Aphrodite

8

“Hey, Westwood.”
Justin was sitting at his desk, his eyes closed, doing what he liked best, which was drifting away in his self-created cloud of darkness. The voice jarred his eyes open and he glanced over at the cop at the desk next to his. What the hell is his name again? Westwood thought. Oh, yeah. Got it. Chalk one up for my side.
“What do you want, Brian?”
“I just want to tell you I think you’re an unbelievable f*cking p-ssy.”
Justin nodded wearily. “Is that right?”
“You let those guys from Middleview push the shit out of you.”
“No I didn’t. I just didn’t push back.”
“You think that missing guy is dead. I heard you with the chief. You convinced him you were right.”
Justin shrugged. “Well, they didn’t believe me. And there was nothing I could do to convince them.”
“Bullshit. You just rolled over and played dead.”
“Maybe it’s because I don’t know if I believe me.”
Brian didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t have to. The look of scorn on his face said more than enough.
“Westwood.”
This time it was the other one, Gary. Justin looked up at him but didn’t bother to respond.
“What’s the deal with the chief and you?” Gary said. He didn’t seem to care if Justin was ignoring him.
“What deal is that, Gary?”
“It’s like he thinks you’re …I don’t know what. Like you’re special. Like you know stuff.” He looked at Justin, took off his silly-looking ultra-cop sunglasses and took a long look. “What is it you know?”
“He don’t know shit,” Brian said.
Gary kept looking. “Is that right?” he asked, but he wasn’t asking Brian. He was asking Justin.
“That’s right,” Westwood said. “It’s the first smart thing I ever heard your little friend say.” Then he got up and walked out the door of the station, onto the East End Harbor streets.
As he walked, he thought about the conversation he had had with the Middleview police.
He’d called them the night before, right after he gave up on reaching Crabbe. He explained his fear and the department dispatched two men to check out Crabbe’s house. He wasn’t there. The house was empty. But there was no evidence of B and E. No blood. No sign of theft or a struggle or that anything violent had occurred. The sergeant at the desk called Justin back, asked him to explain his suspicions, and then said he thought it would be best if they could talk in person. Next, Justin called his chief, filled him in on what was happening. Leggett was nervous. Justin could tell that he wasn’t wild about the call to the Middleview force, but he agreed to back Justin, said he’d be at the meeting in the morning. And he was. Two cops from Middleview showed up at the station around nine o’clock. They went into the chief’s office and Justin did his best to explain his thought process as calmly and cogently as he could. But as he spoke he realized he didn’t have much. Yeah, he had a witness saying that Susanna Morgan had been murdered. But there was no motive and very little physical evidence to back it up. There was a connection between Susanna Morgan and Crabbe, but it was a tenuous one at best. And there was absolutely no proof that anything had happened to Wallace Crabbe other than the fact that he might have decided to stay at his girlfriend’s house for the night. Halfway through his explanation, Westwood could feel the two cops tune him out. They weren’t buying it. Not enough proof. Too much of a stretch. Absolutely no evidence. And it was all coming from a schmuck walking a one-street-long beat in a basically crimeless town.
So he clammed up. The passion that had come out when he’d explained his theory to Leggett was gone. He finished his story in a quiet monotone, listened as the cops politely said they’d check up on Crabbe and keep Justin informed as the investigation progressed. They had glanced at each other and smiled at the word “investigation.”
It was over. Without Wallace Crabbe’s body there was nothing.
As the two cops left, he heard one of them say to Brian, “What’s the story with that guy?” Brian responded, too low for Justin to hear. Then he heard them all laugh knowingly. One of the cops also said, “Hey, isn’t this where that intern’s from? The one who’s missing in D.C.?” And this time it was Gary who answered, “Maura Greer. Yeah. She was a townie.”
“You know her?” one of the Middleview cops asked.
“Went to high school with her,” Gary said. And Brian said, “Me too.”
“She looks like a babe,” the same Middleview cop muttered.
“A little porky,” Brian said. “But not too shabby.”
“Hell,” the Middleview cop said, “that’s who you guys should go out and find. Be a couple of heroes. Don’t waste your time on this bullshit.”
And they all laughed again.
Then, when he came out of Leggett’s office, Brian had accused him of rolling over. Had he? Yeah, probably. He’d spent so many years rolling over that he couldn’t tell the difference anymore. But what the hell could he have said that would have made any difference? I have a hunch? I give out parking tickets in a resort town now but my hunches used to mean something? Yeah, that would have worked. He told himself that he gave up trying to convince them because he had nothing. Somewhere inside him was the thought that he was wrong. That his instincts had dulled and atrophied and his hunches no longer had validity. That the unpleasant and compulsively tidy man hadn’t been attacked, that he did actually have a girlfriend and he was probably just spending the night with her. That was why Wallace Crabbe hadn’t answered his phone. Because he was simply leading a normal life, something Justin Westwood hadn’t led in six and a half years.
Justin made the turn onto Main Street. So what now? Too early to get drunk. Besides, he was on duty. He thought about saying he was sick and going home, smoking as much dope as he could, and blaring some R.E.M., drowning out the world and shutting his eyes for the rest of the day. But he knew he wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do it. If he did, he’d stay there a lot longer than one day. So he had to ask himself the same question he’d asked himself almost every hour of the day and night for the past six-plus years: What do I do to get through the next sixty minutes without blowing my brains out?
