“Is 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 to 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.
The traffic slowed to a crawl, which gave Zachary time to reconsider meeting there. He could call Santiago back and suggest that they meet somewhere else, since it was such a circus at La Rouge. He didn’t even have to use the reporters or protesters as a reason not to go. He could just say that he had run into traffic, or that something had come up.
But he didn’t want to give himself an excuse to avoid the lounge and to reinforce to his brain that it was a dangerous place to be. By confronting it head on, he would teach himself that it was nothing to be afraid of. So he stayed in the lane inching toward La Rouge, texting Santiago that he was going to be late but would be there as soon as traffic allowed.
Giving his car to the valet meant that he had to get out right in front of the reporters. There was no easy way to avoid them. He hadn’t planned for a trip to La Rouge; he didn’t have a tux or a black suit or any kind of fancy dress. He had a button-up shirt and a jacket, and had borrowed a tie from Pat, so he was dressed decently, but his face attracted immediate attention. Zachary heard a collective gasp when he got out of the car and handed the valet his keys, as people saw his bruised face and then started to talk to each other, pointing him out. It wasn’t long before he was hearing his name in their comments. They had clearly made the connection between his beaten and bruised face and the man in the news.
A wave of reporters surged forward as he got close to the front doors, shouting their questions and holding up cameras. Security was already on hand and did their best to restrain and subdue the intruders, and one of them was quickly at Zachary’s side, sweeping him inside.
“Sorry about that, sir. We don’t usually have this much trouble. Everyone is going crazy over the articles in the news today, about the possibility of a serial killer, did you hear?”
He looked at Zachary and his eyes widened at the condition of Zachary’s face.
“Uh… you look like you’ve already experienced worse than being harassed by reporters and Bible thumpers! Are you all right?”
“Yeah, thanks. Sorry for all of the disruption.”
“It’s not your fault.” The security guard passed him off to the maître d’, with a murmur of “Welcome to La Rouge, sir.”
The maître d’ was skinny like a greyhound, with the same alert, quivering-with-expectation look. The guy was going to have a stroke by the time he was forty if he didn’t chill.
“Welcome, sir, welcome. Are you meeting another party here today, or are you alone?”
“I’m meeting someone. Santiago?”
“Monsieur Santiago…” The maître d’ looked down at his appointment book and nodded vigorously. “Of course. You have a private dining room. I think you will find that quite acceptable. This way, sir.”
Zachary followed the greyhound through the busy lounge until he came to a series of small, private dining areas. Each one had a room name beside the door, and the maître d’ stopped beside one labeled ‘Presidential.’ He knocked lightly on the door, waited two seconds, and then opened it a crack. He peered in through the crack, then swung the door wide for Zachary, giving a grand gesture. “There you go, sir.”