Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  “We’re relieved an arrest was made,” he said. “We support the full prosecution of this individual.”

  “Something we both agree on,” I said.

  “It would be useful to have the document returned,” Petersson continued. “The original.”

  “I bet it would.”

  “Yes.”

  “This institute,” I said, changing the subject. “You do scientific research.”

  “That’s right.”

  “For the government?”

  “We have government contracts, yes. But we also conduct research for businesses. And we have our own investigations.”

  “People say you have the bodies of aliens hidden in freezers in your basement. Is that true?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “But you’ve heard that?”

  “I know that’s the joke.”

  “Ever think about capitalizing on that?”

  “What?”

  I gestured at the couch where I’d been seated, waiting for him. “Blow-up alien figures, strategically positioned around the lobby. Or hanging from the railing.” I nodded at a second-floor overlook. “Could be kind of fun.”

  “You’re mocking me,” Petersson said.

  “Just an idea.”

  “The document,” he insisted. “Could I get it, please?”

  “It would be useful to know more about it first,” I said.

  “That’s not possible,” he said.

  “Call me when it is,” I said.

  We left it at that, and I departed under Petersson’s watchful scowl. I tried catching the receptionist’s eye again, but she frowned and turned away.

  It was late afternoon by the time I got around to checking the voice mail from the call I’d gotten while banking. I’d been hoping for someone like Joe Whitestone from the fire department or Karen Feinberg calling with a break in the case. Instead, it was someone named Freddie, her message a mere “Hi. Call me back.”

  “This is Andy Hayes,” I said when she answered. “You called me this morning.”

  “Oh, hi,” she said. “It’s Freddie. How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Freddie?”

  “Freddie short for Frederica. But only my parents call me that. They loved Friedrich Schiller in college. They just didn’t expect to have daughters. Not that I mind. It’s a cool name, it’s just a mouthful.”

  “OK, Freddie short for Frederica,” I said. “Was there something I can do for you?”

  “I just wondered if you’d talked to any of the can fairies.”

  “The what?”

  “Can fairies. Least that’s what we call them.”

  “Let’s back up,” I said. “Who are you again?”

  “I’m a friend of Mindy.”

  “Mindy?”

  “She knows Courtney? From Orton Avenue?”

  That at least got my attention. I said, “I’m lost.”

  “Weren’t you on Orton Avenue the other day, looking for somebody who might know something about the fire? The one that killed those students?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking back. “But that was two weeks ago.”

  “Really? Because I just heard about it. About you, I mean. Courtney told Mindy and Mindy and I were talking the other day, and she, like, mentioned it.”

  Courtney must have been one of the students I talked to the day I canvassed the neighborhood. Something came to mind. Something one of the students I’d talked to had said. “This one girl . . . Different kind of name.”

  Freddie. Freddie short for Frederica.

  I said, “You know something about the Orton Avenue fire?”

  “Not the fire, exactly. I mean, I know it happened. Everybody does. But Mindy said you were looking for witnesses. And I thought of the can fairies.”

  “Can fairies.”

  “The guys who pick up the cans. You know. After the parties.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “You’ve never heard of the can fairies?”

  “Humor me.”

  “So they’re like these guys,” she said. “Really early in the morning on the weekends? After parties? They come along the street and pick up all the cans in the yards.”

  “They just pick them up?”

  “To recycle them, I guess. I saw them one time. I hadn’t gone to bed yet. They push these shopping carts along and toss the cans in.”

  “Why are they called can fairies?”

  “Because the cans just disappear magically,” Freddie said. “That’s why you never need garbage bins at parties. People just toss the empties in the yard. Wake up the next morning—poof, they’re gone. Can fairies.”

  I thought about the first boy I’d interviewed that day. His empty yard, despite claims of a big party the night before. I said, “Are they out every weekend?”

  “Depends on the time of year. Fall, could be Saturday and Sunday mornings, if there’s a home football game. Rest of the year, depends what night people are partying. You know? Winter, you don’t see them so much.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “So I was thinking,” she continued. “You want to know if somebody saw something, ask a can fairy.”

  D. B. Chambers picked up almost immediately when I called.

  “It’s Andy Hayes,” I said.

  “Fabulous Falco,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Got a second?”

  “One minute,” he said. I heard muffled voices, and in the background the sound of a young girl babbling.

  “Sorry about that. I’m over at my baby mama’s. With my baby. And her mama.” He laughed at his own joke. “So what’s happening?”

  I told him what Freddie had said.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ve seen them. Never heard them called that, but I’ve seen them.”

  “Question is, did you see any out that morning? Morning of the fire.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I already told you. I didn’t see anything but the fire. I didn’t see this Aaron Custer dude or can fairies or anyone. It was quiet.”

  “Be good to find one,” I said.

