Ashes to Ashes

by Nathaniel Fincham

  Chapter 38

  April’s Corner Café was one of the few remaining old style diners in Youngstown, due to both the recession and competition with the more mainstream food service outlets, like McDonalds and Denny’s. It was the common battle between the big guy and the little guy and the family owned businesses were not as lucky as the bible claimed David had been against Goliath. In reality, the little guy rarely wins against the big guy. Small diners seem to be going by the wayside, to eventually wash upon the shore next to the mom and pop bookstores, which have long been run out of town by the internet and Amazon.com.

  It was a shame.

  Ashe didn’t consider himself to be old, being only forty, but he was slightly old fashioned when it came to eating. He didn’t care much for fast food franchises, where the food felt plain and mundane, mass produced, as if it came off a conveyor belt. There was no personality. It was boring. He preferred places like April’s Corner Café, where the food was made with pride and specialty, not where just any high school student could get a job flipping hamburgers.

  Minimum wage tended to pay for minimum quality food.

  He must have been early, because Ginger and his mystery friend were not there yet. There were only two booths occupied when Ashe arrived at the café and he took one that was in the far back corner, away from the counter and the other eaters. He had a feeling that he didn’t want any other ears to be able to hear the upcoming conversation. But what could Ginger have for him? What had he discovered about the powder that would give cause to a covert meeting in a nearly empty dinner?

  Ashe’s mind overflowed with possibilities. His imagination went into overdrive. And as he waited, ordering only a simple cup of black coffee, his patience immediately wore thin, causing his foot to wiggle and twitch to a pretend, upbeat rhythm. The rhythm was that of frustration and annoyance. How much longer would he have to wait? Whatever Ginger had discovered, Ashe needed to know. He needed some kind of news. He needed some kind of answers. He just hoped that whatever Ginger had to tell him that it did not only open up more questions. He was sick and tired of questions.

  He was also sick and tired of conflicted emotions. Ashe sat there in the booth alone and tried his best to occupy his mind with other things, but no other things seemed to exist outside of Scott and Katherine.

  Katherine.

  He didn’t want to think about Katherine…at all. It was nothing but a bridge he would have to burn, eventually. Or was it? For some reason something was saving that particular bridge from being kissed by flames. Was it loneliness? Was it pleasure? Or did he actually have feelings for Katherine? Ashe didn’t know. He was truly and utterly conflicted and he hated it. Yet, he didn’t have the motivation to figure out his feeling for Katherine. He simply wanted to avoid them.

  Ashe finally decided to order some food, hoping that if he filled his stomach it might dull his mind a little. When he stuffed his gut full, his mind sometimes became slow and sleepy. He could only hope.

  “Let me get the hot meatloaf sandwich with French fries. I want gravy on the fries, also,” he told the female server. He considered ordering a Sam Adams, but asked her for some more coffee, instead. The server jotted down his request and then took the order over to the cook, before returning with a pot of steaming black liquid.

  It smelled like heaven.

  Ashe took a sip of his coffee, breathing in the fumes. He looked up to see Ginger entering the café. Ginger was solo, his friend nowhere to be seen. Casually, Ginger glanced around and noticed Ashe, who waved him over. With a wide grin of his bearded face, Ginger strolled over and slid into the booth.

  “Afternoon, my friend,” Ginger greeted.

  The female server immediately returned when she noticed Ginger, her order book back in hand. But the server was quickly dismissed by Ginger with only an order for coffee. It took a couple seconds for her to bring the Irishman a white mug filled to the brim. Ashe watched as Ginger diluted the black liquid with loads of sugar and creamer until it was nearly was a pale as the powder at the bottom of the black and gold container.

  Blasphemy.

  There were two drinks that Ashe took absolutely seriously, Sam Adams and coffee.

  “When you’re done destroying that coffee,” Ashe began, “we can get down to why I am here?”

  “In time, Ashy boy,” Ginger replied. “Did you order food?”

  “A bite,” Ashe said. “You going to eat?”

  “I might nibble a bit,” Ginger told him, waiving the server back to the table. He asked for some appetizers, mozzarella sticks, fried mushrooms, and pepper poppers, all deep fried and greasy.

  “I thought you were bringing someone,” Ashe questioned. “Or were you blowing smoke up my ass, trying to throw me off balance for some sick pleasure.” He smirked. “Wouldn’t be the first time you messed with my head, Ginger.”

  Ginger shook his head.

  “Not this time,” he said. “He is just running late. Busy guy. You can relate to that.”

  “I’ve been kicked out of my prison,” Ashe told him. “It might be the first time in history that someone was asked to leave Wilson.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not.”

