The Bottle Ghosts

by Dorien Grey

  “And you don’t?” I asked, returning the grin, but suppressing a totally-out-of-left-field flush of jealousy. Scorpios have a lot of great traits, but they’re too often offset by two less admirable ones: jealousy and possessiveness.

  He blushed. “Well, yeah, but…”

  “Case closed.”

  *

  While Jonathan was fixing dinner…hey, I did my part—I set the table…I called Tim and Phil’s and was surprised to hear Tim say “Hi, Dick,” before I even had a chance to say anything.

  “Uh, hi, Tim. How did you know it was me?”

  I could almost hear the grin in his voice. “Well, let’s see: two bodies show up, you working on a multiple missing persons case, me just walking in the door…gosh, maybe I’m just psychic.”

  “Well, congratulations, Sherlock. So what have you found out? I assume you did manage to wrangle your way into the Chief Forensic Pathologist’s good graces?”

  “Yeah, he let me sort of watch over his shoulder. Not much so far: Caucasian male adults, probably in the landfill at least two years—hard to pin it down until more tests are done. At least we won’t have to worry too much about the cause of death.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “One bullet hole dead-center in the back of each skull. Obviously execution style. Homicide said they’d be sending over some dental records they’ve requested…from your missing guys, I’d imagine.”

  “I’d imagine,” I repeated, “although five of the six disappeared within the last year, year and a half, and I just realized I’m not sure whether Charles Whitaker, T/T’s friend, was black or white. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Well, I’ll keep you posted, for sure,” Tim said. There was the muffled sound of a hand being put over the receiver and Tim saying something I couldn’t hear. A second later, he came back on: “Sorry, Phil just walked in with dinner. We’re doing Chinese tonight, since I wasn’t sure when I’d be getting home.”

  “I’ll let you go, then. Thanks for the info, and I’ll wait to hear from you.” Jonathan popped his head out of the kitchen to blow a kiss in the direction of the phone.

  “Jonathan says ‘hi’…and ‘hi’ to Phil from me, too. See ya later.”

  *

  As we were having dinner, Jonathan suddenly looked up at me and said: “You know, for all the fucking we do, it’s a real shame we can’t have kids.”

  One of the many things I like about Jonathan is that you always have to really be on your toes: he has a fascinating ability to suddenly lob something at you totally out of left field. This one was a real doozie.

  “You want kids?” I was surprised by how that one had caught me off guard.

  “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “Well, I’ve never given it much thought. I know how babies are made, and I sure as hell was never willing to go through the mechanical details to make one.”

  “Me neither. But I read in Rainbow Flag that they’re letting gays adopt kids some places.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think this is one of them.”

  Jonathan shrugged and stared at his plate. He was quiet a moment, then said: “I think we’d make terrific dads.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “Me, too.”

  Fortunately—or unfortunately, however you wanted to look at it, and I wasn’t sure which myself at the moment—the phone rang. Jonathan started to get up but I motioned for him to stay seated, and I got up to answer it.

  “Dick Hardesty.”

  “Mr. Hardesty: this is John Bradshaw. I just got a call from the police wanting to know the name of Jerry’s dentist! Why would they want to know that?” His voice reflected his tension. He was silent a minute, then said: “He’s dead, isn’t he? Jerry’s dead! Oh, God…”

  I could sense he was on the verge of breaking down, so I jumped in.

  “Now, don’t jump to any conclusions.” I hoped I sounded reassuring. “I was going to call you myself: there are several things we have to talk about, but let me just fill you in quickly. The police did, indeed, find two bodies today in a landfill, but I understand they’ve been there for about two years, so that would rule out one of them’s being Jerry. The police are just gathering dental information on everyone who’s been reported missing in the past several years. They didn’t do it before because missing people nearly always show up, and there was no reason to. Even though it’s almost certain that Jerry couldn’t be one of the bodies they found, they want to be absolutely positive. I’m sure you can understand.”

