In the Shadow of Angels (6 page)

Angela made him write her prescriptions for Valium and Xanax in return for her silence with regards to the sex. She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing when she came clean. “I’m done fucking you, Doc,” she said, “but you’re going to keep writing me the prescriptions.”

“Is this Angela or Jezebel?” He asked.

“Jesus, Doc, how stupid are you?” She questioned. “Angela isn’t real. I was fucking you for drugs.”

That revelation came nearly two years before and he continued penciling out the prescriptions ever since. Trading sex for drugs would cost him his practice and they both knew it. He tried to think of a way out of it without losing his practice, but he couldn’t seem to find one. He was her puppet.

So it was a fortuitous turn of events, indeed, that he happened to be at The Place that night. Perhaps more fortuitous that the hooker who was supposed to meet him in room 112 had not showed up yet. When he heard that odd sound outside his door, like the sound of a chunk of beef hitting a butcher block, he opened his door expecting to see his call girl –perhaps with some grand toy she was banging against his wall. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw Jezebel Anders lying there. She was flat on her back, winded, disoriented and not moving, but still very much alive.

As he stood there looking at her, wearing nothing but his short, white robe, it seemed to him that she had fallen from the sky. Like maybe God, or the universe, or whatever it was, decided to offer him a way out.

From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw someone running through the gate. He couldn’t make it out for sure and in fact wasn’t certain if it was there at all, but there was no one else around. No shades were pulled back. Like a gift.

Without giving it much thought at all, Dr. Stephens walked up to Jezebel Anders, sat down on her chest, pinched her nose closed with one thumb and forefinger, put his other hand over her mouth and waited. He held her with exactly the same amount of emotion that he had when he snuffed a candle.

In only a matter of seconds, the lack of oxygen brought Jezebel’s senses to full awareness. Her eyes grew big in alarm and she bit his hand. When he jerked it away in reflex, she let out a scream. Knowing that a scream was the one thing that someone at The Place might see or hear, he decided, rather subconsciously, on another solution to end this whole business quickly. He put his right hand beneath her head, on the base of her skull. Seeing what was coming, Jezebel’s arms were flailing about in a wild struggle to grasp anything - cause any amount of pain that might stop her inevitable demise. Her hands scratched and scraped his face furiously. She yanked at bits of hair, poked at his eyes, jerked at his ears, pushed at his free hand, but none of that stopped him.

His left hand now found purchase on her jaw and in one quick motion, he moved his left hand down and right hand up, as if trying to screw her head off like a bottle cap. He put all the force in his body into that quick motion and heard a muffled crack as he did so. There was no fight left in Jezebel.

It was only when he turned around that he truly realized what he had done: He just murdered someone. More than that, he had just murdered someone only inches away from the door to his room. Thinking quickly about the ramifications of that, he grabbed Jezebel’s arms and dragged her away from his door and to the wrought-iron fence that separated the walkway from the pool. He had no time to think about whether he should try to stage her body. In fact, it never occurred to him to try to make it look like an accident. Perhaps it would have if he had more time, but just then, he saw a light shine over the darkness that could only mean someone just opened a door above.

Dr. Stephens ran back to his room and shut the door quietly.

Through the peephole, Dr. Stephens watched a man run to Jezebel, look around frantically, then run away, only to reappear moments later. What happened next, he found particularly troubling: that man took her, his arm around her waist and her arm around his shoulder and led her toward the gate.

Watching through the peephole he couldn’t tell that she wasn’t walking at all, but being dragged. He also couldn’t tell who it was leading her away. Watching through his peephole, all he could see was her leaving The Place. He was sure she was dead when he returned to his room, but now he doubted and he had a compulsion to leave, but quickly.

He ran to the bed and started getting dressed. Pants, shirt, shoes, belt. Then he looked around for any other sign that he had been there. He found none. One quick run to the restroom to see if the scratch marks on his face were horribly noticeable and then he would be on his way. When he looked into the mirror, he scarcely saw any signs of where her nails found his face. Even if they had been there, he probably wouldn’t have seen them. For what he did see was far, far worse. His douche-y, dangling, gold, dollar sign earring was gone.

He ran outside and searched frantically for it. He looked where he found her initially and all the way to where he left her. There was no sign of it. That could mean only one thing: it was with her. In her hand or on her clothing, it didn’t matter.

That was a problem.

While it may be true that no one ever saw or heard anything at The Place, it was also true that if you left evidence on the body, it most certainly
would
speak.

Another stripe whizzed past the car and with it the lights of The Place grew smaller and dimmer in Beth’s rearview mirror. It was so small now that it was a barely perceptible dot against the black reflection of the night. If she hadn’t known it was there, she could easily have mistaken it for a street light. It was so small, in fact, that she realized that in only a few more seconds, any trace of light would be gone - swallowed by a vast and empty darkness. This was the first thought she had other than
away.
The metaphor was too perfect to ignore.

She was the light being swallowed by the darkness. Her light was bright before she pushed Jezebel over that handrail, but with every mile she put between them, that light faded. Soon, there would be nothing but blackness and from that, there would be no turning back. No escape.

Jezebel was also that light. While Beth might not have thought her light was as pure, it was a light nonetheless. A light that she may well have extinguished when she pushed her over that railing. She was alive when Beth left here there, she saw that much in her eyes, but she couldn’t be sure how badly she was hurt. Surely, a fall like that would have done some major damage. Even though she landed flat on her back, her head must have bounced ferociously off that concrete. Broken back? Fractured skull? Worse? Beth couldn’t bear to think of the worse.

