Russell Andrews - Hades

Justin took his time going through the apartment. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, he just wanted to look. The only thing he was certain of was that Ellis St. John was not off embroiled in a family emergency, as Belinda Lambert had been told. If St. John was involved in the murder of Evan Harmon, Justin was now convinced that so too were some of his superiors at Rockworth and Williams. At the very least, Daniel French and his bosses were involved in some sort of cover-up, protecting St. John. Or protecting the firm's good name.

It's all about self-preservation, he thought again. Survival and safety of the corporate structure.

Having surveyed the overall layout of the apartment, Justin headed into the master bedroom to poke and probe more closely. The closets there were meticulously organized. Ellis's shirts were perfectly and evenly spaced so no sleeve touched another sleeve, and they were organized by color, going from white to gray to black to blue to green. That was the extent of the color range. If it was a patterned shirt, the dominant color was what dictated its placement. Ellis St. John had eight sport jackets, all solid-four of them black, two gray, and two blue. His ten suits were all pin-striped except for one light-gray summer suit and a dark-gray flannel winter one. The most daring of the pinstripes had a touch of wine red running through the black-on-black stripes. All shoes were highly polished and perfectly aligned on metal shoe racks, wooden shoe trees firmly in place. Justin couldn't be sure, but he'd be willing to bet a lot of money that each pair of shoes was separated by exactly half an inch of space. The guy was definitely compulsive and obsessive. There was not a speck of dust to be found. And there wasn't one single thing in the room that was not put in an exact and orderly spot. Justin turned from the closet, then stopped. He turned back, frowning. Something in there, an image, had jarred his memory in some way. An image tried to fight its way into his brain, but the image was diffuse, fractured, not connected to anything that Justin could come up with. Then the brief flash was gone almost as instantly as it had come into his head. And it didn't come back. He shrugged. He knew he couldn't dredge it back up. That's not the way these things worked. It would either be there or it wouldn't.

He moved on. There was a rack with luggage on it, in the farthest closet to the right in the bedroom. Ellis, of course, had a matching set, all made of light-green canvas and brown leather. There was room for four bags. The largest-a normal suitcase size and shape-was on the left, then a medium-size duffel bag. Then there was an empty space-large enough for an overnight bag-and then there was a matching briefcase with a shoulder strap. Justin stared at the space for the missing overnight bag. Ellis had been gone for four days now. Why had he taken only such a small bag? Planning on coming back-but something had suddenly come up? Like murder? Or had he left in that much of a hurry, knowing he had to travel light and move quickly?

Justin exhaled deeply, moved on to an antique tiger maple chest of drawers. As Justin was going through the drawers, he came upon a photo album. It was clearly not meant for public viewing, tucked as it was under a slew of men's underwear-briefs that matched his suits and jackets. Justin pulled the album out and began flipping through the pages. Nothing but photographs of Evan Harmon. Some were candid shots, in and out of an office. Some were newspaper and magazine clippings covering the last decade. Some were prints of Evan in his Hamptons house-and studying the background of those photos, Justin could now see how closely this apartment really did mirror the way Evan had lived. It was a disturbing selection of shots. Ellis St. John was not just obsessed with neatness and order, he was obsessed with Evan Harmon. The question was: Was he obsessed enough to kill him? Justin was now more certain than ever that St. John was mixed up in all this. But he still didn't have a clue how or, more important, why.

Was it jealousy? He realized that there wasn't one photo of Abby in the book. As Justin looked through it again, he saw that in some instances she had to have been cut out of particular pictures. Deeply sick. It was as if Ellis couldn't stand the thought of Evan with another partner, having intimate contact with anyone else. But Evan had been married the entire time he'd known Ellis St. John. The jealousy couldn't have been anything new. But could it have reached new heights? Could Evan have possibly begun an affair with Ellis? If he had, Justin thought, well, that would certainly spark something.

He thought back to Abby denying that her husband had homosexual affairs. She had been convincing. But was she in denial? Was she humiliated by the thought?

What the hell was going on with these people, these connections? These dots?

Justin thought of the famous scene from The Third Man. Orson Welles's great speech to Joseph Cotten atop the Ferris wheel. Welles's character, Harry Lime, justifying his black market dealing in bad penicillin, telling Holly Martins to look down at the small dots below. The dots were people but barely identifiable from so high up. Welles saying, Tell me the truth, if someone offered you a ton of money for every dot that stopped moving forever, would you really care? Harry Lime didn't care. There were too many dots, too many insignificant specks walking around, meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Justin Westwood did care, however. He realized he didn't much care about the grand scheme of things. Didn't really even believe there was a grand scheme.

But he did care about those specks.

Those dots.

He shut the photo album and put it back where he'd found it.

This latest scenario he'd been envisioning didn't feel right to Justin. He couldn't rule it out-it was certainly possible and logical-but it didn't fit with everything he knew about Evan Harmon. Evan was a star. Evan did not live by ordinary rules or even ordinary passions. He wouldn't have looked twice at Ellis St. John unless there was some way Evan could have used him.

Evan was a user. It's what Vince Ellerbe had said. He'd always been a user.

Was that it?

Had Evan used Ellis in some way? And had Ellis finally taken enough abuse from his idol?

Justin shook his head.

Absolutely no way of knowing.

Shit.

He kept prowling through the apartment.

Justin checked St. John's bathroom and medicine cabinet. It was well stocked and as neatly arranged as everything else in the place. It didn't feel as though St. John had been planning on staying away for a long time. Everything was too full, too orderly.

Something was off, but Justin just couldn't put his finger on it.

There were several items he'd been hoping to find but didn't: an address book (electronic or otherwise), a calendar, a BlackBerry or cell phone, hastily scribbled notes, or even interesting garbage. Justin hadn't really expected otherwise. That sort of thing happened only on TV or in Hitchcock movies. The hero finds a notepad and realizes that the piece of paper that had been on top had had an important address written on it, and so he deciphers the address from the indented marks left on the clean sheet of paper. Yeah, right. Never happens.

He went into the second bedroom and eyed a notepad left on the desk. Couldn't help himself. He looked for some crucial markings. Nothing. Whatever had been written on the pad, its secrets weren't going to be revealed now. Sometimes Justin wished life were a little more like Hitchcock movies. And a little less like Bergman movies.

This bedroom. It had been set up as a home office in addition to being a guest room. St. John's desktop computer was there, a sleek silver Dell, and various office supplies. Justin went to turn on the computer but suddenly realized the hard drive was gone. All that was left was the screen and the keyboard.