They Thought He was Safe

by P. D. Workman

  “Great. Do I get a prescription painkiller?”

  The doctor pursed his lips, looking as if he were trying to decide whether Zachary was a drug-seeking addict. He looked down at the clipboard in his hand containing Zachary’s chart, and nodded. “Yes, it would probably be a good idea, at least for a few days. I’m only going to prescribe a small number of pills. You’ll need to go to your GP if you need a longer prescription, and he can decide what you need. You’re on… other meds…?” he trailed off, apparently seeing the list of prescriptions that Zachary had provided.

  “I don’t take them all every day. But I figured you’d need to know all of them because of interactions.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” He looked at Zachary again. “You have someone who is managing this protocol? You’re not getting different meds from different doctors?”

  “Yeah. Just one doctor. You can call him if you want.”

  He nodded, looking relieved. “As long as you’ve got someone who knows all of what you are taking and is making adjustments when needed. I’ll leave that to him.” He took out a prescription pad and scribbled down the details of the painkillers for Zachary. “You’re going to need to be careful if you’re taking that with any kind of tranquilizer or sleep aid. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist first. I’ll get the staff started on checking you out.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  He was glad that he wasn’t going to need to stay overnight. He knew that the Demerol was still masking the amount of damage that had been done to his body, but he didn’t want to have to put the investigation aside while he recovered. Those missing men needed him. And other men who might be in peril if Zachary didn’t figure out who the predator was.

  “No driving,” the doctor advised as he scratched his initials onto the chart. “You’ll need someone to pick you up.”

  Zachary had been afraid of that. He looked at John, who shook his head. Zachary didn’t know if he even had a car. He might have gotten to the hospital on the bus, or a friend might have dropped him off as a favor. Zachary could call a cab, but then the next question was where to stay. He didn’t particularly want to be by himself in a hotel room. Not after the encounter with the skinheads. He wanted to be with other people, not walking down a lonely street again, listening to footsteps behind him.

  “I’ll… uh… I’ll sort something out.”

  “If the nurses see you are driving yourself, they will call the police.”

  “I don’t even have my car here. It’s back at the bar where I got beaten up.”

  “Get it tomorrow when it’s light out and you have someone with you.”

  He ended up calling Mr. Peterson. He hated to do it. He knew he and Pat would be in bed, and a ringing phone in the middle of the night would worry them. But if he didn’t want to spend the night alone, there was only one couple in town that he could call.

  “Zachary?” Mr. Peterson’s voice was concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Everything is okay. I’m fine. But… I need somewhere to stay tonight. And a ride.”

  “Certainly, of course. Are you still working? It’s got to be…” there was a pause as Mr. Peterson checked the time. “Three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry to bother you so late. I wouldn’t have if I could have called anyone else…”

  “You know that we’re happy to have you over any time. Where do you need to be picked up?”

  Zachary cleared his throat, preparing for further concern from his former foster father. “Well… I’m at the Regional Medical Center.”

  “The hospital?” Lorne’s voice peaked louder.

  Zachary could hear Pat in the background, asking about what was going on. Mr. Peterson muffled the phone while he answered Pat. Then he spoke to Zachary again.

  “Are you hurt? Did you have a panic attack? Tell me what happened.”

  “I got hurt. It’s fine. There’s nothing broken, they’re releasing me. Just a few bruises. I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “We’ll be right there. The hospital is about fifteen minutes away.”

  “Don’t rush. It always takes an hour to get checked out. I’ll be out front once I’ve been released. You don’t even have to come in.”

  But he knew that wouldn’t stop Mr. Peterson from coming in. He’d want reassurance from the staff that Zachary wasn’t checking himself out against medical advice and to know whether there were any special instructions to follow. If they knew about the other medications. Zachary was a grown man, but bring his foster father into the picture, and he might as well have been eleven years old again, when he’d had a bad reaction to his meds and Mr. Peterson had been the one to rush him to the emergency room in his pajamas and sneakers.