  “I suppose. Knock yourself out.”

  “When you’ve seen them, more Saturday or Sunday?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I’m not out that early, period, unless I’m opening, and mostly I do weekdays now anyway.”

  “All right,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Why you asking? Going can fairy hunting?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Sunday. Same day of the week as the fire.”

  “Better man than me. Make sure you go early. They’re gone by 7 or 8.”

  “Can’t stand the sunlight?” I said. “Like vampires?”

  “Can’t stand the students, probably,” Chambers said. “Can’t really blame them. Those kids are pigs.”

  30

  I slept in the next morning for the first time in a while. I was feeling good until I rolled over and saw that the clock said 8 and I realized that Anne had been running along the Olentangy Trail with her girlfriends for more than an hour. Suddenly grumpy, I dragged myself out of bed.

  Tanner Gridley hadn’t returned any of my calls or e-mails since my meeting with Helen. So I decided to go to him. I threw on my coat, grabbed my keys, and headed out my front door. I was walking down the street to where I’d parked my van when someone called my name. I stopped and located the source of the voice sitting inside a silver mini-Hummer parked in front of my house. Rick Peirce. Appletree Energy’s director of security.

  I stood in front of the open passenger window and looked at him.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Morning.”

  “Nice day.”

  I looked up and down the street. “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “Little chilly, though,” he said. “Good you have a jacket.”

  “I like to be prepared.”

&
nbsp; “Like the Boy Scouts.”

  “Or garbage men,” I said. “Guys that take out the trash.”

  “Too nice a day to get dirty,” he said.

  “Couldn’t agree more. Something I can do for you?”

  “Just the opposite.”

  “OK.”

  “Steve is concerned we got off to a bad start the other night.”

  “The night he tried to bribe me?”

  “He wanted me to convey to you that our offer still stands with no hard feelings.”

  “Big of him.”

  “We’re a big company.”

  “And you’re conveying this message by sitting in front of my house until I walk out?”

  “I was about to knock on the door.”

  “Tell him I’m still not interested.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Sure as shit.”

  He gave me the same implacable look I remembered from the bar. Neither threatening nor unthreatening.

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said. The passenger window started to roll up. I said, “Peirce,” and it stopped midway.

  “Yeah?”

  “When I said your name just now?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was imagining it spelled ‘I, E’ in my mind.”

  The look again. Then the window rolled all the way up, and he started the Hummer and pulled away. I watched him turn left at Whittier and kept watching until I couldn’t see him anymore. I turned around, went back to my house, and made sure I’d locked the front door. Satisfied, I walked down the street, got in my van and drove off.

  I pulled up in front of the Gridleys’ house on Lakewood in Clintonville, a few blocks south of where Dorothy Custer lived, about twenty minutes later. Neighborhood of neat, well-kept clapboard houses, blue and green and beige and white. Plants hanging on porches, front lawns small or in some cases turned over to flower or vegetable gardens. Every other car on the narrow street had a bike rack.

  A green Subaru wagon was parked in Gridley’s driveway. “No Fracking Way,” read the bumper sticker on the rear. His wife answered the door after I’d rung the bell. I recognized her from the picture in his office. She looked frailer in person, and used a cane. I apologized for the intrusion and asked for her husband. She was polite, but I could tell she was bothered as she turned back into the house and disappeared down a hallway.

  Gridley came striding up a minute later. He looked more than bothered.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, standing in the doorway.

  “Needed to ask you something else. Seemed like you didn’t get my messages.”

  “I got them,” he said. “Just didn’t see a need to return them.”

  “Only take a minute,” I said. “It’s about Knox No. 5.”

  He looked behind him, then back to me. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut.

  “My wife’s been having a hard week. And I don’t have anything else to say to you. Other than I resent what you’re trying to do for Aaron Custer.”

  For the third time in as many days I pulled the document, or the log or whatever it was, out of my coat pocket. I showed it to him.

  “Where did you get this?” Gridley said after several moments.

  “I keep getting asked that,” I said.

  “And what do you say?”

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “No.”

  “Sure seems like you do.”

  “I mean, yes I recognize it. It’s a seismic log of some kind. I just don’t recognize that particular one. I’m curious why you have it.”

  “I’ll get to that,” I said. “Let me ask you something else.”

  “What?”

  “You saw that it’s something from Pendergrass Research.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How well did you know Kim McDowell?”

  He froze for just a second. Just enough for a formula of a suspicion to work itself out, algebra-like, in my mind.

  “Kim McDowell,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “What does this have to do with her?”

  “What I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “I knew Kim,” he said. “It’s terrible what happened to her. Just terrible.”

  The lines stiff, like something memorized by a community theater first-timer.

  I said, “You were on a panel together. In Dallas.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s on the Internet.”

