They Thought He was Safe Read online

  “He’s gay but he has a wife and kids in El Salvador?”

  Pat shrugged and nodded. “Sometimes it happens that way.”

  Mr. Peterson had previously been married to a woman and had foster kids, so Zachary supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. People chose to do the socially acceptable thing, and then later decided that they couldn’t maintain appearances.

  “And work? Does he have a job?”

  Pat nodded and took over again. “He did day labor, cash pay, but it was with the same company every day, not going from one job to another. I talked with the foreman and he said that Jose just stopped showing up.”

  “Was he surprised about that?”

  “No… but that doesn’t mean that he was right. If you had a worker coming in every day and then they just stopped coming without a word, wouldn’t you be concerned?”

  “I would,” Zachary admitted. “But I don’t deal with day laborers. I guess they probably have a pretty heavy turnover. Is he… legal?”

  “No. Undocumented.”

  “So if there was trouble, he might have just disappeared.”

  “He could… but like I said, he would have at least given us a heads-up that something had happened.”

  “If he could. But sometimes there isn’t any warning, they just get arrested and put into a facility awaiting deportation. You don’t know that he would be able to call you. Or that he would. He might have been limited in the number of calls that he could make, or he might have figured there was no point. You couldn’t do anything for him, so why bother?”

  “I still think he would have told us if he could.”

  “Did the police check in with ICE? See whether he had been picked up in a sweep?”

  “They haven’t gotten back to us. I think if they had found his name on a list like that, they would have at least said that he was okay, even if they didn’t give us any details.”

  Zachary nodded. In theory. But sometimes the police dropped the ball and didn’t call back, especially if it were just a random friend and not the next of kin. Sometimes they got distracted by other cases or bogged down, and just clearing the case was all they could do, without making a bunch of reports to the friends or family.

  “You don’t think he went back to El Salvador? What if his wife said she needed him to come back? She or one of the kids was sick. Something that sounded like an emergency.”

  “He would have let someone know.” Pat shook his head. “He didn’t live by himself. Most of these illegals don’t make enough money to get a place of their own. Especially when they’re sending as much home as they can. So he had roommates. He didn’t tell them where he was going. He just didn’t come home one day.”

  Zachary found himself pulling out his notepad to start making notes. His brain was grinding through the possibilities. If Jose hadn’t gone home, then ICE was still the most likely possibility. Someone had tipped them off and he had been nabbed on his way home from work, at a bar, or even at the grocery store.

  But there were other possibilities. He was mugged or had an accident, and was in the hospital somewhere. Maybe under his own name and maybe as a John Doe. Similarly, he could be in the morgue. Going home to El Salvador was less likely. He would probably at least have told his roommates what was happening if he were going back home. There would be no reason not to tell them. He would have had to make arrangements; he wouldn’t have just been able to hop on a plane and fly back in a couple of hours. Zachary scratched down a few thoughts. He looked up to see Mr. Peterson and Pat watching him intently.

  “Do you have the name of the officer who investigated it? A case number?”

  “Yeah. Just a minute.” Pat got up and retreated to the bedroom to get the details.

  Mr. Peterson gave Zachary a smile. “Thanks for this, Zachary. We’ve been very worried.”

  “You should have told me. I could have gotten started on it earlier.”

  “You have a lot on your plate. One undocumented worker disappears… it’s not exactly at the top of the priority list.”

  “Not for the police. It would have been for me.”

  Mr. Peterson smiled. “Thank you.”

  They waited for Pat to return with the information about the policeman. “He and Pat were pretty close?”

  “They clicked. Sometimes you just meet someone that everything falls into place with. You start a conversation with them, and it’s like you’ve known them your whole life. You know?”

  Mr. Peterson didn’t sound jealous, but Zachary couldn’t help wondering just how far the friendship went. He had never seen any cracks in the relationship between Mr. Peterson and Pat, but people hid that kind of thing. Zachary hadn’t known that Mr. Peterson and his wife were getting divorced until he had shown up at the house one day to be told by Mrs. Peterson that her husband didn’t live there anymore. He had seen, before that, that the two of them were not terribly compatible. They had very different personalities and viewpoints. If Mr. Peterson had had his way, Zachary probably would have lived with them longer than he had. Maybe not for years, but a few more weeks. They would have tried for longer to work things out. Mr. Peterson understood Zachary and his issues better. His wife had only been concerned about Zachary’s behaviors and how they might affect the other foster children. As a mother, of course that was something that she had to consider.

  Pat returned with a piece of paper. He handed it to Zachary. Detective Dougan, a phone number, and a case number.

  “Thanks. Tell me the information you can about your friend. His full name, where he worked, where he lived, anyone else in your group I can talk to.”

