Aphrodite

10

Justin Westwood knew exactly how Susanna Morgan had felt when she left the library two days earlier. His legs were wobbly and his head was spinning. His mind kept racing around in circles, but there was no logical end to the race. He could come up with no reasonable conclusion or pattern to any of the information he had just gathered. He wanted a drink as badly as he'd ever wanted anything in his life. And even more than that, what he really wanted was to step back in time. He wanted to go back to the moment he'd seen Susanna's lifeless body on the floor of her bedroom, to ignore the various signs that had pointed to her murder. He wanted to shut out the voice that had told him to go up to Susanna's roof and wipe out the fact that he'd seen Deena Harper, heard her describe the murder. He wanted to forget the fact that he'd ever met anyone named Wallace P. Crabbe and, more than anything else, he wanted to eradicate from his brain the fact that he'd just verified the impossible on an out-of-date computer in the rinky-dink East End Harbor Library.

He wanted to close his eyes and make everything disappear.

Everything.

But he couldn't. His eyes were open and everything was right in front of him, in absolutely plain sight. Even if none of it made any sense.

So in the still silent library, Justin shut off the computer, dropped a ten-dollar bill on Adrienne the librarian's desk, told Deena that he was leaving, that if she wanted to come she should go get her kid, now, no questions asked, just go, which is exactly what she did, striding into the children's room, swooping Kendall up under her arm. Justin walked them both home. He didn't say a word the entire ten minutes. She asked a couple of questions; he just stared, didn't even bother to shake his head. He walked them back to the apartment on Main Street, didn't say good-bye. As soon as they were inside, he continued walking straight ahead, kept going until he reached the end of Main, where he made a left. Five minutes later, he was in the East End Retirement Home, talking to Fred, the home's longtime manager.

"Sure," Fred said. "Just like I told Susanna when she called. Bill's nephew's name is Ed Marion. Nice guy. Always was. Even when he came up the last time. Helluva nice guy, considering the circumstances."

"What circumstances were those?" Justin asked.

"Well, you know, his uncle being dead and all."

"Oh. Those circumstances. So you'd met him before that?"

"Well, sure. He used to come pretty regularly-four times a year- to see Bill and to pay me."

"He paid for Mr. Miller's stay here?"

"Every penny of it."

"Why didn't he just send a check?"

"I guess he liked to visit his uncle. And he didn't pay by check."

"How did he pay?"

"Cash. Every three months, for the next three months in advance."

"Do a lot of people pay cash?"

"Hell, I wasn't even sure it was still legal to pay in cash."

"So he was the only one."

"Unfortunately."

"Did Mr. Miller talk about his nephew, talk about Ed?"

The manager shook his head. "Nah. Hardly ever. In fact, I don't think they got along all that well. Old Bill, he used to tell everyone he didn't have no relatives. One time I heard him say that and I said, 'What about that nephew of yours? He's a relative, isn't he?'"

"And what did Bill say?"

"Didn't say much of anything, as I recall it. He could be a stubborn old coot."

"Tell me something, Fred. How long have you worked here?"

"Me? Six, seven years now."

"And how long was Bill Miller here? Before you?"

"Oh sure. He was a carryover. He's been here a while."

"Do you know exactly how long?" Justin asked.

"Pretty close. But not exactly."

"Don't you keep records?"

"Duhh, yeah, we do. But the day before I started work, literally the day before, we had a robbery. They took some office stuff, a computer, a phone machine, you know, stuff like that. And a bunch of files. God only knows why they wanted that stuff. One of the things they took was Bill's file. Don't think they got a lotta dough fencin' it, I'll tell you that."

Justin stood up to go.

"You wanna tell me what's goin' on here?" Fred asked.

"I wish I could," Justin told him. "I really wish I could." Back at the station, Justin went straight to his desk, was already dialing Ed Marion's phone number before he was even seated in his chair. For some reason, he wasn't at all surprised when he got a recording telling him that the number he'd dialed was no longer in service.

He wasn't surprised, either, when he got Susanna Morgan's phone records faxed to him slightly less than an hour later and saw that, on the last day of her life, at 2:07 p.m., she had placed one call to Ed Marion's number and, at 5:54 p.m., received one call from that same number. A number that no longer existed.

The first call had lasted twenty-seven seconds. Long enough to leave a phone message. The return call had lasted just over four minutes. Plenty of time to have a substantive conversation.

But what was the substance?

