They Thought He was Safe

by P. D. Workman

  “Were you and Jose close?”

  Naylor flashed him a look. “Is that what Pat told you?”

  “He didn’t say anything. I’m wondering.”

  “We were friendly. We did things with the group.”

  “You never saw each other outside of the group?”

  “We didn’t date.”

  Zachary filed that away for future reference. “What did you talk about?”

  “Music. Other things. Small-talk. Work.”

  “Did he talk to you about his job?”

  “No. He asked about the shop sometimes, I’d tell him anything interesting that had happened. You know, interesting customers, estate sales, bell-bottoms.”

  “Sure.” Zachary looked around the store. It was higher than thrift-store quality. Vintage or designer, mostly. An upper-class used closing store. “You look like you carry some good stuff.”

  Naylor smiled, looking around his shop. He nodded. “It’s a good place. I enjoy the work.”

  “You must not be here by yourself.”

  “Right now, yes. But not during the day. I have several employees. I close up on my own, spend time on administrative tasks. Things like that.”

  “Did you ever consider hiring Jose or any of the other immigrants?”

  “Uh… no… I liked Jose, but I wouldn’t hire illegals. I don’t want to get in trouble with the feds. That’s a good way to ruin a business.”

  “They’re cheap labor, if you don’t get caught. Better margins.”

  “Not worth the risk.”

  “What did Jose talk about? His family back home? What his plans were for the future?”

  “Not much. He would mention them in passing, but we were… in a different space than all of that. It was an escape. He could be himself instead of a family man, someone who was responsible for others… he could relax.”

  “Makes sense. Did he ever talk to you about his other friends? People he saw outside of your group?”

  Another sideways look. Naylor made a show of trying to remember any such conversation, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think he ever did.”

  Zachary let the silence draw out for a few seconds. He raised a brow at Naylor. “I don’t get the feeling you’re being completely honest with me.”

  “What do you mean? I’m answering your questions.”

  “Yeah. What I mean is, whenever I ask you something about your personal relationship with Jose, I get the feeling you’re lying or avoiding the question.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying to me about something.”

  “What did Pat tell you? I am not in a relationship with Jose.”

  “I don’t think anyone is in a relationship with Jose anymore. This has nothing to do with Pat. I just asked him for names of other people in your circle of friends who would talk to me about Jose. He didn’t say anything about your relationship. But your body language whenever you talk about him… is wrong.”

  Naylor just stared at him challengingly, not changing his tune.

  Zachary leaned on one of the clothing racks, studying Naylor’s expression. He watched for any change. “One of Jose’s partners told me that he had bruises on his throat one day. Like someone had choked him.”

  Naylor’s eyes got wide.

  “Was that you?” Zachary asked.

  “No, it certainly was not!” Naylor’s tone was heated. His voice had a satisfying ring of truth. He did not like hearing about Jose getting hurt. Or he didn’t like hearing about one of Jose’s other partners.

  “Did he tell you who it was? Or did you already know?”

  “I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “You must know some of the men that he’s gone with. He talks with you. He must mention his social life sometimes.”

  “There are rules. You don’t talk about people’s other partners.”

  “Ah.” Zachary nodded at the confirmation that they had been seeing each other. “That’s one of the rules. And it never gets broken? It would be easy to slip up now and then, or maybe someone didn’t like the rule and wanted to talk about others.”

  “No.” Naylor shook his head. “No, we follow the rules.”

  “Who else was Jose with?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just because you didn’t talk about it, that doesn’t mean you don’t know.”

  Naylor’s eyes narrowed. He looked down at the floor, worried.

  “Jose is gone. I don’t know if he’s alive anymore or not,” Zachary said. “After more than a week… probably not. Don’t you want to find out who did this to him? Don’t you want to know who it is that’s taking other men in the community? You can’t just turn a blind eye to it and pretend it’s not happening.” Zachary paused, analyzing Naylor’s expression. “Or maybe you don’t care, as long as he doesn’t come after you. You’re not dark-skinned like the others. You’re tall and fair. Not the same physical type at all. So maybe you don’t care about any killer, as long as he doesn’t come after you. You and the rest of the community will just stay quiet and let him prey on immigrants, because they don’t count.”

  “Of course they count!” Naylor said hotly. “They are people just like anyone else. Being from another country or being dark-skinned or dark-haired doesn’t make you less of a person. They matter just as much as anyone.”

  “Then help me. Lying to me isn’t going to help Jose. It isn’t going to help the other men. If you tell me the truth, you might be able to protect others in the future. Maybe other current partners. How many of the men that you are seeing now meet that type?”

  “I’m not here to talk about my personal life,” Naylor said stubbornly.

  “So you don’t really care about saving anyone else’s life. You’re just worried about your own reputation.”

  “I… I am a business owner. I can’t have people looking at me as if I’m just a… I am a mature, responsible member of this community.”