  His voice was calmer when he said: “I suppose. But there is a very real possibility that Jerry’s dead, isn’t there? I can say it, now, but I still can’t let myself believe it.”

  “Well, we really have to talk, and I’d prefer it be in person. Can we meet at my office sometime tomorrow?”

  There was a slight pause, and then: “What time do you get in in the morning, again? I’ve got a meeting with a client at ten, so I could stop by your office first. Would eight-thirty or nine o’clock be alright?”

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll look forward to seeing you. And try not to worry too much over this dental thing.”

  Not yet, anyway, my mind said.

  I realized the minute that I hung up from talking with Bradshaw that my resolve to just sit back and wait for the results of the forensics tests before doing anything further on the case was a typical example of Oh, sure, Hardesty—where I firmly convince myself of one thing and then turn right around and do something else. If the bodies were not missing group members, the police would drop back out of the picture, and I’d have lost a couple of days of finding out what was going on. And if they were from the group, well…maybe something I might find out could be of interest to the police. Even if I were bulldozed out of the way by a full police investigation, that didn’t mean I was any the less curious about the details.

  While Jonathan sat on the floor with his textbooks after dinner, I took out a pad and pencil and wrote all the names down again, even though I’d done it at the office and had Mollie’s reports on them all. Yep. Still nineteen names! Nineteen! Jeezus! How in hell was I—or anybody else—ever going to keep track of them all? And every single one of them, with the exception of the six missing men, was a potential suspect! I mean, I like suspects as well as the next P.I., but thirteen?

  Deep breath, Hardesty; deep breath.

  I could fairly well, realistically, rule out the partners of the missing. That dropped the number down to a more manageable…what?..six? No…eight: Carl, Jay, Keith, Victor, Paul, Frank, Oaks, and Nowell. Nowell was really iffy, since he wasn’t technically part of the group, might not even be gay, apparently wasn’t alcoholic and had never shown any interest in anyone there. Except Jonathan, and that might well be more my Scorpio tendency toward jealousy than reality. Still, I couldn’t and wouldn’t let him off the hook entirely until I knew more about him.

  *

  The morning paper, which I managed to glance over quickly before Bradshaw arrived, had a brief front-page article on the discovery of two bodies at the Brauer landfill-to-park conversion site. Not many other details, of course, other than that the bodies were unidentified and that the police were investigating. As I said: a brief article.

  At two minutes to nine, Bradshaw was knocking at my office door.

  I poured us both a cup of coffee, and when we sat down, I told him everything: that Jerry Shea was not the only man missing from the Qualicare group and that whether or not the landfill bodies were of others from the group, I was afraid that the odds were pretty well stacked against Shea’s coming home again.

  He paled, but his expression did not change. He just nodded, slowly. He started to speak, then stopped and cleared his throat before saying: “Why?”

  I knew he wasn’t referring to the odds not being good, but asking for a reason anyone might want his life-partner dead. I don’t even know if the fact of Jerry’s being one of several even really sank in.

  I shook my he
ad. “I honestly don’t know. Other than that all the missing are from the alcoholic half of the group.”

  His head shot up and he looked at me hard.

  “Carl! The guy’s crazy! He hates alcoholics. I’m sure you’ve heard him! I never understood why Brian kept him in the group in the first place!”

  I repeated what I’d thought earlier, “Well, Carl’s probably one of the guys who needs the group most. But, yes, I’ll be taking a much closer look at him. And everybody else, for that matter. What I’m mainly curious about is whether, since you attended meetings with three of the missing men—Benicio, Jerry, and now Andy—if you can remember anything at all that singled them out in any way: any arguments, any attacks, any strong disagreements, anything?”

  He took a sip of his coffee, put it on the edge of the desk, then sat back in his chair and idly chewed his lower lip in thought.

