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

be, had stayed with her father at the apartment—it could be an article of clothing, a second bed, a book, a keepsake, anything —so that he could erase the skepticism of her existence from his mind. So when he arrived at apartment 12B and found the front door wide open, he was about to say a quick prayer of thanks to God when he suddenly noticed that the place was completely empty. No furniture, no wall hangings, nothing .
    A middle-aged man pulling a commercial steam cleaner stepped out from a hallway. When he saw the priest, he stopped short, as if doing a quick self-assessment to see if he was in the process of sinning.
    “I heard this guy was a crazy killer, but did they really call for an exorcist?”
    Luis grinned. “New city requirement. Apartment vacancies have to be exorcised whenever someone’s broken a lease. Heading to jail counts.”
    “Hope the archdiocese is getting a big cut of that,” the man said with a laugh.
    “Oh, they are. Big-time. Bonus if we have to fight demons.”
    The man laughed and extended a hand. “Jerry Bunker.”
    “Luis Chavez.”
    “Are you looking at this place? I’m just finishing up. Building manager is around somewhere.”
    “No, I was just—”
    “Oh crap,” Jerry said, paling. “I knew this guy was a killer but didn’t realize it was the guy who murdered the priest.”
    “Yeah. That’s right.”
    “So what? You coming around to bless the place? That’s kind of weird.”
    “No, no. The shooter was a parishioner, and he had a daughter. We just wanted to check in on her.”
    It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Luis hated himself a little for putting it out there. To make it worse, Jerry nodded reverentially.
    “That’s something,” he said. “That’s very Christian of you. Ain’t no girl here now, though. I don’t know the story, but the place is getting cleaned out and ready to be rented again. Anything that was left behind I took to the Dumpster.”
    “Was there much?” Luis asked.
    “Nah. Trash mostly. Contents of the kitchen. Somebody had already come for the furniture. Which means the building manager probably sold it. Sinister business this.”
    “I agree,” Luis said. “Nothing of the daughter’s?”
    “Not a damn thing as I could tell. Sorry.”
    Luis turned to exit, then glanced back. “Which Dumpster, by the way?”
    There were three at the back of the building. Jerry had said he’d tossed everything in the one closest to the back door. Sure enough, Luis found two garbage bags of food pulled from the cabinet. As they were dry goods, he considered yanking them out to take back to the church’s stores, but then relented. They already smelled of the Dumpster, and there was no telling how long their contents had been in Yamazoe’s cabinet.
    Under the garbage bags, however, were a handful of pint glasses, a couple shattered, all with the logo of a bar, Old Taipa, including the address, a place down in the City of Industry. Each also featured a different animal and year. Luis realized they were commemorative glasses of some sort tied to the Chinese New Year.
    “Hey, did you pull these from this apartment?” Luis asked Jerry after carrying a couple of the surviving glasses back up.
    “I did,” Jerry said, nodding. “Tried not to break them in the Dumpster, as some trash digger might come along and get some recycling nickels out of them. Think I was only half-successful. If you want those, they’re all yours.”
    “Ever heard of this bar?”
    “Oh, of course!” Jerry said, smiling. “It’s not really a bar, though. Why? You feeling lucky?”

    Susan had slept for ten hours straight. She’d blown past the time she was supposed to be back on shift but surprised herself by not feeling guilty.
    Oh well.
    She got dressed, realized she didn’t have a single clean lab coat left, and made a pile of all her used ones to trade at the dry cleaner’s for the ones she’d dropped off the previous week. Even when they’d