In the Shadow of Angels (22 page)

The first hints of daylight were casting a feint light over Ashwood at just past 6am. With the darkness receding, the clerk at The Place went to start checking on the rooms. While they were theoretically rented for two hours at a time, he learned long ago that if someone rented the room after dark, it was best to not check on it until the morning. He had seen some awful things … It was going pretty well so far this morning though. Most of the rooms were remarkably clean.

When he opened the door to room 108, he froze briefly. Then he ran to call the police.

Officer Reynolds was nearly at the end of his shift when the call came across the radio.
God damn it
, he thought to himself,
every Sunday morning.

He remained silent for a moment to see if anyone else might take the call. After a few seconds with no response, he finally responded.

He had walked into a number of situations when responding to the Sunday morning calls at The Place. Usually they were just property damage, but there were also been instances where Johns were left locked in handcuffs, hookers were beaten up, or weapons were found. It was always something horrible. None of that prepared him for what he walked into this Sunday morning.

From the doorway to room 108, he knew that Digby was dead. He also knew that he was off the hook for this one, he wasn’t even going to cross the threshold. He leaned to his radio and reported, “We’ve got a body. Better get Abernathy out here.” Then he blocked the door with his crime scene tape.

*****

Jesse Abernathy was asleep when his phone started ringing. He didn’t really need to answer it to know that it was going to be a call to The Place. When his phone rang this early on a Sunday, it always was. When he did answer the phone, the dispatcher confirmed his theory. He was dressed quickly and jumped into his unmarked Crown Victoria.

Jesse Abernathy wore many hats for the police department in the small town of Ashwood. He was their lead detective, mostly because he was their only detective. He was also their primary crime scene investigator (the others were civilian volunteers), their crime scene photographer and the head of their research department. He had been a homicide detective in Phoenix for years before moving to Ashwood to get away from the pressure. Since moving to Ashwood, he only investigated a handful of murders. Each of them so far was a case with a clear suspect and rather sloppy trail of evidence leading to them. It felt almost like he was retired as simple as it was in this small town.

When he arrived at The Place and looked through the door to room 108, he recognized Edward Digby immediately. From the doorway, it looked like it was going to be an accidental suicide open and shut. He snapped a half a dozen photos before putting on his gloves and entering the room.

He stepped into the room and looked to the TV to see the picture of a guy having some forceful sex with a woman. He thought it might be some random porn at first, but then he noticed that the man in the picture looked a lot like local psychiatrist Dr. Stephens -but it was hard to be sure from the profile.

“Is that Dr. Stephens?” he asked aloud, but meant for himself.

Officer Reynolds heard him and offered a response, “It sure looks like it. Huh. I saw him out on Turner Road at Devin Bryant’s house a few hours ago.”

“Really?” Abernathy asked. “Well that is interesting.”

Still looking at the image, Abernathy couldn’t place the woman. He snapped a couple pictures of the TV before putting the camera in an evidence bag and marking it.

When he approached the body in the closet, alarm bells started ringing like mad. He snapped dozens of photos of the things that were catching his eye before setting the camera down to have a closer look.

He started with the penis. There was no sign of semen on it. That was completely out of the ordinary for an accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation. The whole idea was to choke yourself out at the very moment of climax. This always -
always
- left residual semen on the penis. He snapped a couple of close-up photos before moving on.

Next up was the ligature. It, too, seemed all wrong. He never saw this type of suicide in person, but he had seen photos. Usually the deaths came from some form of fail-safe going bad. The fail-safes were generally primitive, but in this case, there wasn’t one at all. In fact, looking at the rig, it looked like it wasn’t an
accidental
death. If he put himself in this rig, he would have known he was going to die. He snapped some close-up photos of this as well, before moving on.

Abernathy looked to the door to make sure no one was watching him and then he unwrapped the hanger from the curtain rod. The body hit the ground with a thud. He rolled him onto his back and loosened the belt to get a closer look at his neck.

Again, alarm bells. The bruising was all wrong. The belt he was strapped up with was almost two inches wide, but the bruising was very narrow - like one would expect to see if someone strangled him by hand. The belt was clearly added later. He took pictures of that as well.

He then turned away from the body and went to check the other items in the room. He found Digby’s clothing on a chair in the corner of the room. His keys and wallet were in the pocket of his pants, but nothing else. He took the keys and went to the parking lot. He opened up the side of the van first.

He immediately saw the open lockbox behind the driver’s seat. The lockbox was rumored to exist, as were its supposed contents, but he was never sure if it was true. Clearly it was. However, there was nothing inside it. That was very unfortunate. The back of the van was such a mass of cables and surveillance equipment that he didn’t even bother looking through it. The state guys could handle that once he called them in. He turned his search to the front of the van. Inside the glove box, he found a small envelope with a memory card in it, it was clearly labeled
Dr. $ and Jezebel
.

Curious, he took the memory card back to the room. He took the camera out of the evidence bag and slipped the memory card into it. There on the screen he saw a man, this time it was clearly Dr. Stephens, strangling Jezebel Anders, who he also immediately recognized, outside one of the rooms of the hotel. He flipped through the images quickly, but there was no mistaking it: Digby had caught a murder on camera.

It was time to call in the big boys. He radioed dispatch and told them they needed to get the state team in and get out a warrant for Dr. Ulysses Stephens. Immediately after finishing his statement, the dispatcher spoke again.

