Triangulation, p.4
Triangulation, page 4
part #2 of Borealis Investigations Series
“Let’s hear about Zoar,” North said. “And then you can tell us about the fight.”
“We didn’t really overlap that much. Six weeks sounds like a lot, but sometimes there were almost fifty boys there. He managed to get drugs somehow and was dealing them. He liked to fight. He fought with everybody. And I’m not talking about quoting Bible verses back at Shep.” Another smile wisped across his face. “That’s what I tried, by the way. They were equally effective. Once, Donny took one of the aluminum lunch trays and broke a staffer’s nose with it. It’s not like they actually had a solitary confinement cell, but they basically built one. Just for Donny. When he wasn’t getting in fights with the staffers, he’d pick fights with the other boys.” Beau shook his head slowly. “We needed each other, you know? They were breaking us down, trying to get us to betray something fundamental about ourselves, and the other boys, they were the only people we really had. But not Donny. Donny—I don’t know. Donny wanted to fight everyone.”
“And then?”
“On Facebook, a lot of the guys talked about him. He was kind of a legend, you know? The drugs. That thing with the lunch tray. That kind of stuff becomes a myth in a place like Zoar. But it wasn’t exactly a comforting story. We all talked about him, but the way you’d talk about, I don’t know, this crazy dog that you’re fascinated by but also totally afraid of. I guess some of the guys kept tabs on him. Or they just heard about him. But they’d post about how he was using really hard and living on the streets. He went to prison for a couple of years—dealing again, and also assault and battery; they say he saw a guy preaching in a park and beat him unconscious with a folding chair. That was back in Arkansas. Then he was back on the streets. I mean, back in his camper, I guess. I don’t think things have gotten much better for him.”
“What about last week?”
“It was Saturday. The 21st.”
“Five days before Shep disappeared,” Shaw said. “You’re sure?”
Beau wiped the bridge of his nose, trying to smile. “Yeah, it was kind of a memorable night. We take turns on the weekends, you know? Because everybody needs a life. Especially this job; if you don’t watch out, it can eat you from the inside, and you don’t even realize it. So we make sure everybody has one weekend off a month, minimum, and I go out. Every time.” He scrubbed at his nose again, and that self-deprecating grin fizzled on his lips. “A lot of first dates, to be honest. Anyway, I came to pick up a check. I’d called Shep on Friday—I bought a bunch of snacks for the kids, and I needed the money back—and he said he wrote it out and left it in my desk. So I stopped by to pick it up.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t pick up the check.” Beau laughed nervously. “As soon as I came through the door, I knew something was wrong. The main floor was empty. Saturday night, seven o’clock, that’s weird. No. Scratch that. It’s impossible. So I walked through the main floor, trying to figure out what had happened, and then I heard them screaming. Like, crazy-maniac screaming. They were downstairs—we just use the basement for storage. I froze. I mean, I’d seen some weird stuff when I was going through the bad times. On the street, if you’re not careful, there’s a lot that can go wrong. But I just froze when I heard them because it was so terrifying.” His breathing had quickened; he scrubbed his palms against his knees.
“What did you do?” North said.
“I should have left.” Beau tried another of those nervous laughs, but he gulped in the middle of it, and the whole thing sounded more like a death rattle than anything else. “I didn’t, which I guess is something. I went downstairs.” Another of those spasmodic grins. “I grabbed one of those plastic tubs of cheese balls. I guess I was going to club one of them with it. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Donny was screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you. You ruined my life. I’m going to kill you.’ On and on like that.”
“And what about Shep?”
Beau’s lips twisted again; North wasn’t sure if it was a smile or if it was a grimace. “I got to the basement right when he started talking. I was looking right at him. He said, ‘No, I’m going to kill you, you fucking faggot.’ And he said something about . . . about money, which doesn’t even make sense because Shep never cared about money. Something about ‘my money.’ I don’t know.” Beau’s lips twitched again, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “He didn’t even sound like Shep.”
To North’s surprise, it was Shaw who broke the silence, reaching over to touch Beau’s arm and say, “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Beau drew a wet breath and dragged his hands down. “It’s ok. Really. It was just—it was a lot. I mean, I didn’t even know Donny was back in town, but there he was, and Shep was there, and they were screaming at each other in a way I’d never heard before. It didn’t sound like the normal times when Donny would get high and come around just to cause trouble. It brought everything back, all of the stuff from Zoar that I’d tried to leave behind. I said something—honest to God, I don’t even know what—and Shep looked at me like I was a stranger and said, ‘Get out, ok? Just get the fuck out.’ And I did. Jesus, I ran.” He wiped his eyes again. “Without the check,” he said, with another of those horrible laughs.
“And then?”
“Then I went to dinner and got wasted. I told my date everything. Apparently, I told him really loudly. I think most of the restaurant heard me. He must be a decent guy because he made sure I got into an Uber, but apparently,” Beau’s voice switched as he paraphrased, “he’s coming out of a bad place himself and can’t get into a relationship with so much drama. Jesus, who can blame him?”
“Do you have his name?”
“I have his Grindr profile.” Another smile flickered. “He told me his name was Jeremy.”
