“Suzanne Gregory. She’s beautiful.”
I said nothing.
“It wasn’t a question,” she said. “I know beautiful when I see it.”
We crossed underneath Woody Hayes Drive and headed toward Lane Avenue.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Anne said. “I watched the ROOF video.”
I let this sink in for a minute.
“Why, if I may ask,” I said.
“Why what?”
“Why did you watch it?”
“To figure out the e-mails.”
“E-mails?”
“The ones people have been sending me. Since I told some friends we were dating.”
“Sending you?” I said. But I was thinking that dating sounded nice.
“Did you know,” she said, “that you were arrested for point shaving the week before the Michigan game twenty years ago?”
“I might have heard something about that.”
“It’s amazing how many people thought I didn’t know. That it might be news to me. It reminded me of an article I read once, about P. D. James, the mystery writer.”
“OK.”
“She described a motorcycle backing up an alley in one of her first novels. As you probably know, motorcycles don’t back up. Thirty years later, people would still write her and chastise her for the mistake.”
“That’s kind of funny.”
“Anyway, I just hit delete on the e-mails. Had a sore finger, at first.”
“Har.”
“A bunch had been links to the video. Which I finally decided to check out after Lucy brought it up that night at Surly Girl.”
“Great.”
“It’s bad,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“It’s like it’s not even you. Not even the same person.”
“I’d like to say that’s true.”
“Mind if I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Have you talked to her lately? Suzanne Gregory, I mean.”
I looked at her. She returned the glance without malice or censure. But I think she slowed down a little.
“As a matter of fact,” I said.
She waited. I hesitated. Then I told her about Lindey’s.
“But somehow,” I said, “I have the feeling you already know about that.”
“Someone sent me a picture. The two of you at the bar. Another e-mail.”
“Who?”
“A friend. But it had been forwarded five times by then.”
I said nothing.
She said, “I just wonder if I have anything to worry about.”
Same line Glen Murphy had used.
I thought about the dream I’d had of Suzanne the other morning. I said, “I asked her for help with the Aaron Custer case. She knows more about it than any reporter in town. Probably more than most people in the fire or police departments.”
“Makes sense,” she said.
“I also might have seen it as a chance to make amends.”
“Just amends?”
“Meaning?”
“You said you’re not the same person as the guy in that video.”
“I’m not.”
“But you wouldn’t be the first person to think that cleaning up your act meant you might have a second chance with somebody.”
“I suppose not.”
“So do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think you have a second chance with her?”
I kept quiet. Thought about the question. Recalled something from Suzanne’s and my time together that made me blush.
I said, “I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind.”
It was Anne’s turn to say nothing.
“And I should have told you I’d reached out to her. I’m sorry about that.”
She kept running.
“If it’s any consolation, the kindest descriptors she used for me at Lindey’s were turd and asshole.”
More silence.
Then she said, “You know.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking of moving out of my parents’ house.”
“OK.”
“They’ve been great, since everything happened.”
I rode my bike and listened.
“But every day I’m there is a reminder of the fact I’m forty years old and living with my parents and have basically nothing.”
I could have disagreed with this sentiment, starting with her daughter and moving to her job, but instead kept quiet.
She said, “Moving out is daunting.”
“I can imagine.”
“And it’s mixed up with thoughts about you. About us.”
“Us?”
“As in, what’s next? If I move, should it be near you? Should I rent or try to buy? Is it a short-term move or a long-term move?”
“OK,” I said. I didn’t trust myself to say more. The option she’d left unspoken hung in the air between us, like the fading reverberations of a distant gong. Should I move in with you?
As though reading my mind, she said, “I mean, I don’t even have a key to your house. But I’m there all the time.”
“Well,” I said. “Maybe we could—”
“I wanted to talk to you about it,” she interrupted. “About the move. I was going to bring it up. Then I got the e-mail.”
“The video.”
“No,” she said, sharply. “Not the video. That doesn’t matter. Water under the bridge. The picture. Of the two of you at Lindey’s.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you should have.”
Maybe it was one of those optical illusions you hear about, a stream appearing to run uphill. That kind of thing. But whatever it was, after we turned around a few hundred silent yards later, the trip back to Confluence Park and our cars seemed a whole lot longer than the first half of the run.
26
The federal courthouse sits beside a small downtown park where an eternal flame burns in memory of Columbus firefighters who died in the line of duty. Seemed a fitting enough place to talk to Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Henderson a couple of hours later. He was midthirties, maybe six foot, short black hair, with the build of someone who worked out four times a week but not five. We sat on a bench and didn’t look at each other.
“Fourth Street Posse,” he said. “Why do you care?”
I gave him the Reader’s Digest version of the case, leaving out names here and there, but walking him through the work I’d done leading up to Chad’s connection of dots the day before and my discovery of Henderson’s name in Chad’s paper, which had arrived promptly in my e-mail box the previous evening.
