Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

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.

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more than anything else, he wanted to eradicate from his brain the fact that he'd just verified the impossible on an out-of-date computer in the rinky-dink East End Harbor Library.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.