Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  I walked in his direction, keeping an eye on him as he turned the corner. Unless he was a real fairy, he probably wouldn’t be hard to find. Sure enough, he was standing on a lawn two doors down, patiently filling a bag, when I came up to him.

  I cleared my throat from a few feet away.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  He looked up carefully but not in surprise. As if he were used to people commenting on his nocturnal activities. He was older, white, with a beard far more salt than pepper. When he saw my face, he gave me a hard stare.

  “Woody Hayes,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Do I know you?” I said.

  He was about to respond when a sound up the street interrupted us, a sound that wasn’t the dawn’s first bird chorus. I turned and immediately heard a second sound, an alarm going off, and even from half a block away I knew this wasn’t good. I looked at my newly discovered can fairy, hesitated, then ran toward the commotion. Judging from the smoke pouring from under the hood of my van as I rounded the corner, I would have been too late no matter what. Up ahead, moving fast, a car made the corner at Eighteenth and was gone.

  “Could have been an accident,” I said to Whitestone as we stood beside his city-issued sedan. “Engines overheat.”

  “Sure they do,” Whitestone said. “Just not on Orton Avenue at 4 a.m.”

  Flashing emergency lights painted the street in reds and blues. A few bystanders gawked from lawns. My Honda Odyssey, or what was left of it, was a cooling mess of retardant foam, water, and the acrid stink of burnt plastic. Forty-five minutes had passed since I ran into my can fairy.

  “This guy you saw.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t know him?”

  I shook my head.

  “Couldn’t have been him?”

  “Don’t see how.”

  Whitestone scribbled in a notebook. He looked up at my van, then back down. He wrote some more.

  “This is a mess,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  Whitestone said, “Got any suspects?”

  “Me?”

  “No, Jim Rockford, hiding behind the bushes.” He shook his head. “Yes, you.”

  I told him about Peirce. Couldn’t see any reason not to. Then I reminded him about a member of the Fourth Street Posse who might be called Ryan.

  “Pretty thin.”

  “All I’ve got.”

  “Why would either one want to do this?”

  “I don’t know. Send me a message?”

  “More like send up a flare.”

  He wrote some more in his notebook. He said, “You talk to any of the families yet, about this case?”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious. I think a lot about them. Good people.”

  I explained about Janet Crenshaw of Smyth, Sanner, Stacy and Franko.

  “Bunch of bullshit. House had detectors.”

  “Were they working?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Batteries?”

  “Fully loaded.”

  “What kind?”

  “What kind of what?”

  “What kind of batteries?”

  “Hell if I know. What difference does that make?”

  “I’m just asking,” I said. “Covering all my bases.”

  “Good, because you keep striking out.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “We’ll tow the van. See if we find anything might explain what happened. Anything valuable in it?”

  I thought about it. “A Louisville Slugger I keep in there for protection. Not that it’s ever done me any good. Bunch of CDs.”

  “Who?”

  “Bon Jovi. Bruce—‘Born in the USA.’ Lot of John Mellencamp.”

  “Heavy on the eighties.”

  “Sort of my era.”

  “That’s right. I always forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “How much older you look than you really are.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  Peeved at his crack, I declined Whitestone’s offer of a ride and was scrolling through my phone looking for the number of a cab company when I glanced up and saw a Channel 7 news truck round the corner. I turned and looked at the arson investigator.

  “What can I say?” he said. “Scanners. Even my grandma has one.”

  A minute later a red sports car zoomed up and parked behind the truck. Suzanne jumped out and started striding down the sidewalk. She was wearing designer jeans, a tight-fitting red turtleneck, and a Channel 7 jacket, unzipped. She looked dynamite, especially considering she must have been sound asleep not that long ago. She stopped in her tracks when she saw me.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.

  “Guess I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Fire on Orton Avenue. Kind of got my attention.”

  “But nobody else’s?”

  “There’s a reason why I owned this story,” she said. “Now answer my question.”

  I turned to Whitestone. But he had already disappeared inside his sedan.

  I looked back at Suzanne and explained my presence.

  “Can fairies,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Find any?”

  “Might have. The fire hampered my investigation.”

  “Hampered.”

  “What I said.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “I saw somebody, but I didn’t have a chance to talk to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s gone, like any self-respecting can fairy when somebody’s van catches fire on his watch.”

  “You think he did it?”

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  I repeated my suspicions about Peirce.

  “Anything else you know about this situation you’re not telling me?”

  I decided not to point out that I hadn’t told her things because she’d repeatedly told me to go to hell. I gave her the bare bones on the Fourth Street Posse and the threat against Dunning.

  “Somebody named Ryan,” she said. “Tina Montgomery told Helen that?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you think?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Provides a possible motive for someone else to have set the fire. With Dunning as the target.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Problem is, nobody’s heard of a Fourth Street Posse member named Ryan. And it presupposes Dunning was more of a threat to them than he appeared based on a possession arrest.”

