Ashes to Ashes

by Nathaniel Fincham

  Chapter 39

  Ginger moved to stand so that Oscar could slide into the booth, but Oscar stopped the red haired man by holding up a hand. Instead, Oscar pushed Ginger’s shoulder, forcing him to slide over to the wall. Oscar would rather sit on the outside of the seat and Ashe knew why. Ashe knew that Oscar liked sit on the outside of booths for the same reason he always booked the aisle seat on an airplane, he wanted the ability to instantly react whenever a reason presented itself, which would be difficult if he had to climb over another person.

  It made sense.

  Oscar had a smug expression when he put his attention on Ashe. The expression irritated Ashe and he wanted to leap over the table to choke the detective. If not the detective, he could choke the life out of Ginger, the person who had knowingly brought Oscar into their so-called den of secrets.

  They were obviously secrets no more, Ashe realized. And what did that mean for him? He wasn’t sure.

  Putting his arms out, Ashe connected them at the wrist. “Are you going to arrest me, Detective Harrison? Infringement on an active investigation? Trespassing on a crime scene? Obstruction of justice? Should I get up and assume the position?”

  “I’m on a food break,” Oscar replied, shaking his head. “I don’t arrest people on my breaks. It’s bad for the soul.” He motioned for the female server and asked for coffee. Once he had his own steaming mug, he ordered a club sandwich with plain chips.

  “Hmm,” Ashe said, not sure how else to respond to his old friend. “What do you know?”

  “I know everything, Ashe,” Oscar said. “I know that you’ve been conducting your own little investigation behind my back, even though I asked you nicely to stay out of it.”

  Ashe went to protest but was cut off.

  “I asked you nicely,” the detective repeated. “But you’ve been asking questions…when you weren’t sneaking out of bathroom windows. Did that really happen? The bartender had told me you were there and you went into the bathroom. I went back there and you were gone. Window open.”

  Ashe nodded.

  Oscar laughed. “I know that you went into my crime scene. And I know, after talking to Ginger here, that you took evidence from that scene.” He sighed. “You know what I am going to do with you, Ashe?”

  “Book me, Danno?” he replied.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all,” Oscar clarified. “Because I drove you to it. I pushed you out that window when I ordered you to stay on the sideline of your own son’s investigation. I said that it was because you were emotionally compromised. And I stand by that statement. But so was I. So was the whole department.”

  “I don’t follow,” Ashe said.

  “From the beginning,” Oscar began, “this investigation, this manhunt has been compromised by all sides. We know you and love you Ashe…as a former coworker and as our friend. And that clouded judgments…which messed with protocol.”

  As Oscar spoke, something occurred to Ashe. “You personally never went into Scott’s room?”

  “No,” Oscar answered. “And we didn’t process his room fully right away, which we should have. I had CSU go in and quickly grab whatever immediately grabbed their attention. We focused on the actual crime scene. Or at least I told myself that. But if it would have been anyone else, I would have had their bedrooms torn to shit within the first few minutes. But I didn’t. Inside, somewhere, I didn’t believe that Scott could have murdered Owen in cold blood. It took the next bodies to slap me in the face and wake me up a little.”

  “I got slapped pretty good myself,” Ashe admitted.

  “Scott’s face should have been on the news that night,” Oscar insisted. Before Ashe could react, he added, “And you know it, too. That is protocol when it comes to suspect on the run. If not that night, then as soon as the next bodies were positively linked to Owen’s death. I know that you believe that having that press conference puts your son’s life in danger, but that only proves my point. Finding the murder suspect should be the YPD’s only priority. But…we kept it to ourselves. We fucked up. And that should have never happened.”

  Ashe didn’t want to but he had to agree. Everyone had dropped the ball on the investigation, mostly due to the identity of the suspect. “I know. I just…I don’t know. He is my son, Oscar. I didn’t know any other way to act.” He groaned. “If you didn’t go into Scott’s room that night, then you didn’t see that.” He pointed to the black and gold container that still sat in front of Ginger. “You know what that is, don’t you?”

  “I’ve seen something like it before,” Oscar said. “CSU should have taken it when they were in there.”

  “And that is why Ginger called you,” Ashe replied.

  “Ginger called me because he knew that you were in the shit over your head, Ashe,” Oscar said, taking a sip of his black coffee. “Finding that container in Scott’s bedroom changes things. It makes what is going on larger than I expected it to be. The question is…why did you take it? What made you think it was important?”

  “It was an anomaly,” Ashe replied. “It didn’t belong in that bedroom. It didn’t fit.”

  “Okay,” Oscar stated. “What do you think it means?”

  “Drugs? I was right about thinking on that angle?”

  “To a point,” Oscar said, taking another sip of the hot black liquid.

  “What is that, Oscar?” Ashe asked, pointing again at the black and gold container. “What exactly does that mean? Ginger has already given me an idea of what the pill that was inside that container involves. Strange ingredients. Amphetamines. Severe symptoms. Paranoia. Aggression. Possible hallucinations or delusions…based on my own findings during my little investigation. There is a phenomenon known as Amphetamine Psychosis, wherein the person expresses these symptoms. Sense of reality is distorted by this mental disruption. It seems to fit the picture, I believe.”

