Now, this is the longest chapter of this story so far, and there's a lot of shit happening in it (look at the Warnings), and I won't lie, it was kind of a struggle writing it at times. I did have a lot of fun with Google Maps once again, though.

I gotta say something else before you get to reading: I've been able to narrow the number of chapters down to 16, maybe 17 chapters. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on chapter 14, and that means I'll be finished soon, sooner rather than later. BUT next week I'll be starting an internship and won't have time for shit, so even if I manage finishing this story this week (and I'm in the middle of renovating, so that's not that likely), I don't know when I can take the time to get started on Part 2, because, yeah, there's gonna be a Part 2; I didn't name it Part 1 for nothing (unlike the producers of "Loaded Weapon 1"). So, sorry, but you'll have to have a bit of patience. Real life is demanding my attention.

WARNING: Dropping of the c-bomb, using of the n-word, explicit descriptions of Character Death (OFC), murder and conspiracy to murder.

Enjoy!

The Penny in the Parking Lot: Part 1

The Understudy

Chapter 10

After he'd made sure Nina had completely calmed down, Devil told her to show him photos of Nick, and asked her for information on what car the dick was driving. With the car Nina wasn't very helpful ("It's, uh, big. And blue. Kinda shiny."), but she showed him pictures of Nick, and he turned out to be a tall guy, about an inch taller than Devil himself, but the way his dark-brown hair was done in a kind of Justin-Bieber-mob style, Devil couldn't take him seriously. Nick was pretty, in a way Devil had never been, but that also meant he looked like Devil could push him over with only his pinky finger. On one of the pictures Nina showed him, Nick was wearing a pink polo. PINK. Come on, Devil thought, what kinda douchbags has she been going out with?

Also, Nick was three years older than Nina, but that still left him almost ten years Devil's junior, and Devil knew if he ever met the guy, there was no doubt about who'd get out on top. As long as Nina stayed safe behind locked doors when she was alone, everything was going to be okay. Devil made a trip to the closest hardware store and bought a heavy, iron-made locking bolt for the door that was a thousand times safer than the thin, friable safety chain, and Nina handed him tools and screws from the toolbox he kept in the trunk of his truck when he assembled it to the door. Afterwards they both felt a lot safer and laid down on the couch to watch some senseless TV.

That same day at around 6 o'clock, Duffy sent him a text that said to meet him in the pet store again, ASAP. Devil sighed, but knew there was no way around it, so he told Nina to lock the door behind him, and to not forget the bolt, and to not open the door if she couldn't see who was standing there through the spy. Nina just nodded and said "yes" and "sure" and "okay" and "I won't", and Devil had the distinct feeling she thought he was being overcautious with this. He just let her believe that for now. Had he taken a picture of when Nina had opened the door to him a few hours before, he was sure she wouldn't be like that.

Arriving at the pet store quickly, pink-haired petshop-Nina just nodded her head in the direction of the storage room him and Duffy had met in the last time, and he tipped an invisible hat at her and made his way over to the door in the back of the store.

"Mr. Devil, glad you could make it" Wynn Duffy said and didn't even wait for Devil to have a seat before he continued talking.

"It's good that I reach you today, because there's some things you need to do, like go to the whore house and meet Ms. Granger-"

"I already did that" Devil interrupted him, slumping down on the office chair that stood there just for him. "Today."

"Really? When?"

"Round noon."

"Did you say what I told you to?"

"Yep. Worked out just like you said it would. I met the chick, stone-cold bitch, by the way, that's the impression I got, and then I met that nice whore, whatsername, Mary, or somethin', no, Mandy, sorry, had to pay in advance, so I thought, what the hell, I can try her out."

"Did you do her?"

"Nah. My gir-" Devil broke off. He'd almost called Nina his girlfriend. He couldn't really do that, not now, not so soon, not after they'd both agreed this, whatever this was with them, was not a relationship. "Uh, a friend… I got a call, had to go."

"That so." Duffy turned his office chair from side to side a little. "Shame. Well, glad you got to meet Ms. Granger, and yes, in fact, your impression that she's a stone-cold bitch is quite correct. You still have inhibitions about killing her?"

Devil frowned and voted for complete honesty, since he himself didn't know how to feel about it. He had to make his mind up first, no use in lying to Duffy about something he didn't know the true answer to. "Not sure. I jus' wanna get it done and over with."