  Pat sat back down. He pulled out his phone. “His name is Jose Flores. He worked for A.L. Landscaping.” He read off a phone number and address for Zachary. “The roommate that I talked to…” He tapped around on his phone for a minute. “His name was Nando Gonzalez.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No. I hadn’t ever met him before. I hadn’t ever been in Jose’s apartment. But I knew where it was. We had picked him up before and I knew what the apartment number was. So I just went and knocked on the door…”

  Zachary processed this. He tried to envision what had happened, and how Nando might have felt about the broad-chested white man showing up without warning at his door. He would have been nervous. Anxious about being turned over to Immigration. Suspicious of whether Pat were actually a friend of Jose’s, or someone playing a part. Nando probably wouldn’t have told Pat everything he knew. Even if he knew from Jose that he and Pat were friends, he probably would still have hung back. Illegals had to be wary even of friends. There was no telling what Pat’s true motivation might have been.

  “Do you mind me looking into it? Going back and talking to him?”

  “No, of course. Go ahead. I’d really like to know what happened to him. I’m worried. He wasn’t that kind of guy, you know, the kind who would just disappear. I know some people do that. But Jose… he was dedicated to his job. He wanted to make things work in America. He wanted to help his wife and kids come here.”

  “This roommate that you talked to, he wasn’t someone from your community, then?”

  “No. We didn’t know him.”

  “The two of them were not a couple?”

  “No.” Pat gave a smile and shook his head. “I doubt that he knew Jose was gay.”

  “Why not? Had he not… come out?”

  It seemed like an antiquated term in a society where sexual orientation was no longer supposed to be taboo and gay marriage was legal. Was there still a reason for men and women to be in the closet and hide their orientation from their families and friends?

  “It’s different for men of color,” Pat said slowly. “There is a belief that the word ‘gay’ only applies to white men. That it’s not just sexual orientation, but race and class as well. The type of gay men that you see on prime-time TV. White, limp-wristed, lisping, middle-to-upper-class, sweater-wearing men. And people like Jose… aren’t that. So t
hey tend not to even identify as gay.”

  “Really?” It had never occurred to Zachary that the term meant anything other than a same-sex attraction. “I… I had no idea.”

  “How would you?” Mr. Peterson gave a smile. “Unless you spend a lot of time in those circles, you don’t really hear what people think or what their prejudices are.”

  “So how would he identify himself?” Zachary asked curiously. “If he wouldn’t say that he is gay, because only white guys are gay, then he would say that he is…?”

  “MSM is a term they have borrowed from medical literature. During the initial years of the AIDS epidemic, medical practitioners found that a lot of non-whites said that they were not gay, even though they were having same-sex relations. So they had to change their language in order to properly identify the risk factors. Not ‘are you gay,’ but ‘have you had sex with men?’ MSM was the medical shorthand. Or WSW for the women.”

  Zachary wrote MSM down so he wouldn’t forget it when he started to talk to people that Jose knew who might be part of the gay—MSM—community. Language was a powerful thing, and he didn’t want to risk offending someone who might have information to share. Say the wrong thing, and he might never hear anything more from a witness.

  Pat handed Zachary a photo. A group of men around a table. Pat and Lorne and others Zachary didn’t recognize. Pat pointed to the Hispanic man beside him.

  “That’s Jose.”

  He was well-dressed, not what Zachary would have expected for an illegal worker. He had on evening wear, like the other men, a suit or dinner jacket and blue tie. He had a wide, pleasant smile, and looked comfortable, part of the group. Zachary raised an eyebrow at Pat, and when he nodded, kept the photo.

  “Have you talked to his wife?”

  “I don’t know how to reach her. We never talked about it. I don’t know her name or where in El Salvador she lives.”

  “Did she know that he was… MSM?”

  “I doubt it. A lot of men like him keep it pretty quiet. Other than the people that they hook up with, they don’t tell anyone. They live two lives, and keep them very separate.”

  “How did you meet?”

  Pat and Mr. Peterson looked at each other. Not in a way that suggested they had something to hide, but just that they had to think about it and might need a memory jogger.

  It was Mr. Peterson who answered first. “I think… the first time we met up was at a club downtown. There was a very popular lounge singer who was doing a night there… it was very busy, a lot of people wanted to see him. We went well ahead of time to get a table. The place was so packed, they were asking patrons to share tables. Jose ended up at our table, and we struck up a conversation.”

  “That’s right,” Pat’s face cleared. “I’d forgotten all about that. We’ve done so many other things together. It was just one of those cases where everything fits together, and it was such a comfortable conversation… by the end of the night, it was like we had always been friends.”

  “And you’ve spent a lot of time together since then? How long has that been?”

  “About… four months… five?”

  “And the three of you together, or just Jose and you?”

  Pat raised his eyebrows. “I’m devoted to Lorne, Zachary. This was not a hook-up.”

  “So the three of you?”

  “Yes, the three of us. Usually other people as well. A group of guys getting together at a bar or club, or even a museum or gallery. Christmas shopping together. Just… things that friends do together.”

  Zachary nodded, getting a more clear picture of the relationship. “Can I talk to one or two of your friends? Or would that be intrusive?”

  There were several seconds of hesitation, the silence drawing out.

  “I’ll have to talk to them first,” Pat said eventually. “I’ll get you names and numbers once I’ve had a chance to.”

  “Okay. Did the police talk to anyone else?”

  “I don’t know who they talked to. They didn’t ask for the names of any other friends. Just for his boss at A.L. I think that’s where the investigation stopped.”