  “It brings other possible players into the game,” Oscar told him.

  “Steven Reynolds?”

  Oscar cocked his eyebrow. “Hell no. You need to get that man out of your mind. He is nowhere near this.”

  “Then who?”

  During the conversation between Ashe and Oscar, Ginger had been silently eating fried food and drinking coffee, waiting for the moment he could chime back in. At Ashe’s question, his ears seemed to perk up and he had to rejoin the chatter. “Organized crime.” He giggled. “And the criminals involved in that organized crime.”

  “All of them?” Ashe asked, unsure of what Ginger was speak of. “I find that unlikely.”

  “What the lab rat is trying to say is that this here container has only been found at scenes loosely dealing with organized crime,” Oscar said. He picked the container off of the café’s table. “We have three distinct and unique crime scenes where this plain-Jane container has been found. One where we actually turned up an intact pill. There was little to nothing to connect the scenes…except for this.” He pulled the container in toward his eyes and began to inspect and possibly admire it. “The first one was the massacre at the public library two years ago.”

  “The Picante family?” Ashe asked. “I saw it on the news. I don’t remember the exact details. A gunman attacked the family during some kind of secret meeting at the back of the library?”

  “The gunman had worked for the family,” Oscar elaborated. “Charlie Parker. A bodyguard for the head member of the family, even. Luis Picante had swore by the man and had been quoted as saying that he trusted the man with his life. He had trusted the man right up until the day Charlie shot him in the face. Charlie Parker then went on to gun down the remaining members of the family, before fleeing from the building. He still has not been caught. Witnesses and video surveillance had identified him as the killer.”

  “Motive?” Ashe asked.

  “The man wen
t crazy,” Ginger said.

  “No,” Oscar corrected. “People don’t just go crazy. I’ve never believed that.”

  “Then what?” Ashe asked.

  “The librarian said that she had heard what sounded like a confrontation between Charlie Parker and the family,” Oscar said. “It had not been cold blooded and calculated. The librarian had told us that she could have sworn that the gunman sounded scared, as if he had been reacting to a threat. It was like he had been confronting a threat with force. But Charlie Parker had been the only person armed with any type of weapon. Why had he felt threatened?”

  “Odd,” Ginger stated.

  “Where did you find the container?” Ashe asked.

  “At the suspect’s apartment,” Oscar replied. “Once he was identified, we raided his home but he was long gone. We found the container on the coffee table of the living room. It had just been lying there. Empty. We had no idea at that time what it might have meant.”

  “Any motive turn up during the investigation?”

  “Nothing solid,” Oscar admitted. “It could have been a lot of things. Nothing stood out.”

  “What was the second situation?”

  “Young Matty Windham,” Ginger replied to Ashe’s question. He turned his eyes to his empty plate in disgust. Before Ashe or Oscar could say anything or add anything to his response, Ginger waved over the server for another refill on his coffee. Reaching past Oscar, he added his usual load of creamer and sugar.

  Ashe turned away from Ginger, after waiting for him to elaborate. Looking at Oscar, Ashe arched his eyebrows in question. “Who is Matty Windham?”

  “A teenager who murdered his father and disabled his mother with a hammer,” Oscar said. “He had apparently snuck into the garage in the middle of the night and took his dads hammer from his tool box. While they slept, he took the hammer to his father’s head before moving on to the mother. The mother managed to fight him off but not before he hit her one good time in the eye, blinding her in that eye for life. During the struggle, the mother managed to kill Mathew with the same hammer he had come at them with. You probably would better recognize the name, Ashe, if he had lived. Sure he would have been tried as an adult and sent to Wilson. He would have been in your chair. No doubt in my mind.”

  “What motive could he have had to attack his parents like that?” Ashe asked. “You said they had been attacked in their beds? Sounds like the same way Scott killed Owen.” He pointed out the similarities between Owen’s death and Mathew’s assault on his parents, but he didn’t mention Franklin Barrett. Not yet, anyway.

  Oscar cocked his head slightly. “Coincidence,” he replied and shrugged it off.

  “And there was no identifiable connection to the Picante murders?” Ashe questioned, already having been told the answer. “But you did find that container. Obviously.” He took the moment to reach over to Oscar and take the container from him. He began to play with it, slide it across his fingers. It was so little and appeared harmless. What secrets did it hold? And why was Scott involved?

  Oscar nodded.

  The server arrived with Oscar’s plate of food.

  “In his high school back pack,” Oscar said, once the server was out of hearing range. “It was tucked into one of the side pouches.”

  Ashe let the details sink in.

  “But when I say there is little to connect the crimes, you know, besides the container,” Oscar began, his mouth full of chips, “that is not completely true. Organized crime connects them, as Ginger has told you. But that is all the connection we have come across…the thin definition of organized crime.”

  “What did Mathew Windham have to do with organized crime?” Ashe asked. “His parents where in it, somehow, weren’t they.”

  “Yes,” Oscar replied. “But nothing big. The father, Thomas Windham, was a cop.”

