They followed Beth for a mile or two when Devin said, “Because we don’t know,” out of nowhere.
Brent immediately knew that this was meant in response to the unanswered question regarding the pictures, but it didn’t seem to be a very good one. Or maybe it just wasn’t specific enough. “What don’t we know?” He asked.
“Anything,” Devin said, absently. He was still trying to make sense of it himself. “They find the body and the pictures on the TV. Fine. But then they search his van … We don’t know what he has pictures of or when they were taken.”
“They all have names on them, Devin.”
“Yeah, but maybe he was taking pictures of someone else tonight and happened to get pictures of Beth pushing Jezebel? Maybe that was why he ended up at my house.”
“I think he ended up at your house because he saw you dragging Jez’s body out of The Place.”
“Yes. But why was he there? What was he taking pictures of before that? Beth said she got in a fight with Jez outside of The Place before that. There weren’t any pictures of that. What if those are on one of these memory cards with someone else’s name on it?”
That was something that Brent hadn’t thought about. Devin made a good point. “You’re right. I guess we’ll have to figure out how to get rid of them once this is all over.” Brent said.
Devin didn’t say anything and Brent found the lack of a response troubling. “We are going to get rid of them, right?” He said, turning it into a question in hopes of getting a response.
“I wonder why she’s going so slowly,” Devin said, avoiding the question.
They made the rest of the drive in an uneasy silence. Part of this was because of the unanswered question, but most of it was due to the same apprehension that Beth was feeling. Once they made the turn onto Turner Road, they also relaxed a bit. It wasn’t until Beth missed the turn to their driveway that either of them spoke again.
“What’s she doing?” Devin asked, knowing that Brent also didn’t know.
Brent didn’t respond. He just continued keeping pace behind the Fiero. When he saw Devin reaching for his cell phone, he did speak, “She’s going to the end of the road.”
“But why?”
“She probably figured that you were going to make her drive it there anyway and wanted to save a trip.”
This was also something that Devin hadn’t thought about. She was probably right though. They would get back to the house and start figuring out who would do what. He had told her that he would drive it the rest of the way, but he would be driving the Sunfire with the body in the trunk. Someone else would have driven the Fiero. No doubt, it would be Beth. Not taking it there saved her the trip, but it also kept it from being at their house at all. Not having the car at their house would be a very good thing if the investigators saw through their staged accident and started poking around. Someone could see the car going to or from the house or they could find her tire prints on the driveway. Beth made a very good decision here and he was glad she did.
The night felt as though it was getting darker as the cars continued down the road and the open areas beside began to give way to the forest. After a few miles, the moon’s light was only shining on the narrow corridor from which the road was carved, its remaining light consumed by the surrounding forest. It was an oddly claustrophobic feeling. It was also the first time tonight that Devin actually felt that he was doing something horrible.
Everything up to this point was completely appropriate to the situation, or at least relatively appropriate. Driving into the darkness in the middle of the night for the sole purpose of disposing of a body was something completely different. Especially since they would have to make two trips to complete their staging of the accident. This wasn’t like stuffing a body in the trunk in a moment of panic or getting a body off your property after your best friend accidentally (was it an accident?) killed him. This was carefully disposing of the evidence. This was what guilty people did.
Devin wondered if this was what it was going to be like for the rest of his life. Every moment of silence or darkness filled by his conscience reminding him of what he did. It was a decidedly unpleasant thought. Thankfully, that thought was cut short by the jolt of the car as the pavement gave way to dirt.
There were only a couple of miles remaining before they would be at the end of Turner Road. It was paved several miles beyond the last driveway before turning into dirt - the particular location of that transition seeming arbitrary. It did serve the purpose of warning unsuspecting travelers that they had made a wrong turn somewhere, but it was far too narrow to turn around until you reached the end, rendering that point moot.
The hard-packed earth was beaten into a washboard pattern from countless years of cars transitioning off the pavement. The first dip would cause the car’s suspension to bounce which, in turn, would cause it to bottom out again a few feet further down - each successive dip causing the next. If you drove very slowly over them, you would feel every single dip. If you drove too fast, the car could actually bounce off the ground.
The BMW’s suspension was handling it pretty well. Devin and Brent could hardly feel the undulating as the tires frantically tried to follow the contour of the road. However, they could see that Beth’s ride was not nearly as smooth; the Fiero was bouncing like a rubber ball on a gymnasium floor. They were going slow enough that there was no fear of it leaving the ground, but it couldn’t have been a comfortable ride. Though with the way the front of the Fiero was wobbling on the pavement, it might not have even been noticeable.
The end of the road was marked with a small landing. This was a remnant from when the timber industry had clear-cut the hill leading down. In an era when that was what the timber industry did, this was where the logging trucks would be staged and loaded. Jezebel’s Fiero came to a stop when it reached the landing and Brent stopped the BMW just behind.
Beth shot out of the driver’s side of the Fiero shaking, “I’m never getting into that piece of shit again!”