  “I told you about Carl’s going off on Andy for cruising Jay. Brian channeled that into a general discussion of how some people use cruising as a means of self-reaffirmation, and how that’s often very important to alcoholics. A couple of the other guys said that they’d been aware of Andy’s cruising and felt a little uncomfortable with it. John didn’t say a word, though everyone knew he was well aware of it and I can’t imagine that he didn’t resent it.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything, giving him time to think some more.

  “And I told you we only saw Ted and Benicio that one time, and they were having some sort of fight. Benicio had gotten his third drunk driving ticket, I think, and he was pissed because they’d taken his license away. Paul, I think it was, said, ‘That was the best thing that could have happened to you’ or something to that effect, and Benicio went off on what a good driver he was and he’d never had an accident and…well, you get the idea.”

  He finished his coffee and dropped the Styrofoam cup into the wastebasket beside my desk.

  He sighed as he sat back in his chair.

  “As for Jerry, nothing. Everything was fine. At our last meeting, Andy was hitting on him in his usual blatantly subtle way: he was sitting beside Jerry and put his arm around the back of Jerry’s chair, very casually, he thought, but Jerry got up right away and went to get more coffee, and when he came back, Andy’d moved his arm away and was looking innocent as a lamb. Carl was glaring at him the whole night. Other than that…oh, and while we were waiting to go in to the meeting, Jerry mentioned to Nowell that he’d seen him with a really nice looking guy and wondered if they were dating. He was just teasing him, but you should have seen Nowell blush! And of course he didn’t say a word in response. Just ignored it. I told Jerry he shouldn’t tease Nowell like that, that maybe Nowell isn’t gay. Jerry just grinned at me and said ‘Yeah, right.’”

  Bradshaw looked at his watch and sighed again.

  “I’ve got to get to my meeting.”

  We both got up and shook hands, and he started to turn toward the door and stopped, looking at me.

  “I hope you’re wrong about Jerry not coming back.” I could see the pain in his eyes.

  “I hope so, too,” I said. But I knew I wasn’t.

  *

  When you’re looking for information aimed at helping you solve a case, it’s one thing to ask people you’re pretty certain aren’t really all that directly involved, and quite another to have to ask someone you think could very well be the person you’re looking for. The guys whose lovers had disappeared weren’t very likely suspects. Of course there was always the outside chance of a decoy killer, knocking off others at random just to deflect attention from himself. So I thought I’d better run through them first, in the not-too-strong hope I might be able to pick up something that could hint at their own involvement, or that they might say something…anything…that would help.

  I’d mentioned to both Bradshaw and John Ellison that there were other men missing from the group, but I found it a little odd that neither of them had asked who. I’d chalked it up to their naturally just being concerned about their own partners, but still…. I hadn’t told Kemper about the others, but realized that he knew them all, and a follow up wouldn’t hurt. That left Peter Warlum and Greg Barnett.

  It was my turn to sigh as I pulled out the phone book and turned to the “B”s.

  *

  At two o’clock the phone rang. I answered to hear Mark Richman’s voice: “I’m afraid you’re back to square one. N.C.I.C. has confirmed the I.D. on our two landfill bodies: Chucky Brovura and Mike Collins, drug dealers from New Jersey who went missing two and a half years ago. They were last seen in Scranton, but were known to have had connections here. Odds are they got into some sort of disagreement with a local client.”

  Damn! I thought, though I couldn’t tell whether I was relieved or disappointed to know they weren’t part of the Qualicare group.

  “So where does this leave us on this Qualicare situation?”

  He sighed. “We step back and wait and watch. And we’ll put the missing men’s dental records in their file when we get them all—just in case.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  As the good Lieutenant said, “Back to square one.”

  *

  I’d found Greg Barnett’s phone number and called, to no response and no machine. No Peter Warlum listed, but when I looked under “Roedel, Sam” I found it. Again, no answer. Both Barnett and Warlum were undoubtedly at work, so I wrote the numbers down and put them in my pocket to call after dinner.

