In the Shadow of Angels

by Donnie J Burgess

  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.

  Chapter 18

  Devin was waiting patiently at the end of Turner Road. Looking for something to do to keep him occupied, he popped the hood of the Fiero. He first popped the front, but the noticeable lack of an engine reminded him that it was in the rear. The engine compartment looked like he would expect from a woman like Jezebel - dirty as hell. The outside of the car was all dolled up with fake eyelashes and fancy wheels, but the part that actually did all the work was forgotten completely. An apt metaphor for Jezebel, really. There was a thick layer of mixed oil and dust covering the entire engine and most of the firewall. It was a wonder this thing hadn’t burst into flames already.

  Devin’s study of the Fiero fires focused more on the liability of the manufacturer than the actual cause of the fire, so he wasn’t exactly sure which of the wires was supposedly at fault. Looking at this engine bay, it could have been any number of them. Through the flashlight app on his cell phone, he could see the years of neglect had left most of the wires under the hood dry and brittle. With his thumbnail, he was able to flake away some of the wire casings to see that the copper beneath was already badly corroded. He continue flaking away at the brittle wires, careful not to use any force. He wasn’t sure what they would be able to tell after the fire, but he didn’t want it to be evident that someone was stripping the wires.

  He flaked away a good amount of the brittle casing in the time he waited, enough that he was concerned that the pile of flakes might draw attention. He did his best to knock all of the pieces to the ground and then grabbed them in small handfuls to throw them into the forest.

  He hadn’t looked at the time when Beth and Brent left him at the end of the road, but it seemed like it was a long time ago. Too long for everything to have gone as planned, anyway. When he first thought to check the time, it was 1:32am. That was before he started working under the hood. Now it was 2:11. Forty minutes plus however much time had passed before he thought to check the time. Their house was only ten minutes away, but they must have been gone nearly an hour.

  As if in response to his silent willing, a car started approaching. The forest was so thick here that until the car made the final turn, you couldn’t see the headlights. He heard the car well before he saw it. He briefly thought of hiding at the edge of the forest just in case it wasn’t them, but thought better of it. The whole reason he was here was to deter would-be Samaritans, after all. When he finally did see the lights, they were the familiar and distinctive lights of his Sunfire.

  When the car stopped, it was a total shock to Devin that Beth -and only Beth stepped out of the car. Devin approached the car and looked in through the windshield but saw no one else.

  “Where is everyone else?” he asked.

  “They’re still at the house,” she responded. “It’s all gone horribly wrong.”

  *****

  Brent’s hand went from a burning pain to a mostly numb and throbbing sensation. His left leg felt like it was clamped in a vice, but that pain paled in comparison. Jimmy, on the other hand, regained his breath and wasn’t much the worse for wear. He had a pain in his ribs from hitting the form when he tackled Dr. Stephens, but the pain from the earlier gash in his head overshadowed it. They were both staring at Beth as she stood still holding the gun over Dr. Stephens’ lifeless form. At least a minute had passed since his body fell to the dirt, but none of them moved.

  Jimmy was the first to speak. “Beth, you can put the gun down now.”

  Beth’s head shook, as if being snapped from a trance. In a slow and fluid motion, looking almost like a curtsey, she sat the gun down next to Dr. Stephens’ body.

  “Are you guys all right?” she asked.

  Brent slowly got to his feet, his left leg burning as he did so.

  “I’ve been better,” he replied, as he tested walking, “are you okay?”

  The question was directed at Beth, but she seemed to ignore it.

  “It looks like we’ve got one more to get rid of,” she said.

  “Seriously, Beth,” this time it was Jimmy that spoke, “are you all right?”

  “Yep,” she said, in an eerily calm voice, “I’m pretty sure I’m done with emotion for tonight.”

  Beth started walking toward the house.

  “Beth,” Brent said, “what are you doing?”

  She replied without stopping, “I’m going to take the whore out to Devin. He’s been waiting a long time.”

  “Beth, wait!” Brent shouted.

  Beth stopped walking.

  “What?” she questioned.

  “Don’t forget the gas,” Brent replied.

  “Where is my head?” Beth laughed. “We would have had to come all the way back for it.”

  Beth walked back to where Brent put the gas can down before the whole mess with Dr. Stephens started and picked it up. She started walking toward the house again.

  “See if you guys can figure out what to do with this one. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  BrentandJimmy watched her walk away in silence. About thirty seconds later, they saw the taillights of the Sunfire start to disappear down the driveway.

  “Jesus, Brent,” Jimmy said, “I think she might be broken.”

  “Or fixed.” Brent replied. He had just watched Beth walk away with a confidence and decisiveness that he hadn’t seen in her since they were all still in college.

  “What are we going to do with him, Brent?”

  “We’re going to get rid of him. We’re in way too deep not to.”

  “But how?”