  Zachary went through John’s papers one last time to make sure that he’d seen everything and captured it all on his camera. He brought up the images on the camera to make sure they were saved. Then he thanked John for all of the work he had done and for bringing it to Zachary in the middle of the night. Once John was gone, he dressed slowly and gingerly, and headed to the desk to sign all of the release forms and waivers.

  He managed to get to the front doors at the same time as Mr. Peterson was walking up. Zachary smiled and waved and Mr. Peterson stopped where he was and waited for Zachary to exit the hospital. Even under the too-dim exterior lights of the hospital, Mr. Peterson could obviously see the damage done to Zachary’s face. His mouth fell open.

  “Oh, Zachary! What have you done to yourself?”

  He took Zachary by the arm to walk him to the car where Pat was waiting, as if Zachary were the sixty-year-old instead of in the prime of life. They walked slowly, Zachary reducing his speed to accommodate Mr. Peterson’s pace, and Mr. Peterson slowing his even more to adjust for whatever injuries he couldn’t see.

  “I’ll tell you about it when we’re on our way,” he said. “I’ll just have to repeat it for Pat otherwise.”

  He hobbled to the car, where Mr. Peterson insisted that Zachary get into the front where there was more legroom and more comfortable seating, even though Zachary was a small man and would have been just fine in the back.

  Pat turned his head to look at Zachary as he got in, and exchanged looks with Mr. Peterson. They helped Zachary get his seatbelt on. Pat shook his head.

  “Did you have a tussle with a bear, or what? You look awful, Zachary, and those bruises haven’t even set yet. You’d better sleep with ice on your eye tonight, or you’re not even going to be able to open it in the morning.”

  “It looks worse than it is. They hit my cheek, actually, not the orbital…” Zachary trailed off.

  “They?” Mr. Peterson asked. “Who exactly is they?” He climbed into the back seat and pulled his door closed.

  “I kind of got mugged,” Zachary hedged. “It’s okay. I’m fine and they didn’t steal anything. They got interrupted.”

  “You’re not fine. Where were you? Why were you out somewhere so dangerous late at night?”

  “Err…” Zachary had hoped not to have to give them any details, knowing it would just make them feel worse. “I was… investigating…”

  “Investigating what?” Mr. Peterson shot back. And then Zachary heard the intake of breath behind him as Mr. Peterson suddenly realized why Zachary would be in town conducting an investigation late at night. He swore softly. “Not Jose’s disappearance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t have… did you have to go out so late? You could talk to his roommate and his boss during the day. You didn’t need to go anywhere else. You didn’t need to go somewhere dangerous.”

  “It wasn’t really dangerous. I was fine while I was there. It was just when I left… it was dark, and I didn’t see… I was parked a few blocks away and I didn’t realize that I’d been followed.”

  “By who? Do you know who it was that did this to you? Was it a witness? Someone trying to shut you down?”

  “Just… no, nothing to do with the investigation. Just som
e kids looking for trouble, that’s all. It was nothing. Really.”

  “Kids? Like a street gang?”

  “No… a group… of young men. Not an actual gang, I don’t think. Just the kind who band together…”

  Pat looked over at Zachary as he pulled out of the hospital parking lot. “Zachary,” he said, in a low, even tone that meant that they knew Zachary was trying to obfuscate. It was time to fess up and tell the truth.

  “It was… a group of skinheads.”

  “Skinheads,” Mr. Peterson repeated. “Why would you have any trouble from skinheads? You’re white. You’re not Jewish or…” He trailed off, understanding.

  “They followed you from The Night Scene,” Pat said flatly.

  “Yeah.”

  Pat thumped the steering wheel in frustration. As a man who normally had endless patience and sangfroid, it was an emotional outburst. “This would never have happened if you hadn’t been trying to find out what happened to Jose!”

  “It’s not your fault,” Zachary hurried to reassure him. “It was just one of those things. It could have happened to anybody at any time.”

  “But it didn’t. It happened to you when you were investigating a case that I gave you. And I’m not even paying you! You need to drop it now. It’s not worth something happening to you. It’s bad enough that Jose has disappeared, but I would never forgive myself if something even worse than this happened to you because you were following up on a lead.”

