Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

She was twenty-seven years old, he knew.

Well, she'd been twenty-seven years old.

Now she wasn't anything because she was goddamn dead.

The woman who'd found her body was Regina Arnold. She worked with Susanna at the paper and when ten o'clock rolled around and Susanna hadn't shown up for work, everyone got worried. She called Susanna's apartment, got no answer, then called her cell phone and got nothing there, either. She had a spare key-several people had keys, according to Regina; Susanna tended to lock herself out periodically-so she went over because she knew Susanna had called in sick the day before and wanted to make sure she was okay. She wasn't okay. Regina found her sprawled on the floor by her bed. That's when she screamed.

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…