In the Shadow of Angels

by Donnie J Burgess

  This might be his chance to do that. If he did, he would get back a small measure of the masculinity, which was stripped from him earlier. With a confidence only afforded to someone who’s had a few too many to drink, Jimmy turned away from the house and walked toward the sound of the phone.

  He walked close to the tree line, not sure where the sound came from. He was sure it had come from inside the tree line though and wanted to be damn good and sure he was behind it. By the time he passed the kitchen door, he still hadn’t found anything out of the ordinary. There was no sign of anyone or anything in the back. He did notice the kitchen door was open and wondered if he might have been hearing the phone inside the house ringing. Sound travels funny when it has only a narrow opening to pass through.

  After a few more steps, he decided he must have been hearing the ring from inside the house. He turned toward the house and made a few steps toward the door. When he reached the forms for the gazebo that Devin was building, he started to move to the right to go around it.

  At just that moment, a pair of headlights rounded a corner on the driveway. There in front of him, Jimmy saw a man crouched inside the forms. He was clicking away on an enormous camera and had what looked like a satellite dish pointed toward the house too. The stranger was facing away and didn’t see him. He was also wearing a huge set of headphones, so he hadn’t heard him either. Jimmy stood there for a moment, wondering what his next move should be.

  That decision would be made for him. As the headlights hit the crouching man, he quickly turned his head to either side. When he turned right and saw Jimmy, he reacted.

  There are really only two ways that one can react to suddenly finding someone behind them holding a baseball bat. Either turn and run like hell or rush him. Edward chose the latter, lunging at him from his crouching position. Jimmy swung the bat in reaction, but Edward was considerably faster. As Edward’s right shoulder dug into Jimmy’s waist, the swing of the bat was far too high and far too late to make contact.

  Though outweighed by nearly fifty pounds, the force of Edward’s blow pushed Jimmy back. Edward locked his arms around Jimmy’s staggering legs, sending him toppling over backwards. The back of Jimmy’s head hit the edge of one of the wooden forms and tore open a savage gash. Jimmy dropped the bat and grabbed the wound with both hands. He could feel the blood pouring out of it. Edward seized the opportunity to grab the bat and threw himself on top of Jimmy. He held the bat firmly across Jimmy’s unguarded neck.

  Jimmy brought both bloodied hands down to try to push the bat away from his throat. The wound on his head was throbbing fiercely, filling him with an anger and desperation like he never felt before. With his newfound surge of adrenaline, Jimmy used all of his weight to throw his right hand and shoulder up, pushing Edward off balance. With one more throw of his shoulder and a swing of his right leg, Jimmy was able to roll Edward over and end up on top of him.

  Edward’s bat still pushed at Jimmy’s neck, but with nothing behind it, it was no longer constricting his airflow. Jimmy tried to push the bat away, but even with all of his weight, he couldn’t manage it. In a last effort, he dropped both hands from the bat and wrapped them around Edward’s neck, choking him. Edward released the bat with his left hand. With his right hand, he started swinging the bat awkwardly, each hit smashing the open wound on the back of Jimmy’s head.

  Each smack of the bat on Jimmy’s injured head felt like the blow of a hammer, which caused Jimmy to grip Edward’s throat ever tighter. Jimmy’s pulse was also racing and with each beat of his heart, his wound was echoing the savage pain made by the bat. Soon the two became indistinguishable. Jimmy’s death grip was unwavering, just trying to get this bastard to stop hitting him. The throbbing of the wound just wouldn’t stop.

  The pounding continued long after Edward lost consciousness and the bat had fallen limply to his side. Jimmy hadn’t even noticed this. His grip on Edward’s neck didn’t let up. It was a full minute after Edward was dead before Jimmy realized he was no longer hitting him.