  “It’s late and I got you out of bed,” Zachary said. “You’re tired. It’s really not that big a deal. You’ll feel better about it in the morning.”

  “I won’t feel better about it. We’ll talk in the morning, but you’ll drop it. Wherever Jose has gone, we’re not going to get him back. He’s made his own choice.”

  Zachary was silent. He wasn’t going to tell them that it was a serial killer. Not yet. Not until he knew more details. He had a lot of research to go over before he could come to that conclusion. But if it was a serial killer, there was no way Zachary was going to just let it go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  H

  e did his best not to let Lorne and Pat see the extent of his injuries, but by the time they got back to the house, the Demerol was wearing off. Zachary got ready for bed and took one of the painkillers they had filled at the pharmacy on the way home. It was obvious he wasn’t going to get any sleep without them. As it was, he had a restless night, tossing and turning to find a comfortable position when everything hurt. He was up by the time the gray light of dawn started to fill the room, hurting too badly to go back to sleep. His mind was already whirling as he tried to sort out the details he knew of Jose’s life and his disappearance. He wanted to get started on John’s research as soon as possible, but first he would have to get everything off of the digital card and print it out.

  Mr. Peterson looked in on him when he got up and found him poring over his notepad, reviewing everything he had written down and trying to pull all of the threads into something that made sense.

  “Up already?”

  “Yeah, couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

  Mr. Peterson shook his head.

  “I know it looks bad.” Zachary put his hand over his cheek and black eye, as if hiding them from sight would erase them from Mr. Peterson’s memory. “But it really isn’t as bad as it looks. I’m fine.”

  “You always say that. You won’t admit when you are really hurt.”

  “Well…” Zachary trailed off, not sure what to say about that. He’d dealt with debriding and skin grafts following the fire when he was ten. That was a kind of pain he couldn’t even begin to describe. When he compared that to the damage inflicted by fists and feet, even by several men, there was just no comparison. Even broken bones were not that bad. “It hurts if I move the wrong way or if I touch it,” he tapped light fingers over the lump that was normally his cheek, “but I’ve had worse. The doctors checked to make sure nothing is broken and there’s no internal bleeding. It’s just a matter of time for the cuts and bruises to heal.”

  “Have you taken a painkiller already this morning? What can I get you? Breakfast?”

  “Yes. I’m not hungry. Coffee would be good.”

  “You need more than coffee in your stomach if you’re taking painkillers. You need real food.”

  “Just… just a piece of toast.”

  “Okay. I’ll put it in the toaster in a minute.”

  Mr. Peterson went on to the bathroom and then in a few minutes was in the kitchen, getting the coffee and toast started. Pat was the usual cook for dinner, and Mr. Peterson for breakfast. Lunch was usually every man for himself. Mr. Peterson obviously got the light end of the cooking chores. Zachary was surprised that Pat wasn’t up yet, but he might not have had a good night’s sleep after having to get up in the middle of the night to fetch Zachary from the hospital. He’d been pretty upset when he’d gone back to bed.

  Zachary wandered out to the kitchen as the smell of coffee started to waft through the house. He sat down at the table, continuing to read through his notes and make additional ones as Mr. Peterson put a buttered slice of toast in front of him. He put out jam and honey, but Zachary nibbled the toast without.

  “What are you working on?” Mr. Peterson asked.

  “Just looking through my notes; the interviews yesterday. Figuring out where I need to go next.”

  “You’re not going to drop the case, are you?”

  Zachary looked up at him. “No. I couldn’t.” He glanced in the direction of Pat’s closed bedroom door. “It may be more than just Jose.”

  “What do you mean, more? You mean there is some kind of conspiracy?”

  “No… someone who is… making people disappear.”

  “People?”

  “Gay men of color, especially illegals… it’s been going on for a number of years.”

  Mr. Peterson sat down. He stared across the table at Zachary. “You don’t mean it.”

  “You haven’t ever heard any rumors? Any talk about men disappearing?”