"Well, that's an attitude I can deal with, Mr. Devil! Let's get down to business then."

And Duffy produced his small laptop out of thin air again and called up Google Maps.

"You were there, you know how many security cameras there were in the building."

"Probably more cameras than whores, and in a cathouse that big, that's sayin' somethin'."

"Most certainly is. Now, Ms. Granger owns a house" and Duffy started typing in a destination and then zoomed in on it and showed it to Devil, "in Georgetown, on Taylorsville Trail, to be exact, a big house with a pool and most likely, I can only guess since I've never been there myself, with a security camera in every room, including bath and bedroom."

"Nice."

"That's the one" Duffy said, moving the curser on the house that belonged to Granger. "That's where the cunt lives. It's hard to miss, since it's directly next to the Yuko-En on the Elkhorn park."

"What park?"

"Don't matter. Now, the drive from the whore house to Taylorsville Trail takes about thirty minutes, and Ms. Granger, as I've found out by having her shadowed for the past week, has the incredibly dangerous character trait of being a creature of habit. If possible, she always takes the same route home, always in the same range of time, so we can rudimentarily estimate when she'll show up in what place. I guess you can see the danger in that."

Devil nodded gravely. He knew, just as everybody in this business, that having such habits was pretty fucking stupid if you didn't want to get killed. It was like leaving bread crumbs on the floor for your enemies, and all they had to do was follow the trail. There weren't even birds to pick them up. But apparently, Granger didn't know that.

Or, Devil knew, what was more likely was that she knew about that danger and thought it didn't concern her. That's what she had in common with Quarles. She thought she was invincible, like that Irish kid from Misfits. If someone stabbed her through the stomach with a metal pipe, she would just stand up again, dust herself off and go about business as usual. Devil told Duffy as much.

"She ain't stupid, she knows it's dangerous. She just thinks nothin's ever gonna happen to her" he said. "The bitch thinks she's untouchable."

"She does, indeed. But she's not and she will find that out soon enough. Tomorrow night, to be exact."

"What? Tomorrow night?" A flash of anxiety went through Devil's body. "Why… why so soon?"

"Because, tomorrow night is the absolute perfect time to do it. Trust me, Mr. Devil, I've got it all figured out."

"Do you." Devil didn't sound convinced, because he wasn't. "Well, let's hear it then, and if this is just another shitty plan that might land me in jail, do remember where it could land you and your skinny, suited ass."

"Alright, alright, just listen, would you?" Wynn Duffy lifted a placating hand. "As I said, Ms. Granger always takes the same route home, always at roughly the same time. As it seems she's a workaholic, because when she leaves it's always almost nighttime already, so it's gonna be dark. The route she takes" and Duffy used the laptop again to show Devil the route he meant, "is this one, down Leestown Pike and then a left turn onto Woodlake Road, and what comes after that is none of your concern because Woodlake Road is where you'll be waiting for her. Do you wanna know why?"

"I know why" Devil said, studying the satellite-issued picture of Woodlake Road and its surroundings. "It's all fields there."

"Exactly. Nothing but fields and shit, and a bit of wood here and there, and nothing but that for miles. And Stacey Granger will most definitely drive through this road at some point tomorrow night, and you will be there, heading her off with a road block, some kind of trap, I don't exactly care how you do it, just, don't let her pass. And then you kill her. In that area, you could even use a gun. No witnesses there that could hear the shot."

"But why tomorrow night? You said, she uses this way home every day, not just tomorrow night. Why's it gotta be tomorrow night?"

"I'll come to that yet, Mr. Devil, just you wait."

Wynn Duffy did explain it all to Devil, and Devil had to admit it was a pretty fucking solid plan. Obviously, that guy knew his way about murder. Now, usually knowing that about a person didn't necessarily serve to calm Devil down, but in this situation, it did. Because if Devil didn't follow Duffy's plan to the t, it could land him in jail for the rest of his life. Of course, it would land Duffy there, as well, but if it actually came to that, it wouldn't do Devil any good. Duffy had one thing right: They were in this together. From the very moment Devil had entered Duffy's motor coach for the first time one and a half weeks ago, they'd been in this big pile of shit together, and if one said anything, they would drag the other down, as well. Devil hated Duffy for it. Like Devil hadn't already shouldered enough of a burden by coming here and playing the traitor that he wasn't ever going to be, now Duffy had to throw this at him, as well.