“First I’ve heard of this,” he said.
“Makes two of us.”
“You’re thinking there might be a connection between the posse and the fire.”
“I’m not thinking anything,” I said. “I’m passing information along to you. And hoping I can ask a couple of questions.”
“I’m not in the habit of talking to private detectives about federal investigations.”
“You’d be surprised how many times I hear that from assistant U.S. attorneys,” I said.
“No duh.”
“Followed by the same AUSAs dialing me back to ask, pretty please, could I check up on the hubby or the Mrs., because something just doesn’t feel right.”
“Get serious,” he said.
“Scout’s honor.”
“Aaron Custer,” he said, ignoring me. “They got the guy dead to rights. I know the prosecutor who worked the case. There’s nothing there.”
“I would have said so too. But I keep hitting bumps in the road.”
I told him what Helen had heard from Tina. Somebody named Ryan, talking to Jacob.
“Any Fourth Street Posse dudes named Ryan?” I said.
“Indictments are online. Be my guest.”
“Simple enough question.”
/> He didn’t respond right away. I glanced out at the river, the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy, a breeze casting small waves and riffles across the water. Eyed a couple jogging on the newly reconstructed exercise trail. Thought about Anne’s and my own run a couple hours earlier.
“No Ryans,” Henderson said. “There was a Ryder, back in the nineties. An Ian, more recently. That’s about it.”
Ryan, Ian. Ian, Ryan. Seemed like a stretch.
I thought about Jacob Dunning. “Posse deal marijuana?”
“More of a loss leader. Hell, it’ll probably be legal here in another five years. Their real deal is cocaine, meth, and, more and more, heroin. And guns. And armed robberies. And human trafficking.”
“That a fancy word for prostitution?”
“Not when we’re talking about fourteen-year-old girls working truck stops.”
“Point taken. I’ve been hearing a lot about heroin.”
“You should be. There’s a fire hose of the stuff coming in, and they’re selling it just about any way you can imagine. Busted a guy two weeks ago sewing bags into Beanie Babies and hawking them to moms picking up kids from Head Start.”
“Enterprising,” I said. “But they still wouldn’t appreciate a guy like Jacob Dunning, either way, right? Orton Avenue’s pretty close to Fourth Street.”
“Don’t get hung up on the name. Original members lived on and around Fourth. But that was twenty years ago. These guys are all over the near east side. Plus a lot of what they do is across state lines. Columbus isn’t a destination anymore. We’re a hub now.”
I thought about the irony of this. The city had struggled for decades to throw off its reputation as a bland, sleepy midwestern backwater. Cowtown. How perfect that, having finally grown big enough to make it onto the national map, to offer more than Ohio State football and a starring role in presidential politics every four years, the reward was to become a center of the drug trade.
“Back to my question,” I said. “Possible the gang could have put pressure on Dunning?”
“Maybe,” Henderson said.
“Maybe came back that night to send him a message?”
“Using Aaron Custer? No way. That kid’s a scumbag. But he’s not drug-dealer caliber.”
“Someone else, then. This guy Helen heard about, threatening Jacob.”
“Aaron Custer brings the gasoline, but somebody named Ryan ignites it? Jesus Christ, Hayes, this isn’t Murder on the Orient Express.”
Him and Karen Feinberg both. His body language told me we were near the end of our interview. I ran through my now familiar list of names.
“Ever hear of Eddie Miller?”
“No.”
“Rory Ellison?”
“No.”
“D. B. Chambers.”
“No.”
I told him about Chambers’s background.
“Get real,” Henderson said. “We look at every guy on the east side with a possession and dimebag-dealing record and that’s all we do every day for the next hundred years. Hell, at least he’s got a job. Most of these mopes sponge off their girlfriends and watch HBO all day.”
“Mopes,” I said.
“Term of art,” he said.
“You have a fedora hanging up in your office?”
“Next to the tommy gun.”
He stood up. I stood up.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Henderson said. “I appreciate you calling me. It could have been something.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I think Aaron Custer set that fire and he’s where he should be.”
“Thanks for the meeting.”
“I’d say anytime, but I’d probably be lying. By the way.”
“Yes.”
“That crap about people calling you. Other AUSAs. About affairs. You’re kidding, right?”
I leaned forward. Whispered in his ear.
He backed away, shock on his face.
“You’re shitting me,” he said. “He’s the most straitlaced guy I know.”
“Wish I were,” I said. I pulled a card out of my wallet and handed it to him.
“Keep it handy,” I said. “You never know when you might need it.”