  “The kid you talked to,” Suzanne said. “Eric? He confirmed Dunning was selling pot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s more than misdemeanor possession.”

  “Fourth Street Posse moves kilos of cocaine and heroin. Why would they care?”

  She considered this. She looked briefly at me, then up the street toward the van.

  She said, “You tell anybody else this?”

  “You’re the first,” I said.

  “Because I’m the only one here.”

  I shrugged.

  “Whitestone talking?”

  “You can ask.”

  “I will,” she said. “Not that there’s any point.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like I’m going to do a piece on Andy Hayes’s van catching fire. All I’ve got out of this is lost sleep.”

  I wondered if she’d been at Murphy’s house or her condo when she got the call.

  I thought about my conversation with Anne the other morning. Whether I’d seen my visit to Lindey’s as something more than business-related.

  I said, “Any chance I could grab a ride home?”

  “To German Village?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  She looked at my van again, then back at me.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  She walked past me a
nd rapped on the window of White-stone’s car.

  Three minutes later I walked into Buckeye Donuts, ordered a coffee and five for the price of four, called a cab, and tucked myself into a booth while I waited.

  The cabbie turned out to be a fellow named Abdi with a doctorate in economics from Sapienza University of Rome, a house in Mogadishu that was mostly rubble, and several brothers and sisters he was trying to retrieve from a Kenyan refugee camp. That managed to put my morning in context. So I was feeling marginally better, if that’s the way to put it, until we hit Third Street and were passing Katzinger’s Deli, just a few minutes from my house. That’s when I felt my phone buzz. I looked down and saw a text.

  My offer’s still good.

  Dickinson. From Appletree Energy.

  32

  I left a message with my insurance company, texted the basics of the fiasco to Anne, tried unsuccessfully to call Dickinson, then fell asleep on the couch. I was awakened two hours later by my insurance agent calling back with information on rentals. I jotted the information down, hung up, then immediately got a call from Anne. She was at my house half an hour later and had me at the airport rental counter fifteen minutes after that. The best they could come up with on short notice was a Chevy Cruze. A little small but I took it. Made in Ohio. Better than nothing. I asked Anne if she wanted to meet me at my house for breakfast, but she needed to get back to Amelia and her parents. I said I understood.

  I somewhat thought I did.

  Dickinson was circumspect when he called at noon.

  “What’s the deal?” I said. “Drop your phone in the toilet?”

  “I was at church.”

  “Why’d you text me that time of day?”

  “I’m an early riser.”

  “Know anything about my van getting torched?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My van went up in flames a couple hours before you texted. Just wondering if there’s any connection.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Are you all right?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Any idea where Peirce was this morning?”

  “None. Why?”

  “He paid me a visit yesterday.”

  “As I asked him to.”

  “Why?”

  “I was concerned I’d done a bad job pitching the job to you. I wanted to make sure you understood the sincerity of the offer.”

  “Felt more like a threat.”

  “I’m sorry you took it that way.”

  “I bet you are.”

  “I’m also sorry you still don’t appear interested. Some people don’t know a gift horse when it looks them in the mouth.”

  “Look a gift horse.”

  “What?”

  “You look a gift horse in the mouth. It doesn’t look at you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know when I’m talking to a horse’s ass,” I said.

  I heated some soup for lunch and thought about my next move. My first priority was to find the can fairy I’d encountered before my van accidentally on purpose overheated. I thought about enlisting D. B. Chambers to help look for him, figuring he could use some extra income for his baby and his baby mama and his planned exit strategy for leaving behind the early morning sale of Happy Meals. I texted him the query, but all I got in return was a simple No way Falco. LMFAO. Laughing my fucking ass off. Didn’t seem all that funny to me.

  My second priority was to pose some questions to Matt’s girlfriend, Lori Hume. Questions raised by the papers of Matt’s she’d saved, questions my conversation with Gridley the day before hadn’t answered. Calling her was out of the question, even if I had her number. Telling Fielding or Whitestone my suspicions was premature. Calling Helen Chen was a possibility, but I had to weigh that against the fresh memory of Janet Crenshaw’s tongue-lashing. With that in mind, I did the next best thing.

  I called Crenshaw herself. At home, on a Sunday.

  Because that’s what indefatigable assholes do.

  33

  Monday morning’s walk started off promisingly enough. Hopalong made it all the way to Schiller Park at the bottom of the street, where we lingered by the Umbrella Girl, the bronze statue in the center of a fountain with water bubbling from the top of her umbrella and dripping down in perpetuity. We ventured into the grass and I waited while he did his business, scooping up the mess into a blue Kroger bag afterward. When he started to limp, I succumbed to the inevitable, hoisted him over my shoulder, and carried him back up Mohawk. We cut quite a figure, especially with the bag dangling from my hand.

