Aphrodite (6 page)

They’d talked to Regina for ten minutes or so, got everything they were going to get out of her, then they told her she could go. Justin couldn’t decide if she was so anxious to leave because she was so upset by this experience or if she simply wanted to get back outside and start telling everyone what had happened. She was going to be the center of attention for the next couple of days. She’d be talking about this for the rest of her life. Justin knew that from now on, at every dinner party Regina Arnold went to, she’d find a way to tell all about the time she found her friend’s dead body. He wondered how the story would be embellished over time. Would Susanna be still breathing when Regina arrived? Would she have tripped over the body? There’d be something. Something that wasn’t true. There always was.

Justin almost had his breath back. Jesus, he’d run only forty, maybe fifty yards, but by the time he got to the second-floor apartment he was actually wheezing and was practically doubled over with cramps. He had to sit down in the living room right after he checked the body. Now the two assholes were coming in from the bedroom, grinning. Justin sucked in a big rush of air, hoping he wouldn’t give the two cretins the satisfaction of watching him have a heart attack.

“You ever see a dead body before, Westwood?” the non-Gary asshole asked. There was a slight taunt to his words. “Makin’ you a little sick?”

Justin didn’t answer. Death
did
make him sick, and more than a little. There was nothing that made him sicker than its finality and its total lack of discrimination. Its ability to strike anywhere and anyone, no matter how undeserving, at any time. It also had rattled his two fellow cops. He’d seen their faces when they walked into Susanna’s room. He’d seen the way they shrank back, the way they hesitated before touching the body. Now that they were protected by twenty feet and a closed door and several minutes of getting used to being in death’s presence, their swagger was returning. Their snide bravado was their way of covering up the fact that they’d been just as frightened as he’d been.

“You should cut out the smoking,” Gary said now.

Westwood, still breathing hard, looked up, waiting for the punch line, the taunt, but there was none.

“My dad died of lung cancer a couple of years ago. It sucked big time. You can barely breathe right now,” Gary went on. “You’re gonna wind up like him. Like”—he jerked his head toward the bedroom door—“her.”

Westwood looked at the kid, thought,
I hate when assholes show signs of being human.
He didn’t have to respond, though, and pretend to appreciate the thoughtfulness, because that’s exactly when Jimmy Leggett, the East End Harbor chief of police, chose to walk through the front door.

“Fill me in,” he said. He was looking at Westwood when he said it, but it was Gary’s partner who spoke up.

“It’s pretty cut-and-dried,” he said. “Her name is Susanna Morgan, the one who works for the paper, you know, and it looks like she was getting out of bed in the middle of the night, to go to the bathroom, we figure, and she trips—”

“And kills herself?”

“Breaks her neck, it looks like.”

“Jesus. You call Doc Rosen?”

“He wasn’t in his office. Nurse is trying to find him. We left a message on his home machine, too.”

Leggett pursed his lips and thought about this for a moment, turned to Westwood and said, “That the way you see it? She trips and …” He waved his hand vaguely, as if vagueness was the best way to deal with what had happened.

Justin Westwood didn’t say anything. He sat, staring straight ahead, sucking in a few more deep breaths.

“Jay?” Leggett said. “You looked things over and you agree?”

Westwood squinted and scratched his forehead and contorted his face as if he were going to say something, but it took him a few more seconds before he said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Leggett turned to the two young cops. “Okay, you guys, you can take off.”

“What about him?” Gary said, nodding at Westwood.

“He’s staying here for a minute.”

“We got here first, Jimmy.” This was from the other one. “We were the ones, you know, checked things out and—”

“Fine. You checked things out. I’m happy for you, Brian. Now get the fuck out of here.”

The two cops scowled and started to leave, but before they got to the door Gary stopped, turned back to Leggett, and said, “Westwood didn’t do shit, Jimmy. We got here, we did what we were supposed to do.” Then they both went out the door.

“That right?” Leggett asked, when he was alone with Westwood. “You didn’t do shit?”

“His name’s Brian?”

“What?”

