In the Shadow of Angels

by Donnie J Burgess

  Devin stared on, still silent.

  “Go ahead and get out of here,” the officer said. “Don’t keep her waiting. But next time, you call a cab, okay?”

  Devin nodded a defeated little nod and quickly looked at the ticket to get the officer’s name. He wondered briefly if he should address him by his first name, but quickly decided against it.

  “I will, Officer Reynolds.”

  “And you drive safe, now.” Reynolds said, turning away from Devin’s window.

  Devin rolled his window back up and started the car. Before he was able to get back on the road, he got a text from Beth. It was all in caps and simply said. “EMERGENCY CALL ME NOW!!!”

  Devin put the phone on the seat of the car. He was going to call her back, but he wanted to get off the main road first. The turn to his house was only another mile or two and it wouldn’t take that long to get there. He pulled back out onto the road. He was driving for less than a minute when his phone rang again. It was Beth again. This time he answered it.

  “Oh my God, Devin, I’ve done something horrible!” Beth was screaming, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if she’s okay…”

  Upon hearing this much, Devin quickly stopped her. “Bethany,” he said firmly, and he only addressed her Bethany when it was important, “don’t talk now. Meet me where we did that thing that one time.”

  Devin hung up the phone.

  Just fucking perfect, he thought to himself, I’m driving around with a body in the trunk of my car, but somehow her problems are more important. He instantly regretted having thought that. She had no way of knowing his situation, nor did he have any way of knowing hers and certainly neither of them could have known that their situations were one in the same. What he did know was that he could be safely in his garage in less than three minutes and he was going to do exactly that before he went to meet her.

  The two minutes that it took Devin to reach the road to his house seemed an eternity. Then a quick right turn from Turner Road and a quarter of a mile later, he reached the driveway. It was a T in the road. His house was the right turn, another family, the Williams, lived to the left. He drove carefully, the winding dirt road to his house, while short, was also very narrow. He was at his garage within another minute.

  Devin reached into his center console for his garage remote. He raised the left door and pulled the Pontiac into the empty spot. He thought for a moment, then backed the Pontiac out of the garage, turned the car around and backed into the space instead. If asked, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you why, but somehow he felt safer that way. He closed the garage door, locked up the Pontiac and got into his Mercedes. The door opener on this one was built into the dash. He opened up the door, pulled out and closed it again. Almost as an afterthought, he used the key fob for his security system to arm the alarm and turn on the exterior and interior lights.

  Devin drove away much less carefully than he drove in.

  Beth and Devin were watching one of those real crime TV shows years earlier. In the episode they watched, an escaped felon was caught based entirely on calls he made on a cell phone. He told his friends where he was and where he was planning to go, all on his cell phone. While no one actually gave up his location, the phone conversations were under surveillance. They were able to track him down in only a few days. At the time, it seemed implausibly stupid that someone on the lam would be giving out his or her location on the phone. Devin said to Beth almost jokingly, “If either of us is ever in real trouble, let’s not talk about it over the phone. Just say ‘meet me where we did that thing that one time.’”

  Beth either took it more seriously than he expected, or she could have just been playing along. “Okay, where do we meet, then?”

  Devin thought about it for a minute, “I don’t know, how about at the rope swing by the quarry?”

  “Ooh, that’s perfect.” Beth said. “It’s all secluded and mysterious.”

  While they shared a good laugh about that at the time, he hoped that she would remember it. The fact that she hadn’t called him back made him think that she had.

  Devin worked his way quickly back up the driveway and made the left back onto Turner Road. The silver BMW was on the side of the road, facing the opposite direction. His mind was elsewhere at the time, so he hardly noticed it. The quarry was a couple of miles north of 62. It was about a ten minute drive from their house, but it can seem to take considerably longer when you have a corpse at home in your garage and a wife who has just said to you ‘I’ve done something horrible … I don’t know what to do … I don’t know if she’s okay…’. Or so Devin was now finding out. Especially when you are actually travelling at the posted thirty-five mile per hour speed limit.

  When Devin arrived at the quarry, his was the only car there. He turned off his lights and got out of the car. He watched the moon reflect off the still water as he waited for Beth. The calm of the water was doing his nerves some good. If only the water was deeper or darker, this would be a great place to hide a body, he thought to himself.

  What they called ‘the quarry’ was actually a small, natural lake created by a creek running through some very soft earth. Limestone maybe? He knew once, but couldn’t remember for sure. The pattern of erosion left the walls sheer and the shape was almost too angular for natural occurrence. People who saw it generally assumed it was a reclaimed mining quarry, which was how it got its nickname. If you were to look at it on a map, it was called Turner Lake.

  He was there for two or three minutes before he saw a car tearing up the road like a bat out of hell. The car showed no sign of slowing until it was almost on him, then the brakes locked up and it skidded to a stop in a marvelous cloud of dust. Beth jumped out and ran over to him screaming frantically.

  It was difficult to make out any words in the fit of screaming coming out of Beth. She threw her arms about wildly as she tried to yell every word at once.

  Devin took her by the shoulders and shook her sharply. “Beth. Beth! Calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying. You need to calm down.”

