City of Strangers (Luis Chavez Book 2) (11 page)

But they’d miscalculated and taken her away for good. He didn’t care what happened to himself now.

What he hadn’t expected was for the feeling of his old vice to return. Since he’d been dropped off in front of St. Jerome’s, he’d been waiting for the bullet to hit. No,
daring
it to hit. He constantly bet against himself. Would the cops shoot him? Was it better to simply kill himself? Did the triad have a shooter off-site who would do the job for him to make sure his mouth stayed shut?

But it never happened. He was printed, photographed, and booked. The lawyer came and went. He was interrogated by detectives. He was placed in a cell. Guards changed shifts. Prisoners passed him in the halls. He expected every pair of eyes that glanced his way to be those of his assassin, but it didn’t happen.

Which was why he talked to Michael Story. He knew this feeling would only get worse. He’d bet against himself, calculate down to the second the likely moment of his death, then roll the dice again if it didn’t happen. Talking to the deputy DA meant peace of mind. Meant a life sentence still, but hopefully one where on occasion he’d be called into a courtroom, made to give a deposition or testimony. There’d be something to do as opposed to sitting in a cell staring at a wall waiting for any anomaly in his day he could gamble on.

“Prisoner, extend your hands through the slot,” came a voice on the other side of his cell door.

He’d been expecting this. He was going to be moved. He rose and went to the door as the slot was opened. He pushed his hands through, and handcuffs were placed around his wrists.

“Step back.”

Yamazoe complied. The door was opened, and two sheriff’s deputies entered and placed his ankles in restraints as well before chaining them up through a belt and to his wrists.

“Wow,” Yamazoe said, expecting commiseration.

“Quiet, prisoner,” one of the deputies said before coming up to eye level. “You shot a priest, man. Ain’t no Chatty Cathy-ing here.”

Yamazoe nodded. The deputy DA had barely mentioned the fact that he was a killer, focusing almost solely on his gambling and manipulation by the triad. Yamazoe liked feeling understood, even in those small moments. Once the story was out, he figured the guards would treat him differently.

“Prisoner. Step out of the cell and move down the hall.”

His inner gambler came out again. He looked to each cell door and each deputy, wondering which would be the one that took him out. Would it be one of the escorts? Would it be the one who buzzed them through the magnetic locked doors into the booking area? Would it be the older deputy seated nearby, who seemed to be waiting to come on shift? Would it be somebody on the other side of one of the three doors in the room?

The older deputy rose and switched out the handcuffs and ankle restraints with a new set, handing the old ones back to the guards. The right cuff was actually sticky, either from something spilled on it or, Yamazoe thought, grimacing, the sweat of a previous prisoner.

“Loading out prisoner,” the deputy said.

There was another buzz, and the outer door opened. Yamazoe held his breath. It was as if he were in a haunted house on Halloween and a ghost was sure to jump out from behind the door.

He walked the short distance from the jail to a black van with the symbol of the sheriff’s department on it. The back door was slid open by the driver.

“Prisoner, step up into the van.”

Yamazoe did so, though his foot slipped. He felt dizzy, as if the cuffs were cutting off the circulation to his brain instead of just his hands and feet.

“Sorry,” he offered, though no one replied.

He raised his foot enough to gain purchase in the back and swung himself onto the row of seats. The driver indicated for him to sit in the middle. The deputy leaned in and now removed the ankle restraints and handcuffs in order for the driver to lock him into the restraints built into the van.

It felt bizarrely inefficient to Yamazoe, but he figured there was a reason. The older deputy carried the cuffs and restraints back into the station, and the driver got behind the wheel.

“Short ride tonight, but a longer one in the morning,” the driver said. “Taking you to a courthouse around the corner to ask a couple of initial questions. That’ll be about an hour. Then you’re heading down to Laguna Niguel for the next couple of days while everyone gets organized. You behave, this’ll be easy on all of us. You don’t, and you’ll quickly find out the hundred little ways we can make your life hell. We good?”

When the driver didn’t hear an answer, he turned around in his seat. Yamazoe’s tongue, already turning from purple to black, hung from his mouth as his eyes bulged from their sockets. The veins in his neck looked ready to pop.

By the time the driver was out of his seat and around to the back of the van, Yamazoe was dead.

Luis sat up in bed. His pillow was soaked with sweat. He tried to remember what his dream was about as he reached for the phone and checked the time.

He’s dead.

The thought struck him as if blasted from a loudspeaker.

He’s dead.

He texted Michael Story. If there was no response, maybe he was crazy. But he knew Michael would be among the first they’d call. A message came back a second later, a confirmation of what Luis already knew.

Yes, he’s dead. No, we don’t know how. Somebody got to him.

That this ended the communication suggested to Luis that Michael’s night was going far worse than Luis’s. But that was when he remembered the rest of his dream. Or more accurately, the second part of the thought.

He’s dead. And many will follow.

PART II

XI

“Goodness me, Father,” Whillans exclaimed as Luis approached him in the chapel at daybreak. “You look like something the cat dragged in. You know you’re not supposed to look worse than me, right?”

