“So ask your questions,” McDonald barked. “This has nothing to do with my business.”
“When did Jose come into work last?”
McDonald pulled out a handwritten ledger and looked at it, making sure that Zachary understood he was taking the question seriously and not just answering off the cuff.
“The twenty-third. That’s a week ago last Friday.”
“And he didn’t tell you that he was going to be missing time or was taking vacation or going away somewhere.”
“He didn’t tell me anything. And as far as I know he didn’t tell any of the supervisors either. But these people don’t. They don’t take vacations, and if they’re leaving, they just go. They don’t tell anyone.”
“So you weren’t surprised when he didn’t show up for work the following Monday.”
McDonald pursed his lips indecisively. “He had been a reliable worker until then, showing up for work every day. I was surprised to hear he hadn’t shown up. But I wasn’t concerned.”
“Did you call him?”
“Call him? Why would I do that?”
“To see if he was sick or was coming back.”
“No, I didn’t call him.”
“Did you have a number for him?”
McDonald glowered at him. But he got up and went to one of the filing cabinets and thumbed through the files there. He pulled one out and returned to his desk. He opened the slim file and looked over the information.
“Yes, we had a number for him. No way of knowing whether it was a legitimate number or not.”
“You could call it and see if he answers.”
McDonald said nothing.
“Did you give the police that number?”
“No.”
“And you’ve never called him?”
“No.”
“Could I get it from you?”
“I don’t know about giving private employee information to anyone who asks. You are not the police.”
“I can give you Detective Dougan’s number and you could give it to him. Then either he could call it, or he could give it to me. Or you could call the number and see if he answers. It seems a little silly to sit on the number without somebody calling it.”
McDonald could no doubt see that calling Dougan to tell him that he’d had Jose’s phone number all along and had not provided it during their investigation would put him in a bad light. He’d already said that he didn’t want to give it to a private party. That left only one option. He picked up the receiver on his desk phone and held it between his shoulder and his chin. He jabbed at in the numbers in his file, his irritation clear. He waited for a few seconds, then hung up again.
“Out of service,” he said. “Probably it was a fake number from the start. They’ve usually got a burner phone, but they don’t give the real number to anyone.”
“Detective Dougan would be able to check it out and see if it’s a real number and what the last few calls made on it were. You could say that it just came to your attention, or one of the other workers gave it to you because they were starting to get concerned about not having heard from Jose.”
“I could,” McDonald said morosely, not giving Zachary the impression that he would. But Zachary didn’t want to push it yet, or he’d get kicked out before he got a chance to ask the rest of his questions.
“Did Jose have any friends in particular? Was he always on with someone else?”
McDonald shrugged. “No one that I’m aware of.”
“What did he do? Did he have any particular specialty?”
McDonald looked at the file folder again, his eyes skimming over the information there. “He was a hard worker, did pretty much anything. Mowing, carrying, loading and unloading, handyman work. But he wasn’t a skilled laborer. He didn’t have any particular training or certifications.”
“You don’t know what education he might have had back in El Salvador? Did he ever say that he was an accountant or engineer or anything like that?”
“What would he be doing working at a landscaping company?”
“People do, you know. They get here and they can’t use the education they had in their home country. Doctors and lawyers too.”
“Well, he wasn’t any damn lawyer, that’s for sure.”
Zachary gazed toward the open file on McDonald’s desk. “I don’t suppose I could get a copy of that, could I? Any information you could give me on Jose would be very helpful.”
“You don’t have a warrant. There’s nothing in here you could use, anyway. There’s hardly anything here.”
“Do you have his next of kin? Contact information for his wife?”
McDonald looked at the file, then shook his head. “No. We have an emergency contact—I believe his roommate. But nothing back in El Salvador.”
“Is the emergency contact Nando González?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ve already talked to him. Is there anything else? Anything that concerned you or that came up with the police?”
McDonald looked at his watch. “I think we’re ready to wrap up here. I wish you all the best on your investigation, but I don’t think there’s anything else I can help you with.”
Zachary waited for a few seconds, letting the silence draw out, seeing if there was anything else that McDonald had to contribute.
“How about that phone number? Do you want to give it to Dougan or me?”
“Why would I give it to you?”
