Missing

by Jonathan Valin

  “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.”

  But she was thinking about the depth of Greenleaf’s betrayal. “Why would he have done that to me?” she said in a heartsick voice. “When he left Del, he went through an agony of remorse and self-recrimination. He didn’t just walk out on him like a stranger.”

  “We don’t know what happened, Cindy. The part about Cavanaugh is speculation.”

  She put her hands to her face and sat for a moment in silence. “I thought I could let this go. I thought that was what Mason would have wanted—what I wanted. But the fact is I was afraid of finding out the truth. I am still afraid.”

  It was my cue, although I sure as hell didn’t feel like picking it up. “I could look into it for you,” I said uneasily. “At least I could find out if Cavanaugh was the one in the bar.”

  Cindy nodded. “Yes. I guess I need to know who he was with—and why.”

  “The why could be tougher,” I said. “You do understand that this could be painful, don’t you, Cindy? You may not want to know some of things I find out.”

  “All I know for sure is that I can’t go on like this.”

  “Okay. But try to remember that I warned you.”

  I got to my feet, feeling as if I’d gained fifty pounds, as if I’d literally shouldered the burden of Greenleaf’s death like a pallbearer. I could think of all sorts of reasons not to do this thing, not the least of which was the likelihood that, in spite of my warning, Cindy Dorn would end up hating me for what I revealed to her about Mason and herself. But it was a cinch that the cops weren’t going to do any more work. And I didn’t want to send her to a stranger.

  “I’ll start in the morning,” I said, as I walked over to the door. “You may want to collect Mason’s effects. They’re in the CPD property room. The cops found his car outside the bar and towed it to the Gest Street impoundment lot. Call Jack McCain if you have any trouble getting a release.”

  I went out the door and down the drive, knowing that I’d made a bad mistake. It was going to be Ira Lessing all over again—I could feel it in my gut. As I got in the car, Cindy Dorn stepped out on the stoop. She stood there in the moonlit driveway, while all around us the sleepy yellow brick houses dreamed their pleasant suburban dreams.

  “I didn’t say thank you,” she said, coming down by the car. She reached in the window and put her hand on my face. “I’ve been a bitch tonight, and I’m sorry. If Mason were around, I would have taken it out on him. Anyway, I wanted you to know that it was a lucky thing the day I called you. Lucky for me.”

  “Let’s hope you feel that way when I’m finished,” I said heavily.

  “I will always feel that way,” she said.

  Leaning through the window, she kissed me on the mouth. “You know I’m fond of you, right?”

  The persistence of her candor made me smile. “I know.” She smiled back at me
. “Good. Because I’m depending on you, Harry. You’re about all I can depend on, just now.”

  Pulling her head back through the window, she walked up the driveway with her arms wrapped tightly around her body. I watched the woman go inside the house, then sat there for a few moments, liking her and at the same time feeling burdened by the pain Mason Greenleaf and I were bound to bring her.

  8

  DEL CAVANAUGH’S home was on Rose Hill in North Avondale. A great stone fortress with ivy walls and a watch tower that rose above the surrounding trees. In the brilliant light of that early Monday morning, it didn’t seem like a place that trouble could touch.

  I hadn’t bothered to phone the man before driving over to his house. I hadn’t wanted to give him a chance to say no to an interview. But before leaving the apartment, I’d called Art Spiegalman at the Enquirer metro desk and asked him to pull their file on Cavanaugh. There were just two articles in the Enquirer archive: one about a tony art gallery the man had run in Hyde Park; and another about the mansion he lived in, which was on the historical register. The article about the mansion mentioned that Cavanaugh’s mother was a distant relative of Franklin Pierce and that she still lived with her son in the mansion house. After talking to Art, I called Dick Lock at the CPD Criminalistics Unit and had him do a computerized LEADS search on Del Cavanaugh. There was no record of criminal charges filed against him. I thought about phoning Ira Sullivan to get a little more background on Cavanaugh and, perhaps, to use him as an intermediary. I even went so far as looking up the number of Sullivan’s law office in the Dixie Terminal Building. But the truth was, I was anxious to get the thing over with—to get the Greenleaf case over with. In that sense, I suppose, I was no different than the cops.

  It was just a little past ten when I pulled up in the carriage circle of Cavanaugh’s fortress-like home. The day’s heat hadn’t started yet in earnest, but there was assurance of it in the wind that rustled through the tall oaks on the lawn and in the bright blue, cloudless sky. I parked the Pinto in the shade of an oak and walked back up to the pavilion that jutted out from the front door.

  A gaunt man with a haggard, near-fleshless face answered my knock. In spite of the heat, he had wrapped himself in a cardigan sweater and held his arms close to his body, as if the chill he felt was enduring and inescapable. There was a distance in his gaze that I had seen before. The thousand-mile stare of dying men.

  “Yes,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to Del Cavanaugh.”

  “I am he,” the man said, drawing himself straight with an effort that was painful to watch.

  I knew just by looking at him that he wasn’t the man who had been drinking with Mason Greenleaf at Stacie’s bar. He didn’t have the strength to leave that house.

  A white-haired woman in her mid-sixties with a smart, fine-boned face, so sharply angular it cast shadows on her own flesh, came up behind the man. She was dressed elegantly in an iridescent silk dress. “Who is it, Del?” she said, eyeing me suspiciously. “If you are selling something, we aren’t interested.”

  “I’m not selling anything,” I said, feeling the awkwardness of the situation. “I’m a detective working for a woman named Cindy Dorn.”

