Ashes to Ashes (41 page)

Oscar answered, “No. Youngstown
department.”

“Youngstown?” the doctor asked. “I thought he
was shot somewhere here in the city?”

“It’s a joint investigation,” Oscar said.
“Norman Bones is a suspect that needs questioned as soon as
possible. Will there be any way that we could make that happen,
soon, doctor?”

Ashe hadn’t noticed the clipboard in the
Doctor’s hand until he put it up in front of his face. “Mr. Bones
came through surgery as expected. No critical damage had occurred
and we believe that he will make a full recovery. His vital signs
have stabilized. I don’t assume he would be awake just yet, but we
can walk back and take a look for ourselves.”

Ashe had a hunch that the doctor was humoring
them and knew that Norman Bones would not be awake for some time.
But he went along with it anyway. He wanted to see Norman Bones for
himself, even if the man was sleeping off a gunshot.

Ashe and Oscar followed the doctor through
another sliding glass door and into a long hallway. The hallway was
plain, pale and cold, as hospital areas tend to be, because the
cold kept germs from growing and multiplying. The doctor led the
two men from the initial hallway into another narrower one that
intersected the current one. The three men didn’t walk for long
before they came to a door with the number 112 written on it. But
the door was closed and the doctor appeared confused. Dr. Webber
glanced back at Ashe and Oscar before turning the knob to open the
closed door. The knob wouldn’t turn. It was locked.

“These doors are never locked,” Dr. Webber
said.

Oscar swiftly pushed Ashe and the doctor to
the side. “Why would this door not be closed or locked?”

“If a patient crashes,” the doctor explained,
“we need immediately access to them.”

“Good point,” Oscar replied, planting himself
in front of the door. “Maybe you shouldn’t put locks on the doors,
then,” he joked. He patted his hip, which Ashe knew gave the
detective constant problems. The kick came suddenly and caused Ashe
to flinch. Oscar at once kicked a second time. Kicking a door down
was nothing like in the movies, where the hinges collapsed within
one or two kicks. Instead, even though he was a large and strong
person, it took Oscar many kicks and stomps against the wood of the
door in order to gain any form of entry into the room. And it still
took a group shove to get the door completely open.

Dr. Webber rushed inside first. He ran over
to Norman Bones and began to check his vitals, even though it was
obvious to anyone that Norman Bones was dead. It was obvious
because of the large knife that was protruding from Norman’s chest,
along with the red stained note that was taped to hilt of the
weapon.

The note was on white paper. It read:
TRY
AND SEW THIS ONE UP DOC!

“Son of a bitch,” Oscar exclaimed.

Ashe was able to get a good enough look to
notice something about Norman Bones. His nose. It was obvious that
someone had bit down hard on it. He could still see the outline of
teeth in the skin. Scott. Ashe recalled something that happened
when his son was much young, possibly in fourth or fifth grade.
Scott had been being bullied by another student who was much larger
than him. Growing fed up with the shoving and hitting, Scott had
retaliated by biting the nose of the bully. It was an act that got
him suspended, but Scott had made his point and was never bullied
by anyone ever again.

Ashe grounded his son for the action, but he
knew that sometimes people get pushed too far and in that moment
they become dangerous. Even the mildest mannered people have their
breaking points.

Dr. Webber began to check the machines.
“Someone messed with these machines when they unhooked him. They
knew what they were doing. That is why none of the machines went
off when he died. Why would this happen?”

Instead of telling the doctor what he wanted
to know, he pulled out his phone. “Phillips? Norman Bones is dead.
No. Someone got to him and shoved a knife in his ass. Not
literally. Get a team over here a.s.a.p. Yes. Yes. Okay.” He hung
up the phone and ordered Dr. Webber from the room, which he agreed
to storm off angrily down the hall. He motioned for Ashe to leave
as well.

“Phillips is sending guys over,” Oscar told
Ashe when they were in hallway. “We need to stick around here until
they arrive. Why weren’t there anybody at this door? There should
be guns at this door. Why weren’t there any guns at this door
guarding Norman Bones until someone spoke with him?”

“I don’t know,” Ashe replied.

