Slow Burn

by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

  “It’s about time,” I said, handing it to her.

  “Wow,” she said. “Sure about this?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She held it up, examining it. “Any video cameras around?”

  “Probably. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has one on his cell phone now.”

  “Good,” she said, putting her arms around my neck, then pulling me close. “I expect a full in-box by tomorrow morning.”

  Acknowledgments

  Many of the places in Slow Burn are real, but not all. You’ll look in vain for Neil House Inn on Front Street, although there was a Neil House for decades around the corner on High. William McKinley stayed there when he was governor, and he used to wave across the street to his wife, Ida, each morning from the Statehouse. There is an Orton Hall at Ohio State but no Orton Avenue nearby. There’s also no such place as Pendergrass Research, although people have been known to joke about frozen aliens in the basement of Columbus’s Battelle Memorial Institute. No Columbus homeless camp is named Spring Street, but such camps sit on the outskirts of downtown, some no more than a fifteen-minute walk from City Hall.

  There is also no Knox No. 5 injection well, but the connections between storing fracking waste and earthquakes are real and established, including the 2011 quakes around Youngstown. I’m grateful to Jeffrey Dick, chairman of the Youngstown State University Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, and Larry Wickstrom of Wickstrom Geoscience in Columbus for educating me about injection wells and piggyback logs and permeability; any errors in that realm are strictly mine. Rodney Pevytoe, an arson investigator with Kubitz and Associates in Wisconsin, generously explained the science behind arson fires. Thanks also to Columbus police sergeant Rich Weiner for helping me understand how a fatal arson investigation like this might unfold. Similarly, I’m appreciative of the information our friend Scott Mackey, an emergency room doctor and, like Andy, a German Village dweller, provided about injuries suffered by smoke-inhalation victims and victims of head trauma.

  I’m indebted to Gillian Berchowitz, director of the Ohio University Press, for her long-time support, and where Slow Burn is concerned, for her valuable recommendations after reading a first draft. The press’s managing editor, Nancy Basmajian, shepherded the manuscript with her usual finesse. Press production manager Beth Pratt has produced another fine cover, while marketing pros Jeff Kallet and Samara Rafert are peerless in their efforts promoting my work. I’m grateful as always to copy editor John Morris and his suggestions, corrections, and good humor. Finally, a fist bump to my friend Pete Brown, who reminded me that Keanu Reeves had a second career playing ex–Ohio State quarterbacks.

  I read a bunch of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries as a kid, thanks to my mother, Mary Anne Huggins, who kept them around from her beach reading days. My late father, Richard Huggins, leaned toward thrillers, historical fiction, and those saber-toothed-tigerskin rippers, the Clan of the Cave Bear books. I owe so much to their support and inspiration.

  Slow Burn involved a lot of early morning and weekend stints at the computer. My wife, Pam, encouraged and instructed me along the way, both when it was going well and when it was going not so well. She was a cheerleader for a day decades ago, but she has been my chief booster in every way since. I’m continually grateful for her support.