Ashes to Ashes (53 page)

Leave no tree to grow, Lucky might have
proclaimed in a manic tone. Leave no underground passageway
undiscovered, either.

Ashe inspected the tree thoroughly. Tucked in
the back pocket his pants were a pair of thick gloves. He removed
the gloves from the pocket and slipped them on. He began to scale
the trunk of the tree. It was hard going and almost took two
minutes before he was able to reach the bottom limb. From that
point on the climb was a piece of cake, even for an old, tired
man.

Keeping a relaxed eye out for nosy neighbors,
he ascended several feet further. He didn’t worry too much about
being observed by onlookers because there were no homes near enough
to witness his attempted intrusion. And Ashe wouldn’t have cared if
there had been a mob of concerned citizens below him, yelling and
screaming and trying to force him back to the ground. Let them try
and stop him. They would not succeed. not when he had obsession on
his side. The remaining questions, those left in the wake Scott’s
death, had full claim over his attention and his focus. An answer
might still remain over the fence inside the former home of
Franklin Barrett. Nothing would deter him from getting to it, not
even a crowd of viscous neighbors.

Arriving at the long limb that stretched out
onto the property, Ashe began to scoot himself along it. Muscles in
his forearms and calves burned and ached. They quivered more and
more the further out he crawled. When his body was beyond the
limits of the wall, he looked down and considered leaping to the
grass. But didn’t. Instead Ashe decided to hang himself from the
bottom of the tree limb, closing the gap between himself and the
hard earth.

He went for a one…two…three count but barely
made it to the first number before his arms gave out. The drop hurt
Ashe’s knees, but the ache dissipated as he made his way across the
short stretch of green yard. As he jogged, he kept his eyes out for
any caregivers that might have been lurking around the premises. He
didn’t want to have to react if he became spotted. He didn’t want
to hurt them. They were just doing their jobs… serving the needs of
the Barrett family.

The front of the house consisted of a massive
porch that was constructed from stone. It was a prefect shade of
off white. And it appeared flawless. Not a single crack to be seen.
Money could often buy what appeared to be perfection, but that type
of perfection never went any further than the immediate exterior.
Inside, below the illusion of flawlessness, was where the blemishes
were concealed, hidden away from the naked eye. Cracks and fissures
could go unnoticed, spreading and growing, until what was once
thought to be flawless became broken and fractured.

Bounding up the rock steps, Ashe found the
front door, which was actually a pair of thick wooden doors,
enormous in girth and finely stained. Expensive did not quit cover
the impression the massive doors gave off. He could almost hear the
vibrations of power and prestige pulsating through them.

Ashe looked closer at entrance to the
house.

The two doors could not have been made from
any of the trees found in Ohio. Lumber from a larger, denser
woodlands had to have been brought in from another state or even
another country. Or maybe the doors themselves had been crafted
somewhere else and then transported their current home.

Staring at the doors, he wondered how he was
going to get through them and into the house. Kicking them down
would prove to be a pointless effort. Ashe though it over before
trying one of the knobs. Unlocked. Oscar’s lord must finally be on
the psychologist’s side.

He pushed the door open and entered.

Even though the sun was still bright outside,
as it had been ever since the rain had finally cleared a day ago,
it was difficult to see in the dingy building. Ashe could see dust
everywhere, a fine layer of the substance had settled over nearly
everything. He would have to watch where he touched, so that the
age of the house didn’t rub off and onto his own person. How could
a cared for home be in such bad shape? He figured that, for some
reason, the workers seemed to have been neglecting the interior of
the house, for favor of the lawn and shrubbery.

Was it out of discomfort? Did the house
bother the caregivers like it was bothering Ashe? It was giving the
psychologist a sense of unease. He couldn’t put his finger on a
singular cause, meaning that it had to be a mixture of factors, a
combination of history and the atmosphere, both of the past horror
and the current disdain.

He needed to find what he sought and then get
back at quickly, Ashe told himself.

Sunlight seemed to regard the area within the
walls of the Barrett-owned structure as off limits, because little
of it pierced the dusty glass of the windows. And even though there
was a lot of space to move about, the house still felt stuffy,
claustrophobic. Ashe’s temperature rose and his breathing became
tight. He tried to flee the uncomfortable sensations by quickly
moving forward, toward a nearby staircase. He was worried about how
much dust he might have been inhaling. The thought of it being
sucked into his lungs caused the pressure of the claustrophobia
upon him to increase.

Ashe grew overly anxious, causing his flight
impulse to kick in. He would not take flight from the house,
however. He refused. Closing his eyes, he fought for control over
his own body. He relaxed his breathing and gathered his thoughts.
Memories of the crime scene photos tried appear to him, but Ashe
turned his mind away from them. The gory pictures would stay away
from his mind’s eye. In the span of a couple minutes, he calmly
regained enough composure to concentrate. Something told him that
the master bedroom would be somewhere on the second floor, which
was why Ashe was making his way toward the stairs. He would have to
go up.

Ashe had learned his lesson from when he had
snuck into Scott’s apartment, both times. Reaching into the pocket
of his black slacks, he retrieved a narrow blue flashlight. He had
stored it in the trunk of his Mazda in case of a break down or any
other emergency. He had forgotten that it existed until that
morning. For some reason it came back to him, coincidently at the
same instant that he decided to break into Franklin Barrett’s
former home.

Pushing a soft and circular spot at the tail
of the thin flashlight, Ashe brought it to life. The way ahead
became instantly visible. For such a small device, the beam that
was created was more than sufficient. Dust floated into and out of
the beam, up and down, around and around. They danced like little
pixies upon the air, fully visible only by way of a beam of
light.

