In the Shadow of Angels (18 page)

“So, what’s left to do?”

“We’ve just got to get some gas to start the fire and head back out there.”

“Does he have gas here?”

“Yeah, he has a can out in the back shed with the gardening stuff,” Brent replied as he started walking toward the kitchen door. “Why don’t you help me get it?”

This hit Dr. Stephens’ ear wrong. Who needs help getting a can out of a shed? Something didn’t seem right. He didn’t want to let on though, so he just nodded and got up to follow. Brent was a few steps ahead of him and with his back turned he didn’t see Dr. Stephens take the opportunity to stop at the drawer where he stashed the gun. Before he followed him outside, he took the gun form the drawer, opened his jacket and stuffed the gun in his waist near his left hip.
Just in case,
Dr. Stephens thought to himself.

*****

Beth reached the spare bedroom to find Jimmy still passed out. She was certain that he was passed out and not unconscious because of the snoring. While she couldn’t explain why, and it was probably because of watching far too many daytime soaps, she was certain that if he was unconscious he wouldn’t be snoring. She walked over to the bed and sat down next to him. The shifting of the bed woke him up.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

Jimmy reached up to feel his head before he responded. He could feel a cake of blood in his matted hair. “My fuckin’ head is throbbing like crazy.”

“Yeah, you took a few shots to the head. Between that and the alcohol…”

“Shit,” Jimmy interrupted, “that guy that was hitting me… Is he…”

This time Beth interrupted him, “Yes. Don’t worry, Devin and Brent took care of him.”

Well, he thought to himself, at least they won’t tell me to put on my big girl panties anymore.

“So what is going on now?” he asked.

“Devin is waiting with Jezebel’s car at the end of the road. Brent is down with Dr. Stephens getting ready to take her out there.”

Jimmy shook his head to see if he had some cobwebs clouding his memory. When nothing changed, he spoke again. “I thought this Dr. Stephens guy was going to kill Devin or something.”

“So did we, but we’ve got a tentative partnership going on right now. We’re allies until we’re done with this.”

“Then what?”

“Then we walk away, I guess.”

“Do you trust him?”

Beth thought for a moment before responding, “I trust Devin. He said that we have to trust Dr. Stephens.”

“I guess that’s good enough for me, too.”

Jimmy sat up in the bed. His head was pounding, but it seemed to him that it had far more to do with the alcohol leaving him than the wound. The whole situation had a very, painfully, sobering effect on him.

When he started to stand up, Beth protested, “Why don’t you just get some rest?”

“I’m fine, I think,” he replied, now standing next to the bed. “I’m going to go grab a beer and see if I can get rid of this drumming in my head.”

“I don’t think you should, Jimmy.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I’m fine. Besides, I don’t want them saying I slept through the whole thing later.”

Beth wanted to protest more, but Jimmy was already halfway to the door. He was nothing if not resilient. An hour ago, she was worried that he might be dead, now he was ready to start drinking again. She followed behind him. There wasn’t much else she could do.

When Jimmy reached the kitchen, he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. “Do you want one?” he asked Beth, but knew what the response would be. He already had the door closed before she said no.

A motion outside the kitchen door caught his eye and he walked over to look. Outside, he saw Brent and Dr. Stephens opening the gardening shed.

“It’s a good thing Brent’s here,” he said. “I would have forgotten the gas.”

Jimmy took another drink from his beer as he watched them close the shed and start walking back. He could see them talking, but couldn’t hear what they were saying form this distance. As they reached the forms for the gazebo, Brent and Dr. Stephens stopped walking.

I wonder what they’re doing, Jimmy thought to himself.

*****

Brent walked out expecting Dr. Stephens to follow right behind him. He knew that he hadn’t. As soon as he was outside of the house, he could see his shadow falling long in front of him. Dr. Stephens’ shadow didn’t appear for several seconds after. He wasn’t sure what he stopped for, a beer maybe? It didn’t really matter though. He just wanted to talk to the guy.

When he heard Dr. Stephens’ footsteps behind him, he spoke, “So I was thinking while we were on the way back, none of this comes back to you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the girl you were trading drugs for sex is dead. The only one who knew that you were doing it other than her is dead. You come off pretty clean in this whole business.”

“There is the matter of the personal effect that I lost. It still ties me to it.”

“But like Devin said earlier, that might not even be real.”

Dr. Stephens laughed.

“You guys sure do cling to your conspiracy theories. If that isn’t enough, there are the pictures.”

“Yeah, but the thing is, that’s all kinds of unethical, but I’m not even sure it’s illegal.”

“Well, look at it from a broader perspective then. You’ve done me a great service in making sure they don’t get out. What benefit would there be to me drawing attention to this whole business?”

Brent was at the shed now. He opened the door and started looking around for a gas can. He found one, but it was marked as ‘
2-stroke’
. He wasn’t sure if that would work the same as regular gas, but it appeared to be the only can out here. He picked it up and closed the door.

As they started to walk back, Dr. Stephens was a step in front of him. He could see Jimmy and Beth in the doorway of the house, but wasn’t sure if Dr. Stephens saw them. Jimmy had a beer in his hand. He was obviously feeling better.

Dr. Stephens stopped walking just before the edge of the forms for the gazebo. “Wow, there is a lot of blood out here.”

Brent stopped beside him and looked down into the forms. There was a lot of blood. He looked up to see if Jimmy was really standing at the kitchen door. It seemed like someone who lost that much blood wouldn’t be alive, let alone walking around drinking a beer. Seeing him still standing in the doorway, Brent shook his head. He certainly was tough.