  Del Cavanaugh literally staggered at the mention of Cindy’s name. The mother stared at him with concern.

  “You’re here about Mason, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “My son is not a well man,” the mother said, pushing roughly past him. “I think you should leave before you upset him.”

  “I am still here, Mother,” the man said, controlling his voice with effort. “I am still capable of making decisions for myself. I’m not yet so far gone as to cede my rights as a human being to you. When I become demented, then you may make these decisions. It is something you can look forward to.”

  “Del,” the mother said with horror.

  “Oh, give it a rest, for God’s sake.” Staring at me with his thousand-mile eyes, he said, “Let’s go out into the light, Mr.—”

  “Stoner.”

  He smiled hideously, showing a mouth full of blackened teeth. “Stoner. A good, hard Anglo-Saxon name. Something to bust a knuckle on. I won’t ask you to shake hands. There is a fear of contagion with my illness that affects even the most enlightened people. I myself would not shake hands with me.”

  Defeated, the mother shrank back in the doorway. The look of hatred on her face as she closed the door on me was something to behold.

  “There is a patio around the side of the house,” Del Cavanaugh said. “We can talk there.”

  I followed him down a cut stone path that ran around the side of the house. He was so wobbly on his feet that I stayed directly behind him, to catch him if he fell. But he had developed his own delicate balance, and he didn’t fall. The stone path cut through a small sculpted garden. The air was rife with honeysuckle and lilac and heavily shaded by the overarching oaks. In the heart of the garden a tented table and two wrought-iron chairs were set up on a stone tablet. Cavanaugh reached for the nearest chair and virtually collapsed onto it with a long painful sigh.

  “Small steps,” he said, fighting to catch his breath. “I’ve been reduced to small steps. This is not an easy adjustment for a man like me to make.”

  He tried to laugh, but he didn’t have the breath for it.

  “Everything proceeds in small steps with me now. The loss of weight. Loss of hair. Sight. I’m anticipating the loss of my mind. It is a peculiar feeling, like waiting for water to boil. In the nonce I pass time by recording my descent into the abyss. I’ve actually videotaped many of my days. And of course I take scrupulous measurements. Energy lost, measured in the time it takes to traverse a given distance. Muscle mass. This can be measured with a scale or ruler. The growth of tumors. This can also be done with a ruler. I am become the sum total of a series of minute daily measurements. Like a growing child marking his height on the wall. Only, I suppose, I’m shrinking. And the darkness is growing.” The man let his head loll against the back of the chair. He stared up into the oak trees, his gray desiccated face dappled with the shape and shade of the leaves in the sun. “I don’t mean to be, but I’m sure I’m disgusting to you. I have no business being with people any longer. A man must defend himself at all times, and I no longer have the strength to defend myself.”

  It was like the manual of arms, and it said a good deal about the way he’d lived and the way he was dying.

  “Why did you come here?” he said, looking back at me.

  “To ask whether you had seen Mason Greenleaf before he died.”

  “And if I had, what possible difference would it make to Mrs. Dorn?”

  “She’s is trying very hard to understand why Mason took his life. Everyone who knew him is.”

  The man started to laugh. “And so I am to be blamed for this, too? What a magically wonderful train of thought that is. Mason visits Del. Mason kills himself. Therefore Del is . . . what? An accessory to murder. You should remind Mrs. Dorn that I did not live with Mason for the past three years. She did. It would, I think, behoove her to ask herself why Mason took his life.”

  “Did Mason tell you he was unhappy with Cindy?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me,” the man said, looking back at the sky. “I knew him for better than seven years. I knew what he thought and how he felt.”

  “Then he did come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this?”

  A shadow of doubt crossed the man’s face. “Forgive me, Mr. Stoner, but I’m not as quick with dates as I once was. It was two weeks ago, I believe. On a Thursday afternoon. We sat out here in the garden and talked, just as you and I are doing.”

  “Did he seem unusually depressed to you?”

  The man didn’t answer me. “We talked about the old times, when we first met. The days we spent here and at my family’s home in Michigan. The fun we’d had. Some of the people we had kno
wn who are going or gone.”

  “Did he know about your illness before he came to see you?”

  “Do you mean did he come to see me because I am dying of AIDS?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling slightly ashamed of myself. “I guess that’s what I meant.”

  “I suppose that was why he came. He’d known I was ill, of course. That was general knowledge. But I think a mutual friend had told him that I was . . . in decline. It was not an arranged meeting. I hadn’t talked to Mason or seen him since our falling out, since he started his vita nuova with Mrs. Dorn. I suppose it was quite a shock to him to see me as I am now. When we had our parting, I was a different man.” Del Cavanaugh brushed his eyes with bony fingers, then rubbed his thumbs across his fingertips, as if the feel of tears was an unexpected sensation. “I’m not really crying for Mason. He chose to live a lie and was unable to persevere in it. Perhaps seeing me, in my current state, was a blow. As I did not invite him here, I cannot be held responsible for that. But you should tell Mrs. Dorn that what was bothering Mason had little to do with her—or me or anyone else. He had come to the end of his particular road and saw nothing ahead of him but fear and darkness. Tell her no one else is to blame for what happened to him. He made a choice, and choices have consequences.”

  “He told you he was contemplating suicide?”

  Cavanaugh thought about this for a moment, with a finger to his cheek. It came to me that he didn’t know why Greenleaf had killed himself, save that he was satisfied that the man had betrayed him and then gone to hell as a result. The vanity of it made me disgusted.