Charged - Book One Read Online Free

backlogged by weeks.
    When he fixed it, he also read all my notes,
interjecting all his analytical ideas as to who murdered the woman
right onto my own hard drive without my permission. He even created
his own folder on my desktop, labeled “Whodunnit.” His theories
were, however, subsequently correct and I’ve basically been picking
his brain ever since.
    After I consumed a Reuben sandwich and a couple more
cups of coffee, I left the box with him.

CHAPTER 5
     
    LATER THAT EVENING, I decided to investigate the
alley off of Third Street. I took the light rail to downtown and
quickly found the alley where Richie was killed. It was everything
I wasn’t hoping for. The crime scene was still taped off, but the
rain pretty much washed everything away.
    The alley was deep, forty feet back, completely
vacant of any light. It was a dead end, with two-story walls on all
three sides encasing it. I saw a dumpster and one door to the
Chinese restaurant on the left, which I’m sure was bolted from the
inside. It was horrific. I could envision Richie running down this
alley and being trapped. It was narrow and he wasn’t going to get
out of it unless he grew wings. I wondered if he gave up and just
stood there.
    And why did he even go down this alley? He lived in
downtown for the last twenty years and I knew Richie; he would’ve
known every nook and cranny of it. He must have been running for
his life, disoriented maybe, or high. The thought made me
cringe.
    I rubbed my forehead and looked at all the angles of
the other buildings. There were no bank cameras and the back of the
alley was barely visible from where I was standing. Plus,
everything in downtown shut down early in this area. I managed to
speak to the restaurant owner for a few seconds while he was
closing up. His son discovered Richie’s body, but he wasn’t there
and the owner currently didn’t know where he was. I would have to
come back to talk to him. So I headed back to my apartment.
    A couple of hours had passed when my cell rang. It
was Aaron.
    “Hey,” I answered.
    “Man, you gotta see this!”
    I was back at his shop in fifteen minutes and I
brought Zero for the walk. I’m a tall man, but with