Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

“Header says Pendergrass Research. What would they have to do with anything?”

  “Hard to know exactly,” Murphy said. “They’re doing a lot of work with carbon sequestration right now. Could be related.”

  Carbon sequestration. Kim McDowell’s field.

  “But what’s the, I don’t know, context of the log? Is it from drilling that Pendergrass did?”

  He shook his head. “They’re a research operation. Not set up for actual drilling. Way too expensive. They probably piggybacked on someone.”

  “Piggybacked?”

  “Somebody drills a well, there’s a lot of interest in what’s down there. So drilling companies will let scientists, geologists, whoever, run piggyback logs. Run analyses. For a price, of course. But a lot less than if the research outfit had to pay all the drilling costs itself. By piggybacking, they only pay for the logs and analyses they’re performing. Plus the rig time they use for the tests.”

  I thought about my conversations with Erik “Leif” Petersson at Pendergrass, and with Steve Dickinson at Appletree Energy.

  “There’s a lot of interest in my copy of this,” I said. “But aren’t there electronic copies out there? At Pendergrass, or Appletree?”

  “Pendergrass, sure. And technically, they’re supposed to provide copies to the state.”

  “Technically?”

  Murphy shrugged. “It’s very competitive out there, right now.”

  I was starting to gain a new appreciation for why Dickinson wanted what I had so badly. He might have been stuck, unable to get the log elsewhere. Then, voila, I show up with a copy.

  “This permeability zone stuff,” I said. “It can measure earthquakes?”

  “Not measure them,” he said. “That’s completely different. This is more a predictor. The log can point out zones of high and low permeability in the rock. Knowing the characteristics of the rock can also indicate the likelihood of whether the well might have intersected with a fault based on the permeability. And it’s limited to the borehole location.”

  “Which means?”

  “Borehole data is generally the best for a given location, but it helps to have other data, maybe from other boreholes.”

  Something was starting to dawn on me. I said, “So a magnetic resonance log can tell whether one of these injection wells is likely to cause an earthquake?”

  “One of the things that can,” Murphy said. “But yeah, that’s right.”

  “So on this log,” I said. “Where does it show that?”

  “Show what?”

  “Where’s the part on there that shows the Knox No. 5 caused those earthquakes?”

  “Nowhere,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it doesn’t show that,” he said.

  “I thought you said it did. The whole permeability zone thing.”

  “The log measures permeability,” Murphy said, new impatience in his voice. “The results of that are what indicates whether the injection could have led to tremors.”

  Still confused, I said, “It doesn’t show that on here? Why not?”

  “Because the measure of permeability is tiny.”

  “Tiny?”

  “We measure permeability with something called millidarcys. The more of those units, the more permeability in a formation, the more likelihood a well could be linked to an earthquake.”

  “All right.”

  “The quakes around Youngstown a few years back? It’s pretty technical, but that well had a relatively high mD rate deep down within what are called crystalline basement rocks. Pretty indicative of a fault zone.”

  “But not the Knox No. 5?”

  “Not according to this. The injectate, the saltwater and fracking fluids they pump into the well?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s clear as day on here. There’s no way that entered the deep portion of the well.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Knox No. 5 had nothing to do with any earthquakes.”

  As I drove home, headed south on 71, a tractor-trailer flashed his lights at me near the Hudson Street exit. I considered flipping him off until I realized I was driving forty-five miles an hour while I tried to process what Murphy had told me. I sped up, but kept thinking.

  Kim McDowell had acquired the magnetic resonance log as part of her research for Pendergrass into carbon sequestration. Whatever it meant to her work, it also disproved Knox No. 5’s alleged connection to earthquakes. As a result, it negated Tanner Gridley’s entire thesis about the well, and backed up everything Appletree Energy had been saying. That was interesting enough. But it also put Gridley’s affair with McDowell, if that’s what it was, in a new light.

  Up until a few minutes ago, I’d assumed their conjoining had been your standard issue professional conference fling, a bit more odious than usual given Michelle Gridley’s medical condition, but no different than what happens in a hundred hotel rooms around the country every day, clothes flung to one side of the bed, name tags to the other. The twist being they were both from Columbus so the fun could continue. But what if there were something else going on? If Matt Cummings had the magnetic resonance log, he had to have gotten it from his mentor, Gridley. And if Gridley had had it, he could only have gotten it from McDowell.

  Had he been using the Pendergrass researcher? Using affection as a guide to get the log? Had she refused to show it to him as a fellow professional, so he’d taken a different route? Melissa Kramer had said McDowell was a private person, that she hadn’t dated much. A brilliant but shy woman warming to the attentions paid by a type A personality like Gridley? Tale as old as time. But how far had he taken that attention in his desire to get the log? Could Gridley have killed McDowell? Or at the very least had something to do with her hitting her head? Either way, he had acquired the document. And for some reason, instead of destroying it, had sat on it. But why? To study it? See if it could be used to his advantage? Whatever his motives for keeping it, his reasons for taking it were clear: while it was good news for the residents of eastern Ohio, it was bad news for his jeremiads against fracking, not to mention his shot at tenure. Nothing like having your entire thesis on a topic disproved.

