Ashes to Ashes Read online

Chapter 9

  On the other side of the prison was Solitary Confinement, often referred to as The Lonely Mile. The stretch was much less than a true mile, but when a person was standing and taking it in, it seemed much longer than a single mile. The section of the prison was a single narrow hallway, lit around the clock by fluorescent lights, which glared off the pale linoleum, causing the white floor to seem to glow at night. The walls were tan and lifeless. On both sides of the hall were blue doors, made of thick, solid steel. A single slot was at the center of each door, long and wide enough to slide in a tray of food.

  Ashe was aware of the stigma that often accompanied the idea of Solitary Confinement, most of which were not entirely true. Even though he had been on the mile numerous amount of times, he sometimes found himself picturing jagged stone cells, lightless and rat ridden, where men were thrown to rot and starve, while rats scampered in and out of holes. But places like Alcatraz were returning to the dirt, crumbling slowly to the ground. The days of throwing men in the hole were long gone. And justly so.

  Ashe stood peering down the hallway, viewing it from the other side of the locked entrance, which was a door made with thick steel bars and unbreakable locking mechanisms. Waving his hand impatiently, Ashe motioned to the camera above the doorway once more. He waved it two more times, hoping to get someone's attention in the security office. The sound of footsteps grabbed his attention and he turned to see Matt Cummings walking up to the other side of the locked bars. Matt was a young man, employed at the prison for barely a year. Yet, the psychologist knew the man on sight. It was not by choice. It was because many of inmates that Ashe treated as patients found themselves, at one point or another, sitting on The Lonely Mile.

  Ashe rarely trusted young men like Matt, due to the usually found inexperience and lack of plain old maturity. It was nothing personal against the youth of the nation. They were simply raised to be spoiled and selfish. But the young guard had proven himself over the past year to be competent, sensible, hardworking, and thorough in his job. Ashe felt a sense of respect for the young man.

  Matt was smiling apologetically and told Ashe, “Sorry for the wait, Dr. Walters. I was cleaning up in the bathroom after an...issue.”

  Ashe noticed that Matt's right sleeve was rolled nearly to his elbow. A brown rectangular bandage was stretched across a section of his forearm. Tiny specks of blood could still be seen on the edges of the bandage.

  “It's quit all right,” Ashe replied, adjusting his brown tie. “I know all about...issues.”

  Matt chuckled. “I bet you do, sir.” Removing his badge, which was clipped on his shirt pocket, the young man passed it over a blinking red sensor. The sensor turned green. Before the sensor could turn back to red, the young guard opened the barred gate to let Ashe inside. “Welcome back to The Lonely Mile, sir.”

  Once inside, Ashe paused at the mouth of the hallway. He spread out his arms and widened his stance. Matt immediately began to pat down the psychologist.

  “You don't need to do this every single time, you know,” Ashe joked.

  “It's procedure, sir,” the guard replied. “I could pull out the wand, if you like.”

  Ashe faked a shiver. “No thank you.”

  They both laughed.

  “You really think that I would try to sneak something in?” Ashe asked. “Break someone out? Shank someone in the room?”

  Finishing the rub and tickle, Matt said, “You could try to smuggle in a dildo or anal beads.”

  The psychologist nearly choked on his breath. “This part of the jail is male only.”

  “My comment still holds.”

  They both laughed again.

  “I figure that you are here to see Grub,” Matt assumed. “For whatever it is worth, Grub is an okay guy. For whatever it is worth. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  For a couple seconds, Ashe thought about the implications of agreeing with that statement. Grub, by all normal legal standards, had been proven to be a terrible man, deemed unworthy to be among civilized human beings. Yet, he conceded with the young guard’s statement nonetheless.

  Sighing quietly, he pointed down the hall, “Same room?”

  The young guard nodded, holding up six of his fingers.

  “Thanks. Go ahead and hit the button when I am there?”

  “Can do, boss,” Matt agreed, turning and entering a nearby door that would take him into the security office.

  Without another word, Ashe wandered down to Grub's room. The door was plain, blue, and seemingly harmless. Being plain did not always mean harmless, a fact in which Grub himself would be an example. Glancing over his shoulder, he nodded toward the security office the exact moment the electronic locks disengaged. Ashe grabbed the solid steel door handle and pulled the door open.

  He thought of Scott's dream journal and the ghostly figure of death following his son around the white house. A real shiver touched his skin. Death was indeed following his son, wherever he could be. Death was circling him along with the YPD, led by an old family friend. It seemed ironic. Which was more dangerous? Death? Or Oscar Harrison?

