In the Shadow of Angels (7 page)

Edward was sitting in his van watching, when Bethany approached Jezebel. He didn’t know who she was, but her face seemed vaguely familiar. He would have put even money on it being the wife of one of the guys she nailed for
favors
. He saw these confrontations a couple of times before, so it wasn’t that unusual. Jezebel could fend for herself and he thought she would be fine here as well. Especially so, considering the diminutive size of the woman approaching her. He always told himself he would intervene if it got too bad, but he never did.

Edward put his camera down. This was something he didn’t want or need pictures of. This was the seedy underside of the, in his estimation, slightly less seedy blackmail game. A wife that is both mixing and confusing anger and jealousy, lashing out at the perceived cause. Jezebel was no more the cause of a cheating husband than a gun is the cause of a murder. Jezebel may be one of the tools their husband used to cheat, but the harsh reality is they should be angry with the other tool. Whether that tool was the husband or the one in his pants would be open to debate. Trying to punish Jezebel was like trying to punish the gun in the murder trial.

This little blonde approached Jezebel with a purpose though. Edward wondered briefly how Jezebel could always maintain the composure to pull off indifference when anyone else would be terrified. It seems that if you experience something enough times, it becomes natural. Jezebel showed no more concern than she would have shown if the woman was approaching her with a map asking directions. She was one cool operator and that was increasingly troublesome to Edward, being a chief partner in crime.

It played out exactly as he expected. There was much heated debate and posturing, this all coming from the little blonde. Jezebel did her level best to ignore it. Edward knew, and wondered if Jezebel did too, that not returning someone’s anger toward you was a sure way of making them angrier. He figured she did. It was probably better that she didn’t engage, though. Jezebel could probably kick his ass if she was so inclined and he outweighed this little blonde waif by a good hundred pounds. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

This one wasn’t letting up, though. He could see Jezebel engaging in the verbal exchange. He couldn’t be sure what, exactly, she was saying, but each word seemed to fire the little blonde up even more. Jezebel’s eyes narrowed after a particularly long fit of shouting and he could see her speaking slowly, almost hear the firm and direct cadence of Jezebel telling her, basically, to fuck off.

When the little blonde finally tried to take a swing, she regretted it immediately. In a scene that looked like an infant trying to battle Satan himself, Jezebel was on top of her in an instant. Defeated without landing a punch, but Jezebel didn’t let up. She bested her physically, but wouldn’t let her go until she broke her emotionally as well. That was just the vindictive nature of Jezebel. He sincerely hoped he would never be on the receiving end of it.

Like most fights between two women, the physical violence was very abbreviated and underwhelming. It was never as he hoped it would be; two women who start by tearing off each other’s clothes and follow up by rolling around on the ground and
accidentally
fingering each other, only to end with a long and passionate kiss. This one was one blocked punch, followed by a pin and much angry, visceral dialogue. When Jezebel finally let the little blonde up, she ran away, defeated.

Jezebel then looked to the van and flashed Edward a wink. He hated that.

When her latest mark arrived, she led him up to the room. Again, this was something Edward was used to seeing; she would wave that ass in their face to try to shatter any remaining willpower they may have. It nearly always worked.

Edward suspected it hadn’t worked in this case. Once they were inside the room, the curtain never opened even a crack. That was a sure sign that she didn’t have quite the upper hand she thought she did. He kept his camera trained on their window just in case the opportunity presented itself, but it never did.

Jezebel came out of the room alone a few minutes later. She looked to his van and shrugged. That was the end of it. Whatever happened was done and she was packing it in. Edward put his camera down and turned the key in his ignition, but stopped when he saw the door of the room next to hers open as Jezebel walked by. To his surprise and well before he had a chance to react either physically or by grabbing his camera, that little blonde girl appeared behind her and pushed her over the railing.

The night just got a lot more interesting.

Edward debated his options. Should he chase the little blonde girl (who was now running to her car in a big damn hurry), run to Jezebel, call the police, or… And it was the
or
that bothered him. The
or
was the little voice in the back of his mind that was telling him maybe he should just drive away too. Leave as if he never saw a thing. On the one hand, if Jezebel were all right, their little arrangement would probably be over. She might even make good on her threat-in-jest to implicate him for some of his photography blackmail. On the other hand, what if she wasn’t okay? It bothered him that the prospect of that didn’t bother him. The debate was moot anyway.