  Jimmy released his grip and stood up. He immediately felt dizzy and nearly fell back down. He had lost a lot of blood, but also took a number of savage blows to the head. He wasn’t sure which of these was the cause. He pulled his shirt off and pressed it tightly against the wound. He took a couple of stumbling steps toward the kitchen door, but fell to a knee. He wasn’t going to make it. He fished his cell phone from his pocket hoping to call Brent or Devin, but his fingers weren’t working quite right. He suddenly realized that he couldn’t see the screen very well either.

  He tapped blindly at the screen of his smart phone. Just before he fell forward unconscious, he managed to hit an icon. It was for his music player.

  *****

  Beth entered the house and threw her arms around Devin. She was in tears. Over Devin’s shoulder, she shot a curious and angry glance at Dr. Stephens, but he hadn’t noticed. He did feel awkward being in the room with them just then and made his way to the kitchen for another beer. Brent, still not trusting him, followed closely behind.

  Dr. Stephens opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. He offered the first to Brent, who nodded and took it from his hand. He grabbed one for himself and twisted off the cap. He wasn’t normally a beer drinker, but tonight wasn’t exactly a normal night.

  “Why, Doc?” Brent asked.

  “Why what?” Dr. Stephens returned.

  “Why did you kill her?”

  Dr. Stephens smiled and let out a half laugh. “Sometimes when the opportunity to solve a problem presents itself, you don’t think about the consequences. Like when you unloaded on me with that golf club.”

  Brent nodded and took a sip of his beer. “I’d say I was sorry about that, but I don’t like to lie.”

  Dr. Stephens nodded back. “Trust is hard to come by. I dare say we aren’t going to find any between us all tonight.”

  Brent laughed. “You got that right. So what’s the end game? Everyone just walks away?”

  “Ideally, yes.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I’m not sure. I do hope so. I want nothing more than to put this ugliness behind me and I’m sure you’d all say the same.”

  Brent nodded again.

  “Jezebel had a lot of enemies,” Dr. Stephens continued, “if we follow through with Devin’s plan, I don’t think anyone will look into it too deeply.”

  Just then, Brent heard a noise coming from outside the kitchen door. It was muffled and barely audible. He leaned toward the open door, straining to hear it. It sounded like the Vanilla Ice song Ice, Ice Baby.

  “Do you hear that, Doc?”

  Dr. Stephens nodded. He flipped both light switches next to the door. One of them turned on a light out back, casting an awkward yellow glow over Beth’s garden. He stepped outside and Brent followed behind him. They both saw Jimmy lying face down in the dirt, covered in blood. His cell phone was on the ground beside him, the audio player blasting the old song at full volume.

  “Jesus Christ! Jimmy!” Brent yelled as he rushed to his side. “Doc, get out here and help him!”

  Brent need not have added the last part, as Dr. Stephens’ was already beside him. He immediately saw the wound on the back of Jimmy’s head. “Get that shirt and put pressure on that wound!” He yelled to Brent. Brent quickly did so.

  There wasn’t very much blood here. Dr. Stephens got up and looked over the backyard. In the dark, he couldn’t make anything out beyond a few feet. He pulled out his own smart phone and turned on his flashlight app. He could see drops of blood leading back to some random construction in the yard. He followed the trail there and found a pool of blood. A lot of blood, for sure, but not so much as to be fatal. Scalp wounds are notoriously nasty bleeders. He would have to get back to that though. His real concern now was Edward Digby.

  Dr. Stephens recognized Digby immediately. They previously had an exchange or, more accurately, several exchanges of money that left quite a bitter taste in his mouth. But se
eing his body lying lifeless in those construction forms, he didn’t have time to hold that grudge. He ran to Digby’s side and rolled back an eyelid. The eyes were unresponsive. He checked for a pulse and found none. He was very definitely dead.

  This made Dr. Stephens’ life considerably better in the long-term, but considerably worse in the short.

  “Devin!” Dr. Stephens yelled. “You’d better get out here!”

  Chapter 14

  Devin heard Dr. Stephens yell and he ran outside to find him still crouched over someone. In the mix of dark and yellowish light, Devin couldn’t make out who was who, but he saw Dr. Stephens bent over one person on the ground and Brent hunched over another. He ran to Brent first.