“You might find it easier than talking to Dougan. Some people don’t like talking to cops.”
“What are you going to do with it if I give it to you? The number is no good. It isn’t going to lead you anywhere.”
“I may take it to Dougan myself and see if he can find anything out about the last people that Jose talked to, or if there was someone particular who had that number. It may not be a fake number. It may just have run out of minutes or battery by now. He’s been gone for over a week. If it wasn’t plugged in, the battery would be dead.”
“If you tell Dougan it came from me, he’s just going to be back here getting on my case and asking why I didn’t give it to him in the first place.”
Though that would be a good question for Dougan to ask, Zachary didn’t want to antagonize McDonald. “I can say I got it from a friend of Jose’s. Then it’s off of your conscience, because you passed it on, but you won’t have Dougan here asking questions. If you want to know the truth, I don’t think Dougan is interested in putting any more time into the case. Not unless I can turn something up for him to look at.”
McDonald pondered this for a few minutes, then shrugged. He turned the open file folder around so that it was right side up for Zachary. “There it is. You can copy it down.”
Zachary skimmed the rest of the page as he slowly got his notepad out and flipped through it, looking for the next blank page to write the number down on. He wasn’t a fast reader and he didn’t have a photographic memory, so there wasn’t a lot that he could get from the form in the time it took for him to write down the number. But he did his best, quickly skimming past Jose’s name and address. No SSN, of course, and the birthdate was also blank. The phone number that didn’t work. Nando’s name and phone number. A short list of the safety and hazardous materials training Jose had received from the company. There was nothing filled in under medical conditions and allergies. A few codes at the bottom of the page that Zachary didn’t understand. Probably his pay level and other terms of employment. Zachary painstakingly scrawled out the phone number, reviewing the page for any other clues. When he was done, McDonald took the file back again.
“I appreciate you taking the time with me,” Zachary told him.
McDonald stretched, then took a drink of his coffee, as if he’d just been released from a tedious meeting. “Tell me the truth… you don’t think that Jose was actually killed by a serial killer, do you? That’s just something you said to get in the door?”
“I’m afraid it is something I’m looking at. I’m meeting with someone shortly who can hopefully give me a head start on that. You’ll let me know if you think of anything else? Or if anyone else seems to be showing interest in Jose and what happened to him?” Zachary slid another business card across the desk for him. “Just give me a call if you think of anything. It doesn’t have to be proven. Random facts are fine. You never know what might trigger a connection.”
McDonald nodded, but didn’t pick up the card.
Zachary called Philippe to see where he was on getting ahold of his friend who had inside knowledge of the men who had disappeared. Philippe said that he had talked to him, but that he needed some time to prepare before meeting with Zachary. Zachary hoped that didn’t mean that he was spooked and on the run.
“You’re sure he’s going to get back to us?”
“He will, he will,” Philippe assured him. “He wants someone to listen. For years, he keeps telling everyone about these men disappearing, and no one will listen. He wants to talk to you.”
“Okay. Well, I need to keep moving forward with the investigation, so have you had a chance to think about places that Jose might have spent time?”
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to go to these places. You were just telling me not to go anywhere alone.”
Zachary had a hard time coming up with an argument to that. “I’ll just be asking questions as a private investigator. Nobody is going to think that I’m gay.”
“Who are you kidding? People see you coming out of a gay scene, they’re going to think that you’re gay.”
“I’ll be careful,” Zachary promised. “Now, give me a few places to check out.”
Philippe sighed and complied, giving Zachary the names of a few establishments and where they could be found. Zachary could practically hear him shaking his head. “But you be careful, bro…”
“I will.” Zachary put his phone away. For a moment, he entertained the idea of calling a friend to go with him to the bars. But he was away from home and couldn’t think of any friends that he would have invited to go to a gay bar with him anyway. All of the cops he knew well were out of the jurisdiction and weren’t going to drive a couple of hours out of their way to humor Zachary’s whims.
Tyrrell wasn’t that far away, but Zachary couldn’t imagine taking his baby brother into such a place. Mr. Peterson and Pat were, of course, the logical choices, but they were getting on in years and neither would want to be seen as being on the prowl. Being seen crawling gay bars with a much younger man like Zachary might irreparably damage their reputations.
So he went alone, like he had planned to do from the start.