Aphrodite

9

The library was three blocks farther down Main Street, tucked into a residential block. It should have taken them no more than ten minutes to make the stroll. But they were slowed down when a blue Jaguar, driving on the other side of the road, passed them by, stopped suddenly, and began honking its horn. Justin peered across the street, heard someone call out, "Jay? For chrissake, Jay, is that you?" He knew he had to do something-the guy was getting ready to hop out of the car and Justin knew that he'd dash across the street to meet them-so he held up his hand and walked slowly, lumberingly, over to the driver.

"I can't believe it," the guy behind the wheel said. He looked comfortable in the Jag, like he belonged there. His clothes were casual but very expensive, and he was wearing a watch that probably cost two grand. He lifted the arm with the watch and waved his hand at Justin's police uniform. "Is it Halloween?"

"Can I help you?" Justin said.

"It's me! It's Jordy. Chris Jordan! I know I put on a few pounds, but from the looks of it so have-" He hesitated, now sounding unsure of himself. "You are Jay Westwood, right?"

Justin didn't say anything. He adjusted his sunglasses, tipping them a fraction of an inch higher on the bridge of his nose.

"Look," the driver of the Jaguar said, "I heard about Alicia. I tried to get in touch with you-a lot of us did-but you kind of disappeared."

"I'm sorry," Justin said. "I don't remember any Chris Jordan."

"What?" And as Justin turned away, started heading across the street, the driver called after him, "Jay! What the hell are you doing? Jay, for God's sake! You're just gonna walk away? You walk away from college, you walk away from your friends, now you're going to walk away from your old roomie?"

But Justin didn't turn back. Even when the driver said, "Jay, I've got a place in Southampton. I'm listed. If you want to, call me." He just crossed the street, didn't turn around until he heard the car speed away. Then he went back to stand beside Deena.

"What was that all about?" she asked.

"Don't know," Justin said. "I guess he thought he knew me."

"Sounds like he did know you," Deena said. "Sounds like he knew you from college." When Justin didn't say anything, Deena asked, "Where'd you go to school?" When she didn't get an answer, she said, "Justin, where'd you go, a local college? That's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. I mean, if you're embarrassed because you didn't go to a good school, or you dropped out, come on… I bet a few of the guys on the force here didn't even go to college. Or maybe they went to a junior college. Hey, I didn't go to the world's greatest school either."

"I don't like to talk much about my college days," Justin said.

Deena chewed on her lower lip for a moment. "He looked pretty successful," she said. "The guy in the Jaguar. But being a policeman is nothing to be ashamed-"

"I don't like to talk about that, either," Justin said.

Then he nodded his head, jutting his chin forward, indicating that they should continue on their way to the library. When they arrived, Kendall-whom Deena sometimes called Kenny or Ken-went running in ahead of them. By the time Justin and Deena got up the steps and to the librarian's desk, the little girl was comfortably settled amid a horde of youngsters in a room directly behind the foyer. The room had a sliding door separating it from the entry hall, but the door was open. A middle-aged man with a large monkey puppet on his hand was already addressing the excited children.

As they sidled in closer to the doorway, the librarian looked up from her desk and saw Deena. Justin realized he'd never been in the East End Harbor Library before. Out of habit, he glanced down at the librarian's nameplate. Her name was Adrienne.

"Terrible thing, wasn't it," Adrienne whispered to Deena. From the way she said the words, Justin knew immediately that she was one of those people who got extraordinary pleasure from gossiping over terrible things.

"You mean about Susanna?" Deena asked and Adrienne put her hand to her mouth. "Sshhh," she said and pointed toward the kids nearby. Then she nodded vigorously, quietly saying, "Yes, I mean Susanna," and Deena whispered back, "Terrible."

"She was in here the day she died."

"Really? Checking out a book?"

Adrienne shook her head. "Using the computer. This one right here." She tilted her head in the direction of a large desktop model, probably three or four years old. It sat to the left of the front door, in the foyer. "She was very mysterious about it. Didn't want me looking over her shoulder. Not that I would anyway."

Justin stepped forward now. "What was she working on? Did she say?"

Adrienne put her finger to her lips again. "Who are you?"

"I'm with the police department here."

Adrienne nodded vigorously again. "I can see that. Ohhhhh yes- I've seen you directing traffic. Seems to me you slow things down rather than speed things up. What kind of crazy system is that?"

Her quiet rant was interrupted by a chorus of laughter from the kids in the room behind them. The monkey puppet was singing a goofy song. You could see that the actor who had the puppet on his hand was really doing the singing. He was making no effort to hide that fact. But none of the kids were even looking at him. They were all staring delightedly at the fuzzy creature on the end of his arm as if he were a totally separate entity.

