Empty Spaces

“Hey, Ash, wake up.” Ash was riding shotgun in someone’s car, and he awoke to someone shaking him. He looked up, but didn’t recognize him.

“Uh…I’m awake. Who are you?” He asked.

“Heh. Yeah, you wouldn’t remember me. I was helping you find the guy who killed your girl, remember?”

“Sorta…I remember that I was looking for him, but I don’t remember that you were helping me…”

“Well, I gave you some police files and some other stuff to help you find him.”

“Okay…”

“And you must’ve been thorough when you were looking through them, because you found him.”

“I what?!”

“Well, you didn’t actually find him, but you got enough information for me to get him. Here’s your house, I’ll call you when I’ve got him.” Ash looked outside and saw a house that looked familiar. He looked through his notes and saw a picture of the house and a note saying that it was where he lived. He got out, thanked the man for his help and went inside.

Ash set the binder down and looked through it. He found a tape and put it in the VCR. It looked like someone’s home movie, there were some outside shots and the house looked about as familiar as the house he was in now did. He called Brock in.

“Hey, does this house look familiar to you?” He asked.

“Well…yeah, that’s across the street.” Brock said, pointing in the direction of the front door.

“WHAT?” Ash said, jumping up. He ran to the front door and opened it. Sure enough, he was looking right at the house that was on the tape. “So that means, that that,” he said, pointing to the edge of a house just before the tape cut out. “Is this house?”

“I guess. How’d you get this?”

“This guy gave it to me, he’s helping me find the guy.”

“Hey, Ash, look at the date on the corner of the screen.” Ash looked, and sure enough, there was a date on the bottom left side of the screen, the camera must’ve had a date thing on it.

“Yeah, I see it, why?”

“That’s the date you had the car accident.”

“It-“ Suddenly the phone rang. Brock picked it up in the other room. He spoke a few words and hung up. “I gotta go, I’ll be back in about 10 minutes. Here.” He said, handing him a note. “Put this in your pocket.” He got his coat, gave Pikachu some instructions and walked out the door. Ash looked through some of the files and gave the tape another run through while he waited for Brock to get back. About 5 minutes later, the phone rang.

“Hello?” Ash said, answering the phone.

“Yeah, hi. You probably don’t remember me, I’m the guy who dropped you off.” The voice on the other end said.

“Yeah, I still remember you. Do you have him?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. He’s at this house, this guy who lived there got arrested, so it’s vacant, he’s in there. Here, I’ll give you the address, you got a pen?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a car, is it walking distance from where you dropped me off?”

“Well…no. I’ll go pick you up.”

“The guy won’t run off?”

“No, he doesn’t know what he’s there for. I told him he won the house, so he’s giving it a look-through.”

“Uh…alright. I’ll be waiting out front.”

“Okay, I’ll be over in a couple minutes. Ash,”

“Yeah?”

“Try not to black out before I get there.” Ash laughed and hung up. He got his coat, told Pikachu to guard the house while he was gone, and went to the front porch to wait.

“Here, take this.” The man said, handing Ash a gun.

“Why?” Ash asked.

“Well, this is the guy. You said you were gonna find him and kill him. You did the first half, why not follow up on the second half?”

“Works for me.” Ash took the gun and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “Hey, what’s your name anyways?”

“Call me Kint.”

“Okay, Kint, how far is it?”

“See that hill over there?”

“Yeah…”

“We go down there, turn right and it’s the last house on the left. Okay, say you get there and kill him. What then?”

“I dunno, I’ll probably take a picture and write down on that little white part at the bottom.”

“Yeah, but what if you lose the picture? What if you suddenly wake up and you don’t know that you got him. You’ve programmed yourself to remember to get him, you won’t remember that you already did.”

“Hmm… good point. I’ll probably get it tattooed on my arm.” Ash said, motioning to the underside of his forearm.

“Okay, here we are.” They got out of the car and slowly walked up the path to the front door. “Now, I should tell you, this might get kinda drawn out, so try not to think back much. Only concentrate on the here and now.”

“Okay, but why would it be drawn out at all? I see him, I kill him, I take the picture and write it down, and we leave. What’s the drawn out in that?” Ash said, as they opened the door. The first thing Ash saw made him takes a step back out of shock. “…Brock?”

“Ash what are you doing here?” Brock asked.

“You…” Ash was suddenly very angry. “Of all the people…YOU…” Ash reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the gun Kint had given him.

“Whoa, whoa! What’s going on?” Brock asked, suddenly panic-stricken.

“You’re getting exactly what you deserve…murderer.” Kint said as he suddenly came walking in the room.

“Whoa, what’s he doing here?”

“He helped me find you.” Ash said. “Although I never thought you’d be right under my nose.”

“Wait, you think I killed Misty? If you want to know who it is, I suggest you look at him.” Brock said, motioning to Kint.

“What?” Ash asked.

“I knew what the guy looked like, but I didn’t know anything else. The crash was just down the street from the house, I ran down and saw HIM” Brock pointed to Kint “crawl out of the back seat.” Ash didn’t know what to think. But Kint did.

