Missing by Jonathan Valin Read Free Book Online

and checked into the hotel at midnight. That leaves
half an hour unaccounted for, right?"
    "Right," he said, working the gum.
    "You don’t have any idea where he went?"
    "Not a clue."
    "Any indication that he had been with someone?"
    "No semen on his clothes or corpse," Segal
said. "Nothing but booze and Seconals in his stomach. No credit
cards missing from his wallet. Still had money in his pocket when the
coroner carried him out of the hotel. Look, the guy was apparently
having a bad enough week that he didn’t go to work or tell his
friends where he was staying. He goes to a bar with a couple of fags,
gets blasted—blood alcohol of one point four—wanders around for a
half hour or so brooding about his life, ends up in a cheapo hotel,
and swallows a handful of sleeping pills on top of a bottle of booze.
Goodnight, Irene."
    "McCain said there were some bruises on
Greenleaf ’s face."
    "Minor contusions. Nothing like a fight, if
that’s what you’re getting at." Segal stopped chewing the
gum and stared at me. "Is  that what you’re getting at?"
    "I’m just looking for a reason why. Something
I can tell the family."
    Segal leaned back in his chair. He was tired of
answering questions, and I was tired of asking them. "You got to
know we can’t tell you why. People get depressed and kill
themselves. For the most part, you never know what the final straw
was. Obviously this guy Greenleaf had personal problems, emotional
problems. And maybe something did happen to him, in that bar or while
he was wandering around drunk—something that just screwed him up
even more than he already was. But unless the coroner says otherwise,
finding out what it was isn’t our business. We determined the cause
of death, made sure there was no crime committed. And after that. . .
well, people can spend their lives asking themselves why somebody
does himself in."
    The guy was right. Even though he was trying to make
less work for himself, he was still right. Absent a note or a clear
chain of evidence, no cop can be expected to explain motive in a
suicide.
    "Okay," I said, getting up from the chair.
"I’ll pass it on to the family."
    "Understand, I’m
not trying to be a hardass," he said, looking relieved that I
was leaving. "If the family has questions I can help with, I’ll
be happy to talk to them. But when it comes down to it, they’re the
ones who are gonna have to figure this thing out."
    ***
    There was no question in my mind, as I walked out of
the station house back into the heat and stink of soap, that Nate
Segal and his partner had done a half-assed investigation of Mason
Greenleaf ’s suicide. They’d dug up just enough detail to fit
with the coroner’s verdict, and that’s all they’d done. The
fact that Greenleaf was gay, which to your average cop 
automatically meant deviant, was a large part of it, although
suicides in general aren’t top priorities with police. They’re
simply too complex, and often too painful and baffling, to linger
over. Although Segal and Taylor had done an unusually superficial
job, when it came down to it, there wasn’t any doubt that Greenleaf
had taken his own life. And that was where the cops and the coroner
were content to leave it. Ultimately, I guessed, the family would be
content to leave it there, too. There was too much probable ugliness
in the details and, for Cindy Dorn, too much betrayal.
    Once I got to the car I drove straight down Ludlow to
a Frisch’s on Spring Grove and phoned Cindy from a stand inside the
restaul rant lobby. It had been several days since I talked to her,
and I couldn’t kid myself that it didn’t feel good to hear her
voice when she answered the phone, even though she sounded sad and
worn. I told her that McCain had called and asked me to relay the
results of the investigation.
    "The coroner is going to bring an official
finding of suicide in Mason’s death. Outside of that, there isn’t
much new. A few details about the bar in which Mason spent that