  I was a little puzzled by my hesitance in calling Brian Oaks. But I finally forced myself to look up his home office number and dial it. I didn’t know what his work schedule was at Qualicare, and for some reason I felt more comfortable talking with him in a less institutional setting.

  After the third ring, I heard a click and: “This is Brian Oaks. I’m with someone right now, but if you’ll leave your name…”

  I hung up. I really wanted to see him as soon as possible, but I didn’t want to leave my office number because he didn’t know yet that I was a P.I. and my answering ‘Hardesty Investigations’ might be a little too abrupt a way for him to find out. I decided to try again a couple of times after lunch, and if I still couldn’t get him directly, I’d leave my home number.

  While I usually head off for lunch around noon, I had a suspicion that I’d be hearing from Tim. I managed to hold off until around 12:30, when my stomach began grumbling its displeasure at being ignored. I’d just gotten got up to head downstairs to the diner and had made it as far as the door when the phone rang.

  “Hardesty Investigations.”

  “Dick. It’s Tim.”

  “Like I didn’t know?”

  “Well, you’re a busy man. I just wanted to tell you the two bodies from the landfill aren’t yours.”

  “I know. Lieutenant Richman called to tell me. But I’m curious as to why the police would go to the trouble of asking for the missing men’s dental records if N.C.I.C. was able to so readily identify the bodies without them.”

  “A system belch. Dental x-rays and fingerprints—if there are any—on unidentified bodies are sent to N.C.I.C. as a matter of routine. We sent them off, and N.C.I.C. replied that they didn’t have a match. That’s when Offermann decided to get the records of your missing guys. Then we got another message from N.C.I.C. saying ‘Oops, we goofed: we do have matches on both.’ It happens.”

  “Well I appreciate your keeping me posted. Let me know if anything else turns up, okay?”

  “Goes without saying. Now I’ve got to grab a bite of lunch and get back to work. See ya later.”

  Three more attempts, after lunch, to reach Brian Oaks, and three more hangups when I kept getting the machine, and I finally gave up. I called just as I was leaving the office and left my home phone number. I told him it was very important that I talk with him as soon as possible, but didn’t go into any further detail. He’d probably assume Jonathan and I were having some sort of crisis and might have a policy of not even contacting group members outside of
the group setting. I’d find out.

  *

  Right after dinner, while Jonathan was busily tending to a very scraggly Boston fern he’d brought home, I called Greg Barnett, whose partner, Fred DeCarlo, was apparently the first of the Qualicare group’s members to disappear.

  The phone was answered on the first ring with an androgynous “Hello?”

  “Greg Barnett?” I asked, not sure if I had the wrong number.

  “No, this is Lynn,” the voice said, thus leaving the issue of gender hanging in mid air.

  “Uh, is Mr. Barnett in?”

  “He works nights. Can I help you with something?”

  “Well, yes, if you would.” I decided to just plunge right ahead. If I’d reached the wrong Greg Barnett I could always find a way of backtracking when I talked to him. “My name is Dick Hardesty, and I’m a private investigator. I’m working on a case and I thought perhaps Mr. Barnett might have some information I need.” I paused, still not sure I had the right number, until I thought of a question that might help resolve it.

  “Uh, do you happen to know if Mr. Barnett is a member of Qualicare?”

  Not having a clue who I was talking to, I didn’t really want to go into too much detail. And I didn’t even want to mention Fred DeCarlo’s name for fear of the risk of opening a can of worms.

  “Yes, he is. Does this have something to do with his insurance plan?”

  Well, that wasn’t much of a help, really. An awful lot of people belonged to Qualicare.

  “It’s vaguely related, yes.” I sensed the conversation was getting a bit off track. “Would you ask Mr. Barnett if he could give me a call when he gets up in the morning? I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure, I can do that.”

  I gave him…her…Lynn…my office number and my thanks and hung up.