The sight of the dancing dust gave Ashe a
melancholic feeling. Susanne’s poem returned to his thoughts. Dust
of the dead. Ashes to ashes. The path that living things must in
time take. From ashes to ashes. From dust to dust. It was more than
just the path forced upon human beings, he realized. It was the
path for everything. Everything sprung from the ashes only to
return there once their lives ended. Experiences. Knowledge.
Families. Life and all that was included in that word. It all
returned in time to dust, to ashes.

He would one day be dust, inhaled by those
that loved him, Ashe believed.

While climbing the tall stairs, he thought
about the word
ash
. He thought about his own name. When he
was a young boy, he had occasionally asked his mother and father
why they had named him Ashe. They had sometimes laughed to
themselves before changing the subject. Or they had occasionally
replied with an off the wall reason, like how the stork had dropped
him down their chimney and he was covered in the soot of burnt wood
the first time they had laid their eyes on him. They had never
uttered a real answer. It had sometimes irritated Ashe. But he had
eventually grown to appreciate his name and the uniqueness of
it.

He was one of a kind, at least in one
specific way.

As he reached the top of the stairs and
viewed the long hallway in front of him, Ashe began to view his
name as one big inside joke his parents shared. They had understood
the inevitable end that Ashe, like every other person, would have
to face. Ashes to ashes. And with the knowledge and understanding
of the looming end, his parents had labeled him as such.

Ashe
.

Thinking about it for another couple of
seconds, he altered his conclusion a small degree to the left. His
parents, Hannah and Bert Walters, had understood and perhaps even
obliged the end of their and every other living thing’s life. But
they had also chosen to pucker up and spit in the face of that
fate. They had named their child Ashe, telling death that they knew
him and knew his purpose. But…so what? What did it matter? Their
one and only son would meet the reaper head on, staring strongly at
the symbolic cowl and scythe, with the label of his destiny proudly
displayed.

He
was
Ashe. And he would go to ashes
with his head held high.

At the end of the hall was an open door,
beckoning him to enter. He listened to the call and headed straight
for it. Along the way he thought more about his parents. His mother
was long dead, having met her ashes a couple decades years before.
His father was still hanging on, even though his memory and sense
of self had been replaced by agitation, senility, and fantastic
thoughts and ideas that were far from reality. He was alive but
lost. And it appeared as if he would remain lost until the day that
he finally met his own ashes.

One of the reasons Ashe had initially begun
to study psychology was to better understand the disease that was
taking his father away. The symptoms had showed themselves early
and rapidly took the mind of Bert Walters. Ashe had wanted to find
a cure…a way to help his old man. Befuddlement had taken the place
of clear thought. But psychology wasn’t the avenue he should have
taken, because he only learned how to understand and identify the
disease, but not treat it. Only actual medical doctors could do
that for his father.

Before being able to switch his studies to
medicine, Ashe found himself seduced by forensic psychology,
understanding the place where psychology and the legal system
collided, appreciating the minds and methods of convicted
criminals. Once hooked, he had been unable and unwilling to alter
his course.

Pushing the memories to the back of his
skull, Ashe cautiously entered what he immediately concluded to be
the master bedroom. He had been correct about the far opened door,
after all. And yet he was surprised that he had found the room so
quickly in the large house. Somehow, his gut and instincts had led
him directly to the only room in the house he had sought. It was
too easy, too simple. Ashe wondered when the ball would drop.
Because the ball always dropped, it was the universe’s way of
balancing things out.

Good was at once met with the bad. It was
nature at its cruelest.

The room was clearly cleaner than the other
places of the house, the ones that Ashe had been able to see,
anyway. A little dust was present but the layer was vaguely visible
and far from extensive. The queen sized bed was neatly made. Ashe
couldn’t stop himself from picturing Sue Ann Barrett, covered in
blood, her throat slit from ear to ear, dying in the same bed that
she had shared with the man who had killed her. But whatever blood
that had been spilt that day had long been removed. Or had it.

Ashe wondered what realities a black light
would reveal. How deep did the cleansing actually go? If he waved a
florescent wand over top of the bed, would it turn back into a
scene of slaughter?

Putting himself at the center of the room, he
began to look around. Like the rest of structure, the master
bedroom had become a sealed tomb, one that would always contain the
deeds and sins of Franklin Barrett.

Ashe contemplating on how Franklin might have
received the pill, but it could have been through a number of
different avenues. It could have been given to him in the place of
aspirin for a headache. Anything was possible. The how or why no
longer bothered Ashe. He only wanted to know where Franklin might
have kept any possible remaining pills. Ashe was working on the
theory that Franklin had been given more than one. But he might
have only been given a single pill. That was a very real
possibility.

Most rich people, especially those who were
on the level of wealth that Franklin Barrett had once been, often
used hiding spots to hold personal items, whether safety deposit
boxes or false boards in the floor. The more money that the person
had acquired, the further they would go to keep their secrets from
prying eyes. The desire to hide things came from the distrust that
normally accompanied large amounts of wealth. Everything became
private, off limits, and in one of those hiding spots Ashe might
find the remaining pills, if there was in fact more than one
pill.

There had to have been more than one pill put
into the hands of Franklin Barrett. Please let it be true. Ashe
desperately pleaded with the fates.

Wide pictures still hung on the walls. All of
the portraits were oil paintings depicting images from nature, from
a quiet green meadow to a roaring thunderstorm, its lighting
spreading out across the sky like a violent spider’s web. Directly
above the bed, hung on the wall, he found the one painting in the
room that did not depict a scene from nature. It was much bigger
than the others, as well. The painting showed Franklin, his wife,
and their son, smiling broadly for the artist who was transferring
their likeness onto the canvass. The psychologist preferred the
image before him over the pictures held in Oscar’s investigation
folder. In the family portrait, they were alive and appeared
loving. It was apparent that they were enjoying each other’s
company.