“Gary’s little friend. I didn’t know his name was Brian.”

“Jesus Christ, Jay. You been workin’ with the guy for almost a year.”

Westwood shrugged. Leggett realized that was all he was going to get on that matter, so he said, “Wanna go back in there with me?”

The chief opened the bedroom door and stepped inside. Nothing had changed since Justin had first gone in. The room was still a mess and the girl was still dead on the floor.

Leggett let a long breath escape, a faint whistle creeping into it, and said, “The only time I ever saw a body was in a casket.”

“They seem a lot more dead when you see ’em in real places.”

“Yeah,” the chief said. “So what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing,” Westwood said.

Leggett waited. Westwood scratched at his cheek, then he said, “It’s funny, though. Look at the broken glass.”

“What about it?”

“She got out of bed, tripped, knocked the glass over. It was probably on the nightstand, right? Next to the clock radio.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s just strange. She must’ve knocked it over first, you know, flailing around when she realized she was falling, trying to grab hold of something. So she knocks it over, it breaks, and then she falls. But she doesn’t fall
on
it. I mean, you’d think she’d fall on some of the broken glass. It’s all around her.”

“How do you know she didn’t fall on it?”

“There’s no cuts. No blood. Even if she died almost instantly, she should’ve been cut. She couldn’t’ve died
before
she hit the floor if she died of a broken neck.”

“What else?”

“Look at this.” Westwood bent down, pointed to the girl’s left knee. “A scrape. And it’s fresh. How do you scrape your knee while you’re sleeping?”

“Maybe she did it before she went to bed.”

“She would’ve put something on it. A Band-Aid. That stuff that stings like hell …”

“Mercurochrome. Okay, maybe she did it when she fell.”

“No. This floor wouldn’t do it—too smooth. A bruise maybe. A bump. But this is like she rubbed it against something rough.”

“So what are you saying, Jay? You saying it’s not an accident?” Westwood closed his eyes for just a moment. He remembered being on Main Street, not much more than half an hour ago, with his eyes closed the same way. He remembered the feeling of locking the world out and he remembered how much he liked that feeling. Another song began to rattle inside him. Roger McGuinn. “King of the Hill.”
It’s sunrise again. The driveway is empty. The crystal is cracked. There’s blood on the wall. …

Justin Westwood opened his eyes. He walked to the window, the one that had the fire escape outside. He fiddled with the latch, opened the window, and looked at the ledge. Then he closed the window, flipped the latch so it was locked.

Then he looked at the chief of the East End Harbor Police Department, such as it was.

“It’s an accident,” Westwood said. “Has to be an accident. There’s no other explanation.”

2

Justin was in Duffy’s again, sitting at the bar. It was the third night in a row he’d planted himself there. He was almost finished with his third Pete’s Wicked Ale and was thinking about polishing it off with a scotch. He wavered. Right now he had a pleasant buzz, was reasonably relaxed. The scotch would put him over the line. Well, the one scotch wouldn’t, but once he started he knew he’d have more than one. Tonight he’d have three or four. Or five. Which was what he’d had the night before. And the night before that. He watched a young woman sitting in one of the four booths and for a moment he thought it was Susanna Morgan. Then he realized that it couldn’t be and decided he wanted that scotch.

Donnie, the bartender, brought the shot glass over, with some water on the side. Westwood took a sip and enjoyed the burn as it went down his throat and into his stomach. It warmed him instantly and he polished off the rest of it in one more gulp, signaled for another even as his head was tilted back, drinking. When he’d finished the second one, the buzz wasn’t quite as pleasant. It was more of a hum and the hum was saying to him the same thing it had been saying ever since he’d examined Susanna’s body:
Stay away from it.
Don’t
touch this one. Just stay away.

After the third scotch, he realized he wasn’t getting drunk. But the hum was getting stronger. The fact was, it had been getting stronger with each passing hour.

Leave it alone
, it was saying.

You know better.

Just leave it alone.

It had been saying that for three days now.

