Ashes to Ashes (28 page)

“We can’t find any records of a current
employer for Scott,” Oscar said. “We know he has worked here and
there around the city but nothing comes up for the past two months
or so. If he worked, it was under the table.”

“We need to find out where,” Ashe said. We?
It was weird hearing that word when associated with Oscar and
himself. It had been a while.

“We asked one of Scott’s closest friends,”
the detective began. ”The guy claims that Scott may have been in
between jobs. We are going to go with it until something else comes
up.”

Ashe became quiet.

“What are you thinking about?” Oscar
asked.

“Something happened the past year,” Ashe
stated. “I honestly can’t say that I know my son well as an adult.
His mother’s death created a rift that is wide and long and lacking
a bridge of any kind. But this whole thing doesn’t sound like any
kind of person I would see my son becoming. Secretive. Drugs.
Murder. I just don’t know.”

“What could have happened?”

“Steven Reynolds,” Ashe blurted.

“Ashe!” Oscar exclaimed.

“He could be involved,” Ashe said. “He could
be messing with my son.”

“That is the emotional father speaking, my
friend,” Oscar told him. “Not the rational psychologist.”

“Maybe.”

“Steven Reynolds is far from this area of the
world,” Oscar replied. “And if he ever crawls back into our
hemisphere, I will know about it. And then I will shoot him with
every bullet that I own.”

“Ghosts are all around us,” Oscar told
him.

Ashe sighed. “Can I ask you a question while
I have you sitting here?” he asked.

“About what?”

“Franklin Barrett.”

“
That guy
,” Oscar groaned. “What about
him?”

He immediately regretted bring up Barrett,
because he didn’t know whether or not the connection of the bodies
in beds would stand out to Oscar. He wasn’t sure if he wanted it to
stand out to the detective. Should he point out the connections? He
wondered. But he was not ready to fully trust his old friend, yet.
There were still things that would seem crazy if said out loud.
They sound crazy to even him. “You never found any evidence of a
plot against his life?” Ashe asked.

“He is still holding on to that fantasy? We
looked into it,” the homicide detective replied. “We talked to
other members of the Barrett clan, like his brother, which we knew
that he was close to. Still not sure why we even indulged that son
of a bitch. I guess we had to follow all avenues. But we found
nothing
to support his claims. Even if they were true, he
should have reported it instead of doing what he did.”

“Yea,” Ashe concurred. “I just need to get
him to face his hallucinations and delusions. Until then…I don’t
know what I can do. I was just wondering if there was any possible
truth behind it.” The funny thing was that Ashe was genuinely
curious to whether or not a plot against Barrett did exist. It
would change the shape of the entire situation if a plot could be
proven. It would take delusions out of the picture.

Why did that matter, though. Scott was his
priority. Yet, somehow Ashe was sure that what Barrett did was
connected to Scott. And since he didn’t have Scott to question, all
he had was Franklin Barrett. To figure out that man could possibly
provide him with what he needed to figure out what is happening to
Scott, no matter how farfetched it seemed to be. Ashe wanted to
trust his gut.

“You diagnose him yet?” Oscar asked.

“Getting close,” Ashe said. “I’m leaning
toward
whacko
.”

“I concur.”

Oscar raised a sheet of paper that had been
lying on his desk underneath his nose. Ashe hadn’t even noticed
it.

“This is our official statement to the
press,” Oscar told him. “Want to read it.”

Ashe waved it off.

“I wished that we didn’t have to do this but
that bitch reporter gave me no choice,” Oscar said.

“Bitch?” Ashe asked. “It was a woman?”

“Yep,” Oscar replied. “A
new
reporter
even. Hasn’t even had a story printed yet, from what my source
tells me. This was going to be her big break.”

A new reporter?

Big break?

Shit!

“You have her name?” Ashe asked.

Oscar closed his eyes and thought hard.
“Katherine…Katherine something. I can find it for you…if you
want.”

“That is okay,” Ashe quickly replied, jumping
from his chair. “You have my number. Call me if anything new comes
up.”

“We are done here?”

