Missing (6 page)

"How’d you place him at the bar?"

"His car. He left his Saab in Stacie’s lot.
After a couple of days the bar owner got tired of seeing it sit there
and called us. We hauled it to the impoundment lot on Gest Street, by
the way, so somebody ought to pick it up before they start stripping
it for parts."

"McCain said Greenleaf was seen with some people
at Stacie’s."

Nate Segal reached into his coat pocket and pulled
out a fresh stick of gum. "Yeah, he had company," he said,
peeling the foil from the stick. "A couple of adult white males,
according to the bartender and one of the waiters. For what it’s
worth, the bartender said he didn’t recognize any of them,
including Greenleaf. All he remembered was that the three of them
came in together, ordered a lot of booze, and got shit-faced."

I thought about the empty bottle of Chivas in Mason’s
condo.

"Did he give you a description of Greenleaf ’s
friends?"

"The older one was your generic middle-aged GWM.
Slacks, sports shirt. Gray hair. Maybe six feet, skinny. The other
one was short and blond. A good deal younger than Greenleaf and the
gray-haired fag. Late twenties, early thirties maybe. He didn’t
drink as much as Greenleaf and the older guy."

"Jack said the three of them had words at some
point?"

"Yeah. A lot of loud talk between Greenleaf and
the gray-haired guy. Nobody at the bar remembered what about—or
claimed not to. The younger guy, the blond, supposedly tried to make
peace. But Greenleaf got up and left. The other two stayed in the bar
for an hour or so. Waiter said the gray-haired guy was fairly upset.
Like close-to-tears upset." Nate Segal shook his head. "Queers,
you know?"

"You didn’t do any follow-up on these two?"

"Why?" Segal said, folding the fresh stick
of gum into his mouth. "Why jerk some guy out of the closet that
don’t want to come forward on his own? I mean, this thing was all
over the papers and TV, so there was plenty opportunity to be a good
citizen."

He had a point. "You said Greenleaf left the bar
at eleven-thirty and checked into the hotel at midnight. That leaves
half an hour unaccounted for, right?"

"Right," he said, working the gum.

"You don’t have any idea where he went?"

"Not a clue."

"Any indication that he had been with someone?"

"No semen on his clothes or corpse," Segal
said. "Nothing but booze and Seconals in his stomach. No credit
cards missing from his wallet. Still had money in his pocket when the
coroner carried him out of the hotel. Look, the guy was apparently
having a bad enough week that he didn’t go to work or tell his
friends where he was staying. He goes to a bar with a couple of fags,
gets blasted—blood alcohol of one point four—wanders around for a
half hour or so brooding about his life, ends up in a cheapo hotel,
and swallows a handful of sleeping pills on top of a bottle of booze.
Goodnight, Irene."

"McCain said there were some bruises on
Greenleaf ’s face."

"Minor contusions. Nothing like a fight, if
that’s what you’re getting at." Segal stopped chewing the
gum and stared at me. "Is  that what you’re getting at?"

"I’m just looking for a reason why. Something
I can tell the family."

Segal leaned back in his chair. He was tired of
answering questions, and I was tired of asking them. "You got to
know we can’t tell you why. People get depressed and kill
themselves. For the most part, you never know what the final straw
was. Obviously this guy Greenleaf had personal problems, emotional
problems. And maybe something did happen to him, in that bar or while
he was wandering around drunk—something that just screwed him up
even more than he already was. But unless the coroner says otherwise,
finding out what it was isn’t our business. We determined the cause
of death, made sure there was no crime committed. And after that. . .
well, people can spend their lives asking themselves why somebody
does himself in."

The guy was right. Even though he was trying to make
less work for himself, he was still right. Absent a note or a clear
chain of evidence, no cop can be expected to explain motive in a
suicide.

"Okay," I said, getting up from the chair.
"I’ll pass it on to the family."