Much to his surprise, Justin Westwood decided that what he’d do was go see about a yoga lesson.
Deena Harper’s class was just ending. Justin peered in from the street, through the tinted plate-glass window that separated Deena’s studio from the sidewalk. She was wearing a pair of black tights and a black tank top. No shoes, just a pair of thick gray wool socks. He saw two middle-aged women doing their best to unfold their legs and stand up. And one young man—Justin thought it was the guy who ran the computer store a couple of buildings down—who seemed amazingly fit and remained in a sitting position, legs folded, breathing deeply in and out. Finally, the computer guy stood up and all three people handed Deena some money. She thanked the two women and kissed the guy lightly on the cheek, then the three students emerged onto the street in front of Justin. He nodded at them, hesitated, aware that they were all watching him as he stepped through the doorway into the yoga room.
“Hey,” he said, casually.
Deena looked up, surprised. But she smiled when she saw him.
“I’ll be with you in a second.”
She dashed into a back room and Justin had time to survey the studio. Not all that much to survey, really. A few gym mats on the floor, several more rolled up and propped against a corner. One whole wall was a mirror. There were a couple of chalk boards with strange, non-English words on them: trikonasana and sirsasana and parsvakonasana. Across from the mirror was a small poster, handmade, that said, My religion is kindness.—Dalai Lama. The room was clean and clutter free, but somehow it radiated a degree of warmth and serenity that pleased him.
Justin looked at himself in the mirror, bent down to see how close he could get to touching his toes. He got just about to his knees, heard himself grunt. He decided he should look up, check out his form. It wasn’t pretty, that much was for sure. Made less pretty by the nerdy East End Harbor Police uniform he was wearing. It looked more like a Boy Scout uniform than something that should be on a cop. And it was all made even uglier when, unfortunately, Deena chose that moment to return from the back room. Justin looked up at her, his arms dangling in front of him, his legs bent, his head cocked, his uniform sleeves snagged a few unsightly inches above his wrists. He straightened up as fast as he could, felt his back wrench, decided there was no way in hell he was going to acknowledge the pain and show this woman that he was barely capable of bending over.
“Ever do yoga?” Deena asked.
“Can’t you tell from my expert technique? I used to be a black belt.”
“Wrong discipline,” she said. “No belts in yoga. Other than that, you were totally believable.”
He winced now, wanted desperately to stretch his back, but that’s when he noticed that standing behind Deena, as if hiding, was a small girl. She looked like a miniature of the older woman.
“This is Kendall,” Deena said. “This is Mr. Westwood. Or is it Officer Westwood?”
“Justin,” he said. “It saves a lot of confusion. You can even make it simpler and call me Jay.”
The little girl poked her head out, smiled shyly, a charmer of a smile, then ducked behind her mother again. Justin knew what he should say. He used to be good with kids. Why is such a beautiful little girl hiding, that’s what he should ask her. If I were that beautiful, I would definitely not be hiding But nothing came out of his mouth. He just stood there awkwardly, looking at mother and daughter.
“So,” Deena said finally. “Is there news?” He looked startled, his brow furrowed in confusion, so she said, “You know. About Susanna and …everything.”
“Oh,” he said. “Not exactly.”
“I thought maybe you’d come to give me an update. Thought maybe you’d caught them.”
“I’m just passing by.”
“Is anything happening?”
“Sure,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing, even to him. “Lots of stuff.”
“That’s very reassuring. I’m sure I’ll sleep soundly now.”
“Aren’t you sleeping?”
“No,” Deena said, “as a matter of fact, I’m not.”
“Bad dreams?”
She looked as if she wanted to say something, but glanced down at the little girl and thought better of it—why put bad dreams into her head—and just nodded. All she said was, “Are there any other kind?”
“He doesn’t know you were there,” he said.
“What?”
“You might have reasons for your dreams, what you saw. But whoever that guy is, he thinks he got away with it. He doesn’t know there was a witness.”
“And you’re telling me this because …?”
“Because sometimes when people have bad dreams, it’s not just the things they’ve seen. It’s not just what’s real. It’s the things they’re afraid might happen to them. So I thought I should make it really clear that nothing’s going to happen to you. There’s no reason for anything to happen. He doesn’t know you exist.”
Deena was silent for a moment. Then the right side of her mouth flickered upward in a half smile. “I guess I should have thought of that myself, huh? Could’ve helped out my beauty sleep.”
Justin was surprised to hear himself say, “I don’t think you need too much help there.”
The rest of her mouth managed to smile. They stood, facing each other, Justin shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, feeling slightly foolish.
“Well …” she said.
“Well …” he said. “I have to take Kendall over to the library. They’re having a special kids’ book thing. Somebody from Sesame Street or Between the Lions or one of those shows. A storytelling hour.”
“Is it all right if I walk you over there?” he asked, directing his question to the little girl, who was still clutching her mother’s waist and trying to remain unseen. “I’d really like to.”
Again, a quick dart of the head, an even quicker smile. “Okay,” the girl said. “It’s okay with me.”
Deena patted her on the head, looked up at Justin, and added, “It’s okay with me, too.”