In the Shadow of Angels (11 page)

His frantic search was cut short by a voice behind him. Devin’s voice. “A bit late for a social call, isn’t it?”

Dr. Stephens turned around slowly to see Devin standing just in front of the door into the house. In his searching, he hadn’t heard the door open. His luck really was decidedly poor as of late.

Brent looked to Devin after they made it only a short distance. “I know it’s no questions asked, but what is going on?”

“That’s a really long story, Brent,” came Devin’s reply. “We don’t have time to get into it right now.”

Brent looked back toward the house. “I get that, but what the hell is going on? You left the bar like two hours ago. Now you’re telling me that your psychiatrist has killed your mistress and put her in the trunk of your car? And that he’s going to try to kill you? There has to be more to it than that. If he’s going to kill you, he’ll kill me too. If I’m going to die, I need
something
to go on.”

Devin stopped walking. When Brent saw this, he too stopped and turned to face him.

“Here’s the short version. Beth pushed Jezebel over the railing at The Place. I think that Dr. Stephens killed her after she hit the ground. I
didn’t
know either of those things at the time though. I thought Jezebel fell over the railing and broke her neck. She sucked me off just before that happened and my cum is all over her. Plus, the gag I pulled on the bartender … And she’s pregnant with my baby … No one was going to believe that she fell. I panicked and put her in my trunk. Dr. Stephens followed me home. I don’t know why. I’m guessing maybe she has a cell phone shoved in her dress somewhere, that has something on it he doesn’t want police to see - or something else. But I’m pretty sure he killed her and I’m pretty sure he’ll kill me too if he has to.”

Devin started walking without waiting for a response.

“So you don’t even know if he killed her?”

“Why else would he follow me home?”

Brent weighed this question looking for a reasonable response. “How does he even know she’s in your car?”

“I don’t know. I guess he must have seen me put her there.”

Brent nodded. “That makes sense. But if Beth pushed her over the railing and he killed her and you took her body, doesn’t it seem like you’re kind of all in this together?”

Devin missed a step at the question, almost imperceptibly, as he picked it back up quickly. Devin was so concerned with trying to figure out how to make sure that Dr. Stephens took the fall for it instead of him that he completely disregarded the possibility that the doctor might be working with him, not against him. But then why had he called Beth instead of him? An interesting idea though. They both had a great deal to lose.

“Yeah, I guess it kind of does,” was all he returned in response.

“So, what’s the plan, then?” Brent asked, now a couple of paces in front of Devin. “Do we gang rush him and take him down? Or…”

“I don’t know,” Devin replied. He honestly didn’t.

They reached the front door and Devin fished through his pocket for his keys. Trying his best to be quiet, he slid the key into the lock, turned it and opened the front door a crack. When he saw no one, he opened it a bit more and stepped through. He was sure that Dr. Stephens was here. That much he could tell by the kitchen door hanging wide open and the screen ripped out of the window. He was equally sure he would be in the garage.

Devin looked to Brent and motioned for the stairs. He then turned and quietly closed the door. The carpeted floor of the living room and staircase gave back no sound. Making it up the stairs undetected was an easy affair, if not for the games their minds were playing on them. Dancing shadows and phantom sounds stopping their hearts with nearly every step. Once they crested the staircase, Devin took the lead from Brent and made his way, very slowly, to the master bedroom.

With walls on three sides of them now, they both felt considerably more at ease. Devin went to his nightstand and opened the drawer. His gun was gone. Any lingering possibility that Dr. Stephens had not killed Jezebel was now completely gone. This also gave Dr. Stephens the upper hand in a huge way.

“He’s got my gun.” Devin said.

“Jesus, Devin. This is real, isn’t it?” Brent was still thinking that a good portion of this might be all in Devin’s head, but if he took his gun, it all became very real, and did so very quickly.

Devin nodded.

“So what do we do? Grab some knives from the kitchen?”

