Ashes to Ashes

by Nathaniel Fincham

  Chapter 59

  Lucky Barrett continued to sweat and fidget.

  Inmates in Wilson Maximum were forced off any drugs they may have been using on the streets before being incarcerated. It was always unpleasant for everyone involved, from the user to the medical staff. Even though Ashe never really had a role in the detoxing of inmates, because it was usually done using outsourced professionals, both medical and psychological, who specialized in the process, he had had enough experience with former addicts, those who never honestly wanted to be off their drug of choice, to notice the signs of a user who wanted badly to use.

  “Are you sure that your precious pill tells you the truth?” Ashe asked. “Or could it be like any other hallucinogen…causing you to put stock in things that are not real? I’ve seen a lot of drugs in my career,” he slightly lied, “and at the base they are similar. Boringly so. Even your pill. I said it was complex, which is true, but at its molecular level…it is the same as everything else.”

  “It is the truth,” Lucky growled. “It opens my eyes to things that normal people will never be witness to. When I take it, I stand on the shoulders of giants and from there I can see further than those forced to remain at ground level.”

  “The future?” Ashe asked. He came to the conclusion that Lucky Barrett saw the pill in the same way that Scott had seen it, as a way to prophecy. But how could that be? How could different users have the same exact type of hallucinations? Hallucinations should differ from person to person, as it does with those who trip on acid. One user might see evil penguins with razor teeth while another may witness a delicate flower growing and blooming up from the floor of their apartment. It was always a personalized experience. Or it should have been, even with the white pill.

  Or did the pill do exactly as they seemed to believe?

  Lucky had also explained how Amber had also bore witness to the images of her death. And the man was entirely certain of its validity. He viewed it as gospel, containing not a single thread of doubt, like the ancient pages of the Bible, itself. It was a direct link to the mind of God.

  Ashe was again confused. He refused to submit to the idea that a plain, white pill, a drug like any other, gave the users a vision of their own deaths. It wasn’t possible…outside paperback fiction.

  “Not just the future,” Lucky lectured. “It shows something that is on everyone’s mind all of the time. Death.”

  Death? It was the same thing that Lucky’s brother had said. It had shown him death.

  “Not just any death,” the madman continued, “but their own. We all wonder how we are going to die. When. Where. Will be it be expected, like the ending to a long fight with cancer? Or will it be out of nowhere, like a car wreck? It is in our nature to wonder and fear that day…the one day that will come for us all no matter what we do or what steps we try to take to avoid it. Or so most people think. What if we could see exactly how we will die? Then we could avoid it, even if only a single time. Cheating death once is still nothing short of a miracle.”

  “You could become immortal?” Ashe inquired, knowing the statement to be absurd. Natural cause will always kill in time. Death will eventually creep into the person’s old and tired body, removing whatever life had once been there. Not even Lucky Barrett could stop that sort of death.

  Ashe glanced at his son, who had remained silent. He wondered how his son was absorbing the conversation. What was he getting from it? Could Scott still be reached? Scott had cried for Amber. He had apologized to his father for the mess he had caused. The regret and guilt was authentic. And the hope that stirred up from those moments still remained alive and active inside of Ashe.

  No matter how strong the mental illness was that slithered through someone’s mind, Ashe knew there was always hope, even when none seemed to exist. That was one of the reasons he worked in the professional field that he did. Everyone, from psychotics to pedophiles, could be helped and the illness that drove their behavior could be cured or at least closely managed.

  No one was beyond hope, not even criminals, even though most of the world condemned them as monsters and would rather see them wiped from the Earth instead of helped. Ashe chose to fight the good fight on the behalf of the criminals, while most of society spit on the notion of their very existence.

  However, Ashe knew the difference between the mentally ill and those who just chose to commit crimes based on greed or vengeance or some other selfish, destructive reasoning. There was a difference. Like there was difference between night and day, dogs and cats. Those men and women deserved whatever punishment they were handed by the court of law and its officials. Often times those men and women clearly deserved to fry at the hands of an unknown switch puller.

  Which one was Lucky Barrett?

  Which one was Franklin Barrett?

  Were they one or the other?

  Or were they both?

  “Immortal?” Lucky chuckled. “I am not immortal. Death with get my ass, eventually. You can only dodge the shark for so long before it gets to your midsection and takes you under. You know what I mean?”

  Ashe did. The symbolism of a shark must be highly present in the Barrett family. Or only between Lucky and his little brother Franklin. “Absolutely,” he conceded. “What about your brother?”

  Lucky laughed. “What about him?”

