I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!
Today, we find out more about the mysterious stranger and what he’s looking for…
< Read Chapter 29
Join my email list to get my weekly newsletter
with notifications of new chapters.
Chapter Thirty
The Stranger
Warning: deadnaming.
The man in gray looked up and down the street of the residential neighborhood where his target had parked his car. River Park was an upstanding place, not far from the Sac State campus, full of huge trees, broad green lawns, and a multitude of folks out on walks with dogs of all shapes and sizes.
He eyed the big trees warily. Must be fun times in those atmospheric rivers we seem to be getting these days. A couple years earlier, on New Year’s Day, a giant elm tree had crashed into his neighbor’s two-story Victorian in Midtown. Lucky for them, they’d been on vacation when it happened, but the damage had been appalling.
He sidled up to the target’s car, an old Honda Civic. Easy to get into, without all that electronic lock mumbo-jumbo so common these days.
With one last look around to be sure no one was watching, he jimmied the door with an expert touch and slipped inside.
If he had to, he’d break into his target’s apartment. A couple decades spent on the outer edges of the law had taught him the requisite skills needed to entrap a cheating husband, to break into a supposedly secure safe, or trace someone’s finances through the arcane pathways of the financial system, all while following his client’s wishes. But he preferred to start small.
Before nosing around, he glanced in the rearview mirror.
A tall, bald man was approaching, led by a giant German Shepherd. Likely the dogwalker was just passing through and didn’t live on the street, but it didn’t pay to take unnecessary chances.
He lowered the seat and lay down nearly flat, staring up at the stained gray fabric ceiling. He counted out a good thirty seconds before popping his head up to see if they had passed.
Damn my luck. The man was standing right next to the car while his dog did his business on the lawn. At least his back was turned toward the street.
Hope he cleans up after it. Nothing annoyed him more than people who failed to take their civic responsibilities seriously.
A moment later, the tall man was gone.
He got to work. First off, he rummaged through the center console. There were a few candy wrappers, a small black plastic container full of quarters, a garage door opener, three twist ties, and a mostly empty bottle of hand sanitizer. Nothing useful there.
He frowned. Next, he tried the glove compartment. There he found proof of insurance—in the name of Ben Hammond—which had some other information that might prove useful in his online sleuthing. He took a photo of the card.
There was also a car manual—never opened, by the look of it—a couple of probably unpaid parking tickets, and one of those little plastic-wrapped cleaning wipes from Quick Quack Car Wash. He took photos of the tickets too.
One last place to check.
He reached around the back and felt in the pocket behind the driver’s seat. Sometimes people put things there and forgot about them.
Bingo. His fingers closed on a piece of paper. He pulled it out—it was an envelope.
Inside was a copy of the title for the car, dated fifteen years earlier. This guy really needs to upgrade his life. Same job for nine years. Same car for a decade and a half. Surprising for someone who had to be making bank as a manager at one of the city’s most successful restaurants.
Paydirt. The title had Ben’s deadname—Alice Hamil. The person he was being paid to find.
He pulled out his iPhone again and dialed his client.
She answered after the first ring. “Yes?” She sounded tense.
“I found him.”
“You mean her?”
He sighed. “Look. This isn’t going to work if you don’t respect him. That starts with using his proper pronouns.” He might be a sketchy private eye, willing to work on the edges of what was legal. But he wasn’t an asshole.
There was a pregnant pause. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. Maybe she even meant it. “She… I knew him as herfor so long.”
He closed his eyes. He’d lost his daughter when she was ten, and trying to find her was what got him into this business in the first place. “That must have been very painful.”
“We… said a lot of things we shouldn’t have said. It doesn’t matter now.” There was a bleakness to her tone that he’d only heard in someone’s voice before where someone had died. In his ex-wife’s voice. “I’m… thank you, Mr. Kuo. Can I… what happens now?”
He bit his lip, not willing to give into the tidal wave of emotion he held so carefully in check. “Now I make contact. Give me a few days. I’ll be in touch.”
He hung up before she could reply.
Someone rapped on the passenger window.
He looked up. A man stood there, his face smeared with dirt, his hiker’s backpack on his shoulders soiled with grease. At his side was a mangy mixed breed dog.
He rolled down the manual window. “Can I help you?” He needed to move the man along before he drew attention to them both.
“Spare some change?”
There were homeless folks everywhere in California these days. Even in the fancy neighborhoods. “Sure.” He pulled out a crisp twenty and handed it over. “Get yourself something hot to eat.”
The guy blushed. “Thanks, man. God bless you.”
“You too.” He’d been on the streets before himself, had lived like that man for a year.
Besides, he could afford the help, with his current case about to pay out.
After the homeless man left with his dog, he rolled up the window and made sure everything was the way he’d found it when he arrived.
Then he got out of the car and sauntered down the road toward his own ride. Time to enact the next part of the plan.
< Read Chapter 29
Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.