  “Jimmy!” He yelled when he was close enough to recognize the body lying in front of Brent. “What happened to him? Is he okay?”

  Brent looked up at Devin, his head shaking. He still wasn’t sure what happened, but there was a lot of blood. “I don’t know, Devin.” Brent responded, his voice barely masking his own emotion. “We heard his phone and came out here to find him like this.”

  “Is he…” Devin trailed off, not wanting to say the words. “He’s not…” Again, he couldn’t bring himself to ask the question.

  He gave up and knelt down next to Jimmy and Brent instead. Closer now, Devin could see that Brent was holding Jimmy’s bloodied shirt to the back of his head. He could also see Jimmy’s stomach swell as he took each breath. Bloody and hurt, but definitely breathing. Devin felt a bit of relief at this. He had seen Jimmy take a few falls over the years and he always walked away. Surely, a knock to the head wasn’t going to keep him down for too long.

  He got up and walked to Dr. Stephens. In the dark, Devin could barely see the man that Dr. Stephens was kneeling over. He didn’t recognize him, but even in the poor lighting, he knew immediately that he was dead.

  “Who is he? What the hell happened out here?” Devin asked.

  “His name is Edward Digby.” Dr. Stephens responded. “He’s a private investigator.” Dr. Stephens answered Devin’s first question, but he was trying to piece together an answer to the second question for a few moments himself. He pointed to the camera and microphone lying on the ground near the edge of the forms.

  “Jesus Christ.” Devin said. “He was taking pictures?”

  Devin walked to the camera and picked it up. It took him a few seconds to figure out how to turn the power on and a couple more to find the image-gallery-preview feature. He started flipping back through the photos in memory with the arrow keys. The images blurred by quickly, but soon enough he found pictures of himself leading Jezebel’s body from The Place and putting it into the trunk of his car. This was bad.

  “He followed me?” Devin asked of no one in particular. “But how? You followed me, but there was no one else on the road.”

  Dr. Stephens shrugged. “This guy is a friend of Jezebel’s.” He considered this for a second. “Maybe friend isn’t the right word.”

  Devin was thinking the same thing. What kind of a friend sees someone dragging your body around and follows behind taking pictures instead of calling the police? There wasn’t time for questioning the nature of their friendship right now, though. This guy was dead and Jimmy needed medical attention.

  “Alright,” Devin said, thinking through a scenario as he spoke, “We call the paramedics. When the police respond, we say we heard a noise out back and went to look. This guy attacked Jimmy.”

  “We can’t do that, Devin,” Dr. Stephens responded.

  “Why not? That’s what actually happened. Jimmy has a nasty blow to the head. His blood is everywhere.”

  “The pictures,” Dr. Stephens responded.

  Devin was still holding the camera. Starting with the first image of him at The Place, he hit the button to delete the picture. Then he deleted the next one. He continued doing so until the only pictures remaining were the ones of them all sitting in the living room at his house.

  “Problem solved. They find the camera and look at the pictures. They see that he’s been out here spying on us. If anything it makes the story more believable.”

  Dr. Stephens shook his head and let out a half laugh. He had seen enough daytime procedural dramas to know how to get through to Devin quickly on this one. “What’s the most important rule when cross examining a witness?”

  The question caught Devin by surprise. There were many rules when it came to cross examining a witness, any number of which could be considered the most important. This was a very broad question.

  “He has pictures of you and Jezebel. He didn’t follow you home. How did he end up here?”

  Devin realized the answer that Dr. Stephens was looking for: Never ask a question unless you already know the answer.

  “It seems unlikely that he showed up at The Place just as you were leading Jezebel out. Especially since he didn’t follow you home. He didn’t follow me either. I waited beside the road while you were talking to officer smiley and never saw him. So how did he end up here?”

