The Devil Stood Up (12 page)

The Devil nodded. He wanted her to go and didn’t want her to go. But he wouldn’t put her in jeopardy again for his own selfishness.

He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then he stood and turned and started down the alley. He felt overwhelmingly as though he were abandoning her. Everything in him sung out, calling him to return to her, be near her, protect her. But he knew it was just selfishness and perhaps a bit of the man who’d been her brother. Some bit of Mark wanting to look out for his sister.

The Devil set his shoulders and turned out onto Market Street. There was almost no traffic. The sky above him glimmered on the verge of first light. He could see the breath this body generated and he closed his jacket.

Then he started toward mid-town. He marveled at the ache in his chest. All his time in Hell had never once produced this living, grieving pain. Had he done the wrong thing by sending her away? His heart told him that he had.

He turned and trotted back the way he’d come. He turned into the alley, on the verge of calling her name, but the syllables died on his outward breath.

She was gone.

* * *

Kelly drove the two hours home, her mind reeling. She kept the radio on and sang, belting out one song after another, sometimes crying, ignoring her exhaustion and confusion. She was determined to propel herself forward and to forget…everything.

At home, she stripped and showered, leaving her dirty clothes in a bundle on the bathroom floor. She floated her favorite nightgown over her head and down over her body and sank into bed. Thoughts tried to force themselves upon her, but she cleared her mind, allowing exhaustion to do its job and she drifted.

She tried to pin her mind to every day things, trying to clear the fog of the last five confused days. She had to check the bills, call the neighbor to see if she wanted to split the cost of flowers, contact the lawn service, and come up with something to tell work about why she’d called out for the last week.

Thomas was a good boss, if somewhat opaque, but as the owner of Evigan and Partners, he expected a lot from everyone in his employ, even his secretary.

* * *

Kelly drove into Princeton and to the law firm of Evigan and Partners. The office was right off Nassau street and this early in the morning, just after six-thirty, there was very little traffic. Thomas liked her to be in first, open the office, set up coffee and arrange for a delivery of bagels from the small deli down the street. She handled everything, but was too conscious of the dark circles under her eyes and the stuffed feeling of her head.

She thought too, about what she would tell Thomas when he questioned her on her ‘family emergency’. She couldn’t very well tell him her brother had died; she couldn’t tell anyone. There was no body, no funeral, and no official certificate of his death.

That thought led her to what would happen when the Devil had finished his work here on earth. He would leave the body behind, just as that other demon had left the whore’s body behind after it had fallen; after it had served its purpose. The thought made her angry and sad, neither emotion lasting long in her exhausted state.

She arranged the warm bagels into two baskets, her hands shaking. Tears tightened the back of her throat and refracted her sight, but she refused to let them fall. She hoped for a busy day filled with phone calls and appointments. So she wouldn’t have to keep thinking.

* * *

How much time had passed on Earth as the Devil lay below, unquiet in his sleep, tortured by the death of little Brian? Five years. Five years had passed since the woman-child that killed Brian had won her freedom with the help of Thomas Evigan. Five years that Thomas Evigan had reaped the benefits of swarming media coverage. Five years where he’d watched the tide change as drinks and dinners were bought for him and sycophants came in droves to celebrate the opening of his practice.

Five years on Earth are as nothing for the Devil who has been in Hell almost since before time existed. Our time on Earth is a frantic swirl amounting to very little compared to the sentence set down by God, Himself on Lucifer.

Kelly had almost no recollection of the Carrie Walsh case. Five years ago, Kelly had been twenty-three, only one year older than the woman on trial for killing her own son. Kelly hadn’t watched or read any news in that time and in fact had not really been aware of much that was going on in the world…because Kelly had been in a fight for her own life.

She’d been a junior at Rutgers, New Brunswick when the accident happened. She was older than the average junior because her time–and most of her parents’ resources–had gone to helping Mark. Between one thing and another, she’d started college two years later than she’d intended.