She was many things, but she was no killer.

She hammered her brake pedal to the floor and turned the wheel hard to the right. The rear of the car slid wildly in a clockwise motion when the force of the brakes met the force of the turn. The car spun around just over two and a half times and finally came to rest with the front tires on the pavement and the back in the soft gravel of the shoulder. She didn’t wait for the dust to settle before she hammered the gas to the floor -Heading this time toward the light.

She couldn’t leave her like that. She had to get back to The Place.

*****

Dr. Stephens rushed to the gate of The Place to get to his car. He opened the gate when he saw one of his patients, Devin Bryant, fumbling around in the trunk of his car. Through the trunk’s inner light, he could just make out a sheet covering up a rather curious shape. Could that have been a body? The trunk closed.

How much time passed since he saw that unknown figure leading Jezebel through the gate? Two minutes? Three? Maybe three, but no more. He dressed very quickly and wasted very little time searching for his earring. As he tried to imagine how much time it would actually take to stuff a body into the trunk of a car and cover it up, the timing seemed about right. Very curious, indeed.

Dr. Stephens stood frozen at the gate until Devin started up his car and drove out of the lot. Once his car was on the road, he searched where it had been for his earring. He didn’t find that, but what he did find was a broken off piece of a
come-fuck-me
heel. The type of heel Jezebel Anders often wore.

Dr. Stephens realized that his situation just improved dramatically. He didn’t know why Devin was taking away Jezebel’s body in the trunk of a car, but he did know that all he needed to do now was get back that earring and his troubles would be over. Then he would phone in an anonymous tip to the police. ‘
I overheard Devin Bryant arguing with Jezebel Anders at The Place’,
he would say, ‘
and then it went silent. When I went to the door to see what was going on, I saw Devin Bryant stuffing something big into the trunk of his car. It looked like a body.’

When the police found Jezebel Anders in the trunk of Devin’s car, it wouldn’t matter who had done what to her. As long as he could get his earring back first.

He could see the taillights of Devin’s car fading fast down highway 62. He got into his own car and started to follow. The road ran straight for as far as the eye could see and there were only a few side roads. He didn’t need to follow too close.

*****

When Beth was about midway back to The Place, she passed Devin on the highway. She knew it was him and he knew it was her, but they both just ignored each other, each of them so involved in their situations at hand. They both knew this was going to lead to some awkward conversations later. For her part, she was supposed to be at home now. For his part, he was supposed to be at the bar with BrentandJimmy. Each of them decided they were going to try just not bringing it up. Both O’Halligan’s and the road to their house were further down the road in the direction that Devin was currently travelling. Neither of them had any business being there - not if they were actually doing what the other thought.

Shortly after that, she passed a car that might have belonged to Dr. Stephens. Silver BMW’s weren’t exactly scarce in Ashwood, so it could have been anyone. She hadn’t thought to look at the license plate on the front of the car, but remembered just in time to check the reflection in the rearview. Though it was backwards, she could clearly make out the personalized license plate ‘
DR $
’. Later, she would think it a very odd coincidence that the only three cars on the road tonight were hers, Devin’s and Dr. Stephens’, but right now she was concentrating on getting back to The Place.

Her headlights caught Jezebel’s fire-engine-red Fiero as she pulled into the lot. Even if there were more than one fire-engine-red Fiero in Ashwood, which there may have been twenty-five years ago, but probably weren’t any longer, there would have been no mistaking that this one belonged to Jezebel. For it also had the shiny red wheels and the big, black eyelashes pasted onto the pop-up headlights.

Beth’s heart sank just a bit. She hoped Jezebel’s car would be gone. Hoped she got up and walked away. Then she could go to her house and talk it through, or fight, or whatever had to happen. If her car was still here, she must still be laying on that sidewalk. For what? Ten minutes now? Fifteen? It hardly mattered. If she was still laying on that sidewalk, she must be seriously injured.

The thoughts passed through Beth’s mind in fractions of a second.

She threw her car in park, flung the door open and ran to the gate. Her headlights were still on and shining directly at the walkway where she last saw Jezebel, but there was no one there. She scanned the ground floor and saw no one outside. Then she had another thought. She ran up to the room that Devin was in and pounded on the door. In her mind, Jezebel may have gone back to the room with Devin. There, they talked about how his evil witch of a wife pushed her over the railing. Then they made sweet love as they plotted her demise.

That was the part of her mind that was being even less rational than the rest though. The more rational part of her mind just passed Devin on highway 62. Even if Jezebel was in his room, he wasn’t.

She wasn’t sure what to do now. She was prepared for what she would do if Jezebel drove away, at least she knew what she had to do, even if she wasn’t completely prepared for it. She was prepared for what she was going to do if Jezebel was still laying there on the sidewalk, although she really hadn’t thought that through all that well either. She would have called for medical assistance for sure, but what would she tell the paramedics when they arrived? Or worse, the police? She hadn’t prepared for what she was going to do if Jezebel just disappeared.

It was in a last ditch effort that she went back to the check in counter to ask if he saw her leave. His response was exactly what she would have expected, “I didn’t see anything.”

Just perfect.

She thought to ask one last question, “That was my husband in room 213. Did he turn in his key before he left?”

“Look, lady,” the clerk replied, “not that it’s any of your business, but no one ever turns in their keys when they leave. Not even you did and you’re about as goody-goody as they get.”

He made a valid point.

For possibly the first time in her life, she felt utterly helpless. The only remaining option seemed to be to go turn herself in to the police and hope that Jezebel turned up somewhere unharmed.

But first, she needed to call her lawyer.