Devin took stock of the situation. Dr. Stephens had his gun, but he also had a number of reasons not to use it. Chief among them was that he knew he set off the alarm, but couldn’t know if the police would be responding. Regardless of who killed Jezebel, if he were to gun Devin down in his own house, there would be no hiding it. Dr. Stephens’ car was also parked on the main road and he would still need to get back to it and well out of the area before the police arrived if he had any chance of getting out of this.

Knives were out of the question in any case. There was a saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight for a reason. If they confronted him, knives in hand, his only reasonable response would be to open fire. The way Devin saw it, there were only two tools at his disposal and he planned to use them both - surprise and reasonable discourse.

“No.” Devin said flatly. “I backed the Pontiac into the garage. Assuming that he’s trying to get the trunk open, his back should be to the door. I’ll open the door to make sure, then you’ll get on the other side of him. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

“What if he’s facing the door?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Their silent trek back to the stairs was over quickly. They still couldn’t be sure Dr. Stephens was in the garage though, so the trip down the stairs and to the door went much more slowly. Once they reached the door, Brent took up a position to the left side of it as Devin slowly swung it open.

The door made a deafening screech as the hinge rubbed against itself, or so it seemed to Devin, but Dr. Stephens hadn’t heard it. He had the trunk open, which was a bit of a surprise, although not entirely unexpected. That was why he came here after all. He would have forced it if he didn’t have a key. As expected, he was standing with his back to the door and was bent over searching through the trunk. It worked to their advantage since his peripheral vision was obscured by the sides of the trunk as he was searching the body frantically for … Something.

Devin motioned for Brent to go inside.

As Brent turned to face the doorway, he saw Jezebel’s naked body in the trunk with Dr. Stephens unceremoniously throwing it around looking for something. He also saw Devin’s .38 sitting inside the trunk, just to the side of Jezebel’s feet. It was, most definitely, real.

Brent stepped through the doorway as quietly as he could manage. It really didn’t matter. Dr. Stephens was so focused on what he was doing that he wouldn’t have heard or seen him if he just casually walked right by. Brent spotted Devin’s golf clubs just beside the freezer. In a decision that Devin wasn’t entirely behind, yet couldn’t exactly fault him for either, Brent grabbed the head of the biggest wooden club and slowly, silently slid it out of the bag. The club would give Brent a bit of extra courage in a moment, but for now, he carried it rather uncertainly, as if holding a dirty diaper in front of him.

Brent moved as close the side of the garage as he possibly could before attempting to walk past the Pontiac. Dr. Stephens didn’t see anything as Brent slipped past him. Brent walked well beyond where Dr. Stephens could have seen him before he dared to leave the wall of the garage. Once he did, he crouched down low, looking for all the world like every video you have seen of someone running to a helicopter - bent deeply at the waist despite the fact that the blades are spinning several feet over their erect height. When he got to the front of the car, he crouched even lower, if that was possible, and waited. For what, he didn’t know. This was as far as their plan was formulated.

After an eternity that lasted only a few seconds, Brent heard Devin’s voice: “A bit late for a social call, isn’t it?”

Dr. Stephens turned around slowly to see Devin standing just in front of the door back into the house. In his searching, he hadn’t heard the door open. His luck was decidedly poor as of late. The two of them now face to face, neither was quite sure what to say or do. Devin’s mind and eyes were fixed firmly on the .38 sitting in the trunk of the car. Despite that, he had a bit more time to plan for this impromptu meeting and decided he should be the one to break the ice.

“I see you’ve got my gun.”

Brent was looking through the windshield and back window of the car for a reaction from Dr. Stephens. He saw none. Still not sure how this was expected to play out, he let his crouch carry him slowly around the passenger side of the car. He stopped about midway between the hood and trunk and waited for a sign to present itself.

“Yes.” Dr. Stephens returned, still a bit surprised. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen if Devin came home while he was searching through his car, but he expected it to be much more dramatic. “Only as a precaution, though. You told me you kept one and I couldn’t be sure what your mental state would be if you happened across …” he looked from side to side, “well, this, really.”