It was late at night and she and four friends were walking home from a party, giggling and shushing each other, pushing playfully and giggling more. They were on their street, the tall, brick row houses mostly taken over by students, and they were less than a block from home. It had been chilly but not yet cold; the street was wet with a late fall rain that had flattened the layers of orange and yellow leaves blown down over the last three days.

The pickup truck had seemed to come from the very darkness itself, swerving back and forth from lane to lane, no lights on and moving very fast. Kelly’s girlfriend, Angie, had seen it first.

“Oh my God, look at this drunk asshole,” she’d said, shaking her head and wrapping her scarf more tightly around her neck.

Two of the others had turned to look, but Kelly and another girl, Chrissy, had caught each other up in a clumsy waltz and they were humming as they spun and hopped around the other three girls. Kelly never heard Angie.

As the truck drew closer, Angie had an uneasy thought that it could slide right off the street and hit them. She glanced at the flattened, soggy leaves in the road and then back to the truck.

“Girls, we better– ”

At that moment, the truck’s lights came on, pinning Angie and the others in their glare, skidding across the lanes, coming right for them. Angie put her hands up, arms straight out and locked in panic. She screamed. Kelly and Chrissy’s romp came to a jerking halt as Kelly saw Angie’s face, illuminated in the headlights. Kelly didn’t even get a chance to turn around before the truck was upon them.

The truck slid sideways, lights flashing away from the huddled group of girls. It bounced when it hit the curb, but it was a low curb and the truck was going very fast when it hit and it did not deter it in the least. The truck gained the sidewalk and ran into the girls broadside. Kelly felt herself pushed roughly forward into Angie. Her vision was filled with Angie’s eyes, so large they seemed to take up her whole face. Angie’s mouth was a cavern that Kelly felt she was falling into, falling as the truck continued around, pushing the girls down, the tires catching Angie’s feet and legs. She and the two other girls were pulled beneath the truck even as Kelly was pushed up and over by the force, almost as though Angie’s body were a wave she was riding. Chrissy was crushed as the bed of the truck plowed into the town house behind them and Kelly was thrown fifteen feet, her head connecting with the porch railing. She rebounded neatly into the bed of the truck where it had finally come to rest against the base of the porch.

From where she lay, she heard the driver’s side door open, felt the truck lean and rebound as the driver exited, and then came the sound of pounding footsteps disappearing into the night. Lights were coming on up and down the street. She saw the sky above her, black and thick with stars. So many stars, had there always been that many? They were beautiful…

Voices surrounded her, screams, and then a siren. Where was Angie? And Chrissy? Were her friends all right? She wanted to ask someone but she found she couldn’t move. She was just tired. So tired. She didn’t want to close her eyes. She stared up, blinking, tears running coldly down her cheeks. She could feel the tears. But she couldn’t feel anything else. She closed her eyes. I just need to rest a minute.

She opened her eyes in the ambulance. An attendant smiled down at her.

“We’re almost there, you’re okay,” he said. His eyes were blue, sky blue, shining. She found that she loved him. She tried to tell him so.

“Don’t try to talk, you have a tube in your throat,” he said, reaching over her and out of her sightline, adjusting something. “You were very lucky. You might not think so right away, but…it’s amazing you survived that. Really unbelievable.” He shook his head. Kelly felt a pit form in her stomach.

My friends, she wanted to ask, are they okay?

The attendant smiled again.

“Someone was looking out for you,” he said and his eyes seemed to change, getting darker, cobalt, deep ocean, soothing. She floated.

Then she floated away.

She floated for another month while she healed. She had two broken collar bones, a laceration across the top of her head that almost left her scalped (in the Doctor’s mysteriously nauseating words: ‘partially degloved’), a ruptured spleen, three broken fingers and a very serious spinal cord injury. It was the spinal cord injury that caused her the year of fighting for an upright position and several painful surgeries that had left the scars on her neck. The year that Carrie Walsh went on trial with Thomas Evigan at her side.