  “I don’t see what your personal practices have to do with any of that. And I’m not going to tell anyone what you tell me now. I’m just trying to find out what happened to Jose. I want to know who it is that’s taking these men. It’s been going on for years. Maybe you don’t care if it keeps going on. What’s another five or ten years? Twenty to sixty men. Your community will tolerate that kind of loss. There are always new immigrants, and new couples moving in because of the marriage laws. They refresh the pool.”

  “You can’t talk about them like that, as if they’re just playing pieces and don’t matter!”

  “That’s how you’re treating them. Like your reputation is worth more than they are.”

  Naylor slammed his hand down on an accessories table, sending a number of small pieces flying. “You don’t have any right to talk to me like that!”

  “Then tell the truth. How hard is it to admit that you and Jose were together?”

  “Yes, okay. We were together. Sometimes. Privately. Not in public.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t care if you never went out with him in public. I want to know who was seeing him and what you know about it. You know that the person most likely to harm him is an intimate partner, don’t you? Statistically speaking, the person most likely to kill him is a lover.”

  “I did not kill him.”

  “Maybe not, but who else might have known where he was or might have had reason to be jealous of him? Who were his enemies? Ex-lovers? Did his wife know he was seeing men while she was waiting for him to bring her here?”

  “I don’t know who else he was seeing.”

  “I thought you were going to start telling me the truth.”

  “I am.”

  “Who else?”

  Naylor growled. “Philippe. You already knew that. John Mwangi. Honore Santiago. Others. I didn’t always find out if it was just a one-time encounter. Even if you don’t talk about it… you get a feel after a while. Suspicions. The way people react around each other.”

&
nbsp; “And do you know who choked him?”

  “No.”

  Zachary believed it. “Did you ask him about it?”

  “He said it was off-limits,” Naylor’s tone was sullen.

  “Philippe still talked to him about it. Demanded to know who it was.”

  “Philippe is a boy. He doesn’t always follow the rules.” Naylor gave Zachary an appraising look. “What did Jose tell Philippe?”

  “He suggested it was consensual.”

  Naylor frowned, shaking his head.

  “You don’t think so?” Zachary asked.

  “I don’t know. It was… out of character.”

  “Do you think he was lying?”

  “I thought…” Naylor fiddled with the clothing in a rack closer to Zachary, adjusting the spacing between the garments. “I thought he was afraid.”

  “And what did you think of that? What did you do?”

  “I wanted to know what had happened, how he had gotten hurt, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He said it was off-limits, but I thought he was just saying that to make me stop asking.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I stopped asking.” Naylor gave a shrug. “What was I supposed to do? I wanted to spend the time with him. I didn’t want a fight. So I figured he could take care of himself. He was an adult. If there was trouble, he could handle it.” Naylor shook his head, eyes glassy. “Would it have made any difference if I had done something? What? Tell him to go to the police? Force him to tell me who it was and confronted them? There wasn’t anything I could do if he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Zachary nodded. “I don’t know what you could have done. He wouldn’t go to the police because he was illegal.”

  Naylor sighed. “It makes them so vulnerable. How would you like to be invisible? Disposable? He didn’t have any rights.”

  Zachary did know what it was like to be invisible and disposable. “It must have been very difficult.” Zachary waited a few seconds, watching Naylor’s face, curious about whether he would let the tears fall or force them back. Naylor looked away. “How long was this before he disappeared?”

  “A week, maybe two. Long enough to put it out of my mind. I don’t think it could have been related.”

  “What did you think happened when he disappeared?”

  “I thought… he was gone. He must have taken off. Immigration caught wind of him or he decided to move on somewhere else.”

  “Did he ever talk about going somewhere else? Was there somewhere he would have liked to have gone?”

  Naylor gave a little laugh. “Somewhere warmer. Hawaii. He never talked about it seriously. Just one of those things you fantasize about. What you would do if you had the money and the means. Retire somewhere warm and live the good life. It wasn’t something that was ever going to happen to him.”

  “And there wasn’t anywhere else, somewhere he might really go? Somewhere there was better work? A friend or relative who could help him?”

  “No. Not that we ever talked about.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to go to the police when he disappeared?”

  “No. He wouldn’t want that.”

  “But you didn’t say anything to Pat when he went to the police?”

  “He didn’t ask my permission. I didn’t know he was doing it. I would have told him not to bother, but that’s all.”

  “He didn’t know about the two of you?”

  “Not that he ever said. But he and I didn’t discuss personal relationships. I knew that he and Lorne were happy together and weren’t looking for anyone else. When we got together as a group, it was just as friends, and Jose and I never showed any special affection in public.”

  “Do you think that there is someone out there who is killing these men? Or do you think that they just disappeared by their own choice?”

  Naylor fiddled with the buttons on the front of a jacket on display. “I don’t know. There are rumors. People say not to go out alone. To make sure you have someone to walk you to your car. I always thought it was a little bit ‘Big Bad Wolf.’ Something that people said to make sure you didn’t go wandering in the woods alone. Not a real threat. Something to keep people alert and avoid encounters with skinheads and other gay-bashers.”