"Understand, I’m
not trying to be a hardass," he said, looking relieved that I
was leaving. "If the family has questions I can help with, I’ll
be happy to talk to them. But when it comes down to it, they’re the
ones who are gonna have to figure this thing out."

***

There was no question in my mind, as I walked out of
the station house back into the heat and stink of soap, that Nate
Segal and his partner had done a half-assed investigation of Mason
Greenleaf ’s suicide. They’d dug up just enough detail to fit
with the coroner’s verdict, and that’s all they’d done. The
fact that Greenleaf was gay, which to your average cop 
automatically meant deviant, was a large part of it, although
suicides in general aren’t top priorities with police. They’re
simply too complex, and often too painful and baffling, to linger
over. Although Segal and Taylor had done an unusually superficial
job, when it came down to it, there wasn’t any doubt that Greenleaf
had taken his own life. And that was where the cops and the coroner
were content to leave it. Ultimately, I guessed, the family would be
content to leave it there, too. There was too much probable ugliness
in the details and, for Cindy Dorn, too much betrayal.

Once I got to the car I drove straight down Ludlow to
a Frisch’s on Spring Grove and phoned Cindy from a stand inside the
restaul rant lobby. It had been several days since I talked to her,
and I couldn’t kid myself that it didn’t feel good to hear her
voice when she answered the phone, even though she sounded sad and
worn. I told her that McCain had called and asked me to relay the
results of the investigation.

"The coroner is going to bring an official
finding of suicide in Mason’s death. Outside of that, there isn’t
much new. A few details about the bar in which Mason spent that last
night. A lot of questions still unanswered. If you don’t feel up to
hearing this, it can wait a day or two."

"No," she said, "I’ve wanted to talk
to you anyway. If it hadn’t been for the funeral and the aftermath,
I would’ve called you this morning?

"Should I come out now?"

"Wait till tonight. Mason’s brother and sister
are at the house right now, and I . . . I just don’t want to deal
with this while they’re around."

"Okay," I said, "I’ll come about
nine."

"You promise?" she said in a tiny voice.

"Sure. You think I’m going to flake out on
you?"

"People do that, you know."

"I’ll be there. You can count on it."
 

7

TWILIGHT was just descending over Blue Jay Drive,
when I I pulled into Cindy’s driveway at nine sharp. She was
waiting for me on the front stoop, her chin on her knees and her
hands wrapped around the legs of her loose white dress. Even in her
brown study she was more than pretty. It had been a while since I’d
met a woman who made me feel like she did—just to look at.

"It’s good to see you," she said,
stirring as I came up the walk.

"And you," I said, smiling at her.

She reached out a hand, and I helped her to her feet.
"I’ve had Mason’s brother and sister here all day."

"How was that?"

She shrugged. "They’re nice, rich, stupid
people who want to feel bad but don’t know how. Neither one of them
has an inkling what Mason’s adult life was like. They cut
themselves off from him once they learned he was gay, so the only
good memories they have are of him as a child. That’s what they
talked about, mostly. What a good swimmer he was. How kind to animals
and other children. Actually they were just exercising their
nostalgia, remembering themselves as kids, trying to work up a little
honest grief. It was depressing and a little revolting, too."
She sighed. "I’m probably being unfair. I’ve been feeling
disappointed with people anyway, lately."

"It’s normal. You’ve suffered a loss."

"Have I?" she said with a cynical smile.
"What have you lost when you don’t know the person who’s
been taken from you well enough to realize that he’s on the verge
of taking his own life? Harry, I lived with Mason for three years. I
saw him almost every day of those three years. This is something—"
She threw her hands to her head and combed her fingers through her
curly black hair, pulling it back savagely from her face. "How
could I not know that something was this badly wrong with him? What
kind of person is that blind? And what kind of person would keep this
kind of pain secret from his lover?" Dropping her hands, she
shook her head disgustedly. "Anymore, I don’t know if I knew
Mason at all. Or myself."

