Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  9

  I got up the next morning and went through the usual routine. Shave. Throw dog with injured paw in backyard. Tell myself I should go running. Pour second cup of coffee instead.

  After breakfast I sat down at the kitchen table and looked up the number for Aaron’s mom. Voice mail picked up and I left a message. Her greeting sounded oddly formal, as if she’d typed out the words on a computer then read them aloud. “Hello, this is Mary Custer. I’m not available at the moment . . .” Molly, a nickname, dropped for the formal Mary. Duly noted. Next stop the website for Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where I trolled for details about Eddie Miller. It had gotten a lot easier to access stuff online in recent years, and I was able to find and download his indictment and plea for the bank robbery that had sent him to Mansfield Correctional and into the life of Aaron Custer, however briefly. I noted the name of the defense attorney and assistant prosecutor who had handled his case. I had less luck with the three previous cases against him, which were just old enough to require a trip to the courthouse. I called Karen Feinberg and made arrangements to meet her as long as I was down there.

  Next I turned to Chelsea Fowler, the student whose number Suzanne had texted me. I went over my notes. A sophomore at the time of the fire. Business major, from Dayton. She had been at the party for several hours, and had seen Aaron arguing with Tina Montgomery, though she left and went back to her dorm long before the fire. She was an interesting contact for Suzanne to provide. A key witness, but not as key as Helen Chen, the survivor, who I knew I’d have to track down at some point. Or Matt’s girlfriend, Lori. An olive branch, but a qualified one? Or was I reading too much into it? Guiltily recalling my dream from the previous morning, I put the thought aside and dialed the number.

  “Hello?” she answered after a couple of rings. Young-sounding. Chipper.

  I gave her my name, followed by Suzanne’s. I explained my mission in vague terms.

  “The reporter told you to call me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You want to talk to me about the fire?”

  “Just a few questions. Won’t take more than fifteen minutes. We can meet anywhere that’s convenient for you.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I told the police everything?”

  “Sure,” I said. “You were very helpful. Everybody says that. Why I wanted to talk to you. Why Suzanne suggested it.”

  “You said it won’t take long?”

  “No time at all.”

  “All right,” she said. “You know where the Union is? I could you meet at, like, four. But not for long.”

  “The Ohio Union?”

  “Yeah. By the statue of Brutus Buckeye. You know where that is?”

  “You think maybe Starbucks would be better?” I said.

  “Not really. Union works for me. So does that sound good?”

  “Sounds good,” I lied.

  A thin black man and a heavyset white woman were having a shouting match in front of the Hall of Justice on South High when I walked over from my parking space on Mound Street about an hour later and went inside. Franklin County’s old ornate courthouse had been demolished decades earlier, meeting the same fate as so many old but architecturally beautiful buildings in the city. Its replacement, a soaring three-tower complex, was a monument to the magic of poured concrete on the outside and a testament to controlled chaos inside. In turn, a new environmentally friendly, heavy-on-the-windows courthouse across the street had replaced the concrete palace a couple of years back, but it had its own problems, starting with a glass staircase that some female judges and attorneys complained led to impolitic gaping from people below the stairs looking up. To date, I had resisted testing this allegation.

  Franklin County Municipal Court—“Muni Court”—was still in the old building, along with numerous administrative offices. The security line and interior lobbies were crowded with male and female attorneys in dark suits and distracted cops and defendants wearing the most unimaginably inappropriate T-shirts for a date in court. “Things That Make Me Hard,” read the front of one, worn by a young gentleman in the metal detector line ahead of me, followed by a list of mind-boggling possibilities on the back.

  “Aaron Custer,” Karen Feinberg said when I’d emerged unscathed from the gauntlet of wand-waving deputies and joined her at the small coffee-and-pastry kiosk on the first floor. She handed me a cup of black and led the way to a bench around the corner. “You sure know how to pick them.”

  “I specialize in lost causes,” I said. “Just like yourself.”

