Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  If, I thought.

  “Don’t be a hero, Woody,” Peirce said. “Just tell me.”

  I shook my head, afraid to try speaking.

  He drew closer, and I winced at what was coming. Instead, Peirce took his right hand and pushed the stun gun between my legs. Pushed it hard.

  “Shit,” I said, gasping.

  “Newer models shut off after a five-second pulse,” he said. “Safety mechanism. Reduces the number of hopheads who die of accidental heart attacks.”

  I said nothing. Met his gaze.

  “This is not so new. Goes until I let up. Who knows how long.” He pushed it harder into my groin.

  “You’ll lose control of your legs,” he said. “Log.”

  “You kill me, you don’t get it.”

  “Log,” he said, pushing so hard my eyes welled with tears.

  “Why’d you torch my van?” I gasped.

  He laughed. “That van was a piece of shit,” he said. “But that wasn’t me. Should have been, but wasn’t.”

  So: Chambers. I dimly recalled telling him I was going out that morning. Looking for a can fairy. Another thing he’d pried from me, something I hadn’t realized. So fixated had I been on Peirce.

  If I’d figured out that day it was Chambers who’d set my van on fire—a not so subtle warning to stay clear of Orton Avenue, I was guessing—and not Peirce, I wouldn’t be standing here now, rope around my neck. Contemplating a new vocabulary phrase. Angel lust. One I could have done without.

  “Last time,” Peirce said, jamming the stun gun so hard that by itself, not even turned on, my legs gave way just a bit.

  I was about to say, “OK,” screw it, I couldn’t take what he was threatening, would work it out another way. And then I thought of Helen, and all she’d been through, and changed my mind, and leaned toward him, and whispered, “‘I, E.’” And then I thought I was going to throw up from either the second kidney punch or the pain in my ribs or the sickening ache in my groin. And then my cell phone went off. Mellencamp’s “Small Town.” The actual song, of course, with that concluding line: “. . . prob’ly where they’ll bury me.”

  Peirce took a step back, reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the phone, looked at the number, then showed it to me. Helen. He swiped the phone to answer it, then set it on speaker. He held it in front of my face with his left hand while he forced the weapon back into my groin.

  “Mr. Hayes?”

  “Yes.” Teeth gritted.

  “You called? A couple times.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is everything OK?”

  Peirce pushed the device, hard. I gasped and said, “Everything’s fine.”

  “You sure? You sound funny.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why were you calling?”

  “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. I was just at a party. I didn’t want to carry my phone, so I left it at home.”

  “Smart,” I said.

  I relaxed just a bit. A party. Phone at home. She would be OK, assuming I could get out of this mess and get there, warn her about Chambers.

  Then she said, “You think tomorrow we could deal with Matt’s papers? And that log thing, about the well? I really don’t want them here, and I’m afraid Lori may see the folder. She went home for the weekend, but she’s coming back tomorrow. Too many memories. You know?”

  “Helen—” I tried to say, but it was too late. Peirce cut the connection.

  “You would have made a lousy employee,” Peirce said. “Keeping secrets like that.”

  He stood back, and just for a minute I thought it was over, that he was going to leave me and go to Helen’s and that was that. Then he hit me with the stun gun in the stomach and I convulsed and saw bright lights and my legs buckled and the rope bit hard, very hard, into my neck as I slipped and started to choke.

  50

  I opened my eyes. I was lying sideways on the floor. In front of me, a few feet away, stood Hopalong. Staring at me like this was an everyday occurrence. Tied-up master. Game!

  I shifted, struggled with my bound hands. Looked around. On the floor, off to my right, at the edge of my peripheral vision, a doorknob. I took a breath. The knob had given way. Snapped off. My weight had been too much for the old door.

  I was alive because I was fat. Because somebody had smashed a beer bottle in Schiller Park that my dog had cut his paw on and my exercise had ground to a halt for a couple of months.

  Funny, the way things work out.

  It took a few minutes of inching my way through the living room and then into the kitchen, and another long minute straining to lift myself, ignoring the aches and bruises and possible cracked ribs, but eventually I found a kitchen knife and managed to cut my hands free, nicking myself only five or six times in the process. I untied my feet and then stood, shaking, nauseous and lightheaded, trying to figure out what to do next. Helen, I thought. I had to get to Helen. I looked around for my phone. No luck. Realized Peirce must have taken it. I debated what to do for about ten seconds before I headed out the door the second time that night. Much slower, this time, but no less determined.

  Only one or two other cars shared Fourth Street with me as I raced north toward campus. I ran three red lights, once to the sound of an angry horn. I turned left on Sixteenth Avenue, wound my way down and around, then finally stopped someplace on Seventeenth and parked halfway up on the curb in someone’s yard. I stumbled in the direction of Helen’s house as quickly as Peirce’s working over allowed. I swore as I turned the corner onto Woodruff and took in first, Peirce’s Hummer, and second, D. B. Chambers, standing on the lawn.

  I saw Chambers before he saw me, a stroke of luck which probably saved my life. The shot from the gun in his right hand went wide, and I threw myself behind a car on the other side of the street. He stood in the front yard of Helen’s house, near the porch, a can of gasoline by his feet.