  Once the door was fully outward, Ashe went into the isolation room and greeted Grub. He pulled the door closed. “Hello, Grub. How are you this morning?”

  The bulky bodied inmate was squeezed into a petite desk, one that resembled the same type of uncomfortable metal and wooden thing that had once been used by the psychologist during High School. It was one of the few pieces of furniture that each isolation cell had. Grub was hunched over a picture, a crayon in hand. The man had only been in the cell for a few days, but there were already several colored pictures stuck to the usually bare walls. There were pictures of Mickey Mouse, Dora the Explorer, and a group of characters that Ashe did not recognize off hand

  Coloring calmed Grub. And for such a simple art form, if it can be called art, Grub was indeed an artist. Using the crayons, he didn't just add color to the outlined images. Grub added texture and quality to the blank, lifeless pictures, whether it was cartoon characters or scenes in nature. It was somewhat amazing what Grub can do with a kid's toy.

  Hearing the greeting, Grub raised his head. He looked a lot older than Ashe knew him to be. Wrinkles and worry lines covered his face, giving it the depth of old age. Grub couldn't remember his exact birth year and his parents were deceased, obviously unable to give any information. But through a long and frustrating investigation, Ashe was able to locate a birth certificate.

  Grub was 23 years old. And looked 40. He was born Arnold Buford. Grub was a nickname that his parents had given him as a child, because he would pull grubs from the dirt and eat them. Or at least that was how Grub remembered it. He always laughed whenever he told that story. It was one of the few good memories of his parents.

  “I am good this morning,” Grub answered. He followed it with a childish giggle, adding, “I was hoping you were a lady.”

  “Why do you hope that I was a lady?” Ashe asked, concerned.

  “I wanted to look at your boobs,” he replied, immediately lowering his eyes. “I'm sorry. I should not...say that.”

  “That was inappropriate. Right?”

  “Yes,” Grub acknowledged, lowering his head. “In…appropriate.”

  “Would you like me to sit with you?” Ashe asked, motioning to the spare chair.

  Grub nodded giving Ashe permission to pull the only other chair in the room away from its usual spot on the wall. Ashe placed the chair directly across from Grub. During their sessions, the psychologist always sat across from Grub, at eye level, instead of behind a desk. As an equal. Face to face, instead of from behind a desk. If Grub felt insecure or judged in any way, he would never say a word. And there was a lot about Grub that needed to be heard. He just needed someone to look past the label of Mentally Disabled Monster and listen to what he had to say.

  “What are
you coloring?” Ashe asked. “Can I take a look?”

  “Sure,” he replied, his eyes lighting up. Holding up the picture, “It's a dragon flying in the sky.”

  The psychologist studied the blossoming picture, the partially imbued outline. Grub had a difficult time with emotions, the ones that were complex, hard to both interpret and communicate. A lot of the time those types of feelings came through what he chose to color. A good day involved pages filled with fluffy white clouds, cartoon animals, and seemingly endless fields of grass.

  Ashe asked, “Why do you want to color a dragon? Aren't dragons…bad? Scary?”

  “Yea,” Grub answered. “Dragons are mean.”

  “Why are you coloring something mean instead of nice?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Is there someone being mean to you?”

  “No,” Grub replied. “Everyone is nice. You are nice.”

  “I'm glad people are being nice, Grub,” Ashe declared and smiled. “You would tell me if anyone is mean to you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Grub was often on the Lonely Mile. However, it was not always due to his own actions but that of others. He was an easy target, prone to manipulation and victimization, often used as a scapegoat by other prisoners.

  “Good,” Ashe said. “I am glad.” Thinking over his words, he continued, “Do you want to be mean to someone else? You know you can tell me…right? You can always tell me…everything…Grub. Do you remember when I told you that? Remember when I said that we are friends?”

  “Best buds,” Grub happily concurred.

  “That is right,” Ashe said. “Are you feeling…anger…friend?”

  Grub shook his head. “No,” he replied. “No anger.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes,” Grub responded before breaking eye contact to look back down at his picture.

  “Pinky?” the psychologist asked, flipping out a little finger.

  The inmates head jerked back up. He sat the crayon and extended his own short digit. “Pinky. Pinky. I like blue dragons. They are cool.”

  “They are pretty cool,” Ashe agreed. “I have some good news for you, Grub. Would you like to hear some good news? I know that I am glad to give some good news this morning. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your transfer had been approved,” Ashe told him.