I tried to look sympathetic, following the etiquette
of mourning like friends are supposed to do when people die. But the
truth was that she was right about her lover—he was a jerk to have
abandoned her like he did—and she was wasting her emotions trying
to figure a motive that he himself probably hadn’t fully
understood.

"I’m sorry to lay this on you," she said,
brushing her eyes with her sleeve. "But I’ve had to play the
gracious widow for the last three days. And I’m tired of it. Come
inside."

I followed her through the door into the narrow
living room. A half-dozen folding chairs had been set up by the couch
and along the window side of the room to accommodate the mourners.
Paper cups and plates were scattered on the floor. A stack of fresh
plates sat on a card table near the kitchen hall, along with a coffee
machine and the remains of a tea ring.

"I know it’s a mess," the girl said,
staring morbidly at the room. "There have been a lot of visitors
here. A lot of Mason’s friends from school. A lot of current and
former students. It’s funny how many people loved him."

"Why funny?"

She dropped down heavily on the couch. "Because
he obviously didn’t know it, or he wouldn’t have done this
terrible, stupid thing."

I sat across from her on the stuffed chair. "The
way that other people felt about him may have had nothing to do with
why Mason killed himself. You yourself said he’d been troubled."

"Troubled, not suicidal."

Cindy Dorn shook her head. "What the hell
happened, Harry? I know Mason had problems. Maybe more than the usual
allotment. He worried about AIDS. He worried about being bisexual. He
was deathly afraid of cops. But he was not in despair—or no more so
than any fairly thoughtful, screwed-up human being is. Hopefulness
was his creed."

"What you said about the cops," I asked.
"What does that mean?"

She flushed as if the question embarrassed her.
"Mason had some trouble with the police about six years ago,
before I knew him. Sully’s the one to talk to about it. You
remember Sully?"

"Vividly."

"He represented Mason when the charges were
brought. It was an ugly, preposterous thing involving a note that
Mason had written to a kid at school. Mason was actually locked up
for several days before the charges were dropped."

"He hadn’t had any further trouble along those
lines, had he?" I said, trying to make it sound like an innocent
question and not succeeding.

Cindy stared at me coldly. "For chrissake,
Harry, Mason wasn’t a child molester. The whole thing was a
terrible misunderstanding. You have no idea how careful teachers have
to be around their students these days. Anyone who works with
children has to be careful. You don’t dare lay a hand on one of
them for any reason, for fear some vindictive parent will twist it
into abuse. In case you haven’t noticed, there has been an epidemic
of such charges in this country and in this city. It’s paralleled
the growth of AIDS, a kind of fundamentalist AIDS."

"I was just fishing for a motive, Cindy. Don’t
take it personally."

"I just don’t like stereotyping. People have
done it to me, because of . . . well, because I like men. And they
did it to Mason all the time. That’s precisely why he was charged,
because to the cops all gays are potential perverts." She leaned
forward on the couch and stuck her chin in her hands. "I don’t
suppose they found anything useful, the cops?"

"They haven’t really done a thorough
investigation."

"Of course not," the girl said bitterly.

"It’s not just Mason, Cindy. Suicides are
always tough for cops. All the CPD really knows is that Mason died of
an overdose of Seconals and alcohol. He apparently did the drinking
in a bar called Stacie’s, Monday night."

"Stacie’s‘?" she said. "I don’t
think I’ve ever been there."

I told her the truth. "It’s a gay bar, Cindy.
Mason was seen there with two other men. A tall, gray-haired
middle-aged man and a younger blond man. The older man drank a lot of
Scotch."

"Del," she said, falling back against the
rear cushions of the couch.

"That was my thought, too."

She sat with her head to the wall, looking
betrayed—the way she’d looked on the night we’d searched
Mason’s condo. I said, "The police didn’t question the two
men Mason was drinking with, so it may not have been Cavanaugh. To be
honest, the whole inquiry was cursory."