So a senile actor was mind-bogglingly old. So what? What made that something other than a piece of fascinating and astonishing trivia?

What made it a fact worth killing over?

Justin checked the information he received from the phone company. The address that belonged to Edward Marion's number was 2367 Old Post Road in Weston, Connecticut. It was a valid address. He could take the car ferry over, be there in three hours.

He could-

"Hey, Westwood."

It was shithead Brian. Justin didn't bother to look up at the young cop.

"What are you doin' playin' policeman all of a sudden?" Brian said. "It's a little late for that, isn't it?"

Justin stood up now. Took three careful steps over to Brian's desk. But before he did, he palmed the heavy stapler from the corner of his own desk.

"You're a tough guy, aren't you, Brian?"

Brian smiled up at him from the seat behind his desk. An arrogant and confident smile. "I'm tough enough."

"You could kick my ass in a fair fight, couldn't you?"

"I could kick the shit out of you. And I wouldn't mind doin' it, either, if you want to know the truth."

"I believe you. The thing about life, though," Justin said calmly, "is that it isn't very fair. Maybe you're too young to have learned that lesson yet."

Brian put his hands down on the desk, spread his fingers apart, ready to use them to push himself up from the chair. "Then maybe you should try to teach me," he said.

"I think that would be a good idea."

Brian went to stand up, but before he could rise more than an inch or two, Justin slammed the stapler down on the fingers of his right hand. As Brian yelped in pain and looked down at his smashed knuckles, Justin picked up the telephone that sat on Brian's desk, swung it back, and slammed it into the young cop's mouth as hard as he could. Brian toppled over backward in his chair, blood streaming down his chin. Justin was certain he'd loosened three or four teeth, maybe even knocked them out completely.

The younger cop groaned now from his prone position on the floor, looked up at his attacker. Justin could see the hate in his eyes, even through the pain. It wasn't over yet, he decided. Not quite yet. So he lifted the phone above his head and threw it down with all his might into Brian's groin. That was the end of Brian's resistance. He lay on the floor, moaning and twisting in agony, spitting blood, his hands shoved between his legs.

"Let me explain something to you, Brian, now that I've got your attention." Justin was surprised how calm his voice sounded. "My name is Westwood. Justin Westwood. I'd like to hear you say it."

Brian did his best. Through his broken teeth it came out, "Ussin Esswood."

"If I hear you call me anything but that again," Justin said, "here's what's going to happen. Because you're such a big, tough guy, I'm not going to fight fair with you ever. You're going to be walking down the street, nice and relaxed, maybe even with a girl if you can get one to look at you again now that you're uglier than shit and your dick's gonna be broken for a while. And what I'm going to do is take my gun out, the gun I'm going to carry at all times now, and bring the butt down on the back of your head and crush your fucking skull. Do you understand?"

Brian managed to nod his head and say, "Ah unnersan."

"Good," Justin said. "I'm glad."

Chief Leggett came rushing out of his office then, saw Justin standing over one of his young cops, saw his other young cop, Gary, standing several feet away, paralyzed, his mouth open in dumb shock.

Jimmy Leggett looked up at Justin Westwood, looked back down at the floor.

"You better clean yourself up," he said to the terrified Brian. "You're a pathetic mess." And to Justin Westwood he said, "Maybe you should take the rest of the day off."

"I was just leaving," Justin said.

As he gathered up the papers off his desk, shoving them into his small satchel, and took the gun out of his drawer, making sure that Brian saw it, Justin realized something that surprised him. Since his wife and daughter had died, he had felt, almost every minute of every day, as if he were choking to death. There was a weight on his chest and his breath came in short, shallow bursts. He could not take in much air. When he went to that first shrink, the one the force had insisted he go to, he had told her that he hadn't been able to breathe since it had all happened. She asked him what air meant to him. That was her exact wording. At first he hadn't understood what she was asking, he wanted to say, "This isn't a fucking abstraction here-I can't breathe!" But he thought about her question for a few seconds, then he said, "Life. Air is life." She had nodded and said, "That's right. That's exactly why you're having trouble breathing. You can't let any life back into you."

He accepted what she said. It made sense. It didn't help, though, not a bit. But he believed that she was right.

What surprised him now, as he walked back out onto the streets of East End Harbor, was that, for the first time in so many years, he did not feel that heavy pressure in his lungs. His chest was rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm, letting air in, easing it out.

Justin looked down at the knuckles of his own right hand, saw that they were speckled with drops of Brian's blood, and he thought: I'm breathing again.