  Brent looked to the rented cement mixer near the forms. It was an eight cubic foot electric version. Next to it was a pallet of Quikrete with another half-dozen bags stacked beside it. They had the mixer and the cement to just go ahead and pour the slab. Was there enough? One of the few things he had actually excelled at in college, aside from how to drink to excess, was math. That math, coupled with his experience working at the local home center, should make the estimation easy. The forms for the gazebo’s slab were octagonal and appeared to be about two and a half feet on each side and set about six inches deep.

  Brent’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember how to calculate volume for a polygon, but drew a blank. At the moment, he wasn’t even able to remember the formula for calculating area. Years of using the computers at the home center for those calculations had stripped him of the ability. One thing he could remember was that it takes forty-five, eighty-pound bags of Quikrete to make a cubic yard. This was definitely less than a cubic yard and there were definitely more than forty-five bags.

  Brent sighed deeply. “I think we’re going to leave him right where he fell.”

  Jimmy saw him looking to the cement mixer and knew what he was thinking. “But he’s too big,” Jimmy said, “he’ll stick out the top, maybe the sides too.”

  “So we dig a hole first and curl him up in it. You can help me move him. But first we need to go find some rubber boots.”

  Devin was the most anal person that either of them knew. If he was going to be pouring concrete, he would absolutely have bought rubber boots and gloves before doing so. They didn’t see them with the rest of the supplies though. He had Quikrete, shovels, rakes, rounders, lumber, magnesium floats and even a couple of darbies - whoever sold Devin the supplies must have seen him coming from a mile away - but no boots or gloves. They moved their search to the gardening shed, where they found three pairs each of boots and gloves. Three pairs? It appeared as though Devin was planning on having a couple of help
ers for this project, which would probably have been them anyway. They each put them on before heading back to the forms.

  Once they were suited up, Brent took Devin’s gun from inside the forms and laid it carefully outside of them. If anyone heard the shots fired, the police may ask him where his gun was. It was registered, after all. Plus, they couldn’t leave it under the slab or a metal detector would go off if they happened to run one over it. They would get it cleaned up and back in the nightstand in case they needed to show it to the police later.

  They grabbed Dr. Stephens by the arms and legs and dragged him to one edge of the forms. They were careful to keep him inside and not step in any of the blood so that none of it would end up on the outside. Since the forms were only about six feet across, they had to lay him on his side and push him against the perimeter of three of the sides to dig a hole in the center.

  They found a couple of shovels near the bags of concrete and started digging. The dirt was packed solid in preparation for the concrete foundation, but it was tilled before it was packed, so it was much easier than digging a hole from scratch. They dug quickly, being careful not to get any of the bloodied dirt outside the forms.

  Jimmy ended up doing the majority of the digging, as each time Brent would kick the shovel down it would send a pain shivering up his spine. He still dug, but he wasn’t able to move nearly as much dirt as Jimmy. They dug the hole about two feet deep and just big enough around to fit him into it in the fetal position. Once the hole appeared to be big enough, they pushed him in.

  The hole was small enough that it took some finessing to get him and all his appendages positioned correctly. Ultimately, they put him on his left side, but pulled his arm out from under him so his torso would sit a bit deeper in the hole. Once they had his knees forced up into his chest, they were able to get the rest of his legs and his feet into the hole as well. Everything fit neatly into it at just below ground level.

  They were just about to start shoveling the dirt back into the hole around him when Brent thought of something and stopped. He reached into Dr. Stephens’ back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He threw the wallet outside the forms near the cement mixer.

  “Why’d you take his wallet?” Jimmy asked.

  “Because of his car,” Brent replied.

  While that answer didn’t make any sense, Jimmy just shrugged and started throwing the dirt back in. They filled the hole in as tightly as they could around him, tamping it down with the shovel heads as they went. When they couldn’t get any more dirt inside the hole, they smoothed the excess dirt out as close to the center as they could. Once they were satisfied that it was as smooth as they could get it, they started getting things together to pour the concrete.

  They had both poured a fair share of concrete since taking their jobs at the home center. Devin at least rented a large mixer, which was good, it should easily be able to handle six bags per pour. It would only take four or five pours to fill the forms. The mixer was at the edge of the forms and shouldn’t need to be moved during the process. They could do it in under an hour under ideal circumstances, though it might take a bit longer with Brent hobbled.

  They found a long extension cord, still in the packaging, inside the mixer and ran it to an outlet near the back door. They got a garden hose with a sprayer attachment from the gardening shed and ran that from the spigot near the back door as well. They took a small pail from the pile of supplies next to the mixer to use to measure the water. When mixing concrete it is easy to think you don’t have enough water. Too much water weakens the concrete and makes it difficult to work with. Even with all their experience, they always measured it out. They found the truest two-by-four in the lumber pile and set it next to the forms to use as a screed. They added to that the darbies. Finally, they took two rakes from the supplies and leaned them inside the forms with the shovels.