  Zachary ignored the subtle jab. His eyes were following Naylor’s fingers, distracted by his fidgeting. He looked at the jacket, trying to capture the thought nagging in the back of his brain. He concentrated.

  In the picture Pat had given him, Jose had been dressed up. When Zachary had seen Jose’s possessions in the rented apartment with Nando, there had been no sign of formal clothing. Not on Jose’s bed, and nothing hanging in the closets.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I

  s that Jose’s jacket?”

  Naylor stiffened. He turned his head and looked at Zachary.

  “He might have worn it once or twice.” He ran his hand down the jacket nostalgically, as if remembering it lying over Jose’s chest. He looked back at Zachary again. “With a store like this, do you think I’d let him show up at La Rouge in a t-shirt? He always came here before we went out.”

  Zachary looked around the store with new eyes. Serial killers sometimes kept trophies. Was it possible that any of the clothes on display had belonged to or been worn by any of the other missing men? How would anyone ever know? Though, if Naylor were keeping trophies, surely he wouldn’t have them out front where other people could buy them. Maybe on a special rack in the back of the store, carefully protected in garment bags. Or was it a game for him, watching to see who would buy them? Maybe getting to know the men who bought them.

  It was a morbid thought, and Zachary knew he was letting his imagination run wild. He needed to focus on the evidence. What could be proven. Not flights of fancy.

  “Did you date—or see—any of the other missing men?” He’d already asked Naylor if he knew any of the other men on the list, but wanted to touch on it again, now that Naylor had admitted his relationship with Jose.

  Naylor shook his head. “No. I don’t know many of the immigrants. Jose was… special.”

  “Have you dated any men who disappeared who are not on the list?”

  “People come and go… go in and out of circulation… but I don’t think so.”

  “If you did, you should tell me now. It wouldn’t be good if it came up later,” Zachary warned.

  “You think I have something to do with these men disappearing? That’s ridiculous. Whoever it is, if there is a serial killer, it’s not me. He’s not anything like me. There are plenty of people out there bashing gays. You should be looking at them, not at me.”

  Zachary tended to agree with him. Naylor’s name had not popped up in any of John’s papers or with any of the people Zachary had questioned at the club. There was no reason to suspect him of having anything to do with the disappearances.

  “I just want to be sure. We don’t want there to be any confusion over who you knew and who you didn’t.” He used ‘we’ as a reminder that he wouldn’t be the only one asking questions about the missing men. The police too would want those answers, and if they got a different answer from him than from Zachary, it would bring up more questions and suspicions.

  “I don’t remember meeting any of them. Maybe we ran into each other at some social event. I can’t say I was never in the same room as any of them or talked to them. But I didn’t have a relationship with any of them. Only Jose.”

  Unlike Naylor, Honore Santiago, rival for Jose’s affections, didn’t want to meet Zachary at his place of business or at home. He wanted neutral ground. Neutral turned out to be La Rouge, the gay lounge that Naylor had mentioned, so it wasn’t nearly as neutral as Zachary would have liked. So close on the heels of the attack by the skinheads, it was about the last place he wanted to be seen. Maybe that had been Santiago’s hope when he suggested it.

  Climbing right back into the saddle was probably the best thing for Zachary. It meant he didn’t have the time t
o develop a phobia of gay venues. He would go, nothing bad would happen to him, and his brain would learn that it wasn’t an innately dangerous place to be. If Mr. Peterson and Pat ever wanted to take him to some show they loved, he would want to be able to go and not to be held back by unwarranted fears.

  He planned to do the opposite of what he had done at the bar, having his car valet-parked so that he would be able to step right out the front door and not walk along lonely streets to get to it.

  He hadn’t expected to run into any issues. He had gotten into the bar without any problems; it had looked just like any other bar and people had walked by it on the street without another look. La Rouge was a different story. There were all kinds of people up and down the sidewalks in front of and beside the lounge. Not patrons, but protesters and reporters.

  There probably wouldn’t have been reporters there if not for the news of the serial killer. They wouldn’t be hanging around La Rouge waiting for something to happen or to get pictures of gay celebs. But the word was that there was a serial killer targeting gay men in the state, and where else would such a killer go? Obviously he would go somewhere gay men hung out. La Rouge might not be quite the kind of place that the MSM immigrant men hung out, but the reporters wanted photo ops, and La Rouge was big and flashy and recognizable.

  Apparently, it was also where the gay bashers had gone to make their voices heard. As Zachary got closer, he could see some of their signs citing scripture and sin and burning in hell. There were women there with children. It was the last place that Zachary would have brought children, especially at night. He supposed the protesters thought that they would be less likely to be arrested if they had children with them, since the police wouldn’t want to have to deal with screaming children and figuring out what to do with them while their parents were arrested. Or maybe the children were supposed to make the gay men feel guilty in some way. Embarrassed to be seen at such a wicked place by innocent children. Or sad that they could not have biological children as a gay couple. They must have had some logical reason to bring children there, other than their entertainment.