Chapter 2
two
Aaron
The past two weeks have been a shit show.
There’s no other way to describe what’s happened to my family since the police called and asked my folks to identify Zack’s body.
That was a full twenty-four hours after my parents attempted to report him missing and got blown off because, and I quote, “Zack is an adult who is in his rights to not answer his phone or be at home. He can go on vacation, and not text, call, or contact anyone in your family or any of his friends to let them know.”
No matter how much we insisted it was completely out of character for him to do any of that, the police refused to open a case.
And then it turned out they’d found him dead in an alley the night before my parents contacted the police because Zack hadn’t shown up to our family brunch.
The police had been unable to identify him immediately because his wallet and phone had been taken, and my brother’s fingerprints weren’t in any of their databases.
It was only because of my parents’ insistence that the police finally took a report which then linked to the John Doe they were trying to identify.
My parents are numb with grief, and my sister consumed with taking care of them while also assisting the police in their investigation, so arranging Zack’s funeral fell to me.
The details had kept me blissfully distracted, my mind focused on making it a celebration of his twenty-eight years on this planet, but my mother’s near-constant tears and questions about why and how this happened to her baby had been a steady reminder that we weren’t going to find closure until we had answers.
After the funeral, when it had just been me, my sister and parents, and a few of Zack’s closest friends, someone finally asked the question none of us had been able to answer. “What the hell was he doing in Hayes Valley? He hated that neighborhood.”
I have a suspicion, but it wasn’t one I was going to voice in front of my parents.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know Zack was gay or had an issue with it for either him or me, it was that they didn’t know Zack liked anonymous sex with men he met on Grindr and Scruff.
My younger brother may have been an absolute day trading genius, but the risks he took with money were only surpassed by those he took with his body, and his stories of inviting men he didn’t know into his home had left me worried for his safety more times than I cared to think about.
There was no way my mother needed to know these things now that he was gone.
It’s not that I’m judgmental about the choices Zack made.
I’d unsuccessfully used those apps myself a few times, but the apps were all Zack did to meet guys for one-offs.
He’d had a few dodgy hookups that resulted in bruises he didn’t ask for and a couple of close calls with gaybaiting assholes.
I’d offered to go out to clubs with him more than a few times, but my brother was an adrenaline junkie through and through.
He liked the danger, the uncertainty, the rush.
And, he’d assured me, ninety-nine percent of his hookups turned out to be fine. I hated to think this one hadn’t.
As one week turned into two, the police were getting nowhere very fast. There had been no witnesses, just the waiter who’d found my brother’s body when he stepped into the alley to have a smoke on his break.
None of the cameras that might have picked up what happened had been working that night, and a canvass of the area hadn’t turned up anyone who’d seen or heard a thing.
No one remembered seeing Zack at any of the restaurants or bars that evening.
His credit cards didn’t show payments to Hayes Valley shops or receipts to any of the ride share apps.
Without his phone, it was impossible to know what he’d been doing or where he’d been until the police could get his phone records, but I knew that wouldn’t help us if he’d hooked up with someone from an app.
Everyone knew Zack’s murder was turning ice cold, which meant no answers for my parents.
We’ve got to do something.
The text comes from Zack’s best friend, Kit, on the two-week anniversary of Zack’s murder. I agree with him, but I’ve got no idea what to do.
Maybe we should go to Hayes Valley tonight to see if we can find someone who saw Zack that night, Kit suggests.
The police have already tried. No one saw him.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call from Kit.
“I can’t stand this,” he says as soon as I accept the call.
“I know.”
“God, Aaron, how can you be so…I don’t know…complacent about this?”
“You think I’m fucking complacent? Jesus Christ, Kit.
He was my brother. My mom’s barely keeping it together, my dad’s near catatonic at his best moments, and Shayna’s running herself ragged between taking care of them and her kids.
I’m on the phone with the police every fucking day, but they can’t do anything without a lead, and they’ve got nothing. ”
Kit grumbles at me, but I know he knows this. We’ve been through it so many times. What was Zack doing in Hayes Valley? Where had he been earlier in the day? What had we missed?
“I keep thinking,” Kit says. “We were supposed to get together, but I got caught by a deadline at work, so I had to cancel at the last minute.”
I know where he’s going with this. “It’s not your fault,” I say.
“Yeah. In my head I know that, but the thought’s there. If only…”
But something in what Kit says makes me think.
“He was working all day,” I say. “So, he was at home.” I picture my brother hunched over his computer analyzing numbers and following the rise and fall of what he called ‘financial instruments,’ about which I still had no clue despite Zack’s attempts to explain it and get me to join him and his day trading friends.
Unlike my brother, I’m not a risk taker, and my job as a logistics coordinator for a biomed firm suits me just fine.
“Where were you guys going to meet?” I ask Kit, small bits of information turning in my head as I try to fit them into a larger picture.
“Philz on Market in the Castro.”
“It’s possible he met someone around there,” I say.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We both fall silent, and I picture my brother getting Kit’s text while standing in line, then getting on an app to find a hookup now that his evening was free. “That was his regular coffee place, wasn’t it?” I ask. “It’s only a couple of blocks from his apartment.”
Kit agrees with me. “He’d go there when he needed to get out of the house.”
“Think they’d remember seeing him?” I ask, a plan already formulating.
“It’s worth a try. Hell, anything’s better than waiting for the police to do more of this nothing.”
And that’s how I end up outside the Philz in the Castro asking people to take a look at a photo of my brother and asking if they remembered seeing him two weeks before.