Luis took in the frail figure, this man he’d thought would be his spiritual guide for years to come, and dropped his gaze.

“That better be self-pity,” Whillans said, feigning annoyance. “If it’s me you’re feeling sorry for, I might have to kick your ass.”

Luis scoffed, eyeing him ruefully. “Somebody murdered Father Chang’s killer while in custody.”

“Another prisoner?”

Michael had called Luis once he’d gotten more information. The working theory was some kind of poison on a pair of handcuffs. But when they’d searched the officer whose handcuffs they were, including tossing his locker and car, they came up bone dry.

“Doubtful. They were suspicious of one of the corrections officers, but that’s how the triad seems to work. They never authorize a murder without providing law enforcement with a suspect.”

Whillans put a hand on Luis’s shoulder. Though he appeared almost infirm, his grip was as strong as ever.

“The Lord has called you to the priesthood, not to the rank of detective. You can do what you can do, but no more. You may one day understand how you fit into his greater plan, or you may not. What’s important is that you allowed him to guide you in this case, and justice may be served.”

“But a man has died because of me.”

“Yes, he has,” Whillans admitted. “But not before he confessed his crimes. And you don’t need me to tell you how important that part is on any path to redemption.”

Luis didn’t. Whillans indicated the door.

“Ready for our field trip?”

Though Whillans had managed to keep the severity of his deteriorating condition from the archdiocese, he knew it was only a matter of time before a parishioner, layperson, or visiting clergy passed word back. All it would take was a simple “Is Pastor Whillans quite all right?” and some interfering agent from the archbishop’s office might swoop in with pronouncements about getting Whillans “the best care,” and he’d be gone. Such an intervention would likely try to exclude Bridgette, whom Whillans was almost entirely reliant upon, and he wouldn’t have that.

So whenever they left St. Augustine’s for his biweekly chemotherapy treatments at Good Samaritan Hospital, Luis was careful to take Whillans out a side door and straight into a waiting car. This way as few people as possible would see Whillans in his pre-chemo fasting condition. Though with his dazed expression, hollow cheeks, and skin becoming more like parchment by the day, it wasn’t a secret that could be kept much longer.

“How’s your sermon coming?” Whillans asked once they were in the car.

“It’s not,” Luis said. “I’ve been working on this Father Chang case.”

Whillans nodded with only faint disapproval. “I understand, but I’m wondering if you do. I know you see working on these cases might make you feel better about the crimes in your own past, but I also think that’s too simplistic. Whether you admit it or not, I think you miss that life, and this gives you a window in allowing you to stay with us the rest of the time.”

Luis shrugged. It wasn’t something he thought about, and he wasn’t happy that Whillans brought it up so casually. This was a life he’d put behind him and had nothing to do with the present.

“I’ll finish the sermon,” Luis said. “It won’t be as good as yours from this past week, but it’ll be better than whatever your first one was.”

Whillans laughed. It was a merry sound until it was strangled off by choking coughs.

“That wouldn’t be hard,” Whillans retorted. “Particularly if you knew the extent to which I was making it up as I went. I researched and researched, read and read, and took them on a tour through scripture like they’d never seen. It was when I learned to pray first and say what my heart already knew that I became worth a damn as a priest. What do you know right now about Saint Peter Claver?”

“He was from Spain, he came to Colombia, and he baptized hundreds of thousands of slaves brought over from Africa. He saw slavery as wicked, as did the papacy at the time. He took it as his mission on earth to convert as many slaves as he could.”

“You left out the part about him dying penniless and physically abused for years by an ex-slave hired to see after his care.”

Luis shook his head. “Never believed that part. Felt too much like your typical racist demagoguery. ‘Look what a mighty servant of Christ he was. He could’ve chided this ex-slave, but he chose to endure it instead. What a good soldier.’”

Whillans eyed Luis with such a look that Luis feared he might’ve overstepped. He hadn’t meant to sound so cynical.

“My, my, Father Chavez,” Whillans said. “With priests like you around, maybe the church really will survive the next thousand years. That is, if you don’t leave it first.”

When they arrived at the hospital, Luis parked, jogged to the entrance to retrieve a wheelchair, and rolled it back to the car. Whillans was already flagging from hunger and couldn’t go much farther under his own steam.

“Thank you, Father,” Whillans said, settling into the chair. “Now let’s get this over with.”

The fifth-floor oncology wing was as silent as the chapel at midnight no matter how many people were there taking their drip. Whillans had told Luis he’d originally thought it would be social, everyone in the same boat, but he soon found that everyone kept to themselves.

“There are Stage Ones who don’t want to imagine they belong in the same room as the Stage Twos, Stage Twos who are terrified of looking at the Stage Threes or Fours and glimpsing their future, then Stage Fours who are clearly going through the motions for the benefit of their families. They’re ready to die.”

“And you?” Luis had asked.

