Ashes to Ashes (22 page)

“A mistake?”

“When the last body showed up,” he began, “so
did a witness. The killer hadn’t realized that another prostitute
was nearby, leaning against a building having a cigarette. Not only
had this call girl seen the killer, she had known exactly who it
was.”

“Who?”

“A man named Steven Reynolds.”

“Steven Reynolds had had his hand in small
time crime across this part of Ohio, but he had mostly been
considered a local crook,” Ashe said. “I had never heard of him,
either, until that day. But I had looked and had been able to find
his fingerprint in a lot of things criminal. Drugs. Guns. But he
had been a low tier in the Ohio crime ring, a thug who hadn’t quite
acquired the prestige and power that he had desired. He also ran
some of the local prostitution. The girls that were butchered had
been his own girls, or so we had been told.”

“And you arrested him?”

“No evidence outside of the eyewitness of a
known prostitute,” he answered. “No DNA left behind. Nothing.
Wouldn’t stick.”

“What did you do?”

“I came up with the idea of having a press
conference on the local television stations,” he continued.
“Normally press conferences wouldn’t have taken place for slain
hookers, but I had had an idea. We had not referred to Steven
Reynolds by name, we had only talked the killer, the Eastside
Slasher, who we all had known to in fact be Steven Reynolds. I
wanted to get in front of the cameras myself and jab a stick at his
arrogance and power lust. I had called the Eastside Slasher an
impotent coward who attacked woman in order to make up for his
shortcoming as a man. I had been rude and abrasive. I had wanted to
diminish him in the eyes of the public. I had wanted him to feel my
words. I had wanted him to make another mistake.”

“Smart.”

“No. Not at all,” Ashe corrected. “I had been
cocky. Ignorant. We had eyes on Steven Reynolds and were waiting
for him to make a move. What could have gone wrong? Right?”

“Right.”

He sniffled.

“A lot…actually,” he replied. “He must have
had seen the press conference. It must have enraged him. He managed
to slip the tight surveillance. I still don’t how he did it. But
his rage had acquired a new target. Me. And he wanted to show that
he could dominate me, as well, and bring me to my knees. He wanted
to prove that
he
was in control and not the police,
especially not me.”

Katherine shook her head and sighed
heavily.

“Your wife?” she asked.

Ashe nodded, tears streaming down his
face.

“For two days…” he began but choked up.

Katherine got in front of him. She placed her
head on his chest and heard his heart as it raced. As he breathed,
her head rose and fell with his breaths.

“…he tortured and raped her,” he finally
said, “before he killed her. My son, Scott, was only sixteen when
he lost his mother.” Sobs took over his throat and he could no
longer speak coherently.

“Tell me about her,” Katherine said. “What
was she like?”

Ashe put his head down, unable to meet
Katherine’s eyes. “I can’t…”

Putting her hand on Ashe’s cheek, Katherine
kissed him. As a reflex, he pushed her back away from his lips and
looked closely at her. He was confused. Part of him felt wrong
about kissing a woman seconds after describing how his wife was
murdered. At the same time, the warmth of her lips on his made him
realize exactly how lonely he had been.

Pulling her back in, Ashe began to kiss
Katherine. She was soft. And the weight of her against him was
comforting. He had forgotten how comforting touching someone else
could be. To kiss. To touch. Those were the small wonders that kept
people going from day to day.

Katherine pulled back long enough to talk.
“This doesn’t mean that you don’t still love your wife. But you
deserve this. You’ve earned this. Can I stay with you tonight?”

Ashe nodded.

Taking her hand, he showed her where the
stairs were, which would lead upstairs to the bedroom, the same one
that he had once shared with Susanne. It had been cold and empty
for many years. Katherine would help him warm it back up. He looked
forward to it more than he realized he would.