  “Always the joker,” she said. “Problem is, Aaron’s the real thing.”

  “His grandmother thinks differently.”

  “His grandmother, with all due respect, is deluded.”

  “Tell me why you’re not taking his appeal.”

  “There’s nothing to appeal. He pleaded guilty.”

  “His case. You know what I mean.”

  She sighed. Blew steam off her coffee. She was wearing a navy suit, white blouse, no makeup, and a small nose stud that I happened to know was a real diamond.

  She said, “You know how you can tell an addict is lying?”

  I shook my head.

  “When he moves his lips.”

  “Who’s the joker now?”

  “Let’s stick with the facts. First off, he pleaded guilty, which means under the law there’s nothing to appeal. Second, he’s an alcoholic. Third, he’s a firebug. Fourth—”

  “Eddie Miller?” I interrupted.

  “Frequent flier and a heroin addict,” she said. “In and out of the system his whole life. Like most of my clients. Zero credibility.”

  “The baseball cap?”

  “Colonel Mustard in the parlor with the pruning shears,” she said. “Come on, Andy. This isn’t TV.”

  “The cap’s real,” I protested. “He got it from his grandfather. How could Miller know about that?”

  “Maybe Miller saw him wearing it one night when Aaron was out lighting people’s trash on fire. Or he knew someone who saw him wearing it. Or Aaron made the whole thing up to con his grandmother. Maybe he and Miller were going to split the money somehow.”

  I said nothing. I had to concede her points.

  “Listen,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of clients who knew they were guilty and wanted to fight the charges tooth and nail. Aaron’s the rare bird who knew he was guilty and refused to fight. Tough to defend.”

  “His grandmother thinks there’s hope.”

  “Deluded. As I said.”

  “Seemed all there to me.”

  “She tell you about Aaron’s father?”

  “His suicide? Yes.”

  “The divorce?”

  “She mentioned it.”

  “Grandfather’s accident?”

  “Your point?”

  “Aaron is one screwed-up motherfucker. Pardon my Yiddish.”

  “Screwed-up motherfuckers can’t be innocent?”

  “Sure they can. And pit bulls are good with children. Except that nine times out of ten, they’re not.”

  “I love it when you play hard to get.”

  She reached into her briefcase, pulled out a file, handed it to me.

  “This is?”

  “Guy who killed Kim McDowell.”

  “And she is?”

  “Ever read the paper? The Pendergrass researcher? Killed in her apartment two years ago?”

  “Ah,” I said. “That Pendergrass researcher.”

  “Somebody caved her head in during a burglary. Pendergrass folks said it was corporate espionage. She was some kind of scientist there—they were sure she’d been targeted. They were all over the cops. Made it into an international spy thing.”

  I looked at my watch. “OK,” I said.

  “They just arrested the student of the year who did it. Guy named Buddy Keeler. He’d been breaking into apartments near hers, off Schrock Road, for weeks. Apparently she surprised him in the act, and—” She
slapped the palms of her hands together with a sickening smack.

  “Keeler?” I said. “That southern Ohio for ‘killer’?”

  “So funny. Point is, kid’s barely twenty-two, already been in and out of prison and a juvie record a mile long. Spent most of his life before that in foster homes. Mother a prostitute, father a pedophile.”

  “So he’s a screwed-up motherfucker too,” I said, handing her back the file.

  “Just like Aaron. And back to your comment from before, syllogisms run backward in Muni Court.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Just because someone’s a screwed-up motherfucker means they probably did do it.”

  “So you’re passing.”

  “There’s lost causes, and then there’s the Titanic at midnight in the North Atlantic. Yes, I’m passing.”

  “OK.”

  “However.”

  I waited.

  “If you find something to change my mind, I’m all ears.”

  “How Machiavellian of you.”

  “I have to earn a living, same as you. And Machiavelli.”

  “Duly noted,” I said. “So how’s Gabby?”

  “Gabby is well, thanks. Still doing probate, still loving it.”