“Why don’t you give Shaw your phone so he can copy down that information, and meanwhile, you can tell me about Chuck.”
“Yeah. Right. Well, that was Chuck’s night. That Saturday, I mean. I was off. Shep was supposed to be gone by six, although he almost always stayed late doing something or other. Chuck was on.”
“But you didn’t see her?”
“She said she was upstairs. I didn’t tell you the weird part, though. Downstairs, when Shep and Donny were fighting, somebody else was in the room. I just got a glimpse of him. An older guy. He looked . . . tough. Anyway, the next day I asked Chuck about the fight—I called her on Sunday because I was still so freaked out—and she told me she had gone upstairs to do some paperwork. I asked her about the kids, and she said she didn’t know they had left. She said they must have left when the fighting started. She said she came downstairs and everybody was gone, so she stayed until eleven and locked up and left. I kept asking—I mean, those guys were so loud, and it’s an old house, and I wanted to know who that third guy was. There’s no way she didn’t hear something. And finally she said, yes, she heard somebody yelling. But she was busy, and by the time she came downstairs, everybody was gone.” Beau spread his hands. “I just—I don’t know. Chuck is awesome. But it’s weird. It doesn’t make sense. And the more I ask her about it, the weirder she gets.”
“Got it?” North asked Shaw.
Shaw passed the phone back to Beau and nodded.
“Donny’s not, like, in trouble, is he?” Beau scrubbed at his jeans again. “I mean, you don’t think he—” More scrubbing. “Shep’s ok, right?”
North resisted the urge to trade looks with Shaw; instead, he said, “Do you have any pictures of Donny?”
“No.”
“A description, then.”
“He’s a big guy. Maybe your size. A little bigger. He’s losing his hair, but it’s brown, kind of ordinary. Long in the back, and kind of, like, you can tell he doesn’t wash it. I don’t know. He’s just—he’s a normal guy. Oh. Hey. I’ll add you to the Facebook group; there are some pictures there.”
“What about pictures of Shep?”
“There are some of him too. Give me your email.” He played with his phone for a minute. “There you go.”
“What about a home address for Shep?”
“You mean, where he was staying when things got bad? I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”
Again, North had to fight the urge to trade glances, but he just said, “No, his home address. Where he lived with his husband.”
“Yeah. Right.” After consulting his phone, Beau scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and passed it to them.
North and Shaw asked a few more questions, but there wasn’t anything else Beau could tell them. When they’d finished, he walked them to the door.
“He’s ok, right? Shep’s, ok?”
They shook hands. They wished him a good day. But they didn’t answer the question because nothing about this case, nothing that North had seen so far, was ok.
Chapter 6
THEY DROVE ARSENAL TO Kingshighway, then south, passing Uncle Bill’s Pancake House—refuge of drag queens in the wee hours of the morning—and a Schnucks grocery store with a crumbling brick facade. They passed strip malls with Walgreens that had digital signs flashing advertisements for the HPV vaccine and a sale on Camels. They passed four payday loan offices, one with a picture of the Statue of Liberty with enormous, verdigris breasts. They passed a sprawling complex of buildings that had once been standalones but were now connected by a maze of passages, the sign out front reading Pat’s Tats. Neon lettering spelled out two additional words, each letter lighting up individually, teasing out the words: Everything Pierced.
This was the south side of St. Louis. Shaw loved it. What Shaw didn’t love, however, was the Dodge Grand Caravan—1990, maroon, with an upsetting patch of upholstery in the back that always seemed to be wet and which smelled, as Pari had once memorably described it, like two old men had just helped a horse give birth in the back seat. And, to be fair, it did kind of smell like that.
“Bengay,” Shaw said, finally placing part of the smell. That, at least, explained the old man part of the equation.
“Yes. You’ve been gay your whole life.”
“That was cheap.”
“You set me up.”
“You can do better, though. Let’s try again. Bengay.”
“Jadon must have really twisted you into a knot last night,” North smirked. “Did you have to slather yourself up with Bengay because of the cramps?”
“That’s even worse. One more try. Bengay.”
“That’s what all the boys say when they see me. They say, ‘North, I bengay for you since the minute I saw you.’”
“Excuse me,” Shaw said, cranking down the window, leaning out, and pretending to barf.
“Well, it’s a shit setup.”
“I bengay my whole life.”
“Oh Jesus. Again?”
“My parents.”
“They were definitely not gay. You’re proof of that.”
“No, I’m just—do you ever think about that? How you’d be different if you’d had different parents? I mean, take my parents, for example. My dad has the company, and that puts him pretty heavily in rich-white-man territory. But he’s also a barely reformed hippy. I mean, I know for a fact he’s smoked way more pot than I have. He still does, actually. And my mom teaches art. At Wash U. I mean, her entire portfolio is paintings of naked people, naked animals—”
“Naked animals?”
“Yeah, you know: naked chicken, naked cow, naked monkey.”
“They’re animals, Shaw. They’re always naked.”
