Chapter 34
Maybe Ashe simply knew his way around the city enough that he never needed directions or maybe he was simply stubborn and guessed during strange drives, but he found himself using the GPS more in the past few hours than he had ever done in the two years that he had owned his Mazda. He began to like the tool. He liked it even more when he correctly and easily brought him to the door of Katherine’s small house.
Katherine lived in Oak Hill, a small community not far outside of Youngstown, but like his own neighborhood, the town could be on another planet. While Youngstown had people, Oak Hill was the kind of places that had families, homes instead of houses.
Ashe would never have put Katherine in a home. He saw her in an apartment complex, much like Scott’s building. She seemed too modern, to spontaneous to live in a house, whether she was renting or owning.
It didn’t feel right.
But it also made Ashe further realize how little he obviously knew the woman who had shared his bed the previous night.
Pulling his car to the side of the street, Ashe rushed to the door, which was just beyond a white wooden fence. The red front door seemed so normal, which unhinged him even more. The door also felt solid, thick and sturdy beneath his fist as he knocked, unlock the flimsy wood of most apartment doors. He waited a second before knocking once again.
Footsteps could be heard within, moving across what might have been hardwood floors. A lock disengaged. And then the door opened. Ashe couldn’t tell if the look on Katherine’s face was that of being startled or that of being constipated. Whatever her expression, she didn’t look happy to see the psychologist. She didn’t look surprised either.
“It took you long enough, investigator,” Katherine said.
“Don’t act like you expected me to be here,” Ashe insisted. “And I am no longer an investigator…in any form.”
“Could have fooled me,” she replied. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’m fine on this side of the door,” he told her.
“As long as you keep your voice down,” Katherine began. “I have neighbors that still believe that I am a good person.” Her eyes dropped at that statement and Ashe could see true resentment in her eyes. It threw him.
“I once believed that as well,” he said. “My instinct told me that you were too loose with your life for my taste, but my curiosity pulled me in another direction.”
“The bedroom?”
“Among other places.”
“We had a good time, Ashe,” Katherine told him. “Your curiosity wasn’t the only thing that led you to the bedroom. We had a good time together. We click. And I feel that I should apologize for that fact.”
“Apologize? Why would you feel the need to apologize for betraying my trust?” Ashe’s sarcasm was evident in his words. “Why would an apology be needed?”
“Because I like you…Ashe,” she responded. “I find myself on the verge of caring for you…and that was never the plan.”
The plan? There was a plan?
He tried to wrap his brain around the type of plan that might have guided Katherine’s actions, a plan that somehow involved him. She was reporter, or at least she wanted to be a reporter, of that Ashe knew for certain. She couldn’t have known about Scott, because when they were having their first date he didn’t know a thing about what was happening with Scott.
“I trusted you,” Ashe told her. “I told you about my wife. I told you about how and why she was killed. The media. It was wrongly used and it cost me someone that I love. And then you turn around and get my son’s face plastered all over the television.”
“He killed people,” Katherine blurted.
“Did he? And why? Do you know why?”
“No.”
“And neither does anyone else,” Ashe said. “He could be guilty of nothing else but being coerced into murder by someone else. But now he will be seen as the bad guy in the shadows…at least until someone approaches him with a loaded a gun, ready to apprehend a wanted, dangerous fugitive.”
“That won’t happen.”
“It happens. A lot more than it should.”
“What do you want me to say here?” Katherine asked. “I didn’t have that press conference. If you look at the video…I wasn’t even there. What do you want from me?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Ashe admitted.
“Come inside,” she said, stepping aside.
He shook his head.
“You met me on purpose,” Ashe stated.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But there was also luck involved.”
“The bar? My sister? Why me?”
“Not you,” Katherine replied. “Franklin Barrett.”
Ashe closed his eyes and breathed in deep.
“Right,” he said. “Of course. I was the inside information to Franklin Barrett. I could give you information about his mental health and…other types of information. Pillow talk? Was that the method you were hopping for?”
“No,” Katherine exhaled, the look of regret returning to her eyes. “I was only hoping to have a few beers with you…some food…and then come up with a reason why our relationship wouldn’t have worked out.”
“You changed your mind?”
“No,” she quickly said. “You changed it.”
Ashe sighed.
Katherine continued. “I realized that I needed your bedroom just as much as you needed me in it. I can’t tell you why. Not now. Not yet. I just want you to know that I retracted the story immediately. I wasn’t going to do it.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to believe the truth to make it real,” she replied. “Only a couple of people knew about the story. I don’t know how the police found out.”
Ashe shook his head again.
“Reasonings and rationales do not change anything,” he stated
“Doesn’t it? Aren’t those the basis for your entire career?” Katherine asked. “Don’t you seek and search for the reasoning, the rationale behind behavior. You told me yesterday that a man who kidnapped and raped young girls didn’t deserve anything but pity…due to the reason and the rationale behind what he had done.”
Ashe groaned.
“This is different,” he said.
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. His head was beginning to spin as thoughts twirled and spun like a tornado. She was right. And she was wrong. What did those words even mean? Were they real or were they something to turn chaos into a civilized structure? Could the idea of right and wrong be imaginary, from the minds of desperate people, fighting against their true natures? Could chaos be the one and true state of things?
Katherine startled Ashe by taking his hand. She put his palm to her face before putting it to her lips and kissing the skin. “Nothing else matters,” she whispered. And for the moment, he believed her. Within that belief, inside the gray spaces between right and wrong, he let her lead him inside the house. Behind them, Katherine closed the door, leaving any complex concepts outside.