Devin got out of the BMW and ran to her. She threw her arms around him and put her head on his shoulder. Clearly, the drive had been much harder on her than he expected.
“You won’t have to. It’s almost over now.” He whispered, as he held her tightly to his chest.
They shared their embrace under the moonlight for several minutes. There was a warmth to it that neither of them had felt in years. They would both have been happy to stay in that moment forever.
Brent felt uncomfortable watching them, as they seemed to be sharing a very intimate moment - the kind usually reserved for when the guy stops the girl from flying away at the end of a romantic comedy. However, there was still work to be done. After allowing them a couple of minutes, Brent cleared his throat in an awkwardly fake way.
“We’d better get going,” Brent said.
Beth gave Devin a soft kiss before letting him go. “Will the car be okay here alone?” She asked.
Since they hadn’t planned on the car being here before Jezebel’s body was, this was something none of them gave any consideration to. Would it be okay here? Probably. It wasn’t going to drive itself away, but what if someone else happened to see it? They hadn’t seen a single car as they drove out here, but what if someone happened to miss a turn and found the car here? They might call the police and report it. If that happened, the police, or even a tow truck, might show up while they were staging the accident. Or, possibly worse, before they did. Even if they didn’t have a phone, they might write down the plate number and call it in after they got back to town. They would have no way of knowing if anyone saw it.
Devin sighed deeply. He was going to have to stay here. He couldn’t ask Beth to do it and there was no chance she would have after that drive anyway. It didn’t seem fair to leave Brent, whose own involvement in everything tonight was a debt that Devin would be repaying for the rest of his life. He would have to do it himself. If anyone happened to show up at the end of the road, he would just tel
l him or her that the car broke down and he already called someone. The likelihood of that seemed infinitesimally small, but they needed to be sure.
“I need to stay with the car.”
If he expected any sort of resistance, he would have been disappointed. Both Beth and Brent had been running similar scenarios in their own minds and each decided that someone needed to stay behind. Each also decided that it should be Devin. He remained silent for a moment awaiting the non-existent response.
“Please just be quick,” he said, breaking the uneasy silence. “I know that we’re all still worried about Jimmy, but please come right back.”
Brent nodded in response as he opened the door of the BMW for Beth. He closed her door and made his way back to the driver’s side.
“We’ll be right back,” he said, before getting in and closing the door.
Devin leaned against the side of the Fiero and watched as the BMW’s taillights disappeared down Turner Road. Once the red dot of the lights disappeared completely, he suddenly felt very alone.
The moon was still high in the sky, casting plenty of light over the landing where the Fiero was sitting. He walked to the edge and looked down to the rock outcropping which the car would be crashing into in only a few minutes. It was just visible at the edge of the forest below. The drop leading to it was every bit as steep as he remembered. Their plan should work just fine.
Gasoline! He thought, suddenly. He should have told Brent to get gasoline while he was getting Jez’s body. They would need something to start the fire. They talked about using gasoline to start the fire on the car’s engine when they put the plan together, but what if he forgot?
Devin shook his head and clenched his fists against the doubt. Brent would remember the gasoline. He just watched the guy stage a body in the most convincing autoerotic asphyxiation pose he had ever seen. Although it was also the only one he had ever seen, so the bar wasn’t set incredibly high. He must have pieced that plan together on a ten minute car ride. The guy who put that together wasn’t going to forget such a major detail.
He walked back to the Fiero and leaned against it, watching the road for approaching headlights. He would have to ask Brent how he came up with that idea for Digby’s body later. Or not. He had a strong feeling that once they sent the Fiero over the edge of this landing, none of them would want to talk about what happened tonight again.
Right now, he just needed to stay out of his own head. His every thought started with a missed detail and ended with a prison term. And he had only been alone here for a few minutes. He wondered how Dr. Stephens was handling the solitude. He had been alone with his thoughts for considerably longer. Devin shook his head against that thought, too.
Chapter 17
Brent was doing his best not to look at Beth as they started the drive back to the house. She was still trembling. He could see it in her hands. The drive was obviously worse for her than it had been for them. She was staring blankly out the side window into the darkness of the forest, her mind elsewhere. He didn’t want to call attention to her shaking hands and his attempt at small talk on the way to The Place was a bust, so he was also trying not to speak.
When they reached the transition between the dirt road and the pavement, the car jumped a bit. This was enough to snap Beth from whatever place her mind was. Her emergence into the present was a bit unsettling to Brent though, as it took the form of laughter. As a non sequitur, in a situation as deeply serious as they were, the laughter was positively chilling.
“Was that it?” She asked as she continued laughing.
Brent was caught off guard by the question but didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure what she was asking, or if she was even talking to him, really.
“That piece of shit car nearly ripped my arms off when I hit that earlier. You could hardly even feel it.”
At least he knew what she was talking about. That was reassuring. He had been beginning to wonder if she might have snapped. Was that what she was thinking about the whole time they were driving?