"Do you know what Susanna was doing on the computer?" Justin whispered.

"Don't have a clue."

"She went on-line?"

"She did. I collected the eight dollars."

"But she didn't tell you what she was looking for?"

"Didn't tell me a thing. All I can tell you is she looked pretty intense and excited, like it was something important. And then when she left, she was kind of wobbly. Like she suddenly got sick."

"She was," Justin said slowly. "She called in sick to her office."

"Well, I can vouch for that. She could barely walk when she left here."

"So she was here at lunchtime, then."

"Around twelve or twelve-thirty, I'd say. Stayed for forty-five minutes or so."

"Have a lot of people used this computer since she was here?"

"Three or four. Is that a lot?"

He shook his head. "You mind if I use it?"

Now Deena spoke up. "You gonna trace what she was looking at?" She realized she'd said it too loudly. The man with the puppet on his hand gave her an annoyed glare from the adjoining room.

"If I can," Justin said softly.

The librarian looked skeptical. "You know how to do that?"

"I'll have to see."

"It's four dollars for every half hour on-line."

"I'll spring for it," Justin told her. Then he sat at the computer, waiting for Adrienne to return to her desk before he began tapping away.

The first thing he did was click on the Start button, then he went to Programs and clicked on that. He double-clicked on Windows Explorer, ran the cursor down until he came to the Windows program, and tapped on the mouse. He ran the cursor down again until he came to a file that read Temporary Internet. He clicked twice and a window appeared with small files inside it, six to a row, each one labeled directly underneath.

"These are all the recent routes people have used to get onto sites," he said to Deena, making sure his voice was kept low enough to disturb no one and draw no attention.

"I'm impressed," she acknowledged. "But how do you know which ones were Susie's?"

"We'll go chronologically. Or backwards, really. See if anything seems logical."

He began clicking down the long list of locations. There were a lot of things that were impossible to decipher-letters that didn't form words and numbers that seemed meaningless-as well as terms like e-mail and AOL and Outlook and cookies and sportsdata.

"Adrienne won't be happy," he murmured.

"Why not?"

"Someone's been logging onto porn sites."

"How can you tell?"

"Here's a string of three: tiffanyphoto, titsgalore, and fatasspix. I'm just guessing, but-"

"Seems like a pretty fair guess. You think Susanna was checking out porn?"

"No, I'd put my money on a horny thirteen-year-old boy."

She looked at the list of sites on the screen and frowned. "Can you really tell anything from these little things?"

"No," he confessed. "I was just hoping to see if anything struck me." He started to click the Escape button, but then hesitated. "Huh," he said. "Here's one: Oscars."

"What's that mean?"

"Not sure. Could be somebody looking for people named Oscar. But I think your friend Susanna was checking out some information about an actor. Someone she thought was nominated for an Academy Award. So maybe there's a connection." He stared off into space, collecting his thoughts, then clicked out of the window. "Let me go on-line and check something else," he said.

As soon as he was connected, he moved the cursor to the address window and clicked on the arrow to its right. Approximately thirty Internet addresses appeared and Justin leaned forward, squinting to read them.

"Listen, will you do me a favor?" he asked.

"What?"

"Do you have the last issue of the Journal? The one with the obit Susanna wrote about the actor in the old-age home?"

"Probably."

"Will you go home and get it?"

"Will you keep an eye on Kenny?"

Justin glanced back at the room full of enthralled children and nodded. Deena said, "I'll be back in fifteen, twenty minutes."

As she walked out the door, Justin felt a twinge of guilt. He didn't need the obit; he'd practically memorized it and remembered all of the key details. But he didn't want her privy to what he was searching for. And as soon as he'd seen the sites in the address window, he knew he was on the right track.

Two or three people had used this computer to log on since Susanna Morgan had used it. So he skipped the first three addresses. The next four entries were, in order: William Miller, Best Supporting Actor, Oscar Winners, and Internet Movie Database. He wanted to see things in the order that Susanna had seen them, so he let the cursor linger for a moment, then clicked on International Movie Database. Immediately, the address came up: http://www.imdb.com. Then he was connected to the site. He ran down the list of categories. You could get daily movie grosses and reviews and updated show business news. He tried to retrace Susanna's thought process, so in the window that was labeled "search," he typed in: Oscar Winners. When that site came up, he could hear in his head-clear as a bell-Wallace P. Crabbe ranting and raving about the 1938 Oscar winners, so he typed in the year 1938, just as he was certain Susanna had done. When the list came up, sure enough, William Miller's name was not among the nominees. He remembered Crabbe screaming about Miller's movie The Queen of Sheba, so he typed that in the search window and double-clicked. Crabbe had been right again. There was no 1938 movie with that title. There was no talkie with that title, either. There was one Hollywood film called The Queen of Sheba and that was obviously not the right one. It was a silent film made in 1923. Miller would have been two years old.