Chapter 24

The feeling of skin, soft and sweaty,
followed Ashe into sleep. He had forgotten what it was like to be
in the passionate and all-encompassing embrace of another person,
someone who wanted the sensations as much as him. It was an
instinct that he had been ignoring, like growing pressure which was
finally allowed to explode. The act of being with Katherine
reminded him not only that he was alive but that he was human with
human needs. He would no longer ignore them. He would no longer
take them for granted.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep
long when the phone in the kitchen began to ring. Trying to shake
away disorientation, Ashe rose and stumbled his way down hall and
down the stairs.

“Let it ring,” Katherine called from the
darkness of the bedroom.

He merely shook his head. As his mind
cleared, he began to jog toward the phone. Snatching it, Ashe
answered, “Hello?”

“Dad?”

The voice swatted away whatever sleep still
managed to linger. It was like being smacked in the face with a
spray of ice cold water. Ashe’s mind became clear and his senses
were immediately put on edge.

“Scott? Scott, is that you?”

At first there was only silence, but then
Scott answered, “Yea.”

“Damn it, Scott!” Ashe exclaimed. “Where the
hell are you?” He took a second to pull the handset from his ear to
glance at the caller ID. The number was from a Youngstown are code,
meaning that his son was still in town. But he didn’t recognize the
rest of the digits. It was no number that he was familiar with.

And why had he called the house phone instead
of Ashe’s cell?

“Calm down, dad,” Scott replied.

“How can you tell me to calm down? Tell me
where you are and I will come and get you,” he said. Ashe didn’t
know how he would react when he saw or spoke to his son again, but
he never expected the anger and desperation to be so intense. He
had pictured the conversation a few times and it was always calm as
he tried to reason with Scott. But the reality was proven to be
different the moment he heard his son’s voice. “I’m walking out the
door as soon as you give me an address.”

“I can’t do that,” Scott told him.

“And why not?”

“Because there is still some things that I
need to do,” Scott replied.

“I don’t understand,” Ashe began. “Owen is
dead. Two others are also dead. And you are on the run. What are
you running from Scott? Are you running from the police? You won’t
get far and you know it. Oscar has your scent and he will not stop
until he has you in custody. Why don’t you come in? I will come get
you and we can go together.”

“No.”

“I know about the fight between Owen and
you,” Ashe began. “I know about Owen’s drug use. I know about
Owen’s past. I also know that what happened in the park was
self-defense. I’ve talked to your coach. I’ve spoken to
Regime.”

“Don’t worry about any of that,” Scott
insisted. “None of that matters.”

Ashe sighed. “Doesn’t matter? What happened,
then? At least tell me that. I want to understand…what you are
doing.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“You won’t believe me,” Scott answered.

“You would be surprised what I may believe,”
Ashe replied.

“Not this,” he insisted. “I can’t just give
you the answers. It is not…that simple. You have to figure it out
on your own or you will never fully understand or believe. Find the
truth and then you will find me.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ashe said,
shaking his head. “That doesn’t make sense at all.”

“Exactly my point.”

“You’re confused, Scott,” Ashe tried to
justify. “You are…delusional. Sick.”

“I am not
sick
!” Scott regained his
calm and continued. “What is happening will never fit neatly in one
of your textbooks or journals, father.”

“You are not thinking straight. You are not
thinking clearly.”

“I am thinking more clearly than I ever have
before,” Scott assured his father. “My eyes have been opened and I
have seen beyond the veil, so to speak. But my insight will never
stand up in court, when closed minded people are judging my actions
and sealing my fate.”

The voice on the other end of the phone was
Scott but it was no longer his son. Ashe was speaking to someone
that he did not recognize or comprehend. He was speaking to a
troubled stranger, plain and simple.

“Why are you calling me, then?” Ashe asked.
“Why make this call if you are not going to come in or tell me
anything
.”

“To make sure that you are following the
clues,” Scott replied.

“Clues? What clues?”

It was Scott’s turn to sigh.

“The ones I left behind,” he stated.

Ashe took a second to think.

“The journal? The container?”

“Yes.”

“But how did you know that I would notice
them or even look twice at them? That was a long shot at best,”
Ashe said.

“I know you,” his son told him. He then
quickly added, “Wait. You only have the journal and the container?
Is that all?”

