Missing (7 page)

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 specu1ation."

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 fortresslike 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 midsixties 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 known 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.

"The man’s dead, you know," I said,
voicing my disgust.

Cavanaugh looked insulted, as if no one else but him
had the right to die. "No, he did not talk about killing
himself," he said coldly. "That does not mean that I am
mistaken about the reason for his despair."