Aphrodite (15 page)
Welles and Manwaring have clashed repeatedly and angrily over the past several months, particularly over the potential ban of Rectose 4, a new drug that passes fat through the body without being absorbed. Since Rectose 4 appeared on the market just over twelve months ago, there are reports that sixteen people who have taken it have died. Secretary Manwaring infuriated lobbyists and drug companies, particularly the KranMar Corporation—which has donated large sums of money to the president in the past and which holds the patent on Rectose 4—by demanding that the product be taken off the market. Mr. Welles has opposed Secretary Manwaring’s demands, saying that the drug is safe and has been properly tested and approved. He has implied that he believes Manwaring’s decisions are suspect and steeped in corruption. He has not accused Mr. Manwaring of taking bribes from KranMar’s competition, but it has not been difficult to read between the lines of Mr. Welles’s criticisms.
Secretary Manwaring did not return phone calls asking for a comment for this article, but a close friend has said that “he feels that his mistakes have been of a personal and private nature. He has committed no crime and has told no lies. In this time of perpetual national crisis, he feels he is the best man to hold his position and he intends to hold it until he is asked to step aside by the president of the United States.”
At the heart of it all is, of course, the question of what has happened to Maura Greer. Is she dead, as her mother believes? Or will she suddenly return home, safe and sound, as her father so desperately hopes?
Right now, there are no answers. There is only the missing twenty-four-year-old woman whose disappearance reminds us that tragedies do not only happen on grand and global scales.
They happen to everyday people in everyday life.
When the ferry docked, Justin Westwood drove straight to the East End Harbor police station. During the fifteen-minute drive, he tried to figure out how Maura Greer’s body had wound up back in her hometown. Had she come into town to see someone without telling her parents? A lover? That didn’t make sense, not if the stories about her relationship with Frank Manwaring were to be believed. So why would she come back without telling anyone? And if she hadn’t come back, how did she wind up in the water there?
When he arrived at the station, Justin quickly learned that several of the mysteries he’d just read about surrounding Maura Greer and Secretary Frank Manwaring had now been solved.
He learned that at four-thirty that morning Hank Lobel, a local resident who made his living installing sprinkler systems, had taken two buddies out on his twenty-six-foot Hunter 260 for a day of sailing, beer drinking, and fishing in the waters of East End Bay. A fishing line had snagged on something in the water. Under the influence of many cans of Budweiser, the men refused to cut the line, determined to haul in whatever was causing the problem. After a lengthy struggle, they dragged in the decayed and gnawed-upon body of Maura Greer. By the time Justin returned from Connecticut, the coroner had determined that Maura had not drowned but rather had been killed, her neck broken, before being put in the bay. The lengthy investigation into her disappearance was now a murder investigation.
As soon as the news had leaked out about the discovery of Maura’s corpse and the ensuing coroner’s report, a CNN report revealed that Frank Manwaring had been in East Hampton, just several miles from where Maura’s body had been found. He had been there two and a half months earlier, which was the approximate length of time the coroner estimated the body had been in the water. Minutes after that report aired, the secretary of Health and Human Services was asked by the president of the United States to resign. Chase Welles, head of the FDA, was immediately named as Manwaring’s replacement and there was expected to be no trouble with his confirmation. The president called a press conference and read a prepared statement that said: “I wholeheartedly believe in Secretary Manwaring’s innocence. I believe his statements that he had nothing to do with the tragic death of Maura Greer, and I accept at face value his rejection of all the other charges and accusations that have been leveled at him. However, in these very dangerous times, the fact that the secretary is now involved in a murder investigation, however peripheral his involvement, will be such a major distraction that I no longer feel he can fulfill his duties in a timely and competent manner. I am confident that Chase Welles will be a superb secretary, more than capable of handling this crucial cabinet position.”
At his own press conference, Frank Manwaring declared his innocence in Maura Greer’s murder. He also reiterated that all the other women who had revealed their relationships with him were lying. “For what reason, I don’t know,” he said. “I assume that greed enters into it and it is a sad day when greed overcomes any and all sense of morality.” He refused to comment on his replacement other than to warn against changes in current policy. Secretary Manwaring also said that he would no longer comment publicly on the Maura Greer situation. He had been told to keep silent from this point forward. When asked who had told him to keep silent, the secretary declined to comment.
