Aphrodite by Russell Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

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,