Chapter 26
My eyes have been opened…
Ashe couldn’t shake away the words and the sound in his son’s voice as he had said them. It was the same tone that he had come across in the voice mail message. It was pure insanity. Those words. Those words. Again. He didn’t like to use the word insanity, because it was more medieval than realistic, but Ashe didn’t know what other word would suffice.
My eyes have been opened…
The phone call had felt like a dream and the words, those words, had turned that dream into a nightmare. Why had Scott spoken those words? They were the same words that Barrett had uttered during their last session.
Ashe didn’t have to call the phone company to get the number that his son had used to call him. His phone had Caller ID. He hadn’t known the whole number, but didn’t have to. The only digits that concerned him were the second set of three, after the area code of 330. 747. He knew immediately that the number originated somewhere in the city, which meant that Scott hadn’t gone far. The psychologist had been wrong in his assumption that his son would run far and away and never look back. He was still local. But why? What was he trying to do besides simply escaping?
My eyes have been opened…
It was another connection between the events that had taken place in the Barrett household and what had happened with his son. The first connection was the fact that all victims were murdered in their beds. Ashe could discard it because a single connection, one that seemed like a stretch, could be regarded as coincidence, even though he tried to avoid believing in coincidences. But when another connection has been made, the idea of coincidence became thin, appearing more like a pattern.
How could there be any type of connection between the Barrett family and Scott? Ashe’s brain fought and tried to come up with a logical explanation, wishing he could simply disregard both connections, but he couldn’t.
There was something going on? But what? Why?
Steven Reynolds’ name had also spilled from the mouth of Franklin Barrett. For whatever reason, it seemed the man had enjoyed dropping the bomb on Ashe, like he had it tucked in his pocket for a special occasion. Or had he been put up to it? Was the speaking of the name another connection? If it was, Ashe feared what might be to come. Whenever Steven Reynolds was involved, people died, and it was sometimes those that Ashe loved.
An image flashed through his head, breaking a well build barrier. Susanne. Bloody and violated. Dead and gone.
Ashe growled.
His mind sped up and he hoped that it was his imagination put in overdrive by his emotions. Steven Reynolds was long gone, hopefully in a shallow grave somewhere. He couldn’t let his imagination lead him astray. He knew that he was emotional compromised, at least from a professional standpoint, but he no longer cared about being professional. He was a father. He was a father…one who had the ability to help his son.
My eyes have been opened…
Ashe’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, turning his knuckles white. He was heading back to Scott’s apartment complex. He had missed something. Another clue was there somewhere. He hoped that everything was still there. It was still considered an active crime, but Oscar might have cleaned everything out, desperate for some further evidence, in the light of two more bodies. That was what he would do, Ashe thought, and with that thought, he pushed the gas pedal down further.
He began to hate the city. The lights. The noises. The seemingly chaotic moments that were most likely occurring beyond the borders of his car. It seemed to taunt him. The city of Youngstown was poor and smug and he began to loathe every fiber and building around him.
Pulling into the same abandoned gas station as the last time he was in that area of the city, Ashe leapt from his vehicle, almost without putting it into park. He didn’t check for any uniforms on stakeout, it was obvious that Scott wasn’t coming anywhere near that building. Ashe wondered if Oscar and his crew knew that Scott was still somewhere in the city. They probably suspected it, at least until some details pointed them somewhere else, to Warren or even Cleveland perhaps.
Their sights would stay in the city, as would his own.
He temporarily thought about providing fake evidence that would point them somewhere else, out of his way, but quickly shook that idea away. The YPD were not his enemies and he needed to quit seeing them as such.
They would remain on parallel paths until a moment comes when they must intersect.
Using a similar entrance strategy, Ashe followed a young man into the building, thanking him for holding the door. Taking the stairs again, he found the yellow plastic strips still covering the door, but upon closer look he could tell they were not the exact same strips.
They had taken down the old ones for a reason. But what? Moving things.
The door was still unlocked and Ashe slid his way into the apartment. The early morning had not yet become actual daytime and a blanket of darkness once again covered the apartment. Instead of turning on his phone, he flicked on the kitchen. His fears were a reality. The living room was empty, completely and entirely. Every stitch of furniture had been taken. But why? He understood clearing out Owen’s bedroom, because it was the true crime scene. But why remove everything else?
Ashe rushed to Scott’s bedroom, nearly tripping over his own feet. When he got to Scott’s room he didn’t stumble over the hand weight that had been in the doorway, because it was no longer there. Nothing was. The room had also been cleared out. All that remained was four walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
“Fuck!”
The third clue, whatever it was, had been taken, along with everything else, to be processed as evidence. It was at the police station, under Oscar’s nose.
“Fuck!”
Why had Scott felt the need to leave clues? What couldn’t he say? What wouldn’t Ashe believe? Clues? Ashe considered the word and remembered something. Scott had left a clue in the park as well. His jacket on the thug. Ashe and Oscar both considered the likelihood that Scott had killed them in self-defense, making the clue a desperate attempt at a statement, showing them that he had no choice but to kill or be killed.
Was it the same reason he left clues in the apartment? Self-defense? How could shooting Owen in his own bed be an act of self-defense? It didn’t make sense, but Scott had said that Ashe wouldn’t believe him.
“Where are you, Scott?”
Alone in the empty room, Ashe back himself against a nearby wall. Letting his weak legs buckle, he slid down onto the floor. His mind was suffering from an onslaught of feelings and emotions, anger, frustration, helplessness, and all out worry. It overloaded his psyche. And like a loaded breaker, the power seemed to temporally shut off. He didn’t know how long he sat there staring at the floor, comatose, mentally and physically, but his mind reignited and began to function when he noticed that a red began to fill the sky.
Morning had arrived.
Ashe thought about Katherine and how crazy everything must seem to her. He had to run out on her for a second time, after leaving behind a story of death and a fleeing son. Part of him wanted to go back home, hoping that she had stayed, as he had begged her to. He could take her back to bed, leave everything else behind. But how could he expect her to stay? She would have over a million reasons to run the instant that he had stepped out the door. He came with too much baggage. He came with too much fucked up shit for any one woman to want to deal with.
It was karma. He was not superstitious but that was the only word that seemed to fit the situation. Karma. What goes around, comes around.
Instead of going home, Ashe went to work.