  “I know there are people who have talked about it… but I always figured it was just tall tales. People seeing patterns where there weren’t any. As a general rule… we like to classify things, give them names, sort out patterns. We’re a species that likes logic and predictability and tries to create it.”

  “And that may be all it is,” Zachary agreed. “I have to work through the data and see what I can find. Do you know if Jose was seeing anybody regularly? I have one young man who says they were, but I’m wondering if there was anyone else. Or if it was just random hook-ups.”

  “I don’t know if I would say regular… but there were a few men. Probably more that I didn’t know about. He didn’t seem like he was ready for any kind of commitment. Men who have been married often fear settling down with someone again. Taking the risk of calling a relationship permanent.”

  Zachary wondered if Mr. Peterson had experienced that. It had seemed to Zachary that he had transitioned immediately from Mrs. Peterson to Pat, but Zachary hadn’t been aware of anything that was going on while the Petersons were still married. What kind of relationships Mr. Peterson had pursued before the marriage broke apart.

  “The boy I talked to, Philippe, he said that Jose had bruises on his throat one day. Like he’d been choked.”

  Mr. Peterson’s face turned even paler than usual. He took a fortifying sip of coffee. “Who would do that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whether it was a regular partner, or someone he had just encountered. I don’t know whether Jose normally participated in that kind of thing, or whether someone talked him into it or did it without his permission. Or as a threat or part of a fight. I just don’t know.” Zachary shook his head. He had more questions than answers; it was too early in the investigation to know anything.

  “If he was into asphyxiation… I wasn’t aware of it. But that’s not something people usually share casually. I never saw him with bruises.” He
turned his hands palms-up and shrugged. “We talked about music.”

  Zachary nodded. Pat had said that they were just a social group. Jose had done his dating outside of that group, and perhaps they had not known each other as well as Pat had thought.

  “Is Pat okay?” Zachary nodded toward the bedroom.

  “He’ll be alright. He’s worried about you, but he still wants to know what happened to Jose. He was up most of the night after we got back, fussing about it.”

  “I’m not going to drop it. Especially not if this is a serial killer.”

  “If you have evidence that it is, you get the police to take over. You don’t need to be putting yourself in some psycho’s crosshairs.”

  “Sure, of course. You know me. I’m not a cowboy going in, guns blazing. That’s TV, not real life.”

  Mr. Peterson nodded, and took a sip of his coffee, looking more reassured. “This thing last night has got us both pretty worried about you. We thought it would be a few inquiries on the phone, nothing dangerous. You getting attacked like that… brought it too close to home. We don’t want you getting hurt. I don’t know if you’ve looked in the mirror this morning, but you look like you collided with a train. I don’t want you doing anything risky.”

  “I won’t. The first thing I need to know is whether I could use your computer for a bit. I have some digital photos to process and it would be easiest if I could just do it here.”

  “Of course. Process away.”

  “You’ve got a digital memory card reader?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Mr. Peterson smiled.

  Zachary had been introduced to photography by Mr. Peterson when he had given Zachary a used camera for his birthday. They had processed a lot of film together in Mr. Peterson’s darkroom, even when technology had shifted to digital. Now they both used digital cameras most of the time, though they both still had analog cameras for more creative work.

  Zachary ate a couple more bites of his toast and left the rest on the plate.

  Zachary retrieved his camera from his jacket pocket and pressed his thumbnail into the card slot to pop the card out. It didn’t come out. He tried again, and it still didn’t pop free like it was supposed to. Zachary took a closer look to see what was going on. The camera had been banged up and dented during his altercation with the skinheads, but everything had seemed to be in working order when he had taken the pictures of John’s documents the night before. Looking at it more closely, however, Zachary saw that one of the dents pressed into the card slot, and was pinning the memory card in place. Zachary tried to pry it loose with his fingernail, but that didn’t work. He went into the bathroom and found a pair of tweezers, and tried to use them to pull it out. It still wouldn’t budge. Zachary tried to push it farther in, and then to pull it out, but nothing was budging it. Zachary went back out to the kitchen where Mr. Peterson was reading the newspaper. Lorne looked up at him.