  “You don’t want to do this!” I shouted.

  The second shot shattered the windows of the car I crouched behind.

  “It’s all over, Brian,” I yelled.

  “No way, Falco. No way.”

  “Cops’ll be here any second.”

  “Plenty of time.”

  “Where’s Peirce?”

  “Don’t know any Peirce.”

  “Guy driving the Hummer.”

  “Guy driving the Hummer’s inside with a bullet in him.”

  “We can work this out, Brian.”

  “Not an option, Falco. And quit calling me that.”

  “There’s a video,” I said.

  “What?”

  “There’s a video of the Orton Avenue fire. I’ve seen it. You shouted something at Jacob Dunning, then flipped a cigarette onto the porch.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You do this, they’ve still got you for Orton Avenue.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You were wearing a hoodie. Dunning called you an asshole. It’s all there.”

  “Bullshit.” But sounding less certain.

  “Dunning was on your turf. You came to send him a message. Maybe kill him. But you smelled the gasoline, decided to take care of him that way instead.”

  “Fuck you, Falco.”

  Third shot of the night. Car’s right rear tire blown out.

  “He was asking for it,” Chambers said.

  “Asking to die?” I shouted. “I don’t think so.”

  “Bullshitting me. Said he hadn’t come to sell.”

  “That’s true.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “Maybe you should have listened to him.”

  “Listened to the bullshit he was spinning me instead? Like I’m some kind of idiot?”

  “What did he say?”

  “Told me he was looking for something. Something some guy who lived there had.”

  Looking for something?

  “Like I had time for that kind of crap.”

  Something some guy had.

&nb
sp; “Looking for what?”

  “Some paper. Total bullshit.”

  Some paper.

  Dunning had been looking for the log. Gridley must have sent him over. Who better than Dunning to crash a party like that? Not welcome, and yet, for kids like Eric Jensen, very welcome. Gridley couldn’t have known the Fourth Street Posse was keeping an eye on Dunning for different reasons. That he’d attract the wrong kind of attention to the party.

  Gridley had inadvertently caused the murder of three people in his desperation to recover the log. Add their deaths to Kim McDowell’s? A point I’d raise with Fielding. Assuming I lived through the night.

  “You the one that beat up Aaron?” I shouted.

  “No more questions, Falco!”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Had to be sure,” he said. “Might have seen me.”

  “That why you called 911? Cover your ass?”

  “Wasn’t me, Falco.”

  “What?”

  “Custer grabbed my phone. Called when he was on the ground. Right before I started beating his head in. Would have finished the job, too.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Got interrupted.”

  “By who?”

  “One of your can fairies, Falco.”

  The ultimate irony. Aaron, the guy serving life for the fire deaths, had called 911 with the real killer’s phone. Another thing to tell Fielding. I glanced around the corner of the car. I’d gotten Chambers talking, which was good. The subsequent lack of gunshots was also good. I was thinking of something else to say, some other way to reason with him, when I saw him pull a lighter from his pocket.

  That’s when I remembered what Whitestone had told me. The danger of waiting too long to light gasoline. Vapors build. See it all the time. Chambers had been standing in the yard too long. Talking to me too much.

  “No—” I yelled, but in the next instant a ball of flame erupted. I ducked, covering my eyes. When I looked again, Chambers was rolling on the grass, engulfed, screaming, and the front of the house was on fire.

  51

  I made the steps to the porch in two bounds, ran through flames, and got inside.

  “Helen!” I yelled.

  Immediately, I encountered someone on the floor. I crouched down, scooted forward and looked at the face. Peirce. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  Then I heard the sound, around the corner. Between a moan and a cry. Helen.

  She was collapsed half in and half out of her bedroom. Frozen with fear. I can only imagine what she must have been thinking. Again? Thank God she slept downstairs, I thought. Ignoring Peirce for the moment, I inched forward, keeping my head low, then reached out for her, scooping my arms beneath her shoulders and knees. I tried to lift her, then stumbled backward as a wave of pain and nausea overtook me. Peirce had done his job well. I leaned over, lowered my head, took a breath of relatively clear, smoke-free air, and tried again. I felt a wave of relief as Helen raised her arms in reaction and placed them around my neck. I stood up, faltered as the pain hit again, rested a moment, back braced on a wall, then made it all the way up. Something exploded near the front steps and singed my right cheek. I staggered forward, toward the door.

  The porch directly in front of me was a wall of flame. But the lawn was just a few feet away. I didn’t have any choice at this point. I went ahead, half jumped across the porch, shocked for just a moment at the heat and the bite of the flames, then tumbled down the stairs, somehow stayed standing, and reached the lawn, where I stood, swaying, pulling in great drafts of fresh air.

  After a moment, I set Helen down onto the grass, then sat back and put my hands on my knees, sucking in air. I looked at her and saw that her eyes were open and she was breathing. Saying something I couldn’t make out. But she was going to be OK. I glanced at Chambers where he lay, moaning, having stumbled into the next yard before collapsing. With an immense effort, I roused myself, stood up, braved the flames to get back inside, grabbed Peirce by the ankles and dragged him out and onto the steps. Best I could do. Behind me, I could hear the fire growing in size and destructiveness. In the distance, the sound of sirens. I became aware of people around us, of voices, of lights starting to turn on. I went back to Helen.