“I would have done it,” Oscar fumed. “I would
have had men on Norman Bones every damned second.”

“But that wasn’t your call,” Ashe told
him.

“Phillips dropped the ball,” Oscar
growled.

Ashe put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“There is nothing that we can do, now.” He said, even though he too
wanted to scream and kick and break. But that would not help Scott.
Even though the only good lead to his son had just been gutted, he
knew that blaming a fellow good guy was not the answer. “Phillips
didn’t know it would go this way.”

“He should have.”

Ashe shrugged. It was true that Detective
Phillips should have had two men on Norman’s door, but it was done.
Over. And yet he understood how angry Oscar was. It was a big loss.
“What do you think happened here?”

“Lucky Barrett,” Oscar answered. “If the
paranoia is true…I say he had Norman killed before he could talk.
But how…while being kidnapped and missing…I don’t know.”

“That is a good question,” Ashe agreed. “I
doubt that Scott gave him free reign over the nearest telephone.
Someone who is paranoid might have fail safes in place for whenever
something happens…anything. Only thing I could come up with. Lucky
must have someone in the police force, either in Cleveland or
Youngstown, and don’t give me that look, Oscar, even
you
can’t deny that possibility. When word went out in the department
about what took place…that man acted.”

Oscar sighed.

A cell phone chirruped to life and startled
both Ashe and Oscar. The cell phone was still in the detective’s
hand and he snapped it to his ear. “Speak. Ginger. Please tell me
that you have some good news for me, because we need it right now.
No. Nothing I want to talk about. Hold on.” Pulling the phone from
his head, Oscar turned on the speaker. “You are on speakerphone,
Ginger. It’s just me and Ashe.”

“What do you have for us, Ginger?” Ashe
inquired, moving closer to Oscar and the phone.

“I don’t have a lot, friend,” the lab rat
admitted. “Clothes. Bedding. Computer with only school work and
links to porn. I found some unused ammunition for the handgun, but
that would be expected.”

“Anything useful,” Oscar interrupted.

“There was a picture hidden in a frame behind
another picture,” Ginger said. “It was taken from the
newspaper.”

“Who is in the picture, Ginger?” Ashe
asked.

“The picture is not all here,” Ginger told
him. “I think it was a larger picture, but most of it has been cut
away. I can see two men standing side by side.”

“Who?” Ashe wanted to know.

“Franklin and Lucky Barrett,” Ginger
replied.

“We already know that they are involved in
this,” Oscar said. “That doesn’t give us anything new. Damn.”

“The third clue,” Ashe mumbled.

Oscar looked to him. “What?”

“Scott told me that he had left three clues
behind,” Ashe replied.

“Clues,” Oscar exhaled. “I’m tired of chasing
shadows. This isn’t a fucking fiction novel. I want answers.
Ginger? Can you find me the rest of that picture? I want to know
everything about it, who is in it, what articles it is
from…everything.” Before Ginger could say yes or no or maybe, Oscar
ended the call.

“What do you want me to do?” Ashe asked his
old friend.

“I’ll stay right here and watch this room,”
Oscar replied. “I want you to go and find us some coffee. The night
is just getting started.”

Without arguing or asking Oscar when the last
time it was that he had slept, Ashe went down the cold hall in
search of caffeine.

Chapter 49

Detective Oscar Harrison hovered over his
steaming cup of hot sludge for what felt like an hour, but might
have only been twenty minutes. Ashe watched him from an angle,
trying to stay out of direct view of his old friend. The expression
Oscar was giving the air directly in front of his face was not a
pleasant one. It was a mixture of frustration, resentment, and
helplessness, as if the investigation, which he always put
everything that he had into, was getting away from him, and there
seemed to be nothing that he could do about it. Ashe also knew that
one of the reasons for the expression was because Oscar cared for
their longtime friendship and didn’t want to let him, and Scott,
down.

The psychologist had been witness to that
exact expression several times during their many years together,
and sometimes he was even on the receiving end of it. Those times
were rare, but they were never pleasant, Ashe remembered.

