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

handed her the ticket and said, “Tuesday after five okay?” she’d grinned, knowing it would be days after that before she’d finally have time to come back.
    She checked her phone, was perplexed to see no messages from Nan, then hoped that meant he’d managed to get some sleep, too.
    As she drove from her tiny duplex in San Gabriel toward the clinic, she scanned through the radio stations looking for news but found none. She took out her cell phone and while in traffic flipped through the websites of the local TV news stations and the Los Angeles Times , looking for updates on the Father Chang murder. She wondered what it meant that there hadn’t been anything new reported in the past twenty-four hours. Weren’t people interested?
    Nan had shown her where, in comments sections and on social media, people had hinted at the priest being a child molester. At first, she thought it was just unspecific anti-Catholic venom. Cracks about molester priests were omnipresent. But then they got more specific, referencing a teenage girl, suggesting the shooter was a relative, and so on.
    So they’re killing you twice, she’d thought.
    Susan put her mind to the murder now, trying to remember the last protest march or rally or sit-in Benny had attended. She usually found out after the fact, as he seemed to know which ones she’d try to talk him out of. There was the one against the state for potentially using eminent domain to kick poor people out of their houses to make way for a high-speed rail line running up to San Francisco. There was another following the police shooting of an unarmed teenager down in Watts. Then there was that teachers union that staged a silent protest outside schools for better pay.
    In one way or another he’d been involved in all of them. But so were a lot of people, and he was hardly the driving force. He was a presence. A presence in a Roman collar with all the baggage that came with it, but a presence nevertheless.
    When she arrived at the dry cleaner’s, she was surprised to find no one at the counter. It was a family-run joint that prided itself on service. Whoever was closest to the front would drop anything they were working on as soon as a customer walked through the door.
    “Hello?” she said, arms full of lab coats.
    That’s when she heard the commotion coming from the adjoining room. Though primarily a dry cleaner’s, they also employed two tailors to do alterations and repairs. One of them, Rabih Chamoun, a charming old Lebanese gentleman, was a patient at the clinic and traded his services in the form of coupons to the doctors who looked after him.
    “Are you guys okay?” Susan called, hearing chairs scraping, people talking quickly back and forth in panicked voices, and then the rasping cough of an old man.
    She dropped the coats and hurried around the counter. Pushing past the hanging clothes, she found the owner’s daughter, Celia, kneeling beside Rabih as he lowered himself to the floor. His face was bright red, and he clutched his chest as he coughed. Another worker, whose name Susan didn’t know, spotted her and looked relieved.
    “Dr. Auyong!” he said. “We just called 911. I think he’s having a heart attack.”
    Susan rushed to Rabih’s side. She wasn’t his primary physician but frantically tried to remember anything of his medical history. She thought he had high cholesterol and heart disease. But when she touched his skin, it was hot and clammy, indicative of a fever.
    “It’s not a heart attack,” Susan said, mainly to herself.
    But then Rabih coughed once more, sending up a gob of blood. As he continued to cough, bracing himself against his sewing table, more blood emerged. Susan grabbed the nearest article of clothing, wadded it into a ball, and shoved it under his head.
    “Mr. Chamoun, can you hear me?” Susan asked.
    “Ya allah,” Rabih said, though his eyes wouldn’t focus.
    “Mr. Chamoun. An ambulance is on its way. Please relax. Short deep