Ashes to Ashes (21 page)

“Sure,” Ashe replied.

“Splendid.”

She hung up. Seconds later a light knock came
at the door. Ashe couldn’t help but to grin.

Chapter 23

The back deck of Ashe’s house was where he
would often spend warm evenings, relaxing and staring thoughtlessly
out over his rectangular backyard, which was surrounded by a tall
white fence. The fence was not a flimsy picket fence, but something
thicker, sturdier, and more secure. While working in a maximum
security prison, habits can sometimes follow a person home. At
least the fence was not topped by razor wire.

The yard was currently in stages of neglect,
Ashe had to admit. The grass wasn’t ridiculously over grown but it
needed a mowing along with trimming around the edge of the house.
He used to be better at taking care of his piece of land,
especially the rock path that led from the deck to a square patch
at the back corner of the yard. Over the past few years the large
chunks of flagstone that made the path had shifted, causing the
walkway to become uneven. The patch of earth at the end of walkway
was once a small garden, but it had become infested with weeds and
bugs. Ashe remembered when the garden was full of growing
vegetables, like tomatoes and onions. But those days were long
gone. Susanne had had the green thumb. But she was long gone as
well.

The sliding glass door behind him slammed
closed shattering Ashe’s thoughts. “Your refill has arrived, sir,”
Katherine said, handing him a cold bottle of lager. The top had
already been popped and he immediately put the long neck to his
lips. It had been awhile since he had some company on the deck. He
was enjoying it, more than he realized he would.

“Thank you,” Ashe said.

A breeze blew by them and the smell of
cooking meat filled his nostrils. He went to stand but Katherine
quickly rushed across the deck toward the large metal grill. “No.
No. No,” she cried out. “I brought the meat, so I get the joy of
cooking it. You just keep your ass in that chair, mister.”

Calling Katherine quirky was an
understatement. But she was fun and Ashe was actually enjoying
himself, if only for the moment. It was a good shift to his serious
day. He watched her as she used a long, two pronged fork to flip
the pair of sizzling steaks. Her grin was infectious. With her red
hair up in a ponytail, he got a good view of her long neck. Her
skin looked creamy, smooth, and soft. A bead of sweat formed behind
her earlobe and it dripped its way down toward her shoulder. He
forced himself to pull his attention elsewhere or may begin to
sweat too.

“You seem to know your way around a grill,”
Ashe told her.

“Surprised?” she asked, closing the grill.
“Women can grill too, you know. I found your sexism rude yet
attractive. Funny how that works.”

“That is me all the way,” Ashe replied.
“Rude…and attractive.”

She laughed. Going to her own chair, she
found her beer bottle waiting. Taking a large drink, she sighed
with pleasure.

“You got the rude part right,” she said. “You
did
leave me at the altar.”

“You mean restaurant,” he corrected her.

“That is what I said,” she assured him.
“Never correct a woman when she is lying. That type of shenanigans
will only get you shot.”

“Been there, done that,” he replied.

Katherine’s eyebrow rose. “Pray tell.”

He took a drink.

“That isn’t something I disclose on a second
date,” he explained.

“Second date?” she asked. “I thought this was
a booty call?”

Ashe nearly spat out a mouthful of beer.
“You’re crazy,” he swallowed and then blurted.

“That is why I am here, Dr. Walters,” she
said. “I came to tell you my darkest dreams and my lightest
fantasies.”

“How about your lightest dreams and your
darkest fantasies,” he replied. Was he flirting?

“Not on a second date, Doctor,” she said.

“I thought that this was a booty call,” he
corrected.

“You wish.”

The discussion remained fluffy and somewhat
flirtatious as the steaks cooked and the sun disappeared. As the
night came so did a chill that chased them back into the house. He
was trying his best to stay in the moment and not think about
anything else, but his mind continuously attempted to sneak back to
Scott.

“Where are you, right now?” Katherine
asked.

He met her eyes from across the dining room
table. He cleared his head and replied, “Nowhere good.”