  “So you defend killers, and she defends the deceased.”

  “Badda bing. Did you know we’re getting married?”

  “How domestically tranquil of you. When?”

  “Not soon enough, though the invitations we ordered say September.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. We’re pretty happy. My parents too. Gabby’s parents, not so much.”

  “They’ll come around,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “Grandchildren. Works every time.”

  10

  I said good-bye and walked over to the new courthouse, careful to keep my eyes off the glass stairs, and spent an hour looking up Eddie Miller’s priors. Karen was right. Several previous arrests and convictions, almost all drug-related. Prescription painkillers or heroin his poison of choice. No surprise there: the combo was ravaging communities across Ohio, big and small. When the Percocet pills got too expensive, addicts turned to heroin, which was cheap and plentiful. Why Suzanne had started digging into the issue. I called the public defender’s office to discover Miller’s attorney was on maternity leave. I left a message at the prosecutor’s office. I texted Anne in hopes my early morning gaffe the previous day had blown over. No response. I went outside and found a parking ticket on my van. Put it in my pocket. Drove home. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

  I had plenty of time to kill before heading to the Ohio Union to meet Chelsea, a trip I was already dreading. Despite my overblown concerns about being recognized around town, the union was one of the few places in Columbus where the chances soared. I wondered if Suzanne had counted on this when she’d given me Chelsea’s number. An olive branch with a thorn on the stem?

  I made a list of people I needed to reach. Helen Chen was at the top. Next, families of the victims: Tina Montgomery, Jacob Dunning, and Matt Cummings. I studied their bios a little more. Tina Montgomery had been on the dean’s list a couple times. A professor had called Jacob Dunning bright. But Matt was the one who really stood out academically. A few clicks on the Internet brought me to the abstract of a paper he had coauthored on an earthquake in Knox County three years ago. County I grew up in, which piqued my interest. The topic made sense. He was an environmental geology major from eastern Ohio, where thanks to fracking the state’s natural gas drilling boom was in full roar. And fracking had been linked to earthquakes. My face reddening, I recalled Suzanne’s boyfriend and my boneheaded “Drill, baby, drill” quip. Matt’s coauthor was an Ohio State geology professor. I jotted down his information as well.

  Despite Matt’s academic edge, I was left with the same impression of each victim: good kids, their lives snuffed out too early for no good reason at all. If a motive for their deaths or an alternate suspect was hiding in the digital footprints they’d left behind, I wasn’t seeing it.

  I took a breath and started placing calls to the family members. I left messages at the numbers for Tina’s and Matt’s parents and got hung up on by someone at Jacob Dunning’s house. I didn’t have a number for Helen Chen yet, but figured I’d find that eventually. I went back over my notes. There was a reference in one of Suzanne’s stories to fifty or sixty people in the house at one time or another that night. All of them, I supposed, possible witnesses. Or suspects? There was a pizza delivery guy named Rory Ellison. A local guy, D. B. Chambers, on his way to work at McDonald’s when he saw the flames and called 911. Two next-door roommates, sisters Kelsey and Karrie Haslett, apparently twins, who thought they heard shouting before the fire started. Ellison was listed, so I called and left a message, but wasn’t encouraged by the impersonal electronic recording. Nothing for Chambers, so I did the next best thing and Googled the number for the McDonald’s. Someone who answered the phone told me they’d tell him, and then I heard laughter in the background that made me think they might not have been entirely serious. A quick tour of the Ohio State people-finder website failed to turn up the Hasletts, which meant they’d graduated. They weren’t listed in Columbus, and their Facebook pages were blocked.

  I took a break by calling the state and making a request for the report on Eddie Miller’s suicide. Next, I called Mansfield Correctional and got the ball rolling on a visit to Aaron. It was nearly time for lunch by now, and I solved this conundrum with two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. I looked over my notes while I ate and thumbed through the voluminous clips about Aaron Custer and the fire. I recalled Karen Feinberg’s rebuke: “This isn’t TV.” I knew she had a point. I just didn’t want to admit it.