“Someone found a burned up car on the end of Turner Road.”

Since the state agency was going to handle this scene, Abernathy decided to leave the uniformed officers to guard this scene while he went to check up on the car fire.

When he arrived on the scene, again, he found the scene of what was apparently a terrible accident, but, again, upon a closer look, things just didn’t add up. There were fresh tire tracks from at least three different cars on the landing, but no skid marks. Wouldn’t you hit the brakes if you were about to go careening off a cliff? It seemed off.

He had seen a handful of cars miss the end of the road and hit that outcropping over the years. In each case, the cars were nearly destroyed. This one appeared to have taken very little damage comparatively. The body behind the wheel, though badly burned, also had a broken neck. There was no way that injury came from this accident, and a woman with a broken neck isn’t going to be driving a car off the end of a road.

The windows of the car were rolled down, which didn’t seem likely in the cool October air. Also, the engine compartment was open. She obviously didn’t get out of the car and pop open the engine compartment between the time the car crashed and the fire started. Someone else had opened it and someone else started the fire. There was even a set of footprints leading up the side of the slope. Whoever did it was very sloppy and made no attempt to cover their tracks.

Knowing that Dr. Stephens killed Jezebel Anders, Abernathy had no doubt that it was her body in the car. He called this one in for the state agency to handle as well. It looked like Dr. Stephens was going to be going away for a long time.

Something was sticking in his mind though.

“Wendy, can you look up a couple of addresses for me?” He said into his radio.

*****

Abernathy pulled up in front of Dr. Stephens’ house at just past 8am. There was no car in the driveway. He walked up to the front door and checked to see if it was locked. He was sure that no one would be home. It was locked. There was a welcome mat below the door which he flipped up and found the key. Not a lot happens in Ashwood, there are keys under many welcome mats.

He let himself in and strolled casually through the house, not really sure what he was looking for. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. When he got to the bedroom, though, he noticed Dr. Stephens’ douche-y, dangling, gold, dollar sign earring on the dresser. That was unusual. No one ever saw him without it outside of his office. Had he forgotten it when he went out last night?

*****

It was nearly 9am when Abernathy pulled up in front of Devin Bryant’s house. The house was quiet when he arrived, but there were many cars outside and the garage door was open. He got out of the car and walked up to the garage. Through the doorway, he could see a single golf club thrown haphazardly on the floor. That was odd.

He walked up to each of the cars, one by one, to have a look through the windows. Nothing seemed unusual until he got to the Econoline with
Pleasure Palace
written on the side of it. There was a cement mixer in the back. Again, that was odd.

He walked slowly around the side of the house. When he reached the back, he found a freshly poured slab of concrete - still in the forms - a short distance from the back door. A back door, he noted, which was also broken. The dirt in the entire area was a mass of footprints. The wet morning air left the ground soft and it was holding their markings in as surely as those forms were holding that concrete slab. He counted at least four different sets of prints. Something had gone on here last night.

He walked back to the front of the house and rang the doorbell. A woman answered the door. Her eyes were puffy and red from a lack of sleep. Behind her, three men were sitting on the sofa. Two of them were covered in concrete dust. It seemed the oddities just wouldn’t stop.

“Detective Jesse Abernathy,” he said to her as he showed his badge. “Ashwood Police.”

“What did you need?” she asked, in the fakest, concerned voice he ever heard.

“Was Dr. Stephens here last night?” He asked.

“Well, yes he was. He came over at just past eleven and left at about one. He said he was going to meet with Jezebel Anders when he left.”

And that was way too much detail for such a simple question. That was very obviously a rehearsed statement. Abernathy didn’t let on that he knew that, though.

“None of you saw him after that?”

“No.” She replied.

“Okay.” He said, “Thank you so much for your time.”

If he wanted to look around, he would need a warrant. If he let on that he knew anything, they would have time to destroy evidence. It could wait. First, he needed to find Dr. Stephens.

*****

Abernathy asked Officer Reynolds not to mention having seen Dr. Stephens at Devin Bryant’s house that night. It would only serve to complicate the investigation, as they already had photographic evidence that it was Dr. Stephens who committed the murders, and it would be very disruptive to a lot of people who might be innocent. Reynolds had complied, not wanting to become part of the investigation himself. If they were to ask him directly, he wasn’t going to lie, but he wasn’t going to offer up the information either.

There was a warrant out for Dr. Stephens for the last three days, but no one saw him. He didn’t show up for work and his family claimed to have had no contact with him. It was Tuesday morning when his car was found abandoned in the airport-parking garage -his wallet still on the seat. It was at that point that Detective Abernathy knew they would never find him. There was clear evidence to convict him in the murder of Jezebel Anders and enough circumstantial evidence that he would go down for the murder of Edward Digby as well. Abernathy, however, knew better.

When Abernathy learned that Dr. Stephens’ car was found abandoned, he drove immediately out to Devin Bryant’s house. He rang the doorbell, but no one answered. Not satisfied, he walked around the side of the house and found Devin painting the newly constructed gazebo in his yard.

“Playing hooky from work today?” he asked.

*****

“Oh, hello, um … Abernathy, was it?” Devin remembered the name from somewhere when he showed up at the house on Sunday morning, but he still couldn’t place it.

“Yeah, I took some time off from work. So much to do around here,” He said as he sat his brush down and wiped his hands with a towel.

“Where is the wife this morning?”

“She went out to find a patio set for the gazebo.”