Rachel and Marcus Greer held a press conference too. They tearfully expressed gratitude that they at last had some closure but said that, of course, their gratitude was tainted by their sorrow. They stated that they did not believe Secretary Manwaring’s declarations of innocence and ignorance, and they demanded that he take a lie-detector test. When that demand was relayed to Frank Manwaring, he nodded and said that he would be happy to take such a test, but before he could finish making a commitment, he was hustled away by two aides.
Justin learned all this from Special Agent Len Rollins of the FBI. He learned from his boss, Jimmy Leggett, that the Maura Greer murder now took precedence over the investigation into Susanna Morgan’s death.
“Since when is one murder more important than the next?” Justin asked.
“I thought you said he wouldn’t be any trouble,” Agent Rollins said to Leggett, not even bothering to look at Justin.
Leggett, slowly shaking his head, said, “The media’s going to be all over this, Jay.” Leggett sounded rattled. Scared. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that we’re not exactly the New York City Police Department and that this is not our area of expertise. I’m not telling you to forget about Susanna Morgan, I’m telling you there are priorities.”
“What are the priorities?” Justin said, looking straight at Rollins. “You guys covering your ass because you didn’t do shit for three months and now you’ve got a body so you’re looking kind of stupid?”
Rollins smiled and nodded. It was not a friendly smile. It was the smile of someone who was acknowledging that he’d do whatever it took to fight back and win. Rollins looked as if he knew a lot about winning, too. He was six-one, maybe six-two, a muscular two hundred pounds. Justin guessed that he’d played college football. Or had spent a few years in the marines. He had the aura of someone who didn’t shy away from physical contact. He was in his mid-forties with dark hair that didn’t show any signs of thinning. Justin decided that this guy was a player. His instinct was immediately proven correct.
“I know all about you, Westwood,” Agent Rollins said. “We checked you out. You may have been a hot-shit guy at one time in your life, but that doesn’t mean fuck-all right now. I’m not looking to be a hard-ass, but it won’t bother me, either. There’s shit going on that you don’t know anything about and my guess is you never will. But Maura Greer is my priority. It’s the government’s priority. You don’t want to go along with that, fine. You want me to get you put on permanent leave, no problem—that can be arranged in about a minute. You want to stay on the job and collect your paycheck and do what you’ve been doing for the last six years, which is getting drunk and handing out parking tickets and feeling sorry for yourself, what you do is say ‘Yes sir’ to me whenever I tell you to do something and otherwise you stay the fuck out of my way. Is that understood?” When Justin didn’t say anything, Rollins took the hard-ass edge out of his voice and said, as if they were best friends talking about nothing more important than borrowing a lawn mower for the day’s chores, “I can use you, Jay—you mind if I call you Jay? I know you know what you’re doing, you’ve got more experience than anyone else. I value that. I can use you here. But if you don’t want to be used, say so now, because I promise you, if you fuck around with me I’ll step on you like the frightened little bug that you are.” The smile came back on the FBI agent’s face and so did the edge in his voice. “Now is that understood?”
Justin narrowed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath. He felt his lungs contract, realized his breathing would come only in short, quick gasps. He exhaled twice, ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the two idiot cops, Gary and Brian, looking in at him from the other room, waiting to hear his response. Brian’s mouth seemed to be stitched together. Two teeth were missing and the lower half of his face was as swollen as a balloon. Despite that, Justin could see the smirk there. He could see the pleasure Brian was getting from eavesdropping.
Justin thought of many things he wanted to say to Special Agent Len Rollins. He ran through all of them in his mind, which was why it took him so long to respond. But when he finally did speak, what he said was, “Yes sir, it’s understood.”
“Good,” Agent Rollins said. “Now here’s your first assignment. Try not to get too drunk tonight. Take tomorrow off. Don’t do a thing. Relax and get used to the fact that we’re in charge now. I want you to forget about this Susanna Morgan thing for the moment. Whatever you think is going on there, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. I’ve talked to the Middleview police and the East Hampton force and they’re on top of it. It’s their case now. I’ve made Officer Meves their contact in this office.”
“Officer Meves …?” He suddenly realized that Rollins meant Brian.
Brian
was in charge of the Susanna Morgan investigation? “For chrissake—”
“For chrissake
what
, Detective Westwood?”