Edward saw the door below the little blond girl’s open up and saw Dr. Ulysses Stephens step out of it. He quietly surveyed the scene for a moment and then approached Jezebel. Edward was able to get his camera back in place by the time he got to her and focused his lens on the scene. There in front of him, Dr. Stephens attempted to suffocate Jezebel. When she fought back, he grabbed her head and clearly made the motions of snapping her neck.

Edward watched the whole thing through his camera, snapping away frantically, but somehow feeling detached. Through a shield of lenses, he continued watching and snapping. The last of the pictures were of Dr. Stephens dragging her body to the fence that separated the rooms from the pool. Then Dr. Stephens disappeared back into his room. Edward lowered his camera and popped out the memory card. Now there was a decision to make.

If he called the police, he would turn over the pictures and Dr. Stephens would go to prison. If he didn’t call the police, Dr. Stephens would likely be willing to pay a hefty sum to get them back. He knew it was a decision he shouldn’t make without giving it a great deal more thought.

Edward saw the man Jezebel was with in room 213, Devin Bryant, rushing down to her side. He was looking around, trying to piece together what happened, completely oblivious to the little blonde and Dr. Stephens’ intervention. He was with her only a short time before running back upstairs. Edward assumed he must be calling the police right about now. He decided, for the moment, he would hold off on making the decision regarding the photos. He slipped the memory card into a small, clear, zippered pouch and hastily scribbled on the outside
‘Dr. $ and Jezebel’
. He slipped it into his glove compartment.

As he looked on, Devin reappeared from room 213 and approached Jezebel again. This time he started to pick her up. Confused by this new turn of events, it took Edward a moment to find a new memory card and get it into his camera. He did so in time to get a number of pictures of Devin leading her away from the fence and pushing her into the trunk of his car. And pictures of him leaving. And pictures of Dr. Stephens’ silver BMW following behind.

The night just got much more interesting.

He sat there for a time, debating what to do with all of this information. He had two people on the hook for this and it would likely be a sizable payout if he were to take the low road. The high road was paved only with, what, a clear conscience? That mixed with the possibility that some of his
other
photos might find the light of day. It was actually to his benefit, he thought, that this all happened. He told himself that he was debating the decision, but in reality, he was only trying to find any reason not to take the low road.

He sat there for nearly ten minutes, pretending to mull it over. Then, rather unexpectedly, he saw a car turn into the lot. Unexpectedly, because it was the very blonde who ran away so quickly only a few minutes earlier. What was she doing back? He saw her run to where Jezebel was laying, then run up to room 213 and beat on the door. When there was no response, she ran to the front desk and spoke to the clerk for a moment. After that, she went outside and made a frantic phone call.

Edward knew who the other two players were, Dr. Stephens and Devin Bryant. Who was this vaguely familiar little blonde, though? Something told him it would be in his best interest to find out.

Devin closed the lid of the trunk and got into the driver’s seat of his car. He took a moment to regret having brought his work car out tonight, but quickly realized it would work out to his benefit later. One of the many things he learned as an accident attorney is that he was not going to make many friends. Though his biggest cases were people suing large, faceless corporations for huge cash compensation, the majority of his cases, by sheer volume, were representing individuals in personal injuries resulting from car accidents, slips and falls in personal residences and other similar person vs. person cases. For every one of his clients who won their case, there was a defendant who lost - resulting in either having to pay directly or through increased insurance premiums. Some of those defendants were not above seeking out revenge in the form of vandalizing his car. So he frequently left his Mercedes at home when he went out, opting to drive an old Pontiac Sunfire, instead. The old Pontiac blended in much better as an every man’s car, which was good, but he had been driving it around with a burned out taillight since he bought it, nearly six years ago, which could bring about unwanted attention. He couldn’t do anything about that now, though.

He signaled a left turn and pulled out onto highway 62. The Place was located just outside of Ashwood city limits on the east side of town (That it was located so far from town would seem a mystery to the outsider, but was actually the same story as a lot of hotels from this era. When the
National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956
was signed, there was a boom of construction in areas near where the interstates were slated to run. Diners and motels popped up from coast to coast, expecting to cash in by housing the workers for days or weeks at a time as the construction moved slowly through the state, then, ideally to become destinations for travelling motorists. In reality, the construction of the interstate system went so quickly that few of these new businesses were able to turn a profit from their construction. In the case of The Place, and many others like it, it ended up several miles off the interstate and without an off ramp, which gives the appearance that it is in the middle of nowhere). It was about eight miles back to Ashwood, broken down into about 4 miles going slightly downhill and the other four going slightly uphill. That made it so that, on a clear day, you could see the highway disappear into a dot in the distance. At night, you could see oncoming headlights from miles away.

