In the Shadow of Angels (15 page)

Once the gun was secure, Dr. Stephens started looking for Devin’s office. Certainly, he would have one. An office or a den at the very least, where he kept his files. More importantly, where he kept his computer. He didn’t see it when he went upstairs earlier, so he went down the small hallway near the stairs on the ground floor. He found Devin’s office at the end of the hallway, just beside another bathroom.

Devin’s computer was already powered up and as Dr. Stephens expected, it had a multi card reader on it. In the digital age, clients are just as likely to transfer documents with memory cards as they are in paper form or email. He took the memory card that Devin had thrown him earlier and placed it in the drive. He opened up the images folder and clicked the first image, the last image and a few at random. They were all pictures of him with one of his patients: Suzanne Henderson.

Damn it
. He had a one in four shot and missed it. He took the card back out of the computer, deleted the images from the recently viewed files list, and emptied the recycle bin. He walked back to the kitchen and got a fresh cup of coffee. Then he went back and sat on the couch to wait. He could do nothing else.

*****

The drive to The Place went without incident. Devin was so preoccupied with the body in the van that it seemed to take an eternity, while Brent and Beth passed the time making small talk. They never really spent any time alone together and even this short drive was filled with so much awkward conversation that it was clear why.

“It’s a pretty nice car, huh?” Brent asked.

“What?” Beth replied, her mind was elsewhere and it took her some time to process the question. “Oh. Yeah, I guess so. If you like BMW’s.”

“So, this Dr. Stephens guy, what’s he like?”

“He’s a manipulative weasel and I wish I’d never met him.” Her response was firm and held a venom he had not heard from her before.

“Heh. I think we’d all agree with you right about now. We probably wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Beth was looking out the window at the darkness and Brent knew he would be better off just letting her be. He couldn’t though. “I don’t trust him. Dr. Stephens, I mean.” He said, not sure if she was hearing him. He continued anyway, “We can’t leave Digby in the van. If that cop saw both of their cars by your house and then they find him dead in his van, they’re going to ask Stephens about it. I think he’ll sell us out.”

Beth didn’t say anything, but nodded slightly.

“We’re going to put him in a room. I think I can make sure no one asks any questions. It’ll just take a couple of minutes.”

Again, Beth didn’t reply, but nodded. Brent didn’t attempt any further conversation.

They didn’t pass a single car on the road, nor did it seem that anyone saw them. At least that was good. With everything that went wrong tonight, it was nice to have
something
go in their favor.

When they arrived at The Place, Devin hesitated for a moment as he entered the driveway. Seeing this, Brent got out of the driver’s seat of the BMW and walked in front of the van. He motioned for Devin to pull up next to the gate. He got back into the car and parked near Jezebel’s Fiero.

“All right, Beth, we’ll be as quick as we can. You can just wait in the car until we’re back.” Brent said.

“Please be careful,” Beth replied. “I don’t like this.”

Brent nodded and closed the door of the car. He walked past the van and opened the door to the lobby. He spoke to the clerk briefly, plopped some cash down on the counter and walked back out with a key. He stopped at the driver’s door of the van.

“All right, Devin, let’s go. The faster we do this, the less attention we draw.”

Devin nodded. He went between the seats to get to the side door of the van. Brent slid the side door of the van open. They tried to get Digby out of the van in the same way that Devin led Jezebel out of the place earlier: one arm each around his waist with one of his arms over each of their shoulders. Even with their combined strength, they couldn’t keep the body from slipping down between them.

“Well shit,” Brent said. “We’re going to have to just take him by the arms and legs.”

“Which room do we have to get him to?” Devin asked.

Brent pulled the key from his pocket to check the tag. “It’s room 108.”

“That’s not so bad. Just go open the door and we’ll do it fast. We can probably get him there in ten or fifteen seconds.”

Brent nodded and walked quickly to door 108. He unlocked it and opened it just a crack. He made his way back to the van just as quickly.

“I guess you get the legs,” Brent said, “I’ve had to drag Jimmy around enough that I’m probably better at the top.”

Digby’s body was lying flat with his legs dangling out of the side of the van. Devin grabbed an ankle with each hand.

“Not like that, you’ll lose your grip. Get a forearm under each of his calves and force his feet up behind your armpits. You can hold your fists up in front of your chest to keep them from slipping out.”

Devin wondered how often Brent was having to drag Jimmy around that he had so much specific information on how to drag a body, but he didn’t mention it. He made the adjustments and found that it did seem more secure.

“Are you ready?” Brent asked.

Devin nodded.

“Let’s get him on the ground first.”

Devin pulled on the legs and Brent lifted by the arms. They lifted him together and laid him down next to the door. Brent knelt behind him and lifted the body up, bending it at the waist. Then he slid his arms under his armpits. Before picking up the weight completely, he lifted his hands as high as he could in front of Digby’s chest and interlocked his fingers. If the body hadn’t been there, it would have looked like he was begging.

Brent took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, go!” He said and immediately put his strength into heaving the body from the ground. Devin had the much lighter end, but was walking backwards. He was forced to walk in a weird shuffle step, which almost caused him to trip over himself with nearly every step.

Brent had the bulk of the weight, but had carried a passed-out Jimmy like this enough times that he was embarrassingly good at it. He would have been more comfortable if he were the one walking backwards, but it was too late to make adjustments now. He could tell that Devin was struggling to keep from tripping over his feet. As they moved quickly toward the door to 108, they shared a single thought:
‘please don’t drop him.’