“I’m a good listener,” she told him. She
reached across the table and touched his hand. “Anytime you want, I
will join you in
that
place.”

He withdrew his hand and used it to take a
piece of steak from his plate. The steak was delicious and he
stretched out his chewing, enjoying all the mesh of spices that
filled his mouth. When he was finished, he replied, “Not a place
anyone else can go.”

“I’d be happy to try,” she said, before
changing the subject. “How was work, today? I’m interested.
Very
interested.”

Ashe thought about it.

“A transfer finally went through for one of
my patients,” he began. “Grub, or at least that is the name he
answers by. I’ve been trying to get the board to approve his move
to a psychiatric facility for some time. I’ve been worried that it
might not go through or go through on time.”

“What do you mean?”

“In prison,” Ashe said, “there are those who
are mentally incapable of protecting themselves. They are easy prey
and are often isolated, used, and manipulated. They can’t fight
back. They are not strong enough. If they do fight back…it never
ends well for them.”

“What did grub do?”

He knew the question would come.

“Sexual assault,” he quickly answered.

“Sexual assault?”

“Young girls.”

Katherine swallowed hard. Her eyes lowered to
her steak, but Ashe knew she was looking far beyond the piece of
meat. “How awful. That is…terrible. Why would you try to protect
someone like that? Why would you care if they are hurt or even
killed? Doesn’t he deserve whatever happens to him?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Would you punish a dirty, mistreated dog,
when the only life they had ever known was violence and
aggression?” he asked. “If that dog was trained to bite and didn’t
know any better, would you blame him for biting you?”

“Yes.”

He sighed.

“Bad example. Grub was trained and molded to
be a sexual predator from birth,” Ashe continued. “His father
taught him how to rape and abuse, forcing him to practice on his
own sister. It became as natural as breathing. He never had a
chance in hell at being anything but what he became. Should he be
punished for what was out of his control?”

“But aren’t violent dogs usually put
down?”

“Yea,” he agreed. “But should they be?”

She didn’t answer.

“Grub will most likely never be free,” he
admitted, “Even if he survives his long sentence. There is no way,
in modern society, to get around that. I’m not saying otherwise. As
a psychologist and human being, I have to take into consideration
the life of others, as well. His treatment and cognitive
restructuring might work or it might not, most likely not, but we
have to try. Grub is a monster, like that made by Frankenstein, but
I also can’t help but view him as a victim. He doesn’t belong in
the same building as…Franklin Barrett…a rich, spoiled snake who
murdered his wife and son in cold blood.”

“Franklin Barrett? You’ve met with
him
?”

“Just briefly,” Ashe said. “I’m not
impressed.”

He took a long drink of beer. His face was
becoming warm and he knew the alcohol was taking a hold of his
brain. He chewed and swallowed another bite of steak, hoping that
the meat might soak up some of the beer in his gut. At the same
time, part of him didn’t want it to. He wanted to feel the buzz. He
wanted to feel the bite.

“I don’t want to talk about Franklin
Barrett.”

“Your beer is about empty,” Katherine
blurted. “Let me get you another one.”

“Thank you.”

Ashe closed his eyes and listened to
Katherine. Her feet on the tile floor. The opening of the fridge.
Her voice. “Did you know that you have a message on your machine?”
She pushed the button. Suddenly, he found himself lunging out of
his chair and across the room. But he was slow to react.

“Sweetheart. Love you. Love you…”

He pushed the button to stop the recording
and stood there in silence.

“Your wife?”

Ashe nodded. He leaned his body against the
counter and tried to catch his breath. As usual, the message was
like a punch to the gut, taking away the wind from his lungs. He
could listen to it over and over and the effect would be the
same.

“It was like she was in the room with us,”
Katherine mumbled. She was standing directly next to him, close
enough that Ashe felt her heavy breathing. “I can’t imagine how
hard that has to be for you.”

“It gets easier,” he lied.

“Tell me about her?” she asked.

