Chapter 13
On the top of his desk, Ashe had both Scott's dream journal and the case files of Mr. Barrett sitting in front of him. He sat there for several minutes simply staring at them as another headache crept into the back of his mind. It consisted of lingering pressure, not physical but mental, brought on by excessive strain and confusion. The building questions brought on the pressure, which built more and more with each one that went unanswered.
Reaching out, he first moved his hand toward Scott's journal, thinking about reading a few more pages of the fragmented images and thoughts, but changed his mind and instead snatched up the case files. A distraction. He needed one. Even if was just another set of questions that may go unanswered.
The files were held in manila colored folders. On the outside of the folders, written in black marker, were the words SUE ANN AND KENNEDY BARRETT. Underneath the names of the victims was the word HOMICIDE. At the bottom was the word SOLVED. Ashe opened the first folder and pulled out the stack of documents that were inside.
The stack was a thick grouping of loose and bound pages. He picked up the top page and began to patiently scan through the documents. When gathering information and data for an assessment and diagnosis, which he was administering in regards to Mr. Franklin Barrett, Ashe would often find himself confronted with an onslaught of paperwork. But, he knew, among the useless stones were gems, rubies and diamonds and other jewels from which he could build his diagnosis. From the diagnosis, a treatment could be created and put into action. But, that was only if Barrett was mentally ill. He could be malingering, exaggerating false symptoms. Ashe had to consider the possibility. He needed to get the man to speak.
The first meeting was, as he had told the felon, simply a meet-and-greet, in which to get overall feelings and impressions. However, any interviews or sessions after the initial meet were to be far from subtle or simple. Ashe had a feeling, though, a hunch that when dealing with Franklin Barrett and the Barrett dynasty of wealthy, entitled, and often shady individuals, nothing was going to be subtle or simple or by the book, so to say.
He turned to another page and continued to read. A picture began to form, a story about Barrett, his wife and son, along with some other members of his family. And more importantly, Ashe began to get a vivid understanding of the crime itself.
The case began with a simple 911 call.
Oscar had gathered together the transcripts of the call, which was only a single page long. The detective had noted at the top of the page that the caller, unlike those who usually called in to the emergency hotline, was neither frantic nor desperate, but cool and calm, eerily so.
Operator: 911. What is your emergency?
Franklin Barrett: I killed my family. I stabbed them. Both of them.
Operator: Repeat again. Your family has been stabbed? Sir?
Franklin Barrett: I stabbed them. I had to.
Operator: Stay where you are, sir. We have your address and are sending an ambulance.
Franklin Barrett: Don't bother. They are dead already.
Operator: You killed them?
Franklin Barrett: Yes. Don't worry. I am not going to run. I could. I have the money to disappear but I won't. My name is Franklin Barrett and I murdered my family before they killed me. I had no choice. You won't believe me. You won't understand. But I know that God will. That is all the matters. God will understand why I had to do it. It was his plan.
Operator: Just stay on the line, sir, the police are on their way.
Franklin Barrett: I am not going anywhere.
God will understand, was the phrase the stuck out to Ashe. God. He never considered himself to be religious. There was too much complexity directly in front of him, in human thought and behavior, to consider the complexities of a heaven, hell, sin, faith, God, Satan, and eternal damnation. He didn't say that those things did not exist, he simply did not try to unravel that mystery. At least, not yet. But he did know what the belief of God and Satan, and those other things, could do to an unbalanced psyche. It could be like taking the bottom Ace from an already wobbling house of cards.
Did Barrett believe that he killed his wife and son for God? If so, then why lie about the murder plot, about how his wife and son were going to kill him for his life insurance. Why lie, when he apparently had God on his side?
The reports state that the first officers arrived at the Barrett residence at around 3:30 a.m. The YPD immediately found Franklin standing in his front yard, staring at the dark night time sky. He didn't respond to the police presence.
He appeared to be in a daze, one of the police officers recorded.
He was grinning, another officer reported.
Inside the large home, they found Sue Ann and Kennedy Barrett, both with twelve stab wounds. They were both dead. In their beds.
Ashe paused.
Coincidence.
He continued.
Oscar had been able to dig up a general background on Sue Ann Barrett, formally Sue Ann Wamsley, the single daughter of Egbert Wamsley, a poor miner from West Virginia. They lived in a small town called River Creek, a village of scattered homes and properties near to the coal mine in which her father slaved away. The house was a one story double-wide, placed on a spot of land that had been passed down to Sue Ann's father by her grandfather, who had also lived his entire life as a poor coal miner.