As if in response to the unasked question, Beth spoke again. “I’m not driving Devin’s car back over here. Just know that.”
“I know,” Brent replied. “That’s not what you’ve been worrying about, is it?”
“Worrying?”
Her question seemed so genuine that he thought it would be all right to press on a little.
“You’ve been staring into nothing with your hands shaking since we left. I know the situation is tense. It is on all of us, but it seems like your mind is somewhere else.”
“Oh. I just…” she began but trailed off, shifting uncomfortably in the passenger seat.
When it became clear that she wasn’t going to continue, Brent spoke again. “I’m sorry that we made you drive the car, but it made sense.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said, looking away from him and back out the window. “I’m just trying to figure out if I’ll be able to live with myself.”
“All you did is drive the car, Beth. You didn’t kill her.”
Beth laughed again and again the unwarranted nature of it made Brent shiver.
“I tried to kill her … I think … But that’s not what I’m talking about either.”
That was when Brent realized what was bothering her. He knew he would need to get it out in the open eventually and the opening here seemed as a good an opportunity as he was likely to get.
“Devin didn’t see the pictures,” he offered, thinking she would immediately know what he was talking about. He was obviously wrong.
“What pictures? The pictures of him and Jezebel?”
Brent sighed deeply. There was no turning back now.
“The pictures of you and Dr. Stephens.”
Beth turned to Brent incredulously, her eyes wide. “There were pictures?!”
She turned away from Brent and started crying. Once she started, she just couldn’t stop. Brent regretted having said it. In hindsight, his timing was quite poor. The situation was already very tense and piling onto that had clearly been a mistake. After a couple of minutes, Beth began gasping between sobs. She leaned forward with her forearms on the dashboard and her head resting on them. She couldn’t stop crying.
Brent was no expert on women, as evidenced by the creepy, pedo-van which he drove, but even he knew that he couldn’t take Beth back to see Dr. Stephens in her emotional state. While he couldn’t be sure what would happen if she were to see him now, he was certain that it wouldn’t be good.
Brent slowed down and eased the BMW onto the shoulder of the road. He knew that trying to comfort a woman himself was a bit like trying to clean the fine China with a sandblaster, but right now he didn’t have any other options. Dr. Stephens was sitting with a body a couple of miles ahead of him and Devin was in the middle of nowhere waiting to dispose of it a couple of miles the other way. There wasn’t time to involve someone competent.
“Beth?” He questioned softly, reaching his hand out and resting it on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Beth.”
The gesture seemed very stiff and robotic, even to Brent, but Beth didn’t seem to notice. She turned from the dashboard and threw her arms around him. With her head on his shoulder, she continued crying.
Brent had known Beth for many years and in that time he never saw her cry - not like this. She was, unquestionably, the strongest woman he knew, both in terms of physical and mental strength. This type of a breakdown was not something he would have expected from her and it was breaking his heart.
She didn’t like him very much, he knew that, but she was clinging to him as if he was her security blanket; latching onto anything familiar. Whatever it was that was going on here, it was much more than her just banging the doctor to get back at Devin. Or, he reasoned, perhaps it wasn’t but she regretted it more than she anticipated. Whatever the reason, it was eating her up inside.
Brent always wondered how a woman could get out of a speeding ticket with nothing more than a couple of tears. In this moment, he
understood completely. He didn’t have anything to do with her pain, but by virtue of being the messenger, he felt somehow responsible. If he could have taken the words back, he would have. He would have done anything to take her pain away.
After a time, Beth started mumbling between gulps for air. Her words were very soft and he couldn’t make them out at first, but much like the crying, once she got going, there was no stopping her.
“…And then he said that it wasn’t love, it was just sex. He said that Jezebel was nothing to Devin. He said that I couldn’t believe him though.”
She leaned back from Brent, whatever thought she was currently having taking her from defeated tears to angry vengeance. She clenched her right fist tightly and started pounding on his chest, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She yelled as she pummeled him.
“He said that I needed to go see where they had sex. He said that if I saw it I would understand. He said he would take me there at night, just like when Devin met Jezebel … Stupid!”
Brent could see where this was going. He wanted desperately to stop her from saying it. “Beth, you don’t have to…”
“And when we got there, he said we should go into the room where Devin fucked her. He said I would understand then.”
Beth turned away from Brent and buried her head in her hands.
“He told me to look out the window. To look at the empty pool with all the graffiti painted on it. He said, ‘does that look like love to you?’. I started crying. He said that I still didn’t understand. He said that I needed to understand, that he could help me understand…”
“Beth,” Brent said. “You can stop. I get it.”
“And he walked up behind me,” Beth continued, ignoring him, “and pushed me forward. I didn’t stop him. I knew what he was doing, but I didn’t stop him.”
Beth stopped crying and the silence in the car was deafening. Her face was an eerie kind of calm. Somehow, just telling him what happened soothed her. Brent, on the other hand, was fighting to keep from showing the anger he was suddenly feeling.
In the Shadow of Angels Page 17