“If I was in the back seat then why didn’t I die or even get hurt?”

“Ash and Misty flew through the windshield, you probably only hit the backs of the seats.”

“Ash, listen. You wanted to know how I found you or you found me or why I was helping you, well I’ll tell you why.”

“He’s trying to throw you off.” Brock interrupted.

“No, I was the detective assigned to your case. When the forensics people found evidence of possible rigging of the car, they called me in. All the evidence I found pointed to him, but my superiors said that since some of the evidence may have been accidentally corrupted by forensics, I had to drop the case. I was almost ready to let it go, but then I saw what happened to you and what your life was like, and I knew who was responsible, I wanted at least you to get back at him. I wrote you the letter saying she was murdered. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have requested to get out of the hospital, he wouldn’t have offered to take you in, you wouldn’t be here now.”

“You got that right. If it weren’t for him you would be in your own house, with Misty, and you’d be happy. He ruined your life.”

“Ah…why would you or Brock do this?”

“I can tell you why Brock did it. Before the case was dropped, I had a nice talk with Brock, asked him a few questions. Boy, was he nervous. He told me a pretty questionable story; it was so obvious he was lying. And the way he spoke about Misty especially, I knew why did it.”

“Shut up.” Brock started getting angry.

“You see you had something he wanted. So if he got you out of the picture, then he…”

“Shut up…” Brock cut him off.

“He could have Mi-“ before he finished Brock punched him in the mouth. Kint pulled himself up and wiped the blood from his lip. “Heh…you weren’t the only one who loved Misty. He did too, and it ate him up that you were with her and he wasn’t. Everything pointed to him; it was all in the file and on the tape. Ash, they were full when I gave them too you. I did lie about that. I did see them. The tape was a file copy of the home movie of the people who lived across the street from you. File copies don’t have any extra space at the end, and files don’t have entire paragraphs blacked out, who do you think did it? He did, probably while you were asleep. Or maybe you knew that it pointed at him, and you didn’t want to believe it so you blacked it out and erased the tape yourself.”

“No, he did, Ash. He erased the part of the tape and he blacked out the file. It would incriminate him, and he figured he could still give them to you and throw you off his trail to make you think he was helping you. That’s what he’s doing now. He’s making you kill the wrong guy so you’ll think you got him and he won’t have anything to worry about. He knew you were looking for him, someone probably told him you were, and he had to throw you off.”

“Why wouldn’t he just kill me?”

“That would be murder, and there wouldn’t be a nice car wreck to skew any evidence. Ash, he’s full of shit. I have been with you almost since you first set out to collect Pokémon badges, remember? I loved both of you like family; I wouldn’t do anything to hurt either of you. He, on the other hand, was just some prick trying to steal a car when you and Misty got in and went for a drive; he panicked and attacked you and ended up killing Misty. It was all him, not me.”

“Ash, how would he know any of that? He doesn’t because he’s making it all up.”

“Ash, I’m all you have left. Me and Pikachu, and if you kill me, they’ll lock you up again and you won’t see Pikachu anymore, you’ll be alone.”

“If you kill me, you’ll have a dead cop on your hands, there won’t be anybody to get you out of this.”

“I thought you were a detective.” Ash said.

“I…” Kint stuttered.

“If you are a cop or a detective, where’s your badge?” Brock asked.

“I’m off duty, we don’t carry our badge with us when we’re off duty. Ash, he’s the one, SHOOT HIM!”

“Ash, you know in your heart that it’s not me. Look, either shoot him or put the gun down and let’s go home. I’ll fix you some Hamburger Helper.”

“See? He’s trying to bribe his way out of this with Hamburger Helper! Ash, I helped you get out of the hospital, I helped you when I told you that your car accident wasn’t an accident, I’ve been helping you this whole time! I helped you since the beginning!”

“Oh, did you?” Ash asked as he pointed the gun at Kint’s head. “I must’ve forgot.” The gunshot rang throughout the entire house.

“I finally got him.” Ash said, half deflated, half relieved.

“Well, you’d probably better take a picture before you forget.” Brock said. Ash pulled the Polaroid camera out of his binder and took a picture of Kint’s remains. “Come on,” Brock said. “Lets go home, I’ll fix us something to eat.” They exited the house, but were greeted by three police cars.

“Ash, I’m done working on the car, you can go out now.” Brock said, walking back into the house.

“Okay, thanks.” Ash said, taking the keys off the table by the door and walking out to the car. Suddenly, Misty ran out the door and towards the car with him.

“You’re going out?” she asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Where are you going?”

“Uh…Eden Prairie mall…” Ash stuttered through the sentence.

“Cool, I forgot something that I need to get from there, can I come too?” Ash thought for a moment.

“Yeah, hop on in.” I’ll just make sure to split up from her and buy something else and hide the ring in with that. He thought to himself. They got into the car and drove off towards Eden Prairie mall.