  The transfer that Ashe informed Grub about was around two years in the making, since the moment that Grub had finally spoken to him about his parents, with pain and disgust in his child-like eyes. Using his simple words, Grub told a story, which opened the flood gates for many, many similar narratives, each one making the hairs on Ashe's arm stand up.

  The first story was about Grub's sister, Norma, which was two years younger than him, from what he could remember. He remembered vividly his sister's face, small, young, and bewildered, while her own father tied her to the headboard of a bed. Grub watched it, also confused. He told Ashe that his father mentioned that he wanted to teach his son all about sex, along with what a woman's role was. Taking off the young girl's clothes, the drunken, abusive father forced Grub, who was 11 years old, to rape his own sister, while his mother watched obediently from the back of the room.

  Grub's father taught him many other lessons during his childhood, many that followed him into his adult life. He was taught to take what he wanted from a woman, especially when it came to sexual pleasures. He was in charge and a woman should always give him whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. He was the man. And he was the boss.

  At the age of 21, Grub was convicted of 13 accounts of savage sexual assault, with one of the victims barely surviving. The EMTs saved the young girls life, but no doctor could save her sight. The attacks were brutal, committed by a violent and sadistic criminal. The young victims were abducted near their schools. They were always bound to a bed, hands and feet. After two days, the victims were simply dumped, clothed and alive, along the side of a busy road, a place where they were sure to be discovered. The victims were always young girls, prepubescent and dirty blonde, resembling what Grub’s sister had looked like as a child.

  Grub’s parents were long deceased. He couldn’t for the life of him recall what had become of his sister. And Ashe had searched for her, but was unable to turn any recent leads to her possible whereabouts. It was as if she had disappeared from the Earth. Or that her own father had eventually grown tired of his toy and tossed her into the trash.

  Competency to stand trial was never questioned, even though Grub was obviously disabled. Also, the insanity defense was never raised. He was merely treated as a sick and twisted pervert. The trial was swift, ending with sentence of twenty-five to thirty-five years at a federal prison.

  “How do you feel about that?” Ashe asked Grub.

  “I don't know,” he honestly replied. “Where will I go?”

  “Like I told you before,” Ashe began, “I want you to go to the Cleveland Mental Health Facility. You don't belong here, Grub. You don't belong in a place like this. This place is not for people like you.”

  “But...I'm a bad guy,” Grub admitted. “This place is for bad guys.”

  “You're not the same...” Ashe began but had a hard time continuing. Grub would never understand why he was different. He had committed brutal crimes against young innocent girls, for which he was obviously remorseful. He would pay for them, a fact in which Ashe was fine with. He would not escape his punishment.

  But Grub was also a victim, just like the girls.

  Cleveland Mental Health was far from a resort, but it was better than Wilson. Grub was not being punished for life and his sentence would eventually end. He needed to be in a place where a group of experts would be focused on treating him, instead of a single psychologist with his hands tied by prison rules and regulations. Everything that his father had taught him, everything, had to be undone, unlearned, or Grub, even if Ashe didn't want to admit it, was a lost cause...a victim beyond saving.

  “When?” Grub asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Ashe replied. “I am here to go over what is going to happen,” he further clarified, “so that you are not confused when the time comes. A van is going to come to the prison at 3:30 in the afternoon to pick you up. There are going to be two men and they are going to have guns. Don’t worry, though, they are going to be nice guys. They have guns because their boss makes them. You are going to sit in the back and it might be a little scary, but it’ll be fine. You will be fine. The two guys are going to take you to your new home, where you will have your own room and all the crayons you want.”

  The psychologist closely observed how the inmate reacted.

  “It's going to be okay.” Ashe took a breath. “I have a lot of friends there, Grub. Like Dr. Sanjay Sheth. He is a good, kind man and will take care of you. I promise you.”

  “Will you come with me?”

  Ashe was caught off guard by the question. With everything going on with Scott he wasn’t sure how to answer. No. That was wrong. He knew exactly how he needed to answer. “Yes. I will go with you. Grub. Pinky.”

  “Pinky,” was his reply. “Can I get better crayons there? These ones suck big time.”

  Ashe laughed. “They do suck.” Standing, he extended his hand. With the gentleness of a child, Grub shook it. “If you need anything when you are there, you have someone call me. Okay? Okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Turning to leave, Ashe couldn't help but to believe the transfer of Grub to be a victory. A small one. Rare in Wilson. But he would take whatever he could get.