Read Online City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) by Mark Wheaton - Free Book Online

surmised.
    “Can I see his room?”
    Pastor Siu-Tung led Luis to the rectory. Father Chang’s room had been locked but not sealed. Inside, the space was as familiarly spartan as Luis’s own room at St. Augustine’s. There was only a bed, a small chest of drawers, a wooden crucifix hanging on the wall, and a bookshelf. Luis opened the closet door and found clerical clothing and three pairs of shoes. The chest of drawers contained underwear and socks.
    “He only ever wore the collar?” Luis asked.
    “His uniform day and night,” Pastor Siu-Tung said, the first words he’d spoken about Father Chang that weren’t negative.
    Under the pretense of pushing the clothes aside to see if anything was tucked behind them, Luis went through the pockets. They were empty.
    “How about the bathroom?”
    As with the rectory at St. Augustine’s, the priests shared a bathroom on each floor. Continuing his search, Luis opened the small medicine cabinet above the sink and, sure enough, was able to identify Father Chang’s personal effects by a bottle of prescription eyedrops on the second-to-lowest shelf. There was a safety razor with extra blades, deodorant, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a comb. Alongside all that were two bottles of a prescription for Lozol.
    “What about the apartment you mentioned?” Luis asked as he stepped back into the hallway. “The one he kept in town. Do you have the address?”
    “No. We only know of it because there were times he didn’t stay the night here.”
    “He couldn’t have been with friends or at a hotel?”
    “He’d return in fresh clothes.”
    “And these are things he couldn’t have brought with him?” Luis asked.
    The corner of Pastor Siu-Tung’s lip curled and fell. He looked Luis up and down reproachfully.
    “I still can’t for the life of me understand why the archdiocese would enlist an outsider to help in their investigation,” Siu-Tung said.
    Outsider. Now there’s a word that can be taken many ways, Luis thought.
    “I imagine the archbishop didn’t mean to impinge on you during your time of grief,” Luis said. “He and Father Chang go way back, and he doesn’t want to believe these allegations.”
    “Which is why you don’t, isn’t it?” Siu-Tung asked.
    “I don’t think I have enough information to form an opinion,” Luis replied.
    “But you have anyway,” Pastor Siu-Tung said, though his tone had softened.
    “I only have one more question,” Luis said. “Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
    The pastor raised a hand as if to say there was little he could do to stop him.
    “The girl. Yamazoe’s daughter. I know the police have a lot of questions about her. But you seem to be one of the only people who actually saw this person. As the entire case hinges on it, I think confirming her identity becomes pretty important.”
    Pastor Siu-Tung fell silent for a long moment, looking down to the carpet as if weighing his words carefully before giving them to Luis. When he looked up, Luis was surprised to see a sad smile on his face.
    “First of all, you’re wrong. Plenty of people saw the girl. She was in the congregation every Sunday for the past several weeks. Maybe people don’t like talking about it or getting involved in a murder case, but they saw her. If they don’t remember her, it’s because she was so slight, so clearly uncomfortable and unhappy, that she did everything she could to disappear into the pew. What angers me and, perhaps to my discredit, provokes my disrespect for Father Chang’s memory is that I saw that and prayed for her. He saw that and took advantage. I wish I’d known then what it was that caused her such displeasure to be in the house of God. But if it had been revealed to me, I’m afraid I might’ve done what her father did, and we’d be having a completely different conversation right now. She’s real, Father Chavez. And now she’s gone. Whatever the circumstance, it’s just one more person this church has managed