  Devin was following the same trail of logic, but Devin knew that Beth pushed Jezebel over the railing and Dr. Stephens didn’t. Was it possible that he had other pictures somewhere? Pictures of Beth? That would have to wait for the moment, but if there were other pictures, they would have to get to them before they could even consider calling the police.

  “Well we need to get Jimmy to a hospital anyway.”

  Dr. Stephens shook his head. “Scalp wounds always look worse than they actually are. Plus, you bleed a lot more when you’re drinking and I can smell the booze on him from here. He didn’t lose that much blood. I have some Dermabond in my glove box to seal that up. He’s drunk and took a couple of shots to the head. Once he sleeps it off, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “All right, let’s head to your car then.”

  “You don’t need to come with me. You can stay here with your friends.” Dr. Stephens said, but thought about it for a minute and realized how this was going to look to Devin. Before Devin had a chance to respond, he followed with, “On second thought, why don’t you come with me.”

  Dr. Stephens looked to Brent. “You just keep pressure on that wound. I’ve got surgical glue in my car that’ll fix him up.”

  Brent nodded to Dr. Stephens then turned his attention back to Jimmy.

  As they stood up, they both saw Beth still standing at the kitchen door. She had been standing there since Dr. Stephens called Devin outside. She would have been crying if she hadn’t already spent too much emotion tonight.

  “Beth, why don’t you make some coffee?” Devin asked. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  As they started walking toward the driveway, Beth ran to Devin and threw her arms around him. She whispered to him, “I just want this to be over. I want everyone to just leave.”

  Devin hugged her back. “We’ll get through it. I promise.”

  Devin and Dr. Stephens left Beth, BrentandJimmy and the new body behind and started walking down the driveway. Devin’s concern about Jimmy abated a bit at Dr. Stephens’ insistence that the wound wasn’t life threatening. He was very concerned about the indifference Dr. Stephens displayed when he mentioned calling the authorities though. Not about Jimmy, he believed that would work itself out, but the other guy was dead and Dr. Stephens didn’t hesitate about not getting anyone involved. To Devin, that could only mean he was expecting they would just deal with two bodies now instead of one.

  “So do we have a new plan?” Devin asked, not slowing or looking to Dr. Stephens as he did so.

  Dr. Stephens continued walking in silence. Devin almost thought that he was going to ignore the question, but he finally responded with, “I’m surprised you don’t recognize him, Devin.”

  Devin looked to Dr. Stephens briefly and shrugged. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Well that may be. But I can guarantee he’s seen you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Edward Digby is a dirt bag of th
e highest order…” Dr. Stephens started.

  Devin laughed at this. Dr. Stephens knew immediately that Devin was laughing at him calling someone else a dirt bag. Arguing over it now seemed a bit pointless though. He waited for Devin to quit laughing before he continued.

  “Did Jezebel ever say to you ‘it’d be a shame if your wife found out about us?’””

  Devin wasn’t laughing now. Jezebel had said exactly that to him on a couple of occasions. “Yes, she did.”

  “Edward Digby is the reason why. He took pictures of Jezebel’s affairs. They used them to blackmail people.”

  So it wasn’t just an empty threat. She actually was blackmailing people. “I take it that you’re one of the people she was blackmailing?”

  Dr. Stephens continued walking for a moment wondering how he should respond. It seemed fruitless to lie at this point. “Yes, she was blackmailing me. For drugs. Had been for quite a while. If I didn’t continue writing her prescriptions, she would have had him turn pictures of me and her in to the police.”

  “So? Are you married?”

  “It wasn’t all about the pictures for me, Devin. It was about the drugs. The pictures just prove the story and kept me from doing anything they might consider stupid.”

  “Oh.” Devin replied. Dr. Stephens didn’t need to elaborate. Devin would have the same concern if he were just sleeping with one of his clients. Dr. Stephens’ situation was worse than his would be though. The American Bar Association frowns on relationships with clients, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to revoking your license. It had in some, but certainly not all cases. A doctor who is both having sex with a client and exchanging drugs for that sex, on the other hand, would lose his license without question.