Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  “Yes?”

  “Do yourself a favor. Don’t call Fielding with this shit.”

  I was returning my attention to the coincidence that Gridley had known Kim McDowell when I checked my e-mail and saw a notice from the bank. Dorothy’s check for $500 had bounced. Not a welcome development considering how low my bank balance was.

  She was apologetic when I called and promised to move things around right away. She said something about problems with automated payments and online banking. I assured her I wasn’t angry and told her I understood. Truth be told, I was the last person to criticize anyone else’s financial affairs. Not so long ago, my updated version of the old free spender’s joke went like this: if I still had my ATM card, how could there not be money in my account?

  My conversation with Dorothy reminded me of something she had said about e-mailing Aaron. I went online and signed up for the prison communication system, bought a package of virtual stamps, and sent Aaron a message about my conversation with Helen Chen.

  I went back over my notes and looked at the number of potential witnesses I could still talk to. I realized I hadn’t heard back from either the pizza delivery guy or the guy who called the fire in. Since those numbers were staring me in the face, I called them first. I got the same recorded message for my pizza person. Someone kept answering the McDonald’s phone, then hanging up. In the end I decided it was close enough to lunchtime and just drove over there.

  D. B. Chambers seemed taken aback by my visit, but once I’d explained my unpleasant mission again he agreed to sit down with me during a break over a Big Mac and fries. I offered to buy him lunch, but he shook his head. “I don’t eat this shit, man, I just sell it. I’m mostly a vegetarian.”

  “Smart choice,” I said.

  The McDonald’s sat on Hudson just around the corner from Fourth. The lunchtime crowd was a mix of retirees, tired-looking moms, and a couple of college kids, or kids who looked like they should be in college, anyway. Had they rousted any homeless camps recently, I wondered? Chambers was black, light-complected, his face freckled, both arms covered with a series of tattoos. I was guessing he’d done time, but I had long ago stopped holding that against anyone. Just as with my financial affairs, I was the last person to talk.

  “Ohio State quarterback, huh?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Long time ago.”

  “I remember you. Good till all that shit went down.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Ever see that movie The Replacements?”

  I nodded. I get this question a lot. Keanu Reeves’s second outing as an ex-OSU quarterback. First time, in Point Break, he was undercover FBI agent Johnny Utah. “Quarterback punk.” Second time, Shane Falco. “Fabulous Falco.” A big deal until a forty-point meltdown in the Sugar Bowl. Movie didn’t come out until long after my fall from grace. But a lot of days I still identified with Falco.

  “Paper says you were on your way to work that morning,” I said. “You live near there?”

  “Not too far.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not much to say. Saw the flames, pulled over, and called.”

  “You see anybody?”

  “See?”

  “Out and about. On the street. Like Aaron Custer, for example. Guy in prison for doing it.”

  He shook his head. “Nobody was around. It was really early.”

  “Did you stay? After you called?”

  “I drove up the block and parked. I was barely out of the car when the fire trucks started getting there. I waited a couple minutes, talked to a cop, but I had to get to work.”

  I ate a fry. Then another.

  “I know that sounds bad,” Chambers said. “But there wasn’t a lot I could do at that point. And I really needed this job.” He paused. “I was on probation. Got a little girl. I couldn’t afford to get canned.”

  “Probation for what? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Drugs,” he said. “Possession. Little dealing. Stupid shit.”

  “You happen to know Jacob Dunning? One of the kids who died?”

  “No.”

  “People said he sold a little pot on the side.”

  “White kid dealing pot,” he said. “Imagine that.”

  “Didn’t know him?”

  “Didn’t know any of them. They were all college kids. How’s that one girl doing?”

  “Which one?”

  “Chinese girl? She got hurt bad.”

  “Helen Chen?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “She’s back in school.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “How about a guy named Eddie Miller? Ever hear of him?”

  “Nope. He go to OSU?”

  I explained about Miller. It still didn’t ring any bells.

  “OK, forget about that,” I said. “So how’d they get your name? Afterward. You got interviewed, right? On TV?”

  “Police traced my phone, I guess. How the reporters got it, probably. That was about it. Cops said they might call me in, but they never did. Guess ’cause they got that kid so fast.”

  I nodded. Aaron’s almost immediate arrest had made things a lot easier for everyone.

  “So what’s this about?” he said. “You’re a private detective? I thought those were just in the movies.”

  “Used to be. Now we’re on Netflix too.” I explained about Aaron and Eddie Miller and the Columbus Red Birds cap.

  “That’s why I was wondering if you saw anyone,” I said. “Or saw Aaron, maybe wearing the hat while he ran.”

  “Somebody else did it? Bad luck for Custer.”

  “Somebody else might have done it,” I corrected. “Or not. It’s all a bunch of questions with no answers right now.” I pulled out my notebook. “You know a guy named Rory Ellison?”

  “He one of the victims?”