27
Despite Henderson’s objections, I couldn’t help but feel I had come across something. The mysterious Ryan had begun casting a shadow over the Orton Avenue house that I couldn’t shake. I could see how a campus pot dealer like Dunning wouldn’t have mattered much to a big-time street gang. But what if Dunning had graduated to something harder, like heroin? That might explain the threat at the party, though not what Dunning was doing there to begin with. Matt had been upset to see him. So why had he shown up? Then there were the other, niggling details. The geological document I’d come across in Matt’s papers. The fact that D. B. Chambers, the one person who had been near the scene of the fire that morning, hadn’t seen Aaron, potentially giving my client his first toehold on some kind of innocence claim. And, and, and. Taken individually, the things I’d uncovered were as confusing as random paint blotches on trees in thick woods. Taken together, they were starting to point to, if not an actual trail, something that might lead to one.
I used these thoughts as an excuse to repeat my reconnaissance of Neil House Inn, settling into a steady rhythm of circling the block, thinking about the case, glancing over at the hotel entrance in hopes of spying Murphy and the girlfriend, then turning left on Broad. And repeat. And again.
I lost track of how many times I performed this maneuver. But not of how many times I saw Murphy. Which was exactly zero.
I was back home, opening up jars of peanut butter and jelly for another private investigator power lunch while thinking about what Anne had said, about her feelings of having nothing, a feeling my escapade at Lindey’s had unintentionally reinforced, when my phone rang. It was Janet Crenshaw of Smyth, Sanner, Stacy and Franko. She did not strike a conciliatory tone.
“You called Helen Chen,” she said. “After I expressly forbade it.”
“Texted her,” I corrected. “She called me back.”
“Are you kidding me? That’s how you’re going to play this?”
“I have nothing to do with your lawsuit,” I said. “Helen and I had a conversation, she gave me some information unrelated to your bottom-feeding activities, and I left.”
“You’re a conniving SOB. You know that?”
“I’ve been called much worse by blood relatives. We done?”
“What did she tell you?”
“None of your business.”
“The hell it is.”
“Then ask Helen.”
“She said to ask you. Which was a mistake on her part, but I’m not holding that against a twenty-two-year-old girl who’s been through what she has.”
“A real Mother Teresa, you are.”
“Just tell me what the hell she said.”
I’m not in the habit of pissing off lawyers. I work for a good one, who keeps me in Black Label and Hopalong in kibble. I’m especially not in the habit of annoying trial attorneys. I knew Crenshaw was good at what she did. I’m also not sympathetic to manufacturers of defective products, which was her bread and butter. I just didn’t like her attitude.
Nevertheless, I told her the nature of Helen’s and my conversation. Her doubts about Aaron.
“Christ,” she said. “She never told me that.”
“Maybe she was afraid to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If it’s any consolation,” I said, ignoring the question, “I don’t plan to contact the other kids’ parents. Text or call. Unless they call me, of course.”
“No chance of that happening. I can assure you.”
“I bet you can.”
“So now two people in the world think Aaron’s innocent,” she said. “Helen and his grandmother.”
“Look on the bright side. Maybe the real culprit’s a closet millionaire. Then you could quit picking on the realty company
.”
“Screw you.”
“Or are you more the vengeful type? Maybe you’ll decide to go after Aaron’s grandmother after all.”
“I already told you,” she said. “You can’t get blood from a turnip.”
I started to say something, but didn’t get the chance. This time, she hadn’t bothered warning me she was going to hang up.
Crenshaw’s crack about Dorothy Custer reminded me to check my e-mail for an update on the bounced check. But I’d barely made it past an overdue library notice when my phone rang again.
“Andy Hayes?”
“That’s right.”
“Steve Dickinson, returning your call.”
“Thank you,” I said. “From where?”
“Appletree Energy.”
28
We met late that afternoon at the bar at the new Hilton just north of downtown, across the street from the convention center. Dickinson stood up as I walked into the room. He was wearing a tailored dark suit and a red tie and silk handkerchief to match.
“Andy,” he said, shaking my hand. “Thanks for meeting me. What can I get you?”
The bartender poured me a draft Heineken and refreshed Dickinson’s stemless glass of white wine.
“You’re based here,” I said when we were served.
“That’s right.”
“Full-time?”
“I live here. Used to lobby at the Statehouse. Different clients. Now I work for Appletree.”
“They’ve got a lot going on in Ohio, I hear.”
“You hear correctly,” he said. “So you called Appletree. Something about a document. Related to the Knox No. 5.”
I acknowledged it.
“I’m all ears.”
“No. 5 is the well linked to an earthquake three years ago.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“OK. How would you put it?”
“Unfairly implicated.”
“Why?”
“It’s not been proven.”
“You know Tanner Gridley?”
“Of course.”
“He and Matt Cummings wrote a paper that suggested a link between the No. 5 and the Knox County earthquakes.”
“I’m aware of it.”
“You don’t agree with their findings.”
“They didn’t make their case. As I’ve pointed out to Gridley.”
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