“All things considered, I’d like to think that I’m in a pretty rational state right now.”

Devin raised his hand up to show they were empty. “And as you can see, I’m unarmed.” He then lifted his shirt to show that there was nothing in the waistband.

“I am unarmed as well,” Dr. Stephens said, reaching for the gun, “and as you can see the gun isn’t …”

The second that Dr. Stephens’ hand touched the gun, Brent appeared behind and beside him. Though Devin was frantically shaking his head
no,
Brent let loose a drive that would have found the green on a par 5 - if the tee had been about five feet of the ground, that is. He made contact just behind Dr. Stephens’ right ear and the blow dropped him to the ground. He misjudged the distance though and the head of the club was in front of Dr Stephens’ face when the shot landed. Only the shaft made contact. That was likely the only thing keeping there from being two corpses in the garage right now.

“Jesus, Brent!” Devin shouted, “What happened to reasonable discourse?”

Brent didn’t answer, but grabbed the gun which Dr. Stephens had dropped into the trunk of the car and joined Devin on the other side of him.

To his credit, Dr. Stephens never lost consciousness. He fell to the ground from the force and unexpected nature of the blow and his head throbbed something fierce, but he remained aware. Horribly dazed, possibly concussed, but definitely conscious.

“Motherfucker!” He yelled. “If you were going to do that, why bother with the dialogue?”

Dr. Stephens started to get back to his knees. Brent tensed his trembling hands on the gun and kept it trained on his head. “Nice and slow, buddy,” Brent said. “Nice and slow.”

Dr. Stephens climbed to one knee, shaking his head to loosen some of the cobwebs, stopping the invisible bells from ringing.

“Like I was trying to tell Devin before you went all Samurai, that gun isn’t even loaded.”

Brent lowered the gun and popped open the cylinder to verify that. “He’s not lying, Devin, it’s not loaded.”

Brent turned the gun back to Dr. Stephens He really wasn’t sure why, but he felt safer that way.

“So…” Devin said, not quite sure what to do now, “what are you looking for, Doc?”

Between the blow to the head, Brent’s
nice and slow, buddy
comment and Devin’s
what are you looking for, Doc?
question, Dr. Stephens felt oddly like he was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The seriousness of the situation snapped him back to reality quickly.

“Well, I believe that I lost a personal effect earlier tonight that Jezebel might be in possession of.”

So, Devin was right, but he said
a personal effect,
so not something that might be on her cell phone. There was some piece of physical evidence he believed might be on the body, but what?

“Let’s cut the crap, Doc,” Devin said, sharply. “I know you killed her.”

Dr. Stephens laughed. “Do you, now?” He started to go from his kneeling position to his feet, but seeing Brent’s arms wildly pushing the gun forward decided that maybe it was best to remain kneeling. At least for now. The gun may not be loaded, but its bearer proved himself unstable enough to use it as a weapon anyway. “Kind of an odd reaction to seeing me kill someone, putting her body in your car and driving her home.”

Devin knew he didn’t have all the cards, but neither did Dr. Stephens. He was relatively sure they were not at the point where he could be honest, so he needed to be able to bluff better than him. When the time came for that, he would have to be ready. For now, he would just test the water.

“How would
you
react if
I
killed her right after
you
fucked her?” Devin asked.

Dr. Stephens kneeled silently for a minute, putting this together. “Oh my, yes. That would be quite a pickle, wouldn’t it?
DNA speaks when the victim can’t
.” He recited the quote he heard somewhere.

This bizarre standoff continued, but neither of them spoke. Options were being weighed. Dr. Stephens trusted lawyers about as much as he trusted, well, lawyers really. That was about the bottom of the barrel for him as far as trust was concerned. Devin trusted Dr. Stephens about as much as he trusted, well, lawyers really. Dr. Stephens was a deplorable little weasel and Devin had no doubt that when the bus came rolling by, he would throw anyone available in front of it to save his own hide.