  I saw Peirce sitting in the Hummer in front of my house from half a block away. I set the dog down as I walked up.

  “Hi,” he said when the passenger window rolled down.

  “Long time no despise,” I said.

  “Kill you to be nice once in a while?”

  “What do you want?”

  “World peace. And for you to reconsider our offer.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “OK, I’ve reconsidered. Shove it.”

  “Not what I was hoping to hear.”

  “Let me rephrase then. Shove it, and where were you yesterday morning about 4 a.m. while somebody was torching my van?”

  “That van was a piece of shit,” he said.

  “That’s your answer?”

  “Wheels say so much about a man,” he said, tapping the Hummer’s dashboard.

  “So do their peckers. But you don’t see me waving mine around.”

  He didn’t respond, merely looked at me with that same implacable expression. Like someone content to admire a butterfly poised on a flower. Or to pull its wings off, one by one.

  “I was asleep in bed Sunday morning,” he said. “Like you should have been.”

  “Like hell you were.”

  “Yes or no, Hayes? You in or out?”

  “Out,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m supposed to tell Dickinson?”

  “No,” I said. “You can give him a message for me.”

  I lifted the blue plastic bag holding Hopalong’s deposit, reached through the open window, and dropped it on the passenger seat floor.

  “That’s what I think of his offer,” I said. Then I reached down, picked the dog up, and strolled to my house with as much dignity as I could muster holding a seventy-pound Labrador over my shoulder.

  Thanks to my phone call to Janet Crenshaw the day before and a bit of judicious groveling, I found myself at noon in her Brewery District office with Helen Chen, Lori Hume, and Lori’s mother.

  “This is an off-the-record conversation,” Crenshaw said, seated at the top of the table. Her dark hair was pulled away from her face, and she had donned a blue-and-yellow power scarf to set off her navy suit. She looked all business.

  She said, “We’re not recording and we’re not taking notes. I’ve agreed to let Mr. Hayes pose a couple of questions which I’ve determined might have relevance to our suit. Nobody has to answer anything, but it might not be a bad idea to hear him out.” And that was it. She nodded at me.

  I looked at Lori. “I’m going to ask you about Matt, if it’s OK,” I said. She nodded, then looked at her mom. Her mom frowned at me.

  “Matt and Jacob were freshman-year roommates.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not after that?”

  “No.”

  “Any reason?”

  “Matt wanted to stay in the dorms his sophomore year. Jacob wanted to live off campus.”

  “They still got along?”

  “More or less.”

  “Did they hang out together?”

  “A little. Couple parties. I think they worked out once or twice.”

  “That changed, though.”

  She nodded.

  I said, “They didn’t get along so much anymore.”

  “Not really.”

  “Which is why Matt was angry when Jacob showed up at the party.”

  She nodded.

  “So what happened between them?” />
  Lori looked at her mom again, then at Crenshaw, who nodded.

  “Jacob was selling pot. Matt thought it was stupid.”

  “Was Matt opposed to drugs?”

  “No,” she said. “He’d smoked pot before. A little.”

  “Lot of kids do,” I offered. “One time or another.”

  “I guess.”

  “Did you?”

  She looked at her mom again. “Once. I didn’t like it.”

  “Jacob wasn’t selling at the party,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “But in general, Matt was angry at Jacob because he was dealing.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Matt didn’t really care. He thought it was stupid, mostly, and that Jacob was wasting his time and should have been studying more.”

  “But?”

  “But he was really mad because he found out Jacob wasn’t selling just to students.”

  “Not just students.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who else? People around town?”

  She shook her head. “Professors, too.”

  “Professors?”

  “I guess. Just a couple.”

  I had not expected that response. But I knew right away what my next question had to be.

  “Was Jacob selling marijuana to Tanner Gridley? Matt’s environmental geology professor?”

  Lori stared at the table. And nodded. Helen reached out, rubbed her back.

  “And that’s what made Matt angry?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But that’s where I think he was wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Professor Gridley met Jacob through Matt. On the green or something. Matt was mad about that, because he thought he could get in trouble for introducing them, and he didn’t want to jeopardize anything with his degree. Or the paper he and Professor Gridley wrote together.”

  “Understandable.”

  “But the thing is, the marijuana wasn’t for Professor Gridley. That’s what I tried to tell Matt.”

  “It wasn’t for Gridley?”

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “His wife,” she said.

  “His wife?”

  “She was sick. And it helped her. I know it’s not right, or legal. But it seemed OK to me. If it’s helping somebody. But Matt didn’t see it that way.”

  Of course. Jacob Dunning had been selling Gridley marijuana to help his wife with the MS. Medical marijuana.