  Through a veil of tears, Beth continued shouting, but her energy was dying down and Devin was able to make out some of the words. Most notably the word Jezebel.

  “What about Jezebel?!”

  Beth’s words came more slowly. Her mind convinced her that since Devin made out that word, he must have understood them all.

  “You didn’t hear what she said, Devin! She was just so vicious! I didn’t mean to hurt her … Or maybe I did … I don’t know... And when she said she was going to fuck you again and called me a cunt … Why did she have to be so mean?!”

  The words were making it into Devin’s head, but he was having trouble putting them together.

  “What do you mean you didn’t mean to hurt her? Beth, what happened?”

  “I … I pushed her. And then I thought maybe she was hurt, but then she was gone. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know if she’s okay.”

  “When did you push her? Where?”

  “When she left your room at The Place.”

  The words smashed his head like a hammer to a porcelain vase. No amount of breathing exercises could hide the look of shock on his face. Beth must have pushed her over the railing, but the timing was wrong.

  “I saw you going to The Place, Beth, I was already gone.” Devin said, thinking about having driven past her after Jezebel was already in the trunk of his car.

  Beth’s emotions robbed her of her energy and she plopped down on the ground. She pulled her feet toward her body and wrapped her arms around the peak made by her knees. She was leaning forward on them, sobbing.

  “I was going back, Devin,” she said through gulps for air between the tears. “I pushed her before that and then ran away.”

  Devin thought back to his interaction with Jezebel that night. How she seemed so determined to have sex with him for no damn reason at all. Had it been because Beth pushed her? He needed to know more, but how to get the answers wit
hout giving up too much of what really happened? As it turned out, he wasn’t going to need to worry about it.

  Beth sighed deeply and started from the beginning. “I followed her from O’Halligan’s,” Beth said, twisting the truth. It wouldn’t be the only time she did so as she recounted the events. “And when I saw her waiting outside of The Place, I was sure you were coming to meet her.”

  “Why would you think that, Beth?” Devin asked.

  “You met her, didn’t you?” Beth said, staring fiercely into his eyes. “That’s why.”

  “Jesus, Beth, it’s not like that. I just wanted it to be over. She promised that if I came to meet her this one last time, it would be over for good.” This time it was Devin confusing the order of events.

  “I know. I rented the room next to you. I was listening.”

  Devin’s heart sank. If she heard, then she would know that he didn’t completely turn her down.

  “I heard you say you just wanted it to be over. I heard you say you didn’t want to fuck her anymore.” Beth smiled through the flow of tears, “it made me so happy, Devin. You have no idea.”

  As Devin thought about it, it was true. If you hadn’t actually seen what went on in the room, the transcript did play in his favor.

  Beth picked up the story, “I told her to stay away from you. She laughed at me, Devin. She just laughed.” The chain of events, again, was almost correct.

  Beth looked away from Devin and to the ground on her right. “That’s when she said she was going to fuck you. Just to teach me a lesson. Then she called me such terrible things… And when I heard her leave your room, I wanted to see her. I wanted to see how hurt she was when you turned her down.”

  Her tears were back now, with force. “Oh my God, Devin. I don’t know why I did it!”

  “What, Beth, did what?”

  “She was standing there on the landing. One of her shoes was stuck in a crack. She was shaking her leg to try to get it free, but with that nothing of a dress she was wearing… It’s as if she was waving her ass right in my face. So, I pushed her. I know she couldn’t have seen me, but I pushed her anyway.”

  “You pushed her over the railing?”

  Beth took a breath and thought about it for a moment. “I pushed her and she fell over the railing. I don’t think I pushed her over it, at least not on purpose.”

  That last sentence hit Devin’s ear like the testimony of one of his clients who had been at fault but wanted the blame shifted elsewhere. She wanted it to be true. She wanted to believe it, but it wasn’t true and she didn’t believe it.

  In the moment immediately after she said this, Devin had a thought that he would regret for the rest of his life. A shame would haunt him and make him sick to his stomach every time he thought about it. She thinks she did it. If I just put her body back, Beth will confess to it. He never really considered it, and wasn’t sure where it had come from. Though it lasted only a moment, that he even thought it would weigh on him until the day he died.

  He had to decide what he should tell Beth. Should he tell her that Jezebel was dead? Should he tell her that the body was in the trunk of his Pontiac? How would he explain why he took her body? He could tell her he saw her push Jezebel, that wouldn’t be that far from the truth. That would also make him seem like he was trying to protect her. In fact, that seemed like the perfect solution.

  Before he had a chance to say it, Beth said one more thing, “The look she gave me after she landed… I don’t know if it was hate, or fear, or anger, but I felt like if I didn’t get away from her, she was going to kill me for sure.”

  Devin tried to piece together how she could have looked her in the eyes from the second floor landing. Jezebel was leaning against the fence separating the rooms from the pool. That would have meant Jezebel had to be looking nearly straight up and there wasn’t much of a way to do a death stare from that angle.

  “So you walked up to her after she hit the fence?”

  “Hit the fence?” Beth questioned, trying to figure out what the fence had to do with anything. “She didn’t hit the fence.”