Devil knew that he would never forget that. If he actually went through with this, it would follow him for a long time, maybe for the rest of his life. He'd been able to justify the Norwegians by telling himself that Funny would have died, had he not killed them like he did. But this? This was just to satisfy Duffy's greed, wipe off a debt that Devil had no hand in, saving his ass from getting slaughtered by Quarles in the process.

Nevertheless, Duffy's plan was foolproof, if all went well. Devil got back to Nina's and didn't talk about where he went, and she knew better than to ask. They ate pizza and went to bed eventually, and Devil sensed Nina fall asleep next to him. His eyes stayed open, though, and his mind aware, for a long time, his thoughts not able to sway from what he was going to do the next day. He fell asleep in the early morning hours.

Devil dreamt that he was standing in a hall, and there were a lot of people around him, strangers, but Devil belonged. He belonged there, amidst all these strangers, because he knew they were all here, together in this hall, for the same purpose, although he couldn't say what purpose it was. Someone came and said they had fifteen minutes until it would start, whatever it was. Suddenly Devil remembered that he didn't have his gun. He started to panic. He needed his gun! So he turned and left the hall, knowing he had such a long way to get to his gun, but so, so little time.

He crossed a street and went along a way. It wasn't just a way, though, it turned, and suddenly Devil was in the jungle, fighting his way through the undergrowth, his arms getting scraped in the process, his feet sinking into the slurry ground, slowing him down. Devil was running out of time, and he knew it, knew so perfectly well that he was gonna be late, even though he didn't know what time it was or how much time had passed. He wouldn't make it. And then the jungle stopped, just stopped; Devil had to balance his way over what looked like a netting of roots, braided into a giant dome-shaped thing, and Devil was standing at the top of it, staring down and realizing he was so high up off the earth that he couldn't see the ground. The sun was blinding him.

Devil knew he wasn't supposed to be here. He'd gotten lost along the way. So many possibilities presented themselves in his mind on how to escape this place, and they all led him back here in the end.

One of the roots snapped, and Devil fell into the bottomless pit, through clouds, saw the sunshine disappear, and he knew, he KNEW this was just a dream. He was falling, but he knew it was just a dream. All you need to do, he told himself, before you start to scream, is wake up. Wake. UP.

Devil woke up with a start, but he did scream, too. Nina jerked awake next to him and turned onto her back, looking at him where he was sitting up, breathing heavily like he'd just run a marathon.

"Devil?" she asked sleepily. "Everythin' alrigh'…?"

Devil squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to forget how it had felt to fall, so REAL, and willing his heartbeat to calm the fuck down.

"S'fine, baby" he pressed out. "Jus' had a wild dream. Sleep on."

"'Kay…"

Nina's lids were drooping again, and she was asleep within the minute. Devil carefully slipped out of bed, not wanting to wake her again. He sat himself in the living room, on the couch, and stared at the TV, not seeing what he was watching on mute, until he dozed off and woke up a short time later when Nina had to get up for work. She saw that he had fallen asleep on the couch and she looked worried, but she didn't say anything. Devil wouldn't have said anything either way, and he was glad she didn't try to pry anything out of him.

That day Nina didn't get off work early. She worked her normal hours from nine to five, and Devil left shortly before she got home. He didn't want to see her. There were still quite a few hours to kill until night time came around, and Devil used the extra time on his hands to drive along the entire Woodlake Road, up and down, and then up and then down again, until he'd found what he believed to be the perfect position for the roadblock. Putting his car in park at the side of the road, he disassembled his Beretta and cleaned it. Counted his ammunition. Checked his gear. Gloves, check. Plastic bags, check. Shovel, check.

Devil looked at the time. Still between one and three hours until encounter. Damn it, Devil thought. If I wait for this any longer, I'mma go nuts! Fifty minutes later, it was half past ten, the sun had set completely now, and the road was empty. Even in daylight only few cars had passed him. Devil decided that now it was time to set the road block. If anyone came by that wasn't Stacey Granger, he'd just let them through. They wouldn't remember him.