  But all of this still begged the question: What was Matt doing with the log?

  42

  It wasn’t quite the end of the world. But it felt like it the next morning when I flipped to the metro section of the paper and saw the headline:

  Authorities probe gang role in triple fatal campus-area fire.

  Stomach sinking, I read the first paragraph:

  Arson investigators are exploring a possible street gang connection to a fire at an off-campus rental house that killed three Ohio State students, sources say. The role the man sentenced to life in prison after admitting he set the fire might have played with the gang is unclear, but police decided to study new information related to the case, according to the sources.

  That’s as far as I got when my phone rang.

  “You shit,” Suzanne said. “You absolute shit.”

  “I don’t know anything about this,” I protested. I recalled with a sickening feeling my conversation with Glen Murphy the night before.

  “Like hell you don’t. Did you literally just hang up yesterday and call the paper?”

  “You hung up on me,” I said. “And no, I didn’t do that. I want you to have this first. You know that.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “You’ve been playing me this whole time.”

  “No. I told you I couldn’t guarantee—”

  “That was just a ruse, wasn’t it? Something to cover your ass after you gave it to somebody else.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Please.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “When have you ever done that to me? Ever?”

  “I’m doing it right now.”

  “Just leave me out of this from now on. OK? Don’t call anymore. No tips.”

  “That’s it? Bi
ting off your nose?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m telling you, it wasn’t me.”

  “You know what? It doesn’t matter either way. Just stay away from me. That’s all I ask.”

  “Suzanne.”

  “Stay away. Please.”

  I thought about calling Kevin Harding at the Dispatch to see if he’d give up his source for me. Then I thought about the last time I’d tried that and decided I didn’t need the aggravation. I considered calling Whitestone or Henderson and seeing if they knew where the leak had come from. I thought about calling Suzanne back. Oddly, of the three choices, it was the one that appealed the most. I knew if she thought about it she’d see she was being unreasonable. That she had no more reason to expect a scoop on this story in such a competitive media market than I did in expecting she’d keep anything quiet that I told her. The problem with this premise, I knew, is that I had thrust it upon her. Given her druthers, she’d go back in time to the bar at Lindey’s and keep drinking her martini while Murphy sipped his Lagavulin.

  Instead of calling any of them, though, I dialed the number for Janet Crenshaw.

  “You already talked to Lori,” she said when I reached her. “You had your chance.”

  I explained what I needed to ask and why. I told her about Gridley and McDowell.

  “We’re way past protecting Matt,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe.”

  “That whole indefatigable thing again,” she said.

  “In the genes.”

  “I pity your kids.”

  “You and everyone else.”

  But a few minutes later Lori’s cell phone number arrived. I called and left a message, explained about my conversation with Crenshaw. Was guessing Crenshaw had probably called too.

  When Lori didn’t call back right away I used the time to address the other puzzle nagging at me. I flipped through my notes and surfed the Web and as best I could compiled a time line of the worst few months of Aaron Custer’s life. Mike and Molly had divorced five years ago, according to online probate records. Frank Custer’s accident came a year later, and Mike’s suicide just after that. And not long afterward, Aaron started acting up, behavior that ultimately led to an arrest a few months later for lighting a fire in a trash can in Pearl Alley near campus.

  I thought back to Olen-Tangy-Tots, Mike’s business. Maybe that’s what was bothering me. Still seemed like a decent concept for a food truck business at a time in Columbus when such enterprises were booming. On a whim, I looked up the business on the Secretary of State’s website. Two principals were listed: Mike Custer and Todd O’Brien. I found a number for O’Brien but ended up leaving a message. I checked the time and shut the computer down. Time to head to the real Olentangy.

  For her last run before Saturday’s half marathon, Anne had scheduled a short four-miler, two miles up the trail, two back. She seemed in a better mood, and I listened while she talked about the race and her strategy. Then I told her about trying to find Samantha but left out everything with Murphy. Last thing I wanted to do was explain that I’d been trailing Suzanne’s boyfriend, no matter the revelations he’d provided about the Knox No. 5.

  We were approaching the bridge at Third Avenue, close to the end of the workout, when the biker passed us going toward downtown.

  “Shameful.”

  I’d sunk so deep into my thoughts that the insult didn’t register at first. My eyes on Anne’s back, I barely noticed the speaker as she passed. The only thing that brought it to my attention was Anne slowing her pace a tad. She looked back at the figure retreating quickly down the path and shook her head.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Really.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just never going to get used to it. People need to let it go. You haven’t touched a football in, what, two decades?”

  “Does a pickup game last Thanksgiving count?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ve never gotten used to it either,” I said. “It just is what it is.”

  “It’s wrong,” she said, but she kept running.