“I’m the guy willing to make a four-hour commitment in hopes it buys me an extra five hours of life. Five hours I can spend with Bridgette, the congregation, with you, and, simply, in the enjoyment of living in God’s miraculous creation here on earth.”

Luis had no idea what he’d do when Whillans was gone.

A nurse approached to take charge of the pastor. Luis leaned down to him, inhaling the familiar scent of Whillans’s aftershave. His own father had never worn aftershave, so he figured this smell would be one he’d only ever associate with the pastor.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked Whillans.

The pastor held up a battered old copy of
Ulysses
.

“Just getting to the play script,” Whillans said. “Been saving it. Funniest part of the whole book.”

Luis nodded. When he’d first met Whillans, the priest had told him that everything he needed to know about God was in the Bible, and everything he needed to know about man in Joyce’s
Ulysses
. So far he hadn’t managed to get past the third or fourth page.

Someday.

With one last glance back at Whillans, Luis headed down the hall toward the parking lot. He had just enough time to get back to St. John’s before his first class. Bridgette was the one who’d have to deal with the hard post-session nausea Whillans would endure when she picked him up four hours later. Luis said a quiet prayer for God to overlook the pastor and Bridgette’s romantic transgressions and help them through these hard times.

He’d just said a mental “amen” when a doctor ran past him. A second person, this one some kind of administrator in business attire, followed a moment later. Everyone in the hall looked at everyone else for an explanation. A phone buzzed at a nurse’s station. The nurse blanched as she listened to the voice on the other end.

Luis had to get to his class. He wasn’t a doctor any more than he was a detective.

So why was the voice in his head practically demanding he follow them downstairs?

Knowing he would regret it, Luis turned on his heel and headed for the stairwell he’d seen the administrator disappear into. He’d waited too long to hear fading footsteps so knew he’d have to try the door to each floor. The fourth-floor hallway was a desert. The third floor was busy but there were no signs of alarm.

The second floor, however, was all alarm. Orderlies were closing patients and visitors off into rooms. Security guards were in the hall, as were multiple doctors. Everyone wore face masks. Luis exited the stairwell just as two orderlies, also in face masks, rushed a similarly masked woman on a gurney to the one open door in the hallway.

“In here!” a nurse commanded.

The orderlies hurried the woman inside. As they did, Luis caught her wild-eyed gaze, which became fixed on him. She tried to speak but was gone before she could get the words out.

Luis moved determinedly down the hall after her. The doctors were already consulting each other as he pushed past to the door.

“Father? You can’t go in there!” a nurse barked even as he moved inside. “Father! For your own health, please step back.”

“She needs to see me,” he said simply.

“Security!” the nurse exclaimed, but Luis was already through the door.

The tiny room was packed with people. The woman on the gurney was being transferred to an examination bed at the same time that an isolation tent was being erected around it. A nurse attempted to affix two small disk-shaped sensors to the woman’s body to remotely monitor vital signs, but the patient kept thrashing around.

“Should we sedate her?” a nurse asked.

“No,” one of the doctors said. “We have to stabilize her first. If that’s even possible.”

Through the cacophony of overlapping voices, Luis could pick out the woman’s. She was crying and calling out for her son in Spanish. Her voice was ragged and wet. Her words simple and repetitious.

“Padre?” the woman asked.

Luis glanced back to the doorway. A security guard stood there now, but as soon as he glimpsed the chaos inside he took a step back. He wasn’t wearing a mask. Luis ignored him and moved toward the bed.

“I’m here,” he said quietly in Spanish.

Anyone in the room who hadn’t noticed his presence now turned to him in surprise. The woman’s eyes found him again and she began to settle. Though the first instinct of the medical staff had been to kick Luis out, now they took advantage of the quiet beat to examine the patient. A cuff was wrapped around her upper arm, her blood pressure taken, and an oxygen mask brought down over her face.

“My son,” she said between gasps. “My son needs the doctor now. Please.”

The woman’s skin color had gone ashy and white. Her eyes were milky, and mucus ran from underneath the mask. A tremor shook her body. But still her eyes beckoned Luis closer.

“Please find my son,” she repeated. “You have to save him. Please, Father. Help him.”

One of the doctors, as if finally recognizing the danger to the priest, nodded to an orderly, who took Luis’s arm.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you cannot be in here.”

“Where’s your son?” Luis asked, reaching for the woman’s hand, though he was blocked by the isolation tent wall.

“He’s with his babysitter, Mrs. Gomez,” she managed to say as she struggled to breathe. “Our doctor will know what to do. Please find him. Take him to her.”

A nurse who’d been listening to this exchange turned to Luis.

“Tell her she needs to tell
us
where he is. She might be right. He might be in serious danger.”

“Tell these doctors where he is—” Luis began.

“No!” the woman cried. “There’ll be police.
You
find him.
You
.”

Luis was about to reply when two masked security guards came in the door behind him, grabbed his arms, and led him out of the room.

“Are you crazy, Father?” one of them asked. “A stunt like that can get you dead
quick
.”