When Devil had left Wynn Duffy in the pet store the day before, he'd walked to the far end of the parking lot of the Wal-Mart Supercenter, where Mike was waiting for him, wearing a black hat so he wouldn't be recognized (and looking pretty ridiculous with it), and handed two timber trestles over to him. Now Devil got them out of the back of his truck and stood them on the middle of the northbound lane. They were painted in red and white stripes, like the police-issued barrier tape, so the headlights of anyone's car would catch them and the drivers would be forced to halt. Satisfied with his work, Devil sat back in his truck, leaving the door open so he could get out quickly if need be. He checked his gun for the last time. It was all fine.

And then suddenly he could see lights in the distance, they came near. He heard the hum of an engine. Reflexively he checked his gun again. His leg was twitching like crazy, his whole body was buzzing with nervous energy. What if it was Granger, but what if someone was following directly behind her? Neither him nor Duffy had pondered over that possibility for long because it was just so unlikely, but what if it did happen now? He'd have to kill them both. And what if it was a family in the other car? With children?

Devil only now noticed that his breathing was becoming erratic. Jesus Christ, he thought. Derek Lennox, pull yourself together. You will not have a panic attack now. Get a grip!, he told himself. Calm down. Breathe. In, and out. Good.

The car was nearing now. There was only the one car, so that was something. Devil wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. The Beretta was in its place in the back of his belt. He stood up and neared the road as the car came closer and closer. The lights still blinded Devil enough that he couldn't tell if it was her, or someone else. Then the car came to a stop in front of the roadblock, and Devil took a few steps to the side, to be out of the light, and he could see Stacey Granger's pretty face frown at the trestles. He stepped out of the shadows.

"Hey there, Ms. Granger" he said, and his voice didn't sound nearly as raw as he felt.

She jerked in surprise and turned to him. He could see her thinking about where she knew him from, until recognition dawned a few seconds later.

"Oh. You. Hello. What are…" And then the REAL recognition set in.

"Oh… oh. Well… I should… I should have known, shouldn't I. Mandy told me you paid and then didn't even do her, you just left. I should have seen this coming."

She got out of her car, leaving the headlights on, and in the simmering semi-darkness they created, he could only see half of her face, but that half had lost most of its cockiness. Right now, there was no invincible, stone-cold bitch standing in front of Devil, it was just a skinny woman that realized she was alone in an empty street with a stranger who had set up a roadblock for her, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of fields and forest.

"Maybe you shoulda" Devil said. He shook his head. "Why in the hell didn't you just give Duffy back his money? You have it now. Why couldn't you just give it back, huh?"

"So Duffy sent you."

"Yeah. Yeah, he did."

"And what now? You set up a roadblock to head me off, and now?"

"Now I'mma shoot you" Devil answered honestly and took his Beretta out of his belt. He didn't raise it yet, just kept it in his hand at his side, the weight a comfort in this alien situation.

Granger's mouth started trembling when she saw the gun and understood that this was no game, that this was reality. That Devil had the honest intention of killing her.

"Okay, look" she said, holding up a hand like it could stop a bullet. "We can talk about this. I'm sure we could work something out. Like whatever… whatever Duffy offered you, I'll double it. I'll double it, yeah, okay? I'm serious! I got the money, you said it yourself, you know I ain't joking!"

"It ain't about money. Not just about that, anyway. I… I gotta do it, or I'mma get killed."

"You don't have to be afraid of Duffy, I… I can get you under my protection! It's the Dixie Mafia, I'm sure we can handle something like that, you don't have to do this, please."

"It ain't about Duffy. It's… complicated. Sorry."

Devil lifted the gun and pointed it at her, and Granger started crying. "Please! No. Don't. Just… stop, please, I'll… I'll do anything, please!"

She started unbuttoning her blouse then and Devil almost rolled his eyes; of course she would think fucking would get her out of this situation. A woman like her, beautiful and aware of it, in her business, she'd probably been sliding by on her looks her entire life, and it might have gotten her out of a few sticky situations. But Devil knew that, like the poor nigger boy whose legs he hadn't had the strength to break, this woman was dead. Even if Devil actually let her live and Duffy made good on his threat of ratting him out to Quarles, if Duffy survived that, he would just find another guy to kill her off for him. Wynn Duffy had been planning his vendetta against this woman since he'd first asked her to give him his money back and she'd said no.