  “Hard to find unless you went looking for it.”

  “Wasn’t that hard.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “It caught my attention. Were you in the same field?”

  “No.”

  “What did she study?”

  He hesitated for a moment. I could see him working out his own algebra.

  “Carbon sequestration,” he said after a moment. “That was her area.”

  “Carbon what?”

  “Sequestration. Injecting carbon from coal-burning power plants into the ground. The whole clean-coal technology thing.”

  “Coal can be clean?”

  “Personally, I think it’s a crock. We’re better off investing in renewables.”

  “But?”

  “Theoretically, it could work.”

  “Does injecting carbon cause earthquakes too?”

  He shook his head.

  “But the carbon’s injected into the ground?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “But this doesn’t—”

  “Like an injection well?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Explains why you were on the same Dallas panel, then.”

  “Some of our interests overlapped.”

  “I bet they did.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just a statement.”

  Gridley took a breath and gathered himself.

  “Is there anything else you need?” he said. “I want to get back to my wife.”

  “A lawyer I know said Pendergrass was convinced Kim’s death was related to corporate espionage. Right up until Buddy Keeler was arrested.”

  “He’s the guy who did it?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

  “Do you think Buddy Keeler’s guilty?”

  “I have no idea. I assume he is if the police arrested him.”

  “Usually that’s true,” I said. “Not always.”

  “It’s terrible what happened to her,” he repeated, just as formally as the first time.

  I decided to move on. Felt like the look on his face when I’d first brought up Kim’s name had answered at least one of my questions.

  “Jacob Dunning,” I said. “One of the fire victims.”

  “One of Aaron’s victims.”

  “He was a friend of Matt’s.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “But maybe not a good friend,” I said. “I heard they had a parting of the ways. And Matt didn’t want him at the house that night.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Any idea what might have come between them?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Dunning? I’d met him.”

  “Ever have him in class?”

  “No.”

  “Matt ever talk about him?”

  “Not really.”

  “You must have worked pretty closely with Matt. On the paper, about Knox No. 5. He never talked about Jacob? Why they weren’t friends anymore?”

  “It’s not the kind of thing we discussed.”

  “Did you know he sold pot?”

  “No,” Gridley said, after a pause.

  Behind us, the front door opened. His wife appeared. Looked at me curiously.

  She said, “I’m sorry to interrupt. We need to get the kids to soccer. And we’re supposed to bring snacks.”

  Gridley glared at me. I smiled at his wife.

  “If y
ou think of any more answers to my questions, I’d appreciate a call,” I said. I turned and headed up the walk.

  “Andy,” Gridley said.

  I turned around.

  “The log.”

  “What about it?”

  “Could I keep it? That copy?”

  I looked at him. Looked past him to his wife.

  “No,” I said.

  31

  I’d set my alarm for 3:30 a.m. Sunday, but there was no need. My eyes opened thirty minutes before that, and I lay in bed, thinking. I knew I’d been dreaming of a woman again. But I couldn’t have told you if it was Suzanne or Anne. Somehow this was not an encouraging development.

  As I drove up High Street, all but deserted except for a couple of stragglers either just getting up or just going to bed, I thought about Tanner Gridley and Kim McDowell. Had they had an affair in Dallas? Nice hotel, hothouse atmosphere, away from the hassles of home. Jazz at the bar while they had drinks. Maybe Mrs. Gridley had had a bad week, or month, or year. Things happen. Didn’t I know that? His reaction to McDowell’s name betrayed a guilty conscience of some kind. On the other hand, does a guy who runs 5Ks to help raise money for MS turn around and step out on the wife he’s doing those races for? I wouldn’t have put it past me, once upon a time. I wasn’t so sure about Gridley.

  I wondered about the other, related possibility on my mind. Connected to the document, the log, whatever, that Lori Hume had come across. That so many people seemed interested in.

  Was it possible police had the wrong guy for Kim McDowell’s murder?

  I found a spot at the top of Orton Avenue, parked, and started walking up the street. A couple of houses had lights on, and I saw images on a television in somebody’s living room, but it was otherwise quiet. Why wouldn’t it be? It was 4 in the morning. I heard a sound and tensed, then relaxed as I saw a cat run between houses. Old-fashioned lamps cast pools of orange light up and down the street, their glowing curved globes atop cast iron black poles like giant matchsticks. The result was a lot of shadows but not a whole lot of dark. Whoever this witness was, if he existed, would have to have hidden carefully to avoid being seen.

  I was starting to think that both Freddie short for Frederica and D. B. Chambers were putting me on when I heard another sound. Not a cat. And then I saw him. Up the street, near Orton Avenue’s intersection with Woodruff. A man pushing a shopping cart jangling with aluminum cans. I’ll be damned, I thought.