“That’s it,” Ashe replied.

“No. No. No,” Scott said, growing irritated.
“You’re missing something. Three things. I left you three clues.
Not two.”

“Three?”

“You need to find the other clue,” Scott
ordered.

“At least tell me what I am looking for,”
Ashe pleaded. Clues? Was that really what Scott was telling him
about? Clues? Did Scott leave him a trail of breadcrumbs to follow,
like in the fairy tales? But real life is not a fairy tale…and even
in fairy tales, at least the Grimm versions, the good kids got
eaten. He wanted to tell Scott, make him understand just how bad
things were getting for him and how absurd it was to leave behind
vague clues, as if he was living a crime movie. But he never got
the chance.

A voice appeared from behind Ashe. “Who are
you talking to?” He turned to see Katherine standing in the
entrance to the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. “Who is that? You always
get strange late-night phone calls? Should I be worried?”

“Who is that?” Scott asked, his voice
vibrating with irritation.

Ashe didn’t know how to answer.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your sleep over,”
Scott grumbled.

“Scott…”

But he was gone.

“Fuck!” Ashe screamed. Meeting Katherine’s
eyes he finally answered her question. “Scott. My son.” He realized
that he not only needed an embrace, but he needed someone to
confide in. Katherine had fulfilled the one desire and might be
able to fulfill the other. Placing the phone down, Ashe began to
tell her about Scott and the whole damn mess that his son had
gotten into. As the levy broke, his only hope was that Katherine
would neither run nor drown.

Part Two

“Much Madness is divinest Sense -- to a
discerning Eye -- much Sense -- the starkest Madness”

--Emily Dickinson

Chapter 25

He hung up the payphone and stared at it for
a few seconds. He tried but couldn’t get the woman’s voice out of
his head, out of his ears. It played in his mind, over and over.
How dare his father bring someone else into his mother’s house? Who
was she? Did he take the woman to his mother’s bed? Scott thought
about how late it was and knew that it was true. The woman had been
in his mother’s bed, touching her sheets, he knew it.

Scott grew inflamed. Susanne Walters had been
a great woman, loving and honest. He could still picture his
mother’s face and how she smiled without reason. She smiled only to
smile. But that smile had been taken away from him…from
everyone…and it had been the fault of her husband, Ashe
Walters.

Ashe Walters was to blame.

As far as Scott was concerned, his father did
not deserve another chance, another
love
. Frustration rushed
through him like liquid fire, burning him through and through. Ashe
Walters only deserved guilt and shame. He only deserved loneliness.
At the same time, though, Scott was counting on his father to help
him. He had left clues, like a trail of bread crumbs out of the
dark woods, for Ashe Walters to follow.

But Scott did not put all of his hopes into
his father. He knew better.

Scott kicked out toward a nearby plastic
garbage can but missed and nearly fell to the concrete sidewalk.
“Shit,” he mumbled, trying to compose himself. Glancing up and down
the dark street, he didn’t see anyone looking at him. The sidewalk
was nearly empty.

Even if that night was as chilled as the
previous one, Scott would not have produced a single shiver,
because his veins were filled with bubbling magma. He wanted to
cuss and break things, but controlled himself, for obvious reasons.
Pulling his blue baseball cap down lower, he thought about taking
the trek back the way he had come. Before he took a step, however,
he caught an accidental glimpse through the window of the
convenient store. He could clearly see a narrow counter with a
single register. Behind the register, on the wall, was an old
television. Behind a layer of static, the local ten o’clock news
was being replayed for its night-owl viewers.

Scott paused.

After Scott finally reached Bam the night
before, it didn’t take long to find himself wrapped up in her bed,
asleep. He spent most of the day in that same bed, avoiding the
world and the problems that existed for him in reality. He had
dreamed. He had dreamed deep. Most of the dreams had been blurred
and void of any reasonable story line. They had been images that
his mind quickly discarded upon waking. Scott was able to remember
the blue lady. She had been laughing. Always laughing. Laughing at
his dismay. The blue lady always came to him when his life had
issues.