“Yes,” Ashe told him. “I got to go.”

Chapter 31

When Ashe made it back to his Mazda he was
filled with intent and purpose, but when he got into the vehicle he
felt himself deflate. The feeling of betrayal was like poking a pin
into his skull, letting out whatever air and blood was in his
brain. Katherine had betrayed him…for a story. Why? She had told
Ashe that she was a writer, but he had assumed that she had meant a
fiction writer. He was angry at her and also angry at himself for
believing that he had actually found another person to connect
with.

Why was he surprised?

The truth was that Ashe barely knew
Katherine…and sex doesn’t automatically make two people close on a
level beyond the physical realm. Sometimes the physical made people
believe in the illusion of deeper emotions when those emotions were
not present. No matter how much he wanted them to be. Maybe he had
simply wanted that connection so badly that he had seen it in a
place where it never existed.

How stupid could he be?

Last night had meant nothing, apparently. And
yet he could still taste her skin.

Ashe questioned his decision to tell
Katherine about Scott. But he had needed a shoulder to lean
against. He had needed a set of ears to hear him out.

Had he been wrong to trust someone?

Ashe sat in the driver’s seat, still parked
outside of the police station. He didn’t know where to go. He put
his head back. Closing his eyes, he wanted to block out all the
light of the day, but some light still managed to penetrate his
eyelids, creating flecks of reds and yellows and purples.

A short melody came from his pants pocket.
Groaning, he dug for his cell phone and checked the display. A text
had come. Opening it, Ashe saw that it had come from his sister,
Sarah. The text said: CALL ME.

Ashe was happy to oblige.

Swiftly, he searched his CONTACTS and found
his sisters name. Hitting the call button, he listened and waited
as it rang. It rang and rang and he wasn’t sure if she was going to
answer. Just before he flipped the phone closed he heard Sarah’s
voice, “Ashe?”

He hated caller ID. It took away the
surprise.

“Sister,” Ashe replied.

“What the hell is going on? Where the hell
are you?”

“Leaving the police station,” he said.

“Why is my nephew’s picture all over the
news?” Sarah asked. Ashe could hear the panic in his sister’s
voice. She was always excitable. But, in that instance, she had the
right to be. “Please tell me that is why you were at the police
station. Tell me that you are handling this. Scott didn’t do those
things…did he? Tell me that Oscar was wrong.”

“Sarah…calm down,” Ashe requested.

“Calm down? Really? Tell me
something
,
Ashe,” Sarah said. “Will you give me some news?”

Ashe took a breath before he told her the
basics. And then he listened as she gasped, cried, and then
recovered. “It’s going to be okay, Sarah. I was just meeting with
Oscar and we are working on figuring things out. I can’t tell you
any more than that. It’s an ongoing investigation. You know how
that goes.”

“Did Scott really kill someone?”

“Looks that way,” Ashe replied. He wanted to
tell her more. She deserved to hear more. Sarah was a name on a
short list of family members that he had, due to the fact that she
was his only sibling and their mother was deceased and their father
was in a home for Alzheimer’s. He just knew that he couldn’t. He
knew that he shouldn’t.

“But why?” Sarah asked.

“That is what we need to figure out,” Ashe
replied.

“And you’re trying to do that?”

“I’m trying to,” he said. “But first we need
to find Scott.”

“Anything that I can do?”

“Let me know if he calls you?”

“I can do that,” Sarah said. “Ashe…if anyone
can find Scott and sort this whole mess out…it is you.”

“I’m not so sure,” he admitted.

“Is there any way that Scott is still
innocent? Any way at all?” Sarah asked. “It is all surreal. Scott
is such a sweet boy. As sweet as it gets. He would never have blood
on his hands. Would he?”

“Evidence points in that direction,” Ashe
told her.

“Are you okay?” his sister asked.

He was surprised by the simple question. “I’m
still breathing, even though it is getting harder and harder to
do.”

“You must be a mess.”

“As good a word as any, I guess,” he said.
“Listen, Sarah, I need something from you.”

“What? I will help in any way that I can,”
she said.

“How well do you know Katherine?” Ashe
asked.