“Not if you put clothes on them. Anyway, my point is that when I came out, they were thrilled. Like, I think they were happier than when I got into Chouteau. They practically wanted a gay son. My dad set me up with his partner’s son while I was still in high school. I just feel so lucky. I mean, what if I’d had Beau’s parents?”
North adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. Then he said, “Everybody’s parents mess them up, Shaw. Everybody’s. It’s not the end of the world.” Then he turned on the radio, and a Taylor Swift song filled the car.
“I don’t think everybody’s parents—” Shaw began.
North punched the scan button, and the Caravan’s radio screeched before settling on the next station: conservative talk.
“I mean,” Shaw tried again, “I know for you, I know it was hard. I didn’t mean—”
Another shrill burst of static, and then Aretha Franklin came on.
With a sigh, Shaw settled into his seat, digging out his phone and tapping on the screen.
“I’m not going to talk about it anymore,” Shaw said.
North turned up the volume.
“I just wanted you to know I’m not going to talk about it. I’m letting it go.”
North gave the knob another twist. The bass carrying Aretha’s tune was so loud Shaw thought it might shake the Caravan to pieces.
With another sigh, Shaw pulled up Facebook. Beau’s invitation to the Zoar Zurvivors group was waiting for him, and Shaw accepted. He went to the group page and scrolled through the posts. Pinned at the top were the typical rules, warnings, and reminders: This is a safe space, repeated in varying formulations, was the most frequent, but there were also several clear rules that Shaw hadn’t expected:
* No tagging or friending outside the group unless you have a legitimate, real-world connection that you can explain to someone else.
* No copying, reposting, or screenshotting posts.
* No hookups, cruising, or private meetups through the group.
* No exchanging personal phone numbers, emails, etc.
* What happens in Zoar stays in Zoar.
As he scanned the posts over the last month, Shaw started to see why the Zoar Zurvivors had such strict rules—although how they enforced them was a mystery. Out of the six hundred and thirty-nine people enrolled in the group, Shaw saw perhaps twenty-five or thirty who posted regularly. And of those posts, he could divide them into fairly clear-cut groups: eight or ten of the men who posted uplifting thoughts, memes, and quotes, as well as who responded to other posts with words of encouragement and support; fifteen or sixteen men who posted less frequently, often updates about their own struggles, asking for thoughts or prayers, or simply narrating difficult experiences that had triggered their PTSD from Zoar or sent them into downward emotional spirals.
It was the last group, six men, who interested Shaw the most: Allen Whitaker, Bobby Joe Casebolt, J D Richey, Kenny Holder, Dillon Muldoon, and Carey Goodwin. Their posts came sporadically, but universally these men responded to each other, tagging their replies and liking each other’s posts.
Today I wish I could gut Papa Shep and rip his intestines out with my bare hands.
I was buying donuts today, and I thought how awesome it would be to push Papa Shep right into the fryer. I want to hear that motherfucker scream.
Bought this today at Home Depot. A picture was attached of an iron barbeque spit. Can you imagine shoving this down his throat? I’d like to see it come out his asshole.
And more. On and on like that, graphic descriptions of the violence these men wished on Shep Collins—whom they consistently referred to as Papa Shep—as they went about their daily lives. It spoke of a degree of hatred so intense that it had consumed their lives completely.
“This is weird,” Shaw said.
On the radio, Prince had taken Aretha’s place, and a guitar wailed so loudly that Shaw could feel the notes vibrating in his teeth.
“This is really weird,” Shaw said, waving the phone at North.
North didn’t even glance at him; his eyes were focused on Kingshighway.
Shaw bumped the scan button, sending the radio into another burst of screeching. North swore, jammed the radio’s knob, and Shaw’s ears rang in the sudden quiet.
“What the hell?” North said.
“This is really weird,” Shaw said again, explaining what he had found. At the next light, he displayed some of the more disturbing messages to North.
The light changed to green, and North shook his head and put his foot on the gas. The Caravan lurched, sputtered, and rattled to a stop. Behind them, a horn blared.
“Not one word,” North growled as he turned the key.
After thirty seconds of on-and-off grinding, the engine finally turned over, and the Caravan jerked forward. The horn was still blaring, and as the Caravan limped another dozen yards, a Mustang whipped around them, the driver laying on the horn as he passed them, flipping them the bird before he cut in front of them.
“All right, asshole,” North screamed through his open window. “What do you want me to do?”
“Getting the A/C fixed would be a nice start,” Shaw said, wiping sweaty strands of hair from his forehead.
“Don’t start.”
“You asked.”
“Don’t even fucking start.” North put on the blinker, and at the next left, he turned onto Holly Hills Boulevard.
The change as they moved away from Kingshighway was sudden and drastic. Instead of run-down gas stations, shuttered mattress stores, and chicken-and-shrimp fry shops, they found wide streets lined with mature trees. The houses were brick, old, with decorative stonework and gingerbread trim. Ahead, a long expanse of grass, still green in the July heat, marked Carondelet Park. Willows broke the horizon, growing tall near the lake.
“It’s not that weird,” North said, breaking the silence between them. “The Facebook stuff, I mean. Think about it. It’s natural for those guys to hate him. For a lot of them, he ruined their lives. It’s a place for them to vent.”