  A few hours later I approached the bench inside the Ohio Union where the bronze statue of Ohio State’s mascot, Brutus Buckeye, was strategically seated, looking for all the world like a parody of the Headless Horseman with pumpkin firmly in place on his shoulders. I pulled my Columbus Clippers cap down farther over my face, adjusted my sunglasses and waited.

  Chelsea Fowler turned out to be a pretty, petite dyed blonde wearing a pink Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt, black yoga pants, and too much makeup. She introduced me to Chad, “my boyfriend,” a sturdily built fellow with short, sandy hair also wearing an A&F sweatshirt. After strained pleasantries, I convinced them to sidle over to Sloopy’s, a diner tucked into one corner of the union, where we sat at a far table. I ordered coffee. They both had pop. I placed two business cards before them. Chelsea’s lay unretrieved. Chad picked his up, examined it, then set it down.

  “Aaron Custer, innocent?” Chelsea said after our drinks arrived and she’d heard me out. She looked mean when she frowned. “You didn’t say anything like that on the phone.”

  “Allegedly innocent,” I said. “It could be nothing. But his grandmother’s concerned. You know how grandparents can be.”

  “Both my grandmas are dead,” she said.

  “Custer threatened to kill everyone,” Chad offered. “Chelsea heard him.”

  “You heard him arguing with Tina Montgomery,” I said, directing the question to Chelsea.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What did he say?”

  “I already told the police all that? And the reporter? Suzanne?”

  “I just want to make sure I have all the facts straight. So if Aaron really isn’t innocent”—I glanced at Chad—“I have the evidence I need to break the news to his grandmother.”

  “Fine,” she said. “He was saying something like ‘The boss is gonna take him out.’ Real slurred like, ’cause he was so drunk.”

  “The boss?”

  “That’s right.”

  I recalled Frank Custer’s nickname for Aaron. “Hey, boss.” And Aaron’s eager adoption of it. “Hey, Grandpa. The boss is here.”

  “Who was he talking about?”

  “What?”

  “Him. ‘The
boss is gonna take him out.’ Who’s the him?”

  “Jacob Dunning,” Chad said.

  “Tina knew Jacob?” I said.

  “They met at the party,” Chelsea said. “They’d been flirting. Aaron knew Jacob somehow, and he was jealous.”

  “He was jealous of Jacob, for talking to Tina?”

  “Yeah,” Chelsea said.

  “Any idea why?” I said. “Aaron and Tina weren’t dating, were they?”

  “I don’t know,” Chelsea said, looking bored. “I just know they were arguing. Aaron didn’t like Jacob for some reason.”

  Fair enough, I thought. I’d had my share of drunken confrontations with guys I’d thought had been talking to girls I thought I’d been dating.

  “Are we done?” Chelsea said. “I kind of need to get going.”

  “Almost,” I said. “Who else did Aaron talk to?”

  “No idea. It was a big party. I just remember what Aaron was saying. Because he was so drunk. And, I mean, afterward. After the fire and his arrest? It sort of jumped out in my head. You know?”

  “How about Jacob? Did Aaron talk to Jacob?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you remember Aaron arguing with Tina. About Jacob. But you don’t know if Aaron ever talked to Jacob himself.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  “I just want to get it straight.”

  “It’s all in the reports and stuff,” she said. “Like I said, I told the police all this already.”

  “Is there anybody else who might have seen Aaron talking to Jacob?”

  She shrugged.

  “Anybody else you knew at the party who might know? Somebody I should talk to.”

  “I don’t know. Lots of people.”

  “Eric,” Chad said.

  Chelsea looked at him. “Shut up,” she said.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Who’s Eric?” I said.

  “Just a guy,” Chelsea said.

  “Eric Jenkins,” Chad said. “He was at the party.”

  “Got a phone number?”

  “No,” Chelsea said.