  With everything ready to go, Jimmy powered up the mixer. He was able to pour in five bags of the eighty-pound ready-mix without fear that it would spill out. He probably could have added a sixth, but it was only him doing the lifting, as Brent’s broken hand kept him relegated to rake duty. He needed a break after lifting and dumping five of them into the mixer. He started filling the five-gallon pail, eyeballing it to about 3.5 gallons and mixed that in as well. He let it mix for two or three minutes and found it still just a bit too chunky, so he added another splash of water. After another thirty seconds, it was ready to pour.

  As soon as the concrete hit the ground, Brent began using his shovel to throw it to the opposite side of the form. He used a shovel to tamp it down and keep it as level to the forms as he could. Once he had thrown the majority of it over, he used a rake to level it out and the screed they picked out earlier to start smoothing it. Jimmy started mixing the concrete for the next batch when Brent had started shoveling and by the time Brent had worked it to a relatively smooth surface, the next batch was added to the form.

  The night air was cool, which afforded them a bit of extra time for working with the concrete. This was to their advantage, as Brent was hardly working at top speed with his broken hand and the sting in his leg. They repeated this process five times to fill the forms. The fifth pour was enough concrete to fill it nearly exactly, but Jimmy added one more bag of concrete to the mixer just in case.

  While the last bag was still in the mixer, Jimmy started working a darby over the side of the concrete that Brent already smoothed out with the screed. Jimmy did his best, but Quikrete is horrible for trying to get a smooth surface; it seems like the larger aggregate always want to float. If they had to, they could put a coating of mortar mix over it later to finish the surface. Pushing down the larger rocks left a couple of dips in the surface. Jimmy poured some of the concrete that was still in the mixer into another pail and added it by the handful wherever he left a dip.

  Once the screeding was complete, Brent grabbed another darby and started working it from the opposite side of Jimmy. They worked in silence, each of them focused on finishing the process while the concrete was still plastic enough to work with. They had the slab finished in under an hour start to finish. Remarkable time, all things considered.

  Once they had the slab smoothed out, they began cleaning up the tools and work area as they waited. The slab would need to bleed out and then reabsorb the water before they could finish it. Jimmy was careful not to add too much water to the mix. Even with Brent’s injury, he knew they would be able to work quickly with all their experience and too much water in the cold air could make the process take hours instead of minutes.

  They used the hose to wash off all of the tools that they used and started moving them into the gardening shed. They left out the rounders and magnesium floats for the finishing process, but cleaned up and stowed all of the other equipment. Once they had everything put away other than the excess cement and mixer, they changed out of the rubber boots and gloves and washed them off as well.

  The concrete wasn’t quite ready for the finish when they were done cleaning up the site, so they went inside to get a beer and get themselves cleaned up. Brent picked up Dr. Stephens’ wallet and Devin’s gun before they went inside. A quick assessment in the light of the kitchen showed that aside from a powdering of dust from the concrete premix, they were remarkably clean. It seemed that they were embarrassingly good at this. That was good though, as neither of them had a change of clothes here. They cleaned up their hands and faces, but their clothes were going to be a bit dusty until they could get home and changed.

  Jimmy got them each a beer from the fridge, cracked his open and took a long pull from it. The cool liquid felt refreshing after all that work.

  “I don’t know about this, Brent,” Jimmy said, “It seems like there are just too many moving parts for us to get out of this.”

  Brent was nodding in agreement, “Yeah, this getting rid of our best friend’s mistress’s body thing has gone south in a hurry. But we don’t have much choice here, we have to play the hand we have, not the one we
wish we had.”

  “So what does the wallet have to do with the car?”

  “Well, with the other two, we are making sure they will be found and the evidence points away from us. Since this guy is, hopefully, never going to be found, I’m hoping to steer the evidence toward him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we have the girl that was fucking him for drugs found dead on one end of town, the guy who had pictures of it found dead at the other end. A guy in that situation would have a lot to lose.” Brent paused, still piecing together the specifics of his plan, “So we mail the pictures of him and Jezebel to the cops. If we do it this morning, they won’t have any way of knowing they were sent after he was already dead.”

  “Oh, I see. If they find his car somewhere, with his wallet and ID in it, maybe they’ll think that he disappeared on purpose.”

  “Right. If they don’t find his wallet, I think they might think something happened to him too. Hopefully if they do, that will make him look guilty enough that any suspicion they have about the other two will go against him and not us.”

  Jimmy was nodding. It did seem like a good plan. So much happened in the last few hours that it would be foolish to think that they executed it perfectly. This could be, very literally, their get out of jail free card.

  “We’ll just run it past Devin when they get back, but it seems pretty solid to me,” Brent said.

  “I wonder how he’s doing with the car fire thing. It’s been over an hour since Beth left. I would think he would just want to get the fire started and then run like hell.”