The last time that Ashe had been witness to
that particular expression was the day that they found Susanne’s
body, a day where every expression, every word, every single detail
remained chiseled in the rock of his brain, like the pyramids of
Giza, far away from the effects of time and weathering. It would
remain untouched, even though a part of Ashe would love to take a
sledgehammer to the stone, hit it and hit it, smash it and into
dust, in order for it to blow away. But it would never decay, it
would never alter or shatter, at least not until the day Ashe died
and his brain was finally given over to the worms, only then will
that day cease to exist, for him anyway.

Oscar had taken that day hard, as well. Ashe
knew that his old friend blamed himself for Susanne’s death, which
might have been the main reason why Ashe hadn’t been the only one
to withdraw. Oscar had also been drawn away, not from his detective
duties, but from his friendship his Ashe, because he most likely
had been having a difficult time facing Ashe, guilt weighing on
him. But Ashe never blamed Oscar. It had been anyone’s fault
outside that of Steven Reynolds and himself.

“What are we going to do, now?” Ashe
nervously asked, finding it difficult to meet his friend’s
eyes.

“We wait,” Oscar replied.

“For how long?”

“However long it takes,” Oscar grumbled.

` Ashe let it go, immediately sorry that he
had questioned Oscar. There did not seem to be any clear cut answer
for what to do or where to go next. The death of Norman Bones had
stalled the train of motion that both men had recently jumped
aboard. They had been barreling toward his son, but the steam had
suddenly vanished and the locomotive became stilled.

Staring at the detective, Ashe knew what
Oscar was waiting for. He needed a target for his frustration. He
needed to place the hairs of his scope. That target would be
Detective Phillips and it didn’t sit well with Ashe, because
Detective Phillips was a good cop and had been in the trenches with
them during the hunt for the Eastside Slasher. The Cleveland cop
had aged years in those few months, as they all had. Going through
an experience like that had bonded the men, making them brothers,
survivors in arms. Phillips had messed up by not having men
permanently attached to Norman Bones, not just because it was
protocol, but because it was necessary. He had made a big mistake.
It was obvious. Maybe Phillips was losing his focus, having been at
war with the bad guys for too many years. Maybe he had lost his
edge. Maybe. But that did not make him an enemy, a target for
Oscar’s anger. It just wasn’t right.

The face of the true enemy was still
unclear.

But Ashe knew damn well that it was not
Detective Phillips.

“I’ve been thinking…” Ashe began but was
interrupted.

“You think too much,” Oscar blurted.

“It’s a gift,” the psychologist replied,
continuing. “I’m almost sure that Lucky Barrett began by taking the
pill himself. You have only discovered the pill within the last
handful of years, but I’m sure that the pill goes as far as back as
his wife’s death, if not much further.”

“If he has been using it that long,” Oscar
said, “then he should be a raving lunatic by now.”

True, Ashe had to agree. But who said that
Lucky Barrett wasn’t just that, a recluse in the throes of a severe
and debilitating mental breakdown from having taken a violent pill
for who knows how many years. Ashe would have to wait to meet the
man before he knew for sure.

Oscar added, “No one else lasted past the
first or second dose before going into a killing frenzy. Look at
his brother. Why is he different?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Ashe admitted. He
took a much needed sip of his coffee. It was already getting cold.
The thin cups provided by the hospital did little to maintain the
heat of the drink. “But it most likely has to do with his
personality or his state of mind. Maybe he was already a raving
lunatic before he took it. I don’t know. But I believe that he has
found a way to use his paranoia.”

“Use it?”

“Yes,” Ashe said. “When a person has paranoia
they are always on edge, looking for the next attack, even if there
was never a first attack. They see things that might or might not
be there, lurking around the corner, in the bushes. It is like the
common story about the conspiracy nut who keep his food in locked
containers so that someone does not slip poison into his meals when
he turns his back. With someone like Lucky Barrett, someone who has
actual enemies in the world, there might actually be a threat
around the corner, the next rising star thug wanting to slice his
throat. His paranoia may even cause hypersensitivity to those
dangers. If you think about it, for each actual life threatening
event that Lucky was able to
sidestep
, there probably were
many, many more imaginary events that he
believed
he had
avoided. Luck of the draw, pun not intended. The threats that were
actually avoided only served to solidify his paranoia and
beliefs.”