“Katherine? Why do you want to know about
Katherine?”

“It is important,” Ashe replied.

“Does it have to do with Scott?”

“No,” he lied.

“Katherine is a sweetheart,” Sarah said.
“Hence…me hooking you two up. Why do you ask? Did it not go
well?”

“It went fine,” Ashe said. “Where did you
meet her?”

“She is a regular at one of the
hole-in-the-wall dives where I like to drink,” Sarah replied. His
sister was in her mid-thirties but still lived her life like a
younger person, going by whatever strong emotion is overtaking her,
to hell with the consequences. And those emotions often took her to
the bar where there was loud music and dancing. Her emotions also
took her into and out of many turbulent relationships. She had low
impulse control, along with other issues, but Ashe chose to be her
brother and not her psychologist, her shoulder instead of her
conscious, at least until he felt she needed it. “We just started
talking one night over a shot of Jaeger. Talked a few more times
after that and I figured you two would hit it off. She is cute,
funny, spontaneous, and a little crazy. She was everything that you
are not but should be. You know?”

Ashe rolled his eyes. “What bar?” he
asked.

“
Suds
,” his sister answered.
“Why?”

The bar name sounded familiar but he couldn’t
place it. “I just need to talk to her,” he said. “It is
important.”

“Why don’t you just call her?”

“I tried,” Ashe lied, again. “No answer. Do
you know where she lives?”

“Lives?”

“Her place of sleep?”

“We only met up at Suds,” Sarah told him. “Do
you want me to try and call her?”

“No,” he blurted. “Where does she work? I can
try there, instead.”

“She is a writer,” she told him. “She works
from home…I think. I’m not sure though.”

Ashe wished that he would have stayed with
Oscar long enough to ask what newspaper that Katherine worked for,
but he had stormed out of the room like a rushing wind. He
considered calling him and asking, but knew that it would appear
weird to the paranoid homicide detective. He didn’t want Oscar to
know that the leak was not one of his own men, but the person that
he had previously accused of being compromised.

He had been right. And Ashe felt
embarrassed.

“Did things go good, at least?” Sarah
asked.

He could again taste the softness of
Katherine’s freckled skin. “They went good.”

“Ashe?”

“Sarah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Find Scott,” she said. “Keep him safe.”

“You know I will,” Ashe said. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

He closed the phone and immediately reached
to the dash of his car. Built into the dash was a GPS navigator.
Pressing the touch screen of the device, Ashe searched for and
found the address to Suds. He touched the green start button and it
calculated his route.

“Please follow the highlighted route,” the
robotic male voice instructed.

Ashe pulled out of the parking lot and
followed the preferences of the dashboard computer.

Chapter 32

It took under two minutes to get to the
“hole-in-the-wall” bar. As he pulled in the nearly empty parking
lot, he at once knew why the bar’s name sounded familiar. It was a
police bar, one in which he had gone with Oscar on a small handful
of occasions to drink away a bad investigation.

Ashe had forgotten all about the bar.

Pulling onto the concrete slab next to the
grungy bar, he noticed that only two other cars were sitting there.
It was still in the middle of shifts and the bar was nearly empty.
In the beginning of the shift hope shinned bright, because the
officer had a full day to do their duty, to make the world right,
but by the end of their shift the average officer must face the
truth, the world doesn’t want to be set right, and will fight
tooth-and-claw against anyone trying to do so.

Ash knew those days well. Cops drank. It was
a fact. But don’t they have real reasons to do so?

Getting out of the car, he walked up to the
bar. The neon lights were off and looked lifeless in the
daylight.

In his mind, Ashe compared the inside of the
cop bar to the inside of the college bar. While the college bar had
been decorated with multiple televisions and had been populated
with a group of bodies even in the daytime, the cop bar had only a
single television, which was not turned on, and had only a three
drinkers, older guys sitting quietly at the bar.

He didn’t recognize any of the men at the
bar. There didn’t seem to be any officers in the place, at least
none that he knew by face. As he approached the bar, however, one
of the gentlemen rose from his stool and came over to greet
him.