  “Not unless he died of food poisoning. He was delivering pizzas that night. Dropped a bunch off at the party.”

  “Never heard of him. Lot of pizza delivery guys. Thinking of trying it myself. These 5 a.m. shifts are getting old.”

  “I bet.”

  He looked like he was about to say something when a loud female voice called from the kitchen. “Hey, Chambers.”

  “Yeah?”

  “These Happy Meals ain’t gonna sell themselves. Let’s go.”

  He turned back. “Sorry. Kids love them plastic toys. Anything else?”

  I handed him a card. “Call me if you think of anything.”

  “Sure thing, Falco,” he said, grinning as he got up.

  I was back in my van feeling like I hadn’t made any progress at all, and maybe even taken a step back, when a not-friendly-sounding lady finally returned the calls I’d placed to the number for Rory Ellison, the pizza delivery guy. He didn’t live there anymore. Hadn’t been there for a year. Had gone back to West Virginia. Taken her iPad with him, and did I happen to know how I could reach him since she didn’t have his number in Charleston.

  No, I apologized, I didn’t know his number. As my messages trying to reach him might have implied.

  Make that two steps back.

  23

  It was because of all these dead-ends that I was surprised, to say the least, to get a call the next morning from Helen Chen. I was half a block from my house, standing by a tree in front of the Brown Bag deli while Hopalong, gingerly limping back and forth, did his business. It was his longest outing since sometime in February.

  “Lori’s still upset,” she said.

  “I can imagine.”

  “After you left, she went through some things of Matt’s. Stuff she hadn’t touched since the fire.”

  “OK.”

  “That really set her off.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She gave it all to me. Said she couldn’t deal with it anymore.”

  “Understandable.”

  “I don’t know what to do with it. So I figured I’d just give it you.”

  �
��To me?”

  “For the investigation.”

  “What about Matt’s family?”

  There was a pause. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “How about if I just look at it instead?”

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “If there’s anything I want, I’ll make a copy.”

  “OK.”

  “Does Lori know you called me?”

  “No.”

  “Probably better that way.”

  “Yes,” Helen said.

  Going back to Helen’s house was out of the question. She suggested the Union, but I had no interest in a repeat visit. We settled on the coffee shop inside the Barnes and Noble campus bookstore, which a few years back had replaced Long’s down the street, a store that served generations of Ohio State students, even myself on the few occasions I deigned to crack open a textbook.

  I got myself a black coffee and bought Helen something hot and frothy containing milk and chocolate and sugar and not a whole lot of actual coffee, and then she pulled out a folder and showed me what she had. I opened it and spread the papers across our table. A couple letters Matt had written Lori one summer. I scanned them, looking for incriminating phrases that would exonerate Aaron Custer, but instead learned a lot about summer chores in the Cummings’s household and the rigors of late-night Xbox sessions. Interesting that Lori would give those up. But maybe she was really trying to move on. Several photographs, most of them of Matt and Lori but a few of him and friends. A couple school papers. A selection of stick-on notes in different colors on which he’d drawn little pictures of himself with mock warnings in dialogue bubbles: Study. Eat. Jog. I imagined her finding those hidden in a book or on her seat in the library or beside her laptop when she came back from a bathroom break. I fought off a rush of sadness, thinking about what Aaron had done. Allegedly done.

  I pushed the notes aside and looked through the rest. Gazed at some kind of incomprehensible geological document that I took to be related to Matt’s research with Gridley. A flier from a showing of Gasland on which someone, presumably Matt, had scribbled “7 pm. Meet you there?” A menu for the Varsity Club on Lane Avenue. And that was it. Partial remains of a young life, tucked inside a red school folder, evocative, promising, but thin. So thin.

  “Anything interesting?” Helen said, holding her cup in both hands as she took a drink. Her voice scratchy, hoarse.

  “All of it,” I said. “But I’m not sure it tells us anything. Anything bigger. If you know what I mean.”

  She nodded. “I sort of figured as much. I just didn’t know what to do. She was so upset.”

  “Appreciate you thinking of me. These should go back to Matt’s family at some point. Or at the very least, stay with you in case Lori changes her mind.”

  “That’s no problem.”

  I looked through the papers again, pausing at the stick figures Matt had drawn. He would have been a fun kid to know. I skimmed the first couple pages of the papers, one on geological formations, the other an anthropology paper about mid-twentieth-century urban migration patterns, then glanced at the header on the geological document. I paused, looking at it again. And a third time.

  “On second thought,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just make a copy of a couple things. Just in case.”

  “That’s fine,” Helen said. “I’ve got class at 11, though. Do you want to bring them back to me later?”

  “Hang on,” I said. I wandered through the bookstore, quizzing two different employees unsuccessfully about the possibility of a working copy machine. I returned to the table where Helen was sitting and used my phone to take pictures of the letters Matt had written Lori, the stick figures, the first page of his papers, and last but not least, the geological document. When I was done I handed the folder back to Helen.

