Ashes to Ashes (54 page)

How true was it, though? It could all have
been an act for the sake appearing happy. He just couldn’t be sure
if the emotions being shared between the family members on the
surface of the painting were genuine? If so, how swiftly did it
they alter? How quickly did it all change? Ashe couldn’t know. He
would never know.

He moved closer the family portrait but
stopped before making more than a couple of steps. He could
envision Franklin Barrett burying his personal items beneath the
noses of his own family, but behind their family portrait was not
deep enough. It was also cliché.

Beneath Ashe’s heels was a woven rug that
covered the floor at the middle of the room. It was made with
tightly woven stitches that formed abstract shapes and patterns. It
reminded him of a colorful Rorschach Test. Getting to his knees,
Ashe put himself closer to the rug. He knocked on the floor in
several places before hearing a solid steel thump. He wondered if
Franklin’s wife and son had known about the floor safe. They must
have, but they certainly didn’t have access to the contents inside.
That would defeat the purpose of trying to keep his secrets from
them.

Going to the edge of the rug, Ashe pulled it
away to reveal an average sized floor safe. The door was a plain
gray, having only one thing protruding from its face, a simple
handle and a black keypad covered in numbers.

What was the combination?

Ashe gave the family portrait a long
examination, while still remaining perched over the floor safe. The
feelings were real, at one point in time. Possibly. They might have
actually existed. He wanted it to be true. He needed it to be true.
And with that desire he pulled out his cell phone and dialed
Oscar’s number.

It rang twice before the detective was on the
other end. “Ashe? I did not expect to hear from you so soon. What
is going on?”

“What are the birth dates for Sue Ann and
Kennedy Barrett?”

“Don’t do this to yourself, Ashe,” Oscar
begged. “Let it go. You need time to heal.”

“I need those birth dates,” the psychologist
insisted. “You said you would do anything to help me. Anything I
asked. I am asking for these birth dates. Are you going to help me
or not?”

“Where are you?”

“Nowhere.”

Oscar grunted. “Damn it, Ashe. I hope you
know what you are doing. Hold on.” He was away from the phone for
what seemed to Ashe like an eternity. When Oscar returned, he
spouted off a series of numbers. “I really hope you know what you
are doing.”

“I do.”

“Ashe?” Oscar added before his friend hung
up. “Franklin Barrett is dead.”

“What?” he exclaimed. “How?”

“Someone inside Wilson had slid a shank
between his ribs during lunch…five times,” Oscar explained. “It was
broken up and Barrett was rushed to the infirmary but he died too
quickly for them to do anything. I can’t say whether it was beef or
a hit. I can’t be sure, right now. Do you think Lucky had his own
brother taken out? Clear up any loose ends? Would Franklin be
considered a loose end? Buddy? You still there?”

Ashe didn’t reply. He merely hung up. And
then turned his cell completely off.

He had planned on having words with Franklin
Barrett somewhere down the line, once the fallout had settled.
During the sessions in his office and the conversation held on D
Block, Ashe had acquired a hunch that Franklin remained loyal to
his brother, even loved and admired him. Ashe would have used that,
along with his own knowledge about Lucky Barrett, to get Franklin
to turn on his brother. He would show Franklin that his brother was
to blame for what had happened to him, that he was a victim the
same as his wife and son. They were all victim of Lucky. Ashe would
make
him believe the truth.

But that opportunity had been taken away.

He only had what was inside the safe at his
feet.

Ashe entered the birth date of Sue Ann
Barrett. He punched the numbers quickly and groaned when nothing
happened. He tried to turn the silver handle but it refused to
budge. “Fuck!” He had one more chance, though. He entered the
numbers of Kennedy Barrett’s birth date, doing it slower than he
had entered his mother’s. He cautiously pushed in the last digit.
He then turned the silver handle and prepared himself for another
failure. But the handle turned and Ashe heard the door of the safe
release itself.