He shook his head. But he couldn’t help but
to think about one aspect of his wife. When she died. Steven
Reynolds’ name had recently been uttered by another murderer and it
bothered him. He could not have anticipated the effect hearing that
man’s name out loud had caused him. It was like his wife’s voice,
hearing it out loud will always have the same effect.

“Tell me something about her?”

Ashe lowered his eyes.

“During that time, I was still an outside
consultant for the YPD, helping investigate and profile crimes,
mostly deaths for the homicide department,” he said. “Susanne
understood why I did it, even though it would often be dangerous.
She understood why I helped. She would often tease, saying that I
had a superhero complex. But I don’t think that that was close to
true.”

“You wanted to catch the bad guys,” Katherine
stated.

“If I could help,” Ashe began, “why shouldn’t
I.”

“I understand.”

“There had been a rash of murders four years
back, spreading from Youngstown and into Cleveland,” Ashe
continued. “Prostitutes. Brutal crimes. The killer had been quickly
named the Eastside Slasher, for whatever reason. Detective Harrison
and his group from the YPD division of homicide worked with
detectives from Cleveland. Mainly a man named Wan. The FBI joined
the case after the fourth victim was found in Shaker Heights. I was
brought in about that time. Detective Harrison, Oscar, had brought
me in and forced the FBI to take me seriously.”

“You were his go to guy,” Katherine
added.

“I
was
,” he said. “He’s an old friend.
But he would never include me unless he trusted that I could do the
work.”

“I’m sure that you were more than capable,”
Katherine insisted.

“Sometimes I wasn’t so sure,” Ashe said. “I
had spent hours bent over the pictures of the first three crime
scenes. I had then been present at the fourth and fifth. My skin
still shivers at the thought of those killings.” He took a minute.
“The bodies had been mutilated. Mangled. They had been found in
dirty motel rooms. In the rooms…there had been more blood than
oxygen. Everywhere.”

He paused.

“Sexual abuse and penetration had been
present,” he said. “I still don’t know how they were able to figure
that out, given the shape of the bodies.”

“It’s amazing what they can do,” Katherine
added.

“I’m sorry,” Ashe apologized, shaking his
head. “You don’t want to hear any of this.”

“I do,” she quickly objected. “I do…because
you want to say it.”

“My initial profile,” he immediately
continued, “had been that of a sexual sadist, male between the ages
of twenty to forty years of age, who hated women. Hated them and
wanted to punish them. All the rage was released through acts of
extreme violence and sexual viciousness. The rage might have come
from inadequacies in social skills, due to a possible disfigurement
or stutter or other socially crippling factors. Whatever the root,
women didn’t pay attention to him. And the anger had finally boiled
over.”

“Why hookers?”

“Prostitutes are often an easy target. You
pay them and you can get them into situations normal women would
never enter,” he said. “Easy.”

He paused.

“I had profiled the murderer to most likely
to be a loner,” he explained, “due to his socially crippling
factor.”

“Sounds like a good profile,” Katherine
replied, inching even closer to him.

“No. It wasn’t,” he assured her. “I had been
wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“It didn’t have a thing to do with social
inadequacies,” he continued. “Or built up sexual frustrations. The
crimes had not been about that at all. They had been about power.
Control. Blood lust. I should have seen it sooner. I had gotten the
sadism part right, but nothing else continued to fit.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“The bodies,” Ashe said. “Results from
forensics showed us that the murders took place over two days. That
hadn’t fit my initial profile. When frustration and rage builds up
to a boiling point it erupts and the explosion is hot but burns out
quick. Once the frustration is vented, the killer is spent and the
event is over. It should not have lasted for a couple days. It was
not impossible, but not likely. The Eastside Slasher had taken his
time, enjoyed the act itself. He had liked to bind the girls to the
bed, slowly raping and mutilating them until there was nothing
left. He had displayed his dominance over them, over their life,
and then he took it when he saw fit.”

“That is…horrible,” Katherine sighed.

“Yea,” he replied. “And the evidence had left
little else to go on outside of a vague profile.”

“But you figured out who did it?”

“Yea,” Ashe replied. “But only because he had
made a mistake.”