  Ashe smelled his gravy and turned to see his plate approaching. His stomach gave a gurgle and then a growl. “Why are we here?” he asked Ginger as he stuffed a bite of gravy fries into his mouth. “And why so mysterious? You are usually not so…KGB-like.”

  “Or am I?” Ginger joked and then laughed.

  “Quit it,” Ashe demanded. “You are stalling. I don’t care if your friend is here or not. I want you to tell me why I am here.”

  Suddenly, as if appearing from the air, the black and gold container was on the table. “That is why we are here. That right there.”

  “What is it?” Ashe inquired.

  “Where did you get it?” Ginger asked, ignoring Ashe’s question. “And don’t tell me any bull about it belonging to a new girlyfriend. I know it to be a lie.”

  “It is a lie,” Ashe acknowledged. “You are right. I’m sorry that I told you that, but I didn’t want to involve you any more than I needed to.”

  “Another lie,” Ginger spat. “You didn’t trust me.”

  “I don’t know who to trust,” Ashe confessed. “It is nothing personal, but I feel like I’m floating with no way back to the ground. Oscar had sidelined me on my own son’s investigation and I didn’t know where your loyalty sat. I thought that I could trust him and…and I couldn’t ask you to decide between me, someone you used to work with, and Oscar, one of the lead detectives in your precinct.”

  “I know, friend” Ginger said. “This is about Scott. Right?”

  Ashe nodded.

  “Don’t forget what you done for my brother,” Ginger said. “Because I won’t. You listened to his crazy ass when no one else wanted to, not even his own family would, and you decided to help him. You helped him more than he deserved, I tell you. I owe you. I still will owe you after this.”

  “You don’t owe me,” Ashe told him. “And I was an asshole to hold that over your head. I did that for my own personal, selfish reasons. That was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “Shut that up,” Ginger insisted. He pointed to the container, which still sat, almost malevolently, on the café table. “Where did you get that container?”

  Ashe described gaining access into Scott’s building and Scott’s apartment. He told Ginger about finding the black and gold container, along with taking the dream journal. He thought about leaving out the dream journal, but went with it anyway. Ashe felt his head filling up with pressure. It had been building up for the past couple of days, the secrets and half-truths, telling one person one thing while keeping another thing from that same person.

  It was too much.

  “Why would you break into a crime scene?” Ginger asked. “Have you gone mad?”

  “Yes,” Ashe
replied.

  “Good,” Ginger said. “It’s about time, my friend. Sometimes a situation will encourage madness and insanity. It becomes a necessity. It becomes the sane thing to do.”

  Ashe closed his eyes. “What did you find out about the powder, Ginger?” He opened back up his eyes. “Please?”

  “There wasn’t a whole lot of substance to analyze,” Ginger said. “But there was enough to run a couple tests, which showed me what I figured I would find. That substance was made of…”

  Ashe swiftly interrupted.

  “What do you mean…figured you would find? How could you figure anything about what I gave you?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t the first time that I had seen that container,” Ginger admitted.

  “What?”

  “Not now.”

  “Right now,” Ashe insisted.

  “Not now,” Ginger repeated. “The substance contained a mixture of rare fungus, amphetamines, herbs, and baby powder. Yes…baby powder. These ingredients are ground and dyed white and put into pill form. A simple pill, without any designs or brand name.”

  “Pill form? I gave you a powder,” Ashe said, slightly baffled.

  “Yea,” Ginger admitted. “But that was only a dusting left behind by the pill that had been in the container.”

  “A pill?”

  Ginger nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve been in possession of a similar pill of this same substance?”

  “Yes. Just one though, we were able to synthesize the ingredients for further study,” Ginger replied.

  “And you have been able to test it?”

  Ginger nodded. “On the rodents.”

  “And what effect does that pill have?” Ashe asked. “What symptoms does it cause?” Understanding the effect of the substance that he had found in Scott’s room could shine light on some important answers to the whole mess. It could bring Ashe closer to understanding his son’s state of mind because he will be able to view the behavior with a specific point of context. When diagnosing a person’s behavior, having a pivotal point, something upon which everything rotates around, was important.

  An elderly man may stab his nurse with a fork because dementia had caused him to believe that the male nurse was actually an intruder, intending to rob and kill him.

  Tainted heroine could make a young woman believe that she could fly, causing her to jump to her death from the balcony of her high-rise apartment.

  Context.

  A core.

  That was all Ashe needed.

  “What I want you to see, Ashe,” Ginger began, “is that the ingredients, accept for the amphetamines, are harmless. Not only are they harmless, they are bloody pointless…if you are not preparing some weird types of food. I wouldn’t use them in my delicious cuisine, I tell you what. Technically, if you want to get technical, and I quite often do such, the pill shouldn’t do anything. Yet, it does.”