  “You gave him the pill, didn’t you?” the psychologist asked. “Why? If you know the pill…if you are in control of the pill…then you knew what Franklin would do. Right? Or did you? Maybe you were simply experimenting on him. But I think not. I think not…because I know about the other times you slipped others your magical pill.”

  Even in the dimmed room, Ashe could see Lucky’s smug sneer. “Others?”

  “Competition. Enemies. An innocent young man. Your own brother,” Ashe clarified. “Franklin told me about the sharks. You know about the sharks. The Barrett shark pool. Eat or be eaten. Why did you want your brother to be eaten?”

  The gangster snorted. “A shark? Franklin was never a shark. He was always food, a fish spilling a trail of blood for the real predators to sniff out.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  “Some fish believe they are sharks, Dr. Walters,” Lucky replied. “Do you believe yourself to be a shark or a bloody fish, Dr. Walters?”

  “I’m a fisherman,” the psychologist told him.

  Lucky howled with nervous delight. “I don’t know about all that. I think you…are…a fish…one with a shark already on your scent…circling you from afar.”

  “Steven Reynolds?” Ashe considered the name again and its link to Franklin Barrett and possibly Lucky Barrett. He had been grinding his gears over the past couple of days, trying to connect the Barretts and Steven Reynolds, but only coming up with friction. But suddenly the gears shifted inside of his head.

  Sharks.

  Circling.

  And circling.

  Sometime sharks did indeed circle its prey. Sometimes the prey was injured. But sometimes the prey was a stern swimmer, a stern and stubborn meal. When coming upon a prey that might be a challenge, the act of circling, of going round and round the prey, served to scare the would-be food. Now and then the shark would rush in and nip…but just nip. Once the prey had been worn and beaten down to nothing but strayed nerves, the killer would move in for the final bite.

  Ashe was being circled.

  And if Franklin wasn’t the shark…then Lucky was.

  “You visited your brother recently,” the psychologist said. “Didn’t you? You made a mistake getting Franklin put in prison. He had told me recently that he doesn’t take drugs…and I didn’t believe him. But it’s true. Isn’t it? What did you do? How did you get Franklin to take the pill? You wanted him to swallow the pill but couldn’t just slip it into his normal pill intake, because he doesn’t take pills without knowing what they are.”

  Lucky wa
s silent.

  “You lied,” Ashe concluded. “You came up with a reason for him to take them. I can’t for the life of me think of what you said to him…but I know he took them. He trusted you…possibly without question, because deep down you were the shark and he was only the bottom feeder that fed on the dropping that the shark left behind. You got him to take the pill. And then he butchered his family. How did you know he would kill them and not you? You were certain…weren’t you? They were really plotting against him. Weren’t they? And you somehow knew about it. Or you at least knew that Franklin had serious fears that they were. You know he wouldn’t target you…even in his drug induced psychosis.”

  The room had grown still except for the psychologist.

  “But you didn’t think it through,” Ashe said. “Not all the way. Because you left him alive…with a direct line back to you. The other scenes were cloudy, with any link to you being full of holes and speculation. But not Franklin. Nope.”

  “My, my,” Lucky finally said, “have you and my little brother bonded.”

  “And that was what you were scared of,” Ashe responded, his voice rising. “You knew that Franklin’s state of mind would be questioned. You knew that he would be seeing someone like me as soon as he set foot inside. You were afraid the he would talk…spill secrets…about your precious pill and its link to you…because you viewed him as being weak. You knew he would talk…in time.”

  Lucky growled.

  “You couldn’t let him talk,” Ashe continued. “And for some reason you are against killing him. You were loyal to your brother but no to own wife. I don’t get it, but it makes sense to you, I guess. Maybe killing your brother would be like putting down a loyal and loving mutt, you just couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You made a mistake, first one in a long time.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes,” the psychologist corrected. It was Ashe’s turn to chuckle. He shut it down quickly and took a breath. “You did research on me…the man your brother would have to speak to…tell his thoughts to. Finding the cracks in my shell was easy. Any Google search would bring up what happened to my wife. You told Franklin to bring up Steven Reynolds…even though neither of you have ever met the man. You told him that it would give him control over me…a sense of control that you know Franklin always craves…like you crave. But your real intention was to drive a wedge between psychologist and patient. It would get rid of my objectivity and I couldn’t work with him. It would buy you some time. But you failed.”

  “You think you are so smart, don’t you, Dr. Walters?” Lucky Barrett screamed, spittle flying from his lips.

  “Smart? Sometimes,” Ashe admitted. “Now? Possibly. All I know is that I am in your head. I am in your head, Lucky, and it fucking sucks, doesn’t it?”