The speed limit on highway 62 was still fifty-five and Devin was determined to make this drive without exceeding fifty-four, just to be safe.
Nothing to worry about,
he said to himself,
no one has any reason to think you’re driving around with a body in your trunk.
The reason people are caught in these situations is they become careless and Devin was not a careless person. Just a normal drive, like any other - no need to panic. He wasn’t exactly sure what his ultimate goal was here. He had no worldly idea where he was going to take Jezebel’s body, but he wanted to be in the safety of his home to work out a plan.

He had been driving for only a minute or so when he saw a pair of headlights appear on the road behind him. The car was obviously leaving The Place. There was no other access to the highway for miles. Only a few very wealthy families owned the property to the east of Ashwood. The Blacks, the Meeks, the Turners, they all owned hundreds of acres of the land between The Place and Ashwood and had it all fenced off. There were huge homes built on these enormous estates, but only half a dozen roads between The Place and town. All of them with gated access. It must be someone else on his or her way back after a night of indiscretion, he assumed.

After the headlights were in his rearview for another minute, Devin began to feel a bit concerned. The speed limit on this stretch of highway 62 may be fifty-five, but no one obeyed it. It was eight straight miles with a clear view in both directions and no turnouts for law enforcement to hide and clock your speed. No one went under seventy on this road, well, unless they had a body in the trunk of their car. Surely, the lights should be getting bigger and brighter as the other car got closer. But they didn’t. They remained suspiciously equidistant from him. When another set of headlights appeared, but in front of him, Devin had to fight his urge to panic.

His brain began running a scenario where someone saw him stuffing the body into the trunk of his car and called the police. The police were responding, one from each side. When the time was right, they would close in on each other and create roadblocks on both sides of him. His pulse began to speed up as his rational mind tried to quell this impossible scenario. If someone had seen him and called the police, surely they wouldn’t be responding already. Even if they were, there was no way one of them had gotten behind him; there were no police cars at The Place when he left and no other road for miles. Wouldn’t the responding law enforcement be flashing their red-and-blues when they were on their way to a murder scene or pursing the perpetrator anyway?

Devin’s mind was trying to betray him.
Stay calm,
he told himself,
just relax.

The car approaching him from the front closed in far too quickly to be going the posted speed and it passed by him shortly after he first saw the lights. When it did pass, he recognized the car instantly. It was Beth’s. If he knew it instantly, she would too. He looked into his rearview to see if she was stopping or turning around. She just kept going. That was good. He didn’t think he would be able to talk to her right now anyway, but this would surely lead to an awkward conversation later.

The lights behind him, however, remained suspiciously distant.

It took about ten minutes to get from The Place to the first stoplight in Ashwood. The headlights behind him never got any closer, but they also didn’t move further away. Devin signaled the left turn that would lead him back by O’Halligan’s and to the road to his house. His light turned green and he made the turn well before the car behind him reached the light. The speed limit now thirty-five, Devin moved slowly and watched his mirror to see if the car behind him followed.

It did.

Closer now, owing to the reduced speed he was travelling, but it made the turn to stay behind him.
Don’t’ panic,
he continued telling himself,
just another guy on his way home.
The road they were on led to the more affluent area of the town proper. While the
old money
lived outside of the eastern side of town on their sprawling estates, transplants like himself bought properties to the south. The properties here were not as vast nor the homes as opulent as the ones to the east side, but they were still out of the price range for most. Each sitting on at least an acre of land, Devin’s was on five acres, with price tags
starting
at half a million.

O’Halligan’s was the only business on Turner Road before you got to the estates. Devin had driven past it while watching his mirror and didn’t see the police car in the parking lot. He only saw it when it pulled out behind him.

Relax, he told himself, he is probably just…

Devin didn’t have time to finish his thought. The roof lights on the police-car came on almost immediately. The cop was pulling him over.

Panic swept through him when he saw the lights.
Relax, just relax,
he kept telling himself, but there was a little bastard in his head trying to break him. Pushing him to hammer the gas and run and, for some reason, talking like a twenties-era mobster, ‘
we’ve been made, Jack, drop it to the floor and dust this copper.’
But he knew that would be the biggest mistake he could make right now. The fight lasted only a couple of seconds.

The shoulder on Turner Road was wide enough to pull over anywhere and Devin did. He turned off the car and shut off the lights. Normally he would have gotten his registration from the glove box in preparation, but tonight he sat still and did his pre-trial breathing exercise to calm his nerves.