  Chapter Three

  L

  orne and Pat’s house was a couple of hours north of Zachary’s, and he was later getting back to his apartment than he had expected, but he was calm and hyperfocused on the investigation during his drive back. He could barely even remember his time on the road.

  He was glad he had gone back in to find out what was wrong. If he hadn’t, his own anxiety would have been through the roof by the time he got home, and he probably would not have slept that night. Going back had been the right choice. Zachary hadn’t wanted to kick Tyrrell out to talk to Lorne and Pat privately, but he had needed to find out what was bothering them. It had been too obvious that something was wrong.

  It was too late to start making phone calls on the case, especially not to the police officer. Zachary wouldn’t even be able to get patched through. They would just tell him to call back in the morning.

  But he could start by running Jose’s name through the databases he had access to. He didn’t expect to find much. Jose would not show up as a property owner or having a driver’s license. He wouldn’t have any arrest records. No credit history. But something still might pop up somewhere, on a news page, social network, or some other site. He should have asked Pat about an email address as well, which might have given Zachary access to Jose’s email or social accounts if some of his data had been breached in the past.

  There were a couple of social media accounts that might have been Jose’s, but the avatars were cartoons rather than his face, so Zachary couldn’t match them to the photo that Pat had given him, and their activity was private rather than public, so if he was to get into them, he’d have to have a password, or the police would have to deal with the providers to get access to them.

  Eventually, his eyes were getting too gritty to look at the computer screen any longer, and he knew he needed to get to bed. He still felt wired, so he just took one sleeping pill and nothing else with a couple swallows of flat Coke from the fridge, and headed to bed. He would really get into gear in the morning.

  He slept restlessly, but that was normal. If he got a few hours of sleep, he was doing well, especially with a new investigation buzzing in his brain. So when light started to make its way through his window signaling the impending dawn, he got up. He shuffled into the kitchen to put on some coffee, took his morning meds, and woke up his computer again. At least the computer didn’t require a certain number of hours of rest. It was too early to call Detective Dougan, so Zachary checked his email. He hadn’t checked it the night before.

  There was a short email from Tyrrell saying that he had enjoyed having supper with Zachary and his extended family, and one from Mr. Peterson thanking Zachary for looking into Jose’s case for them. Just casual, polite emails, but Zachary savored them, appreciating the touchstones. After all of the horrible email he’d gotten from Devon Masters before Christmas, it was a huge relief to be able to open his email inbox without feeling like he was facing the firing squad. Those casual little polite emails were the best remedy in the world. So he fired one back to each of the men and sipped his coffee. He took a glance at the morning news. Nothing much happening that would impact him.

  He went back to his email and sent one to Kenzie as well. Nothing big or important, just touching base with her too. She had been a rock during his pre-Christmas depression, and now that things were back to normal, he wanted to pay her back in some way. There wasn’t any big, life-changing thing he could do for her or give her, so for the time being, he would have to do the little things, and hope that they added up to something meaningful to her.

  When she had first started seeing him, she’d had no idea what kind of a mess she was getting herself into. She’d been looking for a casual date, a fun time, and instead had ended up with him. She deserved a prize for not dumping him after the first confrontation with Bridget. Maybe part of that had ju
st been the entertainment value Bridget provided, since Kenzie had never really considered her a rival, but had been amused that Bridget claimed to hate Zachary when, as far as Kenzie was concerned, Bridget was still attracted to him.

  Zachary could have told Kenzie that wasn’t the case—and had, in fact told her so several times—but Kenzie stubbornly refused to believe it. She said it was up to Zachary to boot Bridget out of his life, which wasn’t something that he could do. It wasn’t exactly polite to admit to his date that he still had feelings for his ex, but Zachary couldn’t help that. He and Bridget had been apart as long as they had been together, but he still couldn’t let go of the life that he had thought they would have together.

  His current therapist had traced his inability to let go of the relationship back to Zachary’s love for his mother and the fact she had abandoned him as a child, which was a pretty obvious parallel for anyone to draw, but being able to see the similarities between the two relationships and being able to get over his pining for Bridget were two different things. Until he could, Zachary was determined to ‘fake it until he could make it,’ to show Kenzie the attention she deserved and pretend that Bridget was out of his life and didn’t mean anything to him.

  Kenzie wouldn’t be checking her email for a couple more hours, so he started to work his way through the stack of paperwork on his desk. If anyone had told him how much paperwork there would be as a private detective, he might not have set his sights on becoming one. He had never done well in school, his ADHD causing too many problems in any classroom setting. At least at home, he didn’t have to deal with the distractions of thirty other people coughing and sniffling and shifting around in their seats. He worked through some routine skip traces, added paragraphs to reporting letters, and drew up invoices for cases that he had closed and needed to collect on. As much as he hated accounting, he wasn’t going to get paid without them.

  The hour hand finally crept around to eight—or since he didn’t actually have an analog clock, the display on his phone and computer screen read eight—and he figured it was worth seeing if he could get Officer Thurlow Dougan. He dialed the number that Pat had given him and listened to the ringing, fully expecting that he would end up in Dougan’s voicemail and have to explain what he wanted to the machine. He was scripting it in his head when the line was picked up, not by voicemail, but by a real person.