Kelly had not been able to rejoin her graduating class at Rutgers. After her recovery, she’d gotten the secretarial job at the Evigan and Partners law firm because the early hours allowed her the time at night to try and finish her degree.

Kelly had mild twinges of anxiety from time to time, anxious to get it done, but life with her brother had taught her how to temper her impatience.

Now she stepped back, double-checking that the coffee was brewing and everything was ready for the day, knowing Thomas would be the first one in after her; he always was. Kelly admired his dedication.

She went to her desk in reception–really just the foyer of the old house that had been converted to office space. Kelly liked being tucked over to the side under the stained glass window. There was a row of three chairs opposite her, their backs against the stairs, but there was rarely anyone to sit there. Clients were generally greeted within seconds of Kelly informing someone that they were there. It gave the whole practice a very warm, very homey feel.

Thomas Evigan was very aware of that, even as he drove to the small lot behind his building. It used to be where a detached, three-car garage sat, but it had been torn down to make room for more cars. Thomas didn’t even have his name on his parking space; none of the parking was reserved except for four spots that had discreet ‘guest parking’ signs on them.

He exited his Audi, grabbing his attaché case (empty) and stood for a minute looking up at his building. It was a Victorian that had probably once housed a professor and his family. Princeton was a stone’s throw away.

Thomas liked that it was residential looking as opposed to a modern office building. He recognized that this house worked two ways: rich clients saw it as old money charming while poor clients (sometimes his most lucrative in the long run) tended to see the crumbling porch floorboards and the woodwork softened by the thick coats of sometimes peeling paint and they were not intimidated.

He also knew it gave him a hometown advantage as it put him in the midst of the people he knew he’d someday govern. He got involved with the locals and local government, mostly through charity work, careful to ruffle as few feathers as necessary for his climb. He’d already been voted onto the Town’s Board of Selectmen and he knew that it was just the beginning of his rise. Mayor would not be that far off and after that, well…on his best days, even the presidency of the United States did not seem out of his grasp.

To be fully trusted, he’d have to take a wife, and very soon, because children were part of the equation, too. The problem was finding a woman who’d understand the life she was signing on for. He had no intention of being faithful or of being too much involved in the day-to-day raising of children. That’s what wives–and when he was rich enough, nannies–were responsible for.

Thinking about his future wife, he entered the office. Kelly was at the reception desk. She smiled and stood to take his jacket. She looked nervous and he wondered why.

He’d hired her because she was smart and she was plain. She wouldn’t cause any trouble for him with the other lawyers or their wives. Thomas only hired male lawyers, and was determined that no office romance would sully the reputation of his firm. At least not until it was big enough to easily digest that type of scandal.

He had difficulty looking at Kelly. To him, her plainness was almost rude in its unrelenting forthrightness, but at least she dressed nicely. When he was a bit more successful, either this year or next, he’d let her go and hire some eye candy.

“Good morning, Kelly,” he said and smiled. Then, remembering that she hadn’t been in for five days, he tightened his features in concern. “I hope everything is all right. We’ve really missed you.” In fact, he’d barely noticed her absence except as a mild annoyance when he entered or exited the building. “And we’ve missed the bagels! Did you have them delivered this morning?”

He’d turned away to sort through a small stack of mail and was unaware of the mild flash of hurt in her eyes. He turned back, smiling wider.

“Hmm? Did you say something?” he asked.

“No, I…I didn’t,” Kelly said, recovering. “Thank you, it’s good to be back. If we could talk at some point later, I’d like to explain…it was a family emergency, and–”

“No need!” he flicked a hand at her, cutting her off. “I’m just happy you’re back with us, safe and sound.” He smiled wider and then turned away down the hall.

“Thank…thank you, I appreciate–”

He turned back again, cutting her off. Now there was concern on his face. Kelly tensed, anticipating a question about the ‘emergency’ or a commiseration at the very least.

“Were you able to get the bagels?”

* * *