The Strange Case of the Disappearing Landlord

Out of curiosity, what the hell does one do when their landlord disappears? Mark Roth has went missing. I kid you not. The man has mysteriously vanished for over a month now, and Rachel and I are at a lost to what the hell happens if he doesn't show back up.

Our rent is due by the end of the month, though we have a five day grace period (which we utilize quite frequently). As long as our rent check is in his hands by the fifth of the month, he's happy. We can either mail him the check or drive by his house and drop it off in his mailbox. Obviously we never mail the check into him, since we wait until the very last moment to pay the rent. 

Earlier this month, Rachel dropped went to drop off the rent and found his mailbox packed to the gills with mail. Even though it was odd for his mailbox to be that filled (it's a huge fucking mailbox), she squeezed our check into the box and came home. Since we've lived in the building, I've always noticed that Mark deposits our rent on the eighth or ninth of the month, so I thought it was odd that after a week of having our rent in his possession, the check still hadn't cleared. I kept a diligent eye on my bank account, checking it everyday to see if the rent cleared. 

By the middle of the month, I realized that something was fishy. My check was still not deposited, he wasn't returning any of my phone calls about our washer, and when Rachel called about the washer, the phone call went straight to voice mail. During our daily tenant association meetings in the parking lot, the entire building (except for our anti-social neighbor Amy), agreed that Mark was officially missing. Our theories of his disappearance were reaffirmed after speaking to Diane, who tried to call him and couldn't even leave a message because his voice mail was full.

Mark may be a flaky man; (I would even go so far as to call him the skid mark of the human population); but he's a very social man. His voice mail is never full, his phone always rings, and he'll answer my text messages (even if it's days later that he gets back to me). After giving it another two days, Rachel finally had enough last week and went to his house. She found no barking dogs, the garage door still hanging wide open, and nobody answering the door. She did what any responsible, caring, individual would do, she called the police and asked for a wellness check.

After going back and forth with the police for several hours last Tuesday, the police decided that they needed to find someone who had a key to Mark's house rather than bust the door down. Never mind the fact, that the man could be dead in his house and none of his family lives in the area, they had already made the decision to not bust down the door. You have to love the fact that the police are so considerate when dealing with possible life-threatening situations.

Of course, I have several theories as to what happened to Mark...

1. Mark skipped town to join the circus. Not just any circus, a gay circus filled with big gay clowns, big gay elephants, big gay lions eating big gay lion tamers, big gay trapeze artists, big gay cats jumping through big gay fiery rings...you get the picture.
2. Mark hasn't been paying his taxes and decided to take what he had and leave town. 
3. Mark went on vacation to Europe where he was attacked by a polar bear disguised as a tiger disguised as a polar bear. He's either laying in a European morgue or in a European hospital bed with no recollection of his name.
4. Mark died of natural causes in his house, possibly of an ailment that could have been treated if the police had busted down the door when Rachel called.
5. Mark died in his house and his dog has been slowly snacking on his body to keep from starving to death. (ew...)
6. Mark's psychotic ex-boyfriend was released from prison and hunted him down. He has a restraining order on the man for beating the shit out of him (which I think happened last summer, but I might be wrong as to when it actually happened).

I think you get the picture as to what may have happened to Mark. The major problem with Mark disappearing (besides the fact that he's missing) is that he is responsible for certain things in our building. For example, a part of our rent covers the water bill, the gas for the hot water heater, and the electricity for the hallways and outside perimeter of the building. Since he's obviously not around to cash our rent, he's not around to pay the above three bills. What happens when we run out of hot water because he didn't pay the gas bill? Hell what happens when we don't have water one morning because he hasn't paid the water bill.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears because I am clueless about this situation.