They made it to the room without dropping him, but barely. The whole process took about twenty seconds. The second they had him inside the door, Brent dropped him hard.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “that is way harder when the feet are in the air too.” When Brent had to drag Jimmy around, his legs were still on the ground. He never considered that the legs could still be holding some of the weight, but they must have been if Brent’s burning forearms were any indication.

“So what’s the plan now?” Devin asked.

“Go get his camera from the van and see if he has a video cable to hook up the output to this TV.”

Devin left without hesitation. He left the camera on the floor of the van near the safe when he went through the memory cards earlier. He saw a mass of wires in the back of the van and was sure he would find a video cable there too. When he reached the van, he began digging through the cables.

There were dozens of video cables with varying connectors. He picked up the camera and started trying to plug them into it. He found one that connected but had what looked like an HDMI output and it didn’t seem likely that the TV at a place like this would be capable of taking that connection. He put it to the side anyway, but kept checking. He tried four or five more cables when he found one that plugged into the camera and had the familiar red, white and yellow RCA connectors. That seemed more likely to work, but why would did it have the red and white wires? Did the camera have audio as well?. He took both and went back to the room.

The scene he walked into shocked him. Brent had Digby completely naked on the floor. He had removed the belt from Digby’s pants and looped it around his neck, pulled well past the notches so it was tight enough to choke him if he wasn’t already dead. Once he had the time to process what he was seeing, Devin knew exactly what Brent’s plan was.

Brent was currently working on bending a metal hanger from the closet. He threaded it through one notch in the belt and back out of another. He was holding both ends of the hanger and lifting up on it, pulling the belt tighter around Digby’s neck. He lifted it with both hands to see if it would be strong enough to lift him from the floor. Satisfied that it would, he put the rig back down. 

“Help me get him over to the closet,” Brent said.

Without hesitation, Devin grabbed an arm and helped him drag the body to the closet. They lifted him up and Brent started wrapping the coat hanger around the rod in the closet. He wrapped both ends around the pole twice and then twisted the ends around themselves like a bread tie.

Digby’s body was facing out of the closet. The belt and hanger rig was long enough that his legs were still on the floor from the knee down, while the belt around his neck precariously supported the rest of his body. The positioning was just about perfect. If he were kneeling, the belt wouldn’t have been tight enough to choke him. He would have had to lean forward to cut off the oxygen supply. If he had actually fallen face forward though, it would have been tight enough to strangle him. If he lost consciousness in this position, as was the picture Brent was trying to paint, he wouldn’t have been able to breathe. Hopefully, it would look like and accidental death from autoerotic asphyxiation.

Satisfied with the positioning of the body, Brent stepped back to look at the scene. It looked even better than he expected.

Devin was torn on how to feel about the whole business. On the one hand, it was really a good plan. When there were questions surrounding a death from autoerotic asphyxiation, even if it was someone in the public eye, there never seemed to be nearly as much detail put into the investigation as if they were found strangled to death by other means. On the other hand, it was a bit unsettling just how quickly Brent put the plan together.

“I don’t even want to know what made you think of this, Brent,” Devin said.

“Yeah, you probably don’t.”

“So what now?” Devin questioned.

“Let me have the camera and those memory cards. I’m going to put one of them on the TV.”

“I need those, Brent! They’re all I’ve got against him.”

“Don’t worry. I’m only going to use one. I’ll bring you back the others. I’ve just got to make sure it’s not the one with Jezebel”

“Are you sure we should be using one of Dr. Stephens?”

“If we’ve got this set up right, it doesn’t matter. If someone shoots themself while watching
Hannibal,
they don’t question Anthony Hopkins.”

He made a valid point. They would just be sure they didn’t tell Stephens that he was the star of the death by masturbation show. In fact, they probably wouldn’t tell him about the setup at all. The less he knew, the less chance he could talk. Devin put the memory cards, camera and cable down on the dresser.

“All right, I guess I’ll go see if I can find her keys.” Devin left Brent alone in the room.

One of the things they hadn’t spoken of was the potential location of the keys to Jezebel’s Fiero. Devin hadn’t considered it an issue because there was no way she had any keys in that tiny little dress and she wasn’t carrying a purse. Since stealing thirty-year-old Fieros isn’t exactly big business, he assumed she either left them in the ignition or did the old leave-them-on-the-tire trick. Either way, now was the time to find them.

He met Beth at Dr. Stephens’ BMW. “We’re almost ready. Are you going to be okay to drive her car?”

“I guess I’ll have to be. Whatever it takes to put this behind us.”

Devin leaned in and gently kissed her cheek. “It’s almost over.”

Devin walked to Jezebel’s Fiero and opened the driver’s door. Leaning inside, he could see the keys dangling from the ignition. He sat down in the driver’s seat and pushed in the clutch. He almost expected it not to start. It would have been fitting with the luck he was having tonight. It took some trying, but it did ultimately start. He had to quickly turn down the stereo, which was playing some horrible dance club mix - and way too loud, but the car was running. It was revving and cutting out randomly, which was a bit concerning, but at least it started. He shut it off but left the keys in the ignition. It was ready when they were.

*****

Alone in the room, Brent hooked the camera up to the TV. Surprisingly, it did have an HDMI input. In a place like this, there was a high demand for video capability on the television. He put the first memor
y
card in and opened up the first image. He stared at the image in disbelief. He flipped through a few more images thinking his min
d
may be playing tricks on him, but they weren’t.

A mix of anger and confusion began running through his mind. He did the best he could to suppress it. This was something that he would need to deal with later. Right now, they needed get out of here and execute the plan with Jezebel. He took the memory card out of the camera, slipped it back into the pouch and placed it in his left front pocket. He pulled the second card out of the pouch and put it into the camera. This one wouldn’t do either. It was Stephens and Jezebel.