As far as Ashe could see, nothing about her life before joining the Barrett family screamed...money.
Sue Ann's mother, Abigail, had died during childbirth. The birthing process had occurred at the isolated Wamsley household, because a massive snow storm had trapped Egbert and his wife in their home. Egbert did the best he could to deliver his daughter, but complications soon arose and no medical help would be able to intervene. Sue Ann survived that night while her mother died of blood loss.
Tragic.
Sue Ann graduated high school and went on to WVU, paying for the courses with government loans. She majored in business. Her father had died in a mine collapse half-way into her sophomore year of college. After two years she graduated with an Associate’s Degree in Business. It was quite an achievement for a poor miner’s daughter from West Virginia. But Sue Ann had proven herself a fighter from day one.
She had then become a secretary.
During a business dinner thrown by her boss, Mr. Jack Sullivan, CEO of Perk Enterprises, Sue Ann caught the eye of Franklin Barrett, who was accompanying his older brother Thomas, an up and coming business tycoon. Franklin and Thomas were riding the waves of their family name. While Franklin never hit the big time of business, Ashe knew, Thomas would eventually make a name for himself...Lucky.
Thomas “Lucky” Barrett. Wealthy and powerful business man. Possible mobster and criminal. Investigated but never arrested.
Three months after meeting during that business dinner, Sue Ann and Franklin were married.
Sue Ann had obviously come from nothing. Rising from dirt would often make a person humble, grounded, weary of money and power. A person like that would never plot to murder their husband for their own personal gain. But there was a yang to that yin. Sometimes, when a person went from having nothing to being able to get anything, greed and obsession for money began. They never had enough. And would do anything to get it...even murder their own husband.
Which one was Sue Ann Barrett?
Humble?
Or insatiable in her greed?
Ashe couldn't be sure.
If a murder plot could be proven, then Barrett' story would be based in reality instead of delusion or paranoia. But, as Oscar noted several times, no evidence of a murder plot had ever been discovered.
What about the son?
Kennedy Barrett.
Ambitious name, Ashe noted to himself.
Born rich. Private schooling his entire life. Sports. Debate clu
b. Private trainer. Private tutors. He was bred to be successful, like a race horse. All he knew was money and power and the family name. He had the making of a spoiled, rich, sociopath. But that didn't mean that he had been.
Could he have plotted to murder his own father?
Again, no evidence.
Within a set of bound documents, Oscar had put together a brief background of Franklin himself. Most of what was gathered matched the image that Ashe had had of the man the moment he had come into Ashe's office. A worm. Pale. Greasy. According to a group of business documents, Franklin was also a parasite, latching onto his brother and his brother's success, milking it for his own needs. There wasn't a business document in the stack that had Franklin's signature without that of his brother Lucky directly above it.
Barrett was a leech.
But that did not make him mentally ill.
Only lazy and pitiful.
Ashe felt his eyes growing glossy, unfocused. All the little printed words were beginning blur together. Closing the folder, he pushed it aside. He was finished with it. Shutting his eyes for a few minutes, he let them rest before pulling over and opening the second manila folder.
Inside was nothing but pictures, crime scene photos. Two photos in, Ashe came across Sue Ann Barrett stabbed and dead, face up in her bed. The next photo was Kennedy Barrett, in a similar state. Face up. Dead. In his bed.
The psychologist’s skin crawled.
Owen's blood soaked mattress flashed before Ashe. He had been found face down in his bed, a bullet to the head. What was the likelihood that he would find himself focused on two crimes in which the victims were found dead in their beds, most likely killed while sleeping. Similar. Possibly. He quickly put the stack of photos back in the folder and closed it.
Similar.
Yes.
But not the same.
No.
The itch of human imagination wanted to be scratched, but Ashe refused. Imagination could often lead a person on a fool’s errand, searching for connections that did not exist. No matter how many times a coin was flipped, no matter how many times it landed on heads, there was a fifty-fifty chance that the next flip would either be heads or tails. He knew the dangers of forcing a pattern onto events that were obviously coincidence. There was no evidence or facts supporting the idea of connection. Scott was not connected to the Barrett family.
He just wasn't.
Was he?
He pushed the question far away, deep into the pressure pit that was his mind. He thought over Oscar's documents and findings. Ashe had what he needed, or at least he believed that he had a place to start.
He would make Barrett talk.
Ashes to Ashes Page 14