Justin nodded to himself, nodded to the hum, agreeing with it. Knowing he should listen to it. Knowing that he
had
to listen to it.

Then he put down money for his tab, got up from the bar, and headed to the door. When he was out on the street, the hum kept telling him to go home. It was an easy walk, maybe half a mile. The previous two nights he’d paid attention and followed instructions. But now he found himself walking toward Main Street and the center of town. He found himself walking back to Susanna Morgan’s apartment.

When he got there, when he stood in front of the two-story building looking up at the top floor where the girl had died, he thought,
What the fuck am I doing?

Then he walked around back to the alley, went to the building next door, the one with the fabric shop in the front, and he jumped up so he could grab hold of the bottom rung of the building’s fire escape. He pulled it down so he could step on it comfortably, then he began to climb up to the roof, telling himself it was no problem, he knew how far to take it, he was just going to play his hunch, then he was going to leave it alone.

Halfway up, he stopped. Told himself he’d already gone too far. If he went any farther he’d get sucked in, might never be able to disentangle himself. His right foot stepped down one rung lower, but his left foot hovered in the air. He muttered “Shit” out loud. Then, telling himself nothing, doing his best not to think at all, he put his left foot back on the fire escape and began climbing up to the top.

Westwood stood on the roof for a few moments, taking in the scene. He wasn’t trying to focus on anything in particular, just wanted to get a feel for his general impressions. He slowly turned his head, taking in the shadows and the view of the town. He listened, didn’t hear much. One bird. Then another, answering. From somewhere, probably several blocks away, the steady drone of a car engine.

He didn’t exactly see or hear the girl. But he did feel her presence. When he turned to the corner of the roof, spotted her sitting there, then took several steps closer and was able to see the expression on her face, he realized that what he had felt was her fear.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said. Her voice didn’t quiver, which surprised him. It was steady and strong, if extremely soft.

He held up his hands, to show he meant no harm. “I’m a policeman,” he said, making his voice match her hoarse whisper. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He flashed his ID, peered in closer at her, tried to smile in as friendly a manner as he could muster, and said, “You’re the yoga teacher. I can’t remember your name. I’m Justin Westwood. We talked once, remember? You had the guy who kept exposing himself outside your class.”

She didn’t say anything but she nodded slowly. Justin said, “You live in this building?” When she nodded again, he said, “The other apartment? The other half from Susanna?” and once again her head moved almost imperceptibly up and down.

“I’m just looking around,” he told her now, keeping his tone gentle. “Nothing serious. Just to satisfy my own curiosity. I’m going to go down Susanna’s fire escape, just for a minute. Will you wait here for me until I get back?”

The woman nodded. Westwood thought about saying something else—she seemed to need more reassurance—but he didn’t know what else he could say, so he walked across the flat roof until he got to the fire escape that led to Susanna Morgan’s apartment. He stepped down a few rungs. When his eyes were level with the ledge of the roof, he stopped, squinted, looking for something, then resumed his descent. When he got to the landing outside the bedroom, he examined the exterior wall and the outer windowsill. He scratched his cheek and climbed back up to the roof, expecting the woman he’d left there to be gone. But she was right where he’d left her. Sitting cross-legged in the corner. He walked closer to her, putting the smile back on his face and saying, “See? Nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want to get hurt,” she said when he was a few feet away from her.

“I told you.” He was out of practice at being sincere, but he did his best to keep his body language as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I have a daughter,” she said. “A little daughter. She’s seven years old.”

“That’s nice,” he told her. “What’s her name?”

She didn’t answer him. It was as if she hadn’t heard him. It was as if she was listening instead to some kind of voice within her.

“I saw something,” she finally said.

“Something about what?” He tried to keep his voice level but he could hear his heart pumping and he could feel his blood racing through his body. Suddenly, he knew he should have listened to that damn hum, should have stayed the hell off this roof. What did he think was going to happen by coming here? Nothing good, that’s what. Nothing remotely good could possibly come from this.

“I know why you’re here,” she said. “I know what you’re looking for.”

Nothing remotely fucking good.