  “Why? How? I don’t understand,” Ashe stated, pushing his plate of food aside. He leaned forward, his elbow on the previously occupied portion of the table. “It obviously does something.”

  The server returned with Ginger’s deep fried food. He took a bite and continued. “While I tested on the wee rodents, I had an idea of testing all the ingredients accept for the amphetamines,” Ginger said. “It was a hunch. Stroke of genius. One of many. When lacking the amphetamines, my friend, the other ingredients have no effect, outside of giving some of the wee ones the runs. Nasty case too. Couldn’t stop pooping.”

  “But with the amphetamines?”

  When taken, amphetamines can cause some serious mental problems, causing things like psychosis and other psychotic states. One of the possible symptoms of psychosis is the imagined threat of persecution, possibly causing the person to act against the perceived threat, believing it to be self-defense.

  Did that explain Owen? And Franklin Barrett’ wife and son?

  “Craziness,” Ginger replied. “The wee rodents became aggressive, but never to each other. Which was strange. We put pairs together to see how they would react and they were never anything but buddy-buddy with the other rodent. They would only appear agitated, vicious when a human would approach the cages.”

  “They were only aggressive when a person would be involved,” Ashe said, more to himself than to Ginger. “But they were not aggressive to other rats. What does that mean?” He wasn’t sure what would cause a rat to grow violent against their human handlers without causing them to strike out against their own kind. “When you say aggressive, what exactly do you mean, Ginger?”

  “Aggressive,” Ginger answered. “They would attack the cage when someone would be by it. They would freak out when someone had to get into the cage for any reason.”

  “Are you sure they were being aggressive?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could they have been afraid?” Ashe asked. “Reacting with fear instead of anger or irritation?”

  Ginger opened his mouth to speak, but shut it quickly. His eyes looked away from Ashe, clearly distracted with thought. “I’d never considered that,” Ginger admitted. “The rats normally don’t fear us. We have raised them and we are the ones that feed them. Even during tests, the wee ones are always ambivalent to people. But the substance changed that.”

  The substance changed that, Ashe thought to himself. “We both know that substances can do strange things to behavior. If this pill could cause aggression, that could explain Scott’s behavior…to a point. There seems to be more to it, though, than just straight forward aggression. It doesn’t fit everything. I talked to Scott, Ginger, and I didn’t get the feeling of aggression, outside of expected reactions.” He remembered how Scott sounded when he had heard Katherine’s voice, but that response was more due to hurt than anger.

  “You talked to Scott?”

  Ashe nodded.

  “It makes sense that he would reach out to you…at some point,” Ginger said. “The sons and the fathers and all that biblical mess. He must honestly believe that you are out to help him…instead of to hurt him.”

  “I would never want to hurt him. He wouldn’t have called me if he ever questioned that,” Ashe told him, and when the words left his mouth, something occurred to him. It was a strange idea, but he asked anyway. “You said the rats attacked when people were at the cage? Right? Did they attack everyone?”

  Ginger considered the question. “I’m not following you,” he said.

  “How many handlers deal with the rats?”

  “Besides myself? Three interns deal directly with the rats,” Ginger told him.

  “Did they attach when you came to the cage?”

  Ginger shook his head. “No. They only attacked at the other three.”

  “Are you still squeamish about putting the rats down after experiments?” Ashe asked. “I remember how you never could do that yourself. You said that it was the same as killing your own babies.”

  “I never kill the wee ones,” Ginger said.

  “And they never attacked you,” Ashe said.

  “Right. Why is that important?”

  “Fear,” Ashe said. “They didn’t see you as a threat. They weren’t afraid of you. Paranoia? Maybe. Hypersensitivity to external stimuli, mainly those that might be a threat? Could be.” What about hallucination? He had been sure that they played a part in the events that have occurred, with both Barrett and his son. Their eyes had been opened and they had seen something that they believed gave them a reason to kill. If not hallucinations, then what?

  “Did the rats appear to see things?” Ashe asked ginger.

  “Imaginary things?” Ginger responded. “Not that I can tell.” He shook his head. “Why would they only attack the interns? How would the rodents know they were a threat? How could they possibly?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashe r
eplied. “Maybe they picked up on body language. Paranoia can heighten senses, causing even rats to become sensitive to cues.”

  “Could be,” Ginger said. Something under the table chimed and Ginger swiftly reach for his cell phone. “I got a text,” he declared, looking at the phone. “My friend is pulling in.”

  “Your friend is far from punctual,” Ashe said. “I know. I know. Busy.” He turned his attention to the front door of the café and nearly swore out loud when Oscar walked through it. Scratch that. He did swear out loud. “Shit!” And added, “Liar!”