  And that’s when it registered.

  Shameful.

  I squeezed hard on my hand brakes.

  “What is it?” Anne said, reacting to the squeak of the bike and the scoot of the arrested tires.

  “Not what,” I said, turning my bike around. “Who. That’s Samantha Parks.”

  43

  She rode fast, and it took me almost a minute of hard pedaling to catch her.

  “Do I know you?” she said when I’d persuaded her to stop.

  “We met in the Spring Street camp.”

  “So?”

  “I’m a friend of Roy,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Pastor Roy.”

  “Shameful,” she said.

  “I was hoping I could talk to you,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Orton Avenue.”

  “What about it?”

  “Something you might have seen.”

  “I see a lot of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like things.”

  “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “But I don’t know you,” she said.

  I looked up. We were pushing our bikes along a small rise on the path, the protective wall blocking out the 315 expressway on our right. In another couple minutes we’d be at Spring Street, and in a few minutes after that she’d be back at the camp—if that’s where she was headed.

  I glanced behind me at Anne. She put her hand to her ear with thumb and pinkie spread in the universal representation of a phone. I gave her a look of noncomprehension.

  “Roy,” Anne mouthed, exasperated.

  “Roy?”

  “Call Roy.”

  “Read my mind,” I lied, pulling out my phone.

  He didn’t sound overjoyed when he picked up.

  “I’ve got fifty people coming for lunch in an hour,” he said. “I run a soup kitchen, in case you’d forgotten.”

  “Samantha Parks,” I said. “I found her.”

  “Where?”

  I told him.

  “Put her on,” he said.

  It took Roy several minutes of cajoling, during which Samantha hung up on him twice, but eventually we arrived at a plan. Samantha agreed to let me add her bike to mine on the rack I’d strapped to the back of the rental and drive her to the Church of the Holy Apostolic Fire where Roy could talk to her in person. Meantime, Anne would take a house key and drive down to German Village to shower and change at my place. I tried not to dwell on the look in her eyes as I handed her the key, a spare I keep in my wallet. A cross between sadness and resignation.

  I had just arrived at the church and was walking Samantha inside when my phone buzzed. I looked down and saw that Lori Hume had texted me back.

  Matt made me promise I’d never tell anybody where he got it.

  I went inside, handed off Samantha to Roy.

  Understood, I replied, stepping into the church dining hall. But things changed. Did Janet Crenshaw talk to you?

  A minute passed.

  Yes.

  What do you think?

  IDK, she texted. I don’t know.

  It’s important to find out, I said. For Matt, and for other people.

  Aaron Custer, she wrote, adding an emoticon devil’s face.

  For Aaron. And for Matt. And Tina. And Jacob and Helen, I texted. A couple minutes passed. I looked up from the phone and peered around the hall. Roy was in a corner, deep in conversation with Samantha, leaning in toward her like a hermit ministering to a troubled pilgrim. He broke his concentration long enough to glance at me without expression, then went back to what he was saying. Volunteer workers clanked pans and silverware in the kitchen. Two women I knew had been working the streets six months before were setting tables. The smell of bean soup filled the air. I was bursting with impatience to do a formal interview, to
find out, finally, what Samantha had seen, but it was clear it wasn’t going to happen quickly. Not like on TV, I reminded myself.

  My phone buzzed. Six texts in rapid succession.

  Matt found it in Professor Gridley’s office someplace. One day when he was doing research.

  OK. That was no surprise. I remembered all the clutter.

  Matt said Professor Gridley was very angry when he found out he had it. Said he needed it back to challenge the findings.

  So a possible explanation for why Gridley didn’t destroy it. He couldn’t let it go.

  Couldn’t give up the possibility he was still right.

  Matt said he didn’t know what to do.

  He said he was worried.

  He said he was scared.

  44

  Lori had confirmed Gridley had a log that had come from Kim McDowell. A log whose disappearance set off alarms at Pendergrass. A log whose subsequent discovery by Matt Cummings had made Gridley angry.

  No doubt about it now. It was time.

  First I called Karen Feinberg.

  Then I called Columbus homicide detective Henry Fielding.

  On consulting with Roy, he made it clear Samantha wasn’t ready to talk yet and wasn’t going to be for a while, and he had to take a break to start serving lunch.

  “Understood,” I said. “I’ll just grab a plate and we can start up later.”

  “Might be better if you take off for a little bit. Give her some breathing room.”

  “Why?”

  “She says you make her nervous.”

  “I make her nervous?”

  “That’s what she said. Frankly, I agree.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “It’s my pastoral duty to speak plainly.”

  “A duty you never shirk. What time should I come back?”

  “Give me a couple of hours.”

  Reluctantly, I agreed to return later in the afternoon. I walked back to my rental and was mulling a return visit to Tommy’s, this time for lunch, when Chambers called me. I could hear the sound of drive-through orders in the background.

  “Falco.”

  “Hi.”

  “You see the paper?”

  “Yes.”