She was good as dead. If Devil could save his own skin now, and sacrifice hers to do it, he decided he just had to do it then. He'd already gotten this far. You couldn't trust this woman to give back something that was actually, truthfully someone else's property, so how could you trust her to keep to her word about protection?

Devil shook his head. "You can keep your tits in your shirt, girl. You ain't gettin' out of this one with them."

"What…" Granger's shaking fingers stilled on her last buttons. "Come on. You want this. Every man wants this. All you ever want is to fuck me. I saw you stare at my tits yesterday. You want this. I'm giving it to you-"

"Girl, I didn't stare at your tits. You jus' wanted me to, you're fuckin' delusional."

And just like that, the invincible, stone-cold bitch was back. Her spine went rigid, her face transformed, and it was like another person entirely was standing in front of Devil. He understood. Not the stone-cold bitch was an act, but the scared one was. This was her, this was Stacey Granger: Stone-cold, detached. Dangerous. Invincible megalomaniac.

"You think so, huh. You like to think that I'm the crazy one here. Well, I'm not the one pointing a gun at someone I hardly know."

"And I ain't the one tryin' to fuck their way out of a situation there ain't no way out of" Devil interrupted her. He inched a bit closer to her, his gun now pointed directly at her chest, because in this darkness, he wanted to make sure he wouldn't miss.

"There's always a way out, haven't you figured that out yet?" Granger's mouth was set into a thin line. Her face wasn't really pretty that way anymore, and with tear stains on her cheeks and her blouse undone like this, she didn't look better than any of her whores.

"You didn't answer my question. Why didn't you just pay Duffy back what you owed him?"

"Because" Granger said, pushing a strand of glossy brown hair out of her face elegantly, "I didn't want to."

Stacey Granger didn't have any regrets, Devil could see it plain as day. It made him feel better about what he was going to do now.

"Well, you have it your way" he said. Pulling the trigger had never felt so easy, and never so hard.

The impact of the bullet threw Granger back onto the ground. A fine spray of blood colored the air around her red for a few seconds. It rained onto the grass they were standing on. Or, well, Devil was standing on. Granger was lying now, her body in spasms, wet choking sounds coming from her throat. She wasn't dead yet, even though Devil had aimed rather perfectly for the heart. Shuffling over to her, Devil could see that blood was running freely out of her mouth to both sides. It looked ugly. She looked ugly. Devil knew, if he told her this now, this woman would die unhappy. He decided against it, doing her this one little favor.

When Granger saw him standing over her, she gave a weak squeaking sound that could have been a try at talking, or just a noise to express pain. Devil crouched down.

"W… why-y?" Granger asked. Devil shrugged.

"I guess we just both were in the wrong place at the wrong fuckin' time."

And then, just like that, she died. From one moment to the next, her eyes stopped looking at him, and just looked through him. The light went. The change in appearance was instantaneous. On TV, when somebody died, they made it look like it took the body some time to lose its color, but in real life, it wasn't like that. The second the heart stopped beating and pumping blood through the veins, the skin turned gray. The body took a few minutes to cool down, that much was true, but the color? It changed from one second to the next.

Crouching over the body of Stacey Granger in the dark on the side of the road, Devil listened into himself and tried to find out what he was feeling. He wasn't sure whether the lack of regret was a bad thing, maybe a sign that he'd lost his mind? But, no, that couldn't be. For now, Devil decided that it had to be a good thing, because he still had some things to do.

Getting the plastic bags out of the car, he wrapped the body up as neatly as he could. Lifting her wasn't that hard; luckily Stacey Granger had been skinny, probably a victim of media-induced diet delusions. The heaviest part of her body had to be her fake tits. Still it took some fight out of Devil to haul her into the trunk of his truck. A slack human body, as skinny as it was, bore an unbelievable weight to it. Next he packed up the trestles and just left Granger's car standing in the middle of the lane, now looking abandoned.

It was midnight by the time Devil sat behind the wheel and started the motor with a body in the trunk. Now the really tricky part of the plan began. Wynn Duffy had obviously put a lot of thought into it, and Devil dimly wondered if all his murders were that well thought through. He drove along Woodlake Road straight onto Bedford Road, then took the right turn onto Georgetown Road. It felt weird, driving this route with Granger's remains in the trunk, knowing this was her way home, the route she'd taken every day. Devil saw the trees and fields pass him by and knew that Granger had seen these trees and these fields every day. He looked at them for the first time, but Granger, she'd probably known every single one of them by heart and hadn't even noticed she did, but if something was in disarray in this environment she'd seen so often without actually seeing it, Devil was sure she would have noticed. It felt more like an invasion into her privacy than her unbuttoning her blouse for him and him looking into her eyes while she died had.

Thinking about that, the quiet of the night became almost oppressive, and Devil turned on the radio, which at this hour there was only shit on, so he pushed a CD into the player that Keegan had lent him. It was some dark techno stuff, Prodigy he thought Keegan had said the name of the band was, and usually Devil didn't listen to this crap, but right now, it really, actually fit his mood. John Denver wouldn't have done it right now.

No car came across him on Frankfort Pike, and Devil was glad of it. Being this alone made him feel more secure. Finally he reached the inner skirts of Georgetown. Duffy had told him where to go, and Devil knew the way by heart as he maneuvered his truck onto North Broadway Street and looked at the dark, silent houses in the neighborhoods he passed. Not a single person was on the street. It was like a blessing.

Had he actually wanted to arrive at Granger's home, Devil knew he would have had to drive onto Payne Ave and then take a turn to the left onto Rough River Run to get into the rich neighborhood her house was located in. But that wasn't where Devil was headed, and hence he slowed down less than half a mile before the right turn onto Payne Ave offered itself and turned left instead. He would have liked to drive further so as to not have such a long distance to walk on foot, but he didn't want to be seen, and he was sure the Georgetown Sewer Department had security cameras installed, as well.

Devil drove slowly past some gigantic fertilizer basins and into the woods, as far as his old 4runner would go. Then he halted, and turned the motor off. The lights went out in an instant, as did the music, and for a moment Devil sat there in the complete blackness and silence, willing his eyes to get used to the darkness, and feeling like he was being swallowed whole. It reminded him of a nightmare he'd had repeatedly when he was three or four years old, one of the first memories of his childhood he still had. He'd laid in bed and pulled the blanket over his head, and suddenly the blackness under the blanket swallowed him and he couldn't surface anymore, and he could hear a storm, a tornado blowing over the blanket and there was nothing he could do.

Devil blinked to rid himself of that memory. The woods started taking fuzzy shapes around him, and he checked his cell phone for the time: Too early still? Duffy had told him to wait until 2 am. But it would take Devil some time to bury the body, and as he listened around, trusting only his ears in the oppressive darkness around him, he heard nothing, nothing at all. A breeze blowing in the warm September air. A crocket chirped, then stopped, then picked up its chirping again. No sounds of voices, or cars, or anything else even remotely human, other than Devil's own breathing.

Fuck Duffy, Devil thought to himself. It's late enough. The earlier I'm done with this shit, the better.

As silently as he could he slipped out of the truck, leaving the door open a crack so he didn't have the unnecessary noise of slamming it shut, and walked around to the trunk. It couldn't be physically possible, as far as Devil knew (whose knowledge of physics was admittedly small), but Granger's body seemed to have gotten heavier since he'd last lifted it, and it pissed Devil off. He didn't exactly know how much further it was to his destination, but it had to be a quarter of a mile at least, and he had to walk that distance through the darkness with the body and a shovel.

Heaving the body over his shoulder in a weird half-fireman's carry, he grabbed the shovel and left the trunk open as well. He could close it when he left. Here in the dark, no-one would find it anyway. Grabbing a flashlight, he went on his way.

Devil was headed, and that was the real elaborate part of Duffy's plan, to the Georgetown Sewer Department because for one, there was a construction site on the compound where they wanted to build an environmental monitoring station, and the foundations for that had been dug in the last couple of days. The next day, and that was the reason why Devil had had to kill Granger tonight, they would pour the cement over the foundations so they could start building. And if Devil buried the body in the dirt before the cement was poured over it, nobody would ever find it, and nobody would ever find out what had happened to Granger. Sure, they would find the car, and they would see specks of blood on the side of Woodlake Road where the car stood. But nobody would ever actually be able to prove that she'd been murdered.

It was a perfect plan, Devil knew. He wondered if Duffy had stolen it from Misfits. But even if anybody figured out that Granger's body could be buried somewhere, the stretch from Woodlake Road to the Sewer Department was a long one to make.

Devil illuminated the ground in front of his feet so he wouldn't fall on his face. He still tripped over rocks and roots and bumps from time to time. Luckily he never fell. The extra weight on his back was hell on his side, even though it hadn't hurt him in quite some time now, and he was drenched in sweat when he finally, finally reached the threshold of the Department compound. He could see the construction side, it was only thirty feet away from him now, and he could have wept, he was so glad to see it. The last few seconds it took him to get close enough that he could drop the body to the ground passed agonizingly slow, but he made it. Turning the flash light off, he sat on the ground next to the wrapped-up body and tried to catch his breath.

Listening to his environment again, he still couldn't hear anything. He was far away enough from any building that he felt secure enough to not be on any camera. This was Georgetown, not Frankfort – no-one would think it necessary to observe a construction site for a Sewer Department. Devil could smell the stench of waste and sewage. That was the other reason why this place was perfect for burying a body. If the body started to rot, no-one would smell it because everything was covered by the fumes of thousands of people's worth of shit.

Devil took a deep breath then and moved his head from side to side to get the tension out of his neck. His side had ceased acting up. He was as good to go as he was going to get tonight. So he stood up and grabbed the shovel he'd dropped to the ground, and slid down into the pit where the foundation for the monitoring station had been dug out. He started digging right at the edge of the dropping. It didn't have to be that deep, but he couldn't risk anyone accidently seeing a finger sticking out, so he had to dig at least three feet of dirt out.

Devil had no idea how long he'd been digging, the flash light lying on the ground so he could see where to set the shovel next. The night was still silent when he dropped the body into the hole, and as silent as it ever was when he started shoveling the dirt back in its place. Stomping on the ground where he had buried Granger to even it out, he thought he heard, or rather felt, something snap. Might have been her spine, he thought. Well, it wouldn't bother her anymore.

Devil was exhausted when he stumbled back to his truck in the woods. The cricket was still at it, chirping an entire concert just for him. Devil checked his cell phone again. 4 am. Time to get out of here, he thought. He packed up his stuff, closed all the doors that needed closing and started the motor as quickly as he could, but it still seemed not quick enough, too slow. Too slow. That feeling rang a bell in his mind, he couldn't quite catch on, though, and just realized how goddamn tired he was. It was still more than half an hour until he was at Nina's. He had no idea how he was supposed to stay awake that long… he knew he couldn't stop anywhere for coffee, though. He'd committed a crime; he needed to be unseen.

So he just started driving, down Frankfort Pike, and when he was out of the more lived in areas and back to just fields and forest, he turned on the CD player and cranked up Prodigy as high as he dared to keep him awake. He sent a text while driving to Duffy with his number suppressed, consisting of one word. 'done.'

The question of an alibi popped up in his mind. How likely was it that the polies would suspect him of having anything to do with the disappearance (because once the cement was poured into the foundation, that was all it was going to be: a disappearance) of Stacey Granger? He had visited her whore house once. If that alone had been enough of a reason to be a suspect, half of the population of Frankfort would have been suspicious, so no. That couldn't be it. Okay, so around a couple corners the cops could find out that he was working for Quarles. But one of the main suspects, Duffy, had no apparent connections to him.

Still, Devil thought. If he asked Nina to cover for him and, should anyone ask, say that he'd been with her all night…

Of course, she would wonder why he even needed an alibi in the first place. He wasn't sure she'd grant him one if he told her the truth; he wasn't even sure if she'd grant him to STAY if he told her the truth.

Therefore, when Devil finally arrived at Nina's flat, after taking off his clothes and hopping in the shower to get rid of the dirt, and slipped into bed next to her, to her question of where he'd been all night, he just said, "Nowhere."

I don't know where Wynn Duffy got his idea about the Sewer Department, but I most certainly got it from Misfits. An Environmental Monitoring Station? It DOES sound like bullshit.

The Prodigy songs Devil listens to are my favorite Prodigy songs: "Smack my bitch up", "Firestarter" and "Spitfire". And yes, I got "Smack my bitch up" from the Misfits season 1 finale (Nathan's got some seriously good music on his iPod!), but "Firestarter" is one of my mom's favorite songs and has been since the 90s, so there you go. I have a cool mother!