  “Maybe keep this in a safe place for now? Give Lori some time.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  We took our drinks with us as we walked out of the bookstore. At the street we shook hands formally, like a professor and student wrapping up a tutorial.

  “Thanks again,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “All right,” she said. And then she headed across the street to class.

  24

  “Andy Hayes,” I said, a few minutes later. “For Professor Gridley.”

  “He’s not in at the moment,” the department secretary informed me. I was back inside the bookstore with another cup of coffee. “I can take a message or put you through to his voice mail.”

  “Do you know if he’s coming back?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  I asked if she knew his schedule the next day.

  “Tenure committee first thing, classes and office hours the rest of the day. Busy time of the semester.”

  I murmured my concurrence, then left my number.

  Back home, I turned on my laptop, plugged my phone into the computer, and a few minutes later printed out two of the pictures I’d taken of the documents in the bookstore. I e-mailed Gridley, a guy I suddenly wanted to talk to very much.

  Next, I placed a call to Appletree Energy headquarters in Oklahoma City. I wasn’t exactly sure how to word my message, so I left it somewhat vague after the receptionist transferred me to a marketing and communications number.

  I was looking up an address on the Web when my cell phone buzzed.

  How’s it going?

  Chad, I realized, the criminal justice major. Chelsea’s boyfriend.

  Fine, I texted back. Thanks for your help.

  To my surprise, he called a minute later.

  “Chad?” I said.

  “Don’t mean to bother you,” he said. “Just wondered if I could talk to you sometime. About private detective stuff, I mean. How you got into it. It’s cool.”

  “It has its moments,” I said. “It’s not really a good time right now. But maybe in a couple weeks.”

  “That’s fine. I’m thinking of being a cop? That’s what Chelsea wants me to do. But I’ve always liked private eyes, too. Pinkerton Agency, you know? Were you a cop? I mean, before this?”

  “No,” I said. “Not a cop. I know a few.”

  “I’m doing this street patrol thing next semester? You walk the neighborhoods, talk to people. Kind of eyes and ears of the police. Not armed or anything. Good experience.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “So did Eric Jenkins help you out at all?”

  “A little. Although I wonder if you gave me his name for information or because he was Chelsea’s ex-boyfriend.”

  “Maybe I was teasing her a little,” he said. “But Eric was there. At the party, I mean.”

  I agreed with this assessment.

  “So he was helpful?”

  “Yes,” I said, multitasking while I looked up Tanner Gridley’s home address.

  “Like with what?”

  Impatiently, I told him about the posse and boss confusion, adding that I didn’t think it amounted to much.

  “Like the Fourth Street Posse,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Fourth Street Posse. The gang.”

  I stopped fiddling with the computer. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s a gang, you know. We’ve studied it in class. Been around for years. The Fourth Street Posse. You’ve heard of it, right?”

  I confessed that I hadn’t.

  “It used to be a big deal. In the nineties. Then the feds cracked down hard. I wrote a paper about it.”

  The boss is gonna take him out.

  The posse’s gonna take him out.

  “I’d like to read that,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Could you e-mail it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That’s really cool, you want to read it,” Chad said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very cool.”

  25

  “I have to admit,” Anne said. “I used to be a little nervous running along here.” />
  “Even in the daylight?”

  “Sometimes, yeah.”

  The Thursday morning lunkhead run. A week and a half out from Anne’s half marathon. Her prospects were excellent, to judge by the pace we were keeping. Good thing I was on the bike.

  “What changed? Your brute private eye boyfriend tagging along?”

  “That helped,” she said as we headed up an incline that took us away from the river and into the shadows of Ohio Stadium looming off to the right.

  “Good to hear.”

  “Although your tendency to squeal whenever a Canada goose hisses at you has given me pause.”

  “Those things descended from velociraptors,” I said. “Never forget that.”

  “What helped was visiting the homeless camp,” she said. “With Roy and Lucy.”

  “How?”

  “The homeless guys I’d see on the trail scared me. But after that night, I realized they’re just, you know, like me. Except a whole lot less lucky. That lady I met? The one with the baby?”

  “I remember.”

  She reached up and touched the long scar running down her face, the one left by her murderous husband. A gesture I could never be sure was conscious. “Slightly different circumstances, that could have been me at one point.”

  “I’d still be careful,” I said. I thought of Roy’s and my visit to the camp the previous Saturday, the troublemakers who’d raised Cain.

  “Understood,” she said. “It just got me thinking.”

  “Roy will do that to you.”

  We paused to let a trio of female joggers pass us, then resumed our journey.

  “Visiting the camp reminds me,” Anne said.

  “Oh?”

  “I was watching the news last night.”

  “All bad, I hear.”

  “Channel 7 was doing a story on a big heroin bust, on the South End.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “The reporter was Suzanne Gregory. First on the scene, she said.”

  “She usually is,” I said, carefully.

  “She’s beautiful,” Anne said.

  “I’m sorry?”