In the eternity that passed between the time he stopped and the time the officer approached his car, the car from been behind him drove slowly past. It was a silver BMW with the personalized license plate
‘Dr $’.
Later, Devin would find it odd that the only cars on the road tonight were his, Beth’s and Dr. Stephens’. Unless he counted the cop, of course. For now, his mind was focused on remaining calm and rational.

The officer finally approached his car and tapped the driver’s window with his flashlight.

Devin rolled the window down, fully expecting the usual, “license and registration please. Do you know why I stopped you tonight?” Line of questioning.

What he got instead was, “Devin, how many times have we told you to fix that taillight?”

Devin looked up to the officer, vaguely recognizing the face. He didn’t know the officer personally, but they had obviously met before. “Um,” He thought about it for a moment, “I don’t know.” He replied, honestly.

“Well, this is the third time I’ve stopped you for it.” The officer replied.

“I’m sorry,” Devin said. “I keep meaning to fix it, but I just keep forgetting.”

“I’m going to have to give you a ticket this time,” the officer said, expecting Devin to make a plea for him not to. They always do.

Devin felt a bit more relaxed, knowing it was just the taillight.

“I get that,” he said. “Who knows, maybe that will be the motivation I need to get it done already.”

The officer, not expecting this response, was caught a bit off guard. “You know, a lot of times it’s just a simple fix. If you pop the trunk, I’ll look at it for you. If I can get it fixed, we can skip the ticket.”

Devin’s courtroom demeanor now in full effect, he didn’t flinch at the suggestion. Just like in court, his mind searched quickly through his available responses for their probable outcome. Option 1) pop the trunk. Well that was straight out. Option 2) tell him that he identified the problem as a disconnected wire from when he put something in the trunk. That might make the officer suggest that maybe he could reconnect it. Which would lead to him making suspicious excuses not to pop the trunk. That was also out. Option 3) burned out bulb. What if the officer happened to have a bulb? Then he would again be making excuses for not popping the trunk. No go. Devin settled on a different option, making it up as he went along.

“Nah,” he said calmly. “I actually took it to the shop after you stopped me last time. The whole housing is crushed. They had to special order the part since the car is so old. They called me a few weeks ago to say the part came in, but I just haven’t had the time to get back to the dealership.”

The officer nodded his head. “Yeah, I guess since they aren’t making Pontiacs anymore it’s probably a bitch to get parts for it.”

With this, Devin was finally able to relax. The officer seemed to be talking to him guy to guy and even used the word ‘
bitch
’. It was smooth sailing now.

“Listen. I’m still going to write you the ticket.” The officer said, scribbling on his pad, “You’ve got two weeks to get that fixed, then get the dealer to sign off on it and you won’t have to pay the fine.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Devin replied. “I’m sorry to be wasting your time.”

“Eh,” the officer responded. “Still a couple hours till the bars close. Not a lot going on right now anyway.”

He tore the ticket from his pad and handed it to Devin. “You just get that taken care of, okay?”

Devin nodded.

“One more thing though. How much have you had to drink tonight?”

The question nearly froze Devin in place. With his guard quickly back up, he searched for his response.
Don’t say two beers. Say anything other than two beers.
They always say two beers.

“Well, I had a few with BrentandJimmy at O’Halligan’s, but that was a couple of hours ago.”

The officer nodded again. “I can still smell it on you…”

The officer was interrupted by the sound of Devin’s cell phone, which, unfortunately, was set to play the song
Cold, Hard Bitch
when his wife called. Devin fumbled through his pocket for his phone. He pulled it out. Beth’s picture was up on the screen and it took him a moment to find the decline button.

The officer had also seen Beth’s picture when Devin pulled out the phone. “The wife, huh?”

Devin thought he heard something in that question. Empathy. Very subtle, but he was sure he heard it. Now he tried to use it to his advantage. “Yeah. I told her I’d be home by eleven and I didn’t quite make it. Looks like it’s going to be the couch again tonight.”

The officer nodded in understanding. “Look, I probably should be checking your blood alcohol level. If you were pulling out of O’Halligan’s right now, I damn sure would. You’re lucky I didn’t catch you when you were leaving earlier.”

Devin looked on, not sure if he should say anything.

“It’s not worth it anymore,” the officer said. “Just call a cab. We’re cracking down on drunk drivers and two drinks in an hour is enough to qualify as drunk with the .08 law.”

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?”