  “A cop? How do I not know the name?” Ashe wondered.

  “You do,” Oscar blurted, surprising Ashe. “Only no one ever called him Thomas or Tom. He went by other names.”

  Realization came to the psychologist. “Tommy-on-the-take. I didn’t know he was killed. Where have I been the past few years?”

  “You needed to get away,” Oscar told him. “I’m sorry that you are getting brought back into this world.”

  “I’ve never left the world of killers, Oscar,” Ashe said. “And you know it.”

  Oscar grunted.

  “Tommy-on-the-take,” Ginger mumbled from whatever world he had been in for the past few minutes. “Tommy-on-the-take was a dirty rotten shame of a cop. Always on the take for whatever he could get. Dirty. Dirty. Dirty shame of a man.”

  “But you could never prove it, though,” Ashe said.

  Oscar agreed with the statement. “Never could find any evidence. But everyone knew he was in the pocket of some serious guys.”

  “The Picante family?”

  “They were never in question, that we could tell,” Oscar replied. “But who knows. Circumstantial at best. But that life never had to do with Mathew. And it was him who committed the crime.”

  Ashe nodded. That was true.

  “And Matty was never part of any crime family,” Ginger added. “The container had a small dusting, just like the one you got from Scott’s bedroom. We matched the substance to what was in Mathew’s blood stream. It was hard to find…but I am that good, my friend.”

  “Are you done gloating?” Oscar asked Ginger.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied.

  Ashe just watched the exchange. There was a strange relationship between the cops and the lab, as it always has been between religion and science. To a lot of police officers, law enforcement was not just a duty but a religion, one that was based on gut instincts and faith in both the system and the god that protects them from the bad guys. While the lab relied on studies and experiments, the hard science that made the evidence speak to them. Religion and science, was an age old squabble. However, within law enforcement, it had become a friendship as well, no longer trapped in the dark ages. Crime investigation embraces that line where the two positions, religion and science, could merge and blend and fill in where the other one falls short. It was a true dream team.

  He noticed that the rain had stopped but the clouds refused to break up.

  “And the third situation?” Ashe asked.

  Ginger sighed. The sound was not good to Ashe’s ears, reminding him of a whining horse when it had broken a leg and was about to put down.

  “That bad?” Ashe inquired. “It couldn’t be much worse than Mathew Windham.”

  “Not worse in brutality,” Oscar said. “But it was worse in scope. I know that you know this one. Everyone knows this one. Women and children gunned down…all to get at three brothers. The gunman drove by an opened fire on the entire building.”

  “At a church,” Ashe said, remembering the story. It was awful. “St. Anthony of the Angels on E. Wood Street. Nine people dead, including twin toddlers who were sitting with their father in the back pew. Several others were seriously injured. Including other children. It was all over the news.” Anytime a child dies, something inside of Ashe…dies? He didn’t know if that was the right word to describe what happened to him, but it was close enough. What took place inside of him whenever a child was needlessly affected by violence was hard to describe in civilized and structured language. Emotions stirred. Ones he forgot that he had. They were guttural and instinctual feelings that were at his core, possibly at the core of everyone. No. Not everyone. Not everyone had those instincts. If they did…no child would have to suffer.

  “I still think about it,” Oscar admitted.

  “I don’t remember hearing about any target, though,” Ashe said. “What three brothers was the man after?”

  “The Cool brothers,” Oscar told him. “Joe, Johnny, and Jimmy.”

  �
��The gun runners? They are petty criminals…from what I remember. A few unproven homicides to their heads. Mostly other low-life criminal types. They were never mentioned in the news,” Ashe said. “Why?”

  “No reason to,” Ginger conveyed. “Nothing could tie them to the shooting, at least nothing short of hunches. And the later confession of the gunman. Victor Ortiz.”

  “Victor Ortiz?”

  Oscar took the reins and continued. “We located Victor Ortiz a few days later and he was arrested as being the gunman. He confessed to the shooting and to the targets being the Cool brothers. Wouldn’t tell us why.”

  “I don’t remember a gunman being caught,” Ashe admitted. “Victor Ortiz? Was he also put in Wilson?”

  “Not Wilson. No,” Oscar replied. “He never made it to trial. Hung himself or was hung in lock-up the day after confessing. Suicide? Evidence said so. I have my doubts. He left the Cool brothers alive and I think they found out the bullets were aimed at them.”

  “Sounds possible,” Ashe concurred.

  The food was long gone but the coffee still flowed hot. Ashe and Oscar stuck with black while Ginger continued to water his down with sugar and cream. And it continued to be blasphemy.

  “Where did you find the container?” Ashe wanted to know.

  “On him,” Oscar said. “He had two containers on him, for some reason. Never could figure it out. One of them still had a full pill. It was a move in the right direction. Or so we thought. But the trail on the pill went cold, completely for the past year.”

  “Not really,” Ashe told him, grabbing the detective’s attention.

  “How do you mean?” Oscar inquired.

  Ashe placed the black and gold container as the middle of the table. “Did you find a container on Franklin Barrett?”