“Well,” Dr. Stephens said. “It looks like you guys are going to have a lot of cleaning up to do.”

Brent realized he was right. It was Jimmy’s blood, but they needed to get rid of it anyway. Suicide or not, the police would likely show up to question Devin about Digby, his van having been so close by, and maybe Jezebel too, since he was seen with her. If they had a look around and found a huge pool of blood, they weren’t likely to shrug it off. They were likely to come back with a search warrant. They would scour the area where Jimmy had fought Digby and who knows what else might be there. However, Dr. Stephens’ phrasing didn’t seem right.

“Don’t you mean
we
have a lot of cleaning up to do?”

Dr. Stephens looked at Brent. “No. I said it just how I meant it.
You guys
have a lot of cleaning up to do. Once we get rid of Jezebel, I’m out.”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“As I recall, there wasn’t any
deal
. You bashed me over the head and then you and Devin started throwing around all kinds of plans with
we
in them. I’ve already stuck around a lot longer than I probably should have.”

Brent was visibly irritated by now and struggling to suppress it.

“Wow. You really are a miserable little piece of shit, aren’t you? You kill a girl and try to pass the blame on to Devin, then, when you’re caught, you agree to work together, but try to back out before everything is done?”

“You clearly see this whole business differently than I do. A few hours ago, I was ready to go home and get some sleep. Then your boy, Devin, stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. So instead of being in my nice, warm bed, I ended up out here when your other buddy killed a P.I. that has Devin on tape dragging around a corpse.”

“Bullshit. Every bit of this is your fault. You killed her for fuck’s sake!”

“A glorified hooker found dead at The Place wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. The rest of this isn’t on me. I’ve been playing along because you all have so much hostility toward me that I didn’t dare try to walk away.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen hostility yet, buddy.”

“Yes I have, and I don’t know why. You don’t even know me.”

“I know that you raped Beth, that’s enough for me.”

“Is that what she told you? Well, I can assure you that I didn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to. In fact, I think she wanted it more than I did.”

Brent had to fight back the urge to take a swing at him. That line was spoken like a true rapist. There was no benefit to attacking him though. Nothing was going to change what happened and starting a fight right now would only make things worse.

“Once this is over, you better hope I don’t run into you in some dark alley.”

“And now we’re adding empty threats to the hostility?”

Brent leaned in until he was only inches from Dr. Stephens’ face. “One day you’ll see just how empty it is,” he growled.

From the doorway to the kitchen, Jimmy could see their conversation had grown heated. Their voices were raised for much of their exchange and it was making him nervous.

“Is everything all right, Brent?” Jimmy yelled.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Brent said, switching back to a more casual tone, “we’re just working out some … issues.”

Dr. Stephens looked to the doorway when he heard Jimmy yell. Seeing Beth standing next to him, he smiled and winked at her. That was the biggest mistake of his life.

Beth was still worked up from so recently recounting the details of their encounter to Brent. Seeing him and Brent having this exchange was fanning that fire. She snapped when she saw him wink.

“You son of a bitch!” she yelled, as she charged out the door and ran toward Dr. Stephens.

She made it only a few steps when both Brent and Jimmy saw Dr. Stephens reach under his jacket and toward his waist. They both saw the gun at the same time. Jimmy started running toward him, but caught Beth and held her back instead. Brent was close enough to react to the gun. He lunged at Dr. Stephens from behind and wrapped his arms around his waist, tackling him. They hit the ground as one and the force of the blow knocked the gun from his hand. They both fumbled for the gun, but neither could see it in the shadows of the gazebo’s forms. Unable to find the gun quickly, Brent sprung back to his feet and turned to face Dr. Stephens.

Dr. Stephens was still face down when his hand found the Louisville Slugger that fell there only a couple of hours ago. He quickly got to his knees and turned around. He couldn’t make out anything but Brent’s vague form looming over him. He took a wild, two-handed swing at the shape. Brent was on his feet when the bat hit him. It hit his left leg, midway between the knee and hip, with a loud cracking sound. He let out a scream and fell to his right knee, hunched over and using both hands to put pressure on the leg. He wasn’t sure if it was his leg or the bat that cracked, but the pain was excruciating.

Dr. Stephens wound up for another swing, this time aiming more carefully, directly at his head. Brent saw the bat coming and was barely able to get his left hand up before it made contact. It hit the side of his hand and left pinky finger, this time definitely breaking bones. The power of the blow caused his hand to smash into the side of his head on the follow-through. The force knocked him the rest of the way to the ground.

Seeing that the melee had gone bad, Jimmy was running toward them. When Dr. Stephens pulled back to swing once more, Jimmy was on him. He was running at full speed when he reached him and he threw all of his weight into Dr. Stephens’ back. They both went down with a thud, but Jimmy got the worst of it - his side hitting one of the forms on the way down. He rolled over to get his bearings, but Dr. Stephens was already on his feet, swinging the bat with an overhead, chopping motion. The blow hit him hard in the chest and knocked the wind from him. Unable to get a breath and in too much pain to move out of the way, Jimmy interlocked his fingers behind his head and forced his elbows as close together as he could in front of his face. It wasn’t much protection, but hopefully it would keep him from getting his skull fractured.

Dr. Stephens pulled back to swing again. He didn’t get the chance. He heard a loud bang just as he felt a massive force in his left temple. He was disoriented for only a fraction of a second as he tried to figure out what just happened to him. Then, he fell backwards onto the ground, dead.

Beth was less than five feet away from him when she pulled the trigger and she knew her shot found its mark. He never saw it coming. She took a couple of steps to look down at his lifeless face and then she shot him again.