Ashe pulled on the door and watched as it
swung upward and held. It was open. His wife or son had to have
been able to figure out the simple number combination. They must
not have ever tried. Out of devotion? Or obedience? He would most
likely never find any more pieces to that puzzle either, even if he
regained the stamina to search for them. It would remain
incomplete, annoyingly so.

There was more empty space than Ashe had
anticipated. It looked almost bare. But it did make it easier for
him to scan over and identify what
was
present. Inside of
the safe, from what he could tell, were a few random things. There
were stacks of papers and sealed documents, most likely dealing
with business endeavors. He considered opening and leafing through
the documents for anything concerning any possible life insurance
Franklin may have had. It was one the central theme that had been
at root of the murderers. But Ashe chose against it. There were
also old photos of what might have been family members, maybe even
kid pictures of Kennedy. At the far bottom were three tall stacks
of twenty dollar bills. He didn’t reach for any of those items, not
even the money. Instead he jolted his hand toward the small cluster
of black and gold containers that were grouped together at the
bottom corner of the safe.

Score.

The score almost dwindled away as Ashe began
to open the containers. They were empty. One by one he found them
that way. Cleaned out. It wasn’t until he opened the last container
did he expose a single white pill. It looked harmless. But he knew
otherwise.

After tucking away the container into his
pocket, Ashe closed the safe. He then returned the rug before
rushing off. He continued the rush until he was outside and covered
with the rays of the sun. The light of day greeted him by falling
over his shoulders. He felt the chill of the abandoned house
washing from him.

He ran back over to the wall and the tree but
realized that he would have to find another way out. He never
considered that he would not be able to leave along the same route
that he had used to enter the grounds. Distraught, he began to
survey his surroundings, searching for a way out. He saw motion,
what might have been movement on the far corner of the long
house.

Attempting to sneak, Ashe moved carefully,
circling behind the possible movement. A well-aged gentleman
wearing dirty coveralls was standing there, lost in thought. The
old man’s eyes didn’t look at anything particular because his mind
had taken over. He didn’t even notice as Ashe came up behind to put
the smaller tip of the flashlight against his back.

The man yelped in surprise.

“Don’t move,” Ashe said in a deeper than
usual voice. “I will shoot you right in the spine if you try
anything. You understand?”

The gentleman understood.

The psychologist led the caretaker to the
front gate, each man remaining silent. The gate was built to keep
out unwanted vehicles and Ashe assumed that it opened and closed
electronically, possibly controlled by a device inside what
appeared to be a guard station. It would take too long and be too
complex to guide the caretaker to the station and have him release
the large gate. Instead, he looked to a smaller door built into the
massive wall and positioned near to the gate. It looked like a
normal door. He could use a normal door. But it would obviously be
locked.

When the psychologist had alarmed the
caretaker, he had noticed a plastic badge hanging from the man’s
belt by a black cord.

“The door,” Ashe whispered. “Go to it. Open
it.”

Once the badge was swiped and the door was
unlocked, Ashe clubbed the old caretaker on the back of the head
with the flashlight. He then bolted through the door. He wanted to
get far away from that damned building. He may never be fully able
to wash the dust of the house from his skin, but he would scrub and
scrub anyway. The dust may one day come clean from his flesh, but
he honestly doubted it.

Chapter 66

Ashe was glad to be back home, back to his
house, his sanctuary. It was a safe place. And he hoped that it
would always be exactly that. He wouldn’t know what to do if his
own home became compromised, tainted, by whatever nastiness from
the outside world may choose to creep through the doorway. He
wouldn’t know how to act if he lost his only remaining safe haven
from dirtiness of existence.

He hadn’t always viewed his house as a safe
haven from the world, a place where he could return to when he
wanted to escape. But in a way it always had been. He was only then
realizing that fact. And he would fight anything or anyone that
tried to take it away from him. Ashe didn’t have much left to hold.
What he did have, he would hold onto with an iron grip, one that
would be nearly impossible to break, as long as he still lived.