  This time I caught the word through her sobs.

  “Upstairs.”

  52

  Taking the front hallway stairs to the second floor was out of the question; the fire had vented straight up onto the landing between floors. That left—what? I thought back to the day I’d met with Helen in the living room. How Lori had come home, surprised by my presence. Stomped out of the room. Stomped . . . upstairs. A back staircase. Other side of the kitchen. I bent over, duckwalked in that direction. Found the stairs and headed up.

  She was huddled at the end of the hall, curled into a ball, covering her mouth, trying to shield herself as the cloud of smoke coming from the fire leaping up the front staircase began to descend. I reached out, touched her arm. She started, cried out, her eyes widening as she recognized me. I still had the comforter on, the one I’d wrestled from the inopportunely dressed girl outside, and I took it off now and wrapped it around her. I held her tight as we shifted and scooted toward the back stairs.

  But already that way was blocked. The fire downstairs had spread faster than I’d anticipated. The kitchen, full of plastics, the fuel of modern fires, had already ignited, sending smoke up the staircase I’d climbed just a minute or two earlier. Madness to go down now. Help would be there soon enough, if it hadn’t already arrived on the street, but now it was a simple calculus of time. The Columbus Fire Department prided itself on quick response. Add to that the report of a blaze anywhere near Orton Avenue and they were going to be here in no time flat. But fires burn fast, much faster than people realize. Would no time flat be fast enough?

  We scooted the other direction down the hall. I despaired as I realized the air was already too hot to breathe and I could barely see from the smoke. At the last moment, we reached an open door and I pushed us both inside. Flames illuminated the interior. Tile, a white tub, aluminum legs of a sink. The bathroom. Which meant water, which might buy us a few moments. With what felt like the last bit of strength I had I lifted Lori up, then placed her inside the tub. Grabbed a towel from a rack, soaked it in the sink, then set it over her face. A little protection from the smoke even now starting to fill the room. I got down on my hands and knees. If only I could shut the door. I had almost made it, had my left hand on its corner, when something started to happen with my eyes and the smoke was suddenly overpowering, a gust from a campfire you can’t hide from. I tried to breathe but took in only impossibly hot, scorching air. What was the old saying? Smoke follows beauty?

  I lay flat, pressing my left cheek onto the cool tile floor. Pressed hard, as if by pushing myself down far enough, down into the tile itself, I’d be all right. We’d be all right. Everything would be all right.

  In a dream, I heard a sound and raising my head, reluctantly, from the cool respite of the floor, saw big, black boots in the doorway.

  53

  I came to in a small, narrow room. I reached up and felt something cold and hard and plastic over my mouth.

  “Easy,” someone said.

  I looked up. A young man in a blue uniform with some kind of patch on the front of his shirt was staring down at me. Medical equipment on either side of him. Ambulance, I thought, the word coming to me. Paramedic.

  I pulled off the oxygen mask. “Lori,” I said.

  Then: “Helen.”

  “Everyone’s all right.” A second voice. I raised my head. Omar Sharif, standing off to my left. “Lori and Helen. Thanks to you.”

  Or no thanks to me, I thought.

  “Peirce,” I said. “Guy on the steps.”

  “Not doing so well. But he’ll make it. Also thanks to you?”

  I didn’t respond. “Chambers,” I said. “On the lawn?”

  This time Whitestone didn’t answer.
>
  I’d been lucky. So had Helen. And Lori. We were all discharged from the hospital within a couple hours. Not so for Peirce, who was in a secure hospital room at the Ohio State medical center with a Columbus police officer parked outside for good measure.

  Chambers lived a few hours, but his burns were too severe. He’d moved too quickly, splashed too much gasoline too carelessly, knowing his window to get this right was narrow. Nothing to be done.

  It was nearly ten that morning when I finally woke up. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t alone in bed, and my companion wasn’t a yellow lab named Hopalong. Anne lay beside me, still asleep, her red hair cascading across the pillow like hair floating upward underwater. Eyes open, not moving, I thought about the trauma that Samantha Parks must have experienced watching the arson unfold that night, the memories it must have literally sparked from her own life. Little wonder she hid the phone rather than reveal the truth. Then I thought about Columbus waking up to the news that a drug dealer and not Aaron Custer had set the fire that killed three college students. Then I thought about the city learning that a college professor was equally responsible and might have a fourth murder hanging over him as well. Then I coughed, clearing smoke from my lungs, and Anne stirred. She rolled over and put her hand on my chest.

  “How are you feeling?” she said.

  I thought about the question.

  “Happy and sad,” I said.

  “No need to use such big words,” she said. “You saved the day. Again.”

  “Not yet,” I said, after a moment.

  “What do you mean?”

  I coughed some more, and then slowly sat up. I took her hand. I cleared my throat.

  “Aaron Custer,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “I finally realized who he reminded me of.”

  54