“The girl was murdered,” Justin said. “That’s got to mean something.”
“It does. It means that it’s being handled in exactly the manner I’ve just described to you. We have other priorities. Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes sir.”
Agent Rollins let his face relax. His eyes revealed no emotion other than pleasure in the fact that he’d just won. “Day after tomorrow, I want you here at eight a.m. sharp. We’ll have your assignment for the Maura Greer case.” Justin didn’t respond, just stood silently until Agent Rollins said, “You’re dismissed.”
Justin nodded, turned on his heel, strode past Brian and Gary without looking at either of them, marched out the front door of the station, went straight to Duffy’s, told Donnie the bartender to bring him a double scotch. He proceeded to stay there for four hours. He didn’t leave until he was positive he was drunk enough that for the rest of the night, until whenever he woke up the next day, he couldn’t possibly speak or think or feel or, most important of all, dream.
When Justin woke up, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. He thought he might have passed out in Duffy’s and was coming to on the floor by the bar. It seemed a realistic enough possibility that one of his first hung-over reactions was to get angry at Donnie for not getting him home and letting him spend the night sleeping on a bed of hardwood in puddles of spilled beer and whiskey.
When his brain cleared a bit more, Justin realized that he was not sprawled on a barroom floor. He was in his own home. But not on his bed. He hadn’t made it that far. He hadn’t even made it to the couch. He’d managed to get into his living room, take a few steps, and collapse on the coffee table.
He took a deep, wheezy breath, kept his eyes open for several seconds, trying to clear the haze behind them, and forced himself to stand up. The move wasn’t one of his major successes. He felt himself bob and weave and sway. But he stayed up. He took one step toward his bedroom, had to stop when he was overcome by the urge to puke his guts out. It was while he was standing there, trying to keep his balance and whatever was in his stomach in there, that he heard it. At first he couldn’t place the noise. It sounded like birds squawking. Then he realized it was the buzz of a crowd. Human voices, talking. It seemed disconnected from his environment, but he began to understand that the noise was close by. He managed to take several steps over to his living room window, looked outside onto his small front lawn, and saw that the crowd was standing in front of his house. There were several vans, all with television-station logos on their sides. One had a satellite perched on top of it. A row of cars was parked on each side of the street. Twenty or thirty people stood peering in at him. Several of them had cameras. When Justin’s face appeared in the window, the cameras started clicking and the crowd began to vibrate.
Justin jerked away from the window, making his head feel as if it were going to topple off of his neck. He took several more deep breaths, a foul odor emerging from his mouth, the taste of whiskey and bile forging up his throat. He tried to piece together what was going on. Something to do with the discovery of Maura Greer’s body, that much was clear. But why the hell were the jackals pursing
him
? He looked at the clock that rested atop the living room mantel. One o’clock. Jesus. He’d slept half the day away.
Before anything, he knew he had to clear his head. So he went into the bathroom, popped four aspirin, brushed his teeth, turned the shower on as hot as he could stand it, and stepped in. As the water streamed down, he slowly turned the knob until it was ice cold. He was awake. Toweling off, Justin went into the kitchen, grabbed a large bottle of water out of the fridge, and drank half of it in one gulp. He went back to the living room, turned on the television, surfed the channels until he came to CNN. Maura Greer was the story. And it was a big one. The media had already sunk their sharklike teeth into it and they weren’t going to let go until it had been torn into tiny little pieces. He pressed the Mute button on the remote control. Sat there trying to absorb what was happening. When he looked up, what he saw on the TV screen surprised him so deeply that he dropped the remote. It was Brian Meves, his fellow East End cop. Brian’s mouth was still stitched and swollen, his face still puffed out from the beating Justin had given him. But he was being interviewed by some blond woman. She had a microphone shoved up to his battered lips. Justin found the remote, fumbled with the buttons, finally got the sound back on, heard the end of the interview, heard Brian saying, “We didn’t know anything about his background. He’s not much of a talker. It’s all been a big shock, on top of, you know, what happened to Maura. Let’s face it, the guy basically had a nervous breakdown, so that’s not exactly who you want in charge of a murder investigation. His recent assault on me shows that he’s not exactly stable. So yeah, I can verify the fact that he’s off that case—”