The events of the past few days had altered
Ashe. He felt changed in ways he never thought possible. He felt
like a different creature, a more feral being than he had been
before. He may forever be the new beast, whether he wanted to or
not, but his home was the same. He wondered if it would forever
remain that way.

Ashe leapt from his dining room table, where
he had been sitting, lost in thought, as the old man had been
before Ashe had put a flashlight to his back and inferred that it
had been a gun. He went to the front door and checked the locks.
Enabled. He then checked the locks on the back door, which was also
engaged. He followed the safety checks of the doors by making sure
that the windows in the house were also locked tight.

Ashe knew that he was only temporality
satisfied. He would get up to checking them again in another hour
or so, because he would doubt the previous check. He might have
been mistaken, might have missed a window, Ashe would tell himself
before storming back and forth across the house making sure that
the locks were indeed enabled and engaged.

He was not naïve enough to believe that there
wouldn’t be a bit of backlash on him for what happened with the
Barrett family. Because of Lucky and Franklin, he had become a
buzzing in the ears of the other family members, too. Ashe had
possibly become a blip on their radar. And he also never fully
shook the feeling that there was a real connection between the
Barrett family and Steven Reynolds. Franklin Barrett had taunted
him with man’s name but how much of the taunting was based on
something real. Could his involvement with Barrett brothers put him
back on Steven Reynolds’ radar as well? He didn’t know, but he had
no choice but to fear and prepare the worst.

Ashe tried to push it all from his thoughts,
but he couldn’t move it that far. It was too heavy. For what might
have been an hour, he sat and stared at the pill and the black and
gold container, which was sitting on the surface of the table. The
pill seemed to stare back. It was the cause of it all. He was
finding himself blaming Lucky, but the pill was equally to blame.
Whatever it was and wherever it came from, the little white thing
was right at the core of the whole mess. And Ashe wasn’t much
closer to understanding it than he was on the night that he had
found the remnants of it in Scott’s bedroom.

He needed a beer. A Sam Adams was always in
the fridge, chilled and waiting for his consumption. But Ashe never
made it to the fridge. He never made it past the old fashioned
answering machine. The number one still remained on the machine’s
display. The number one…taunting him. Before he could stop himself,
he pushed play.

“Sweetheart,” Susanne Walters said. “Love
you. Love you.” Ever since his wife was killed, Ashe had to deal
with low points, points where he didn’t know what he was doing or
why he was trying to do it. Those points had been numerous in the
beginning, but had grown few and far between as Ashe made his way
through the lengthy and difficult grieving period. But he had once
again found himself at a low point, a point seemingly lower than
all those that had come before it.

He listened to sounds of Susanne.

Whenever he would play his wife’s message,
her voice was loving, caring, delicate, and at peace. Because that
was the way he wanted to remember her. Loving. Caring. Delicate. At
peace. But Ashe knew, like his own father, that he was hanging on
to fantasy. He had given himself a false reality and hung on to it
even though he knew it to be fake.

The answering machine continued to play and
Ashe forced himself to face the message head on. He couldn’t
remember the last time that he had allowed the message to play
beyond the first few sentences. He rarely let go beyond the
declaration of love. At once the sick and sad fantasies began to
fade to nothing, like a dream sometimes did upon waking.

He listened closely.

“I just wanted to let you know that none of
this is your fault,” Susanne explained. She struggled to speak on,
but she got the words out regardless of the intense pain she was
being bombarded with. “You didn’t do this, Ashe. You didn’t do
anything wrong. I don’t want you living with this on your
shoulders. You hear me, hun? This…is not your fault. I love you, my
dearest. Tell Scott that I love him, too. I am sorry, Ashe. I am
sorry that this going to happen to you, my dearest. You will
survive.” She fought for air. “You are strong…and so is our son.
Cherish the moments together. After I am gone, you will have each
other.” She made a noise as if she wanted to say something more but
the message was suddenly filled a loud mechanical noise, as if the
phone was being ripped from her grasp.