  Devin started thinking about his assessment of what must have happened. He drew many conclusions with a very limited amount of data. He was more or less right about her heel sticking in the walkway and her falling over the railing. But he also had to be right about her hitting the fence. She was leaning against it when he found her, after all.

  Beth could tell Devin was thinking about it, trying to get an idea of how Jezebel had fallen. “She landed flat on her back on the sidewalk.” Beth offered. “Right below the railing. She fell straight down. Then she was staring up at me.”

  Now Devin wasn’t sure what to say. If what she was saying was true, then Jezebel got up and walked (crawled?) over to the fence. With her neck snapped like it was when he found her, there was no way she moved. Something wasn’t right here and he got the feeling it was more than either of them misremembering what happened. She basically admitted to killing Jezebel, so why would she be fudging the ending to make the body end a few feet in one direction or the other?

  “Beth, this is very important,” he said, speaking very deliberately. “Are you sure she was lying flat on the sidewalk when you left?”

  Beth looked at him, puzzled. “Yes, Devin, I’m sure.” She shook her head. “I’ve just told you I tried to kill someone and your only question is if I’m sure about how she landed?”

  Devin was remembering a moment from back in college. It was on the first day of his Critical Thinking class. When he walked in, there was a quote from Sherlock Holmes on the blackboard. ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ That would remain the only thing written on the chalkboard for the remainder of the semester. The professor, Billings was his name, was much more hands on with his approach to teaching.

  On the professor’s desk were the shattered remains of a porcelain vase and a hammer. After the students found their seats and settled down, he asked them each to write down what they thought happened to the vase. Every student in the class said that it was broken by the hammer. Some said that someone swung the hammer and broke it on purpose. Others said the hammer fell on the vase. Every answer, though, involved the hammer. Every one of them was wrong.

  The professor then swept the pieces of the vase off the desk. He took another vase just like it, he had a half a dozen on a on a table near the blackboard, stepped up on the chair behind the desk and dropped the vase. It fell on the desk next to the hammer and broke into pieces.

  He swept those pieces away and placed another vase on the desk. This time he took a CO2 pellet pistol from the top drawer of his desk, walked to the front row of desks, turned and shot the vase. Again, it shattered into a brilliant pile of shards on the desk, next to the hammer.

  The professor swept the pieces away once again and placed another vase. He pulled a firecracker from the same drawer of his desk, lit the fuse, dropped it in the vase and motioned for the class to cover their ears. There was a loud explosion a few seconds later. It was probably an M-80, as it made a hell of a bang. When the dust settled, there was a pile of porcelain next to the hammer, though this one made quite a larger mess than the previous examples.

  The professor then asked the class one more time to write down what they thought happened to the vase. This time their answers varied, but most chose one of the methods they had just witnessed. Some said the mess of shards looked more accurate this way or the other, but they all had an opinion. Only a few of them still said the hammer had done it, and they did so thinking he was trying to trick them.

  They were all still wrong.

  The professor then wheeled a TV cart out of his closet. He plugged in the television and VCR and pressed the play button. The video showed the desk in front of them with a pristine vase on it and, of course, the hammer lying next to it. In the video, the professor walked up to the vase, placed it into a garbage bag, smashed it onto the ground, and then dumped the
pieces onto the desk.

  It was a grand show that none of them would forget.

  The professor ended this demonstration with a rhetorical question. “If I hadn’t put the hammer on the desk, would any of you guess that it was smashed with a hammer?” To a sea of students shaking their heads no, the professor closed with “There is evidence and there is truth. Even if the evidence is overwhelming, it’s not always the truth. Never forget that. Evidence may be quick, convenient and compelling,” he paused, “but the truth rarely is.”

  While Devin couldn’t be sure what the truth was, it was impossible that Jezebel could have been both lying flat on her back and leaning against the fence when Beth left her. Something else happened before he found her. He could scarcely believe there was time between her leaving his room and when he found her for the event with Beth to take place, but it had. It now seemed that something else also happened. However improbable, something else had to have happened.

  He knew he couldn’t lie to Beth. If he were going to figure out what actually happened, he would have to be completely honest with her. As it stood, the evidence showed that Beth pushed her over the railing and he hauled her body away. Mostly because both of those things actually happened. If he could find out who or what actually killed her, they might still be able to get out of this.

  “Beth,” He said, searching for a way to word this without sending her back into a fit of hysteria. “You definitely didn’t kill Jezebel...”

  “Oh, thank…” Beth started, but Devin cut her off.

  “You didn’t kill her,” he paused, “But someone did.”

  Beth stared at him, her eyes the size of softballs.

  Devin sighed deeply. “And her body is in the trunk of my Pontiac.”

  Chapter 9

  Dr. Stephens followed Devin all the way back to Ashwood. He kept slowing down to keep from gaining on him. Devin was driving as if he had a body in his car. When Dr. Stephens made the left onto Turner Road, he did so just in time to see the police car pull in behind Devin. He had to drive past him. He really didn’t have much of a choice. If he had pulled off the road and tried to follow him after, assuming Devin wasn’t arrested on the spot, it would have been far too obvious.