Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

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.