Impatient now, Justin decided to cut to the chase. He typed the name "William Miller" into the search window and clicked. Moments later, Miller's bio appeared on the screen. Justin Westwood began to read. And as he read, his mouth dropped open. This was wrong, he thought. This couldn't possibly be correct. He went back to the home page, typed in just the name Miller. He thought there'd be another William Miller, maybe with a middle initial, or there'd be a Bill Miller- something to differentiate the actor who'd died in East End Harbor from the man whose bio Justin had just seen on the screen. But no, there was only one William Miller, and the details of his life and career reappeared on the screen. Justin read through all the information, tried to absorb the specifics, then read through it all again, still not convinced he was seeing what was right in front of his eyes. He tried to imagine what Susanna Morgan had done when she'd reached this page on the Web site. He tried to imagine her forcing herself to believe that what she saw could possibly be the truth. Just as he was doing.

In William Miller's filmography there was a string of films with titles Justin had never heard of. The titles were followed by the dates the movies were made and the name of the character played by Miller. The first few titles read:

In the Land of Plenty (1922)… Charles Robertson

The Runaway (1922)… Police Chief

The Safest Place (1922)… Professor Allen "Smitty" Smith

Blue Boy (1923)… Roger Darris

Justin felt disoriented. The dates made no sense. But he kept scrolling, and there it was, just as it had been the first two times he'd scrolled through the info. The next film on the list: The Queen of Sheba (1923)… The Prince

He blinked. Rubbed his eyes to make sure they were clear and that he was reading correctly. He barely noticed the rest of the credit roll. There were several films in the 1930s, just a couple in the forties. In the 1950s there was a subhead that read Television Work, and listed from the years 1953 through 1955 was the series Cowboy Bill.

Justin began to scroll faster. He scanned the mini-biography. Saw the highlights of Miller's life. Saw that he'd been married. Saw the date his wife died. He saw-and read the line over three times-that the couple had never had any children. Saw that for The Queen of Sheba he had not received an Academy Award-the award hadn't even come into existence yet-but he was voted Screen magazine's "Favorite Non-Leading Man of the Year." Screen's honor would certainly have been a memorable one for the young actor. Was it memorable enough so, as he got older, it led the old man to tell people he'd won the Oscar? Maybe. One more crazy "maybe" to add to the growing list.

Miller's theater credits were listed, too. Justin remembered that the obit had said he was in a 1970s revival of two Clifford Odets plays. William Miller had indeed been in those plays. But not in the 1970s. In the 1930s. In the original productions.

It was impossible.

But there were other matches, too. The Miller he was reading about was married to an actress named Jessica Talbot. She'd appeared with him in The Queen of Sheba and she died in 1972. Exactly as Susanna Morgan had written in her obituary. Exactly as Bill Miller must have told her.

He scrolled back up, read the line one more time: no children.

No Bill Miller, Jr.

This had to be the guy Susanna Morgan had known and written about. It had to be. There were too many details that connected. But how could it be? The answer was that it couldn't. That was the only thing that made any sense at all. It simply couldn't be.

Justin got to the end of the bio. Saw that William Miller had been born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Saw that there was no date of death yet listed.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, he read the date of William Miller's birth.

"Jesus Fucking Christ!" Justin Westwood said, and he said it slowly and clearly and very loudly.

When he realized that his words were reverberating throughout the library, he turned around, saw twenty small children and one grown man with a monkey puppet on his hand all staring at him in shocked silence. He saw Deena Harper, clutching a newspaper, freeze as she stepped through the front door of the building. And he watched as Adrienne the librarian's eyes opened as wide as they could possibly open.

The oppressive silence lingered as Justin turned back to the computer screen. He forced himself to read, one more time, the last line of William Miller's biography.

Justin thought of the headline in Susanna Morgan's obituary. The obituary he was more and more certain had gotten her killed. cowboy bill dead at 82.

One last time, he stared at the line on the screen in front of him:

Date of birth: 1888.

Impossible, inconceivable, and illogical.

But there it was in black and white. The proof was staring him right in the face. And there were only two possibilities.

One: The guy who died wasn't Bill Miller. But what sense did that make? Why would he lie?

Which left possibility number two: The guy who died wasn't eighty-two years old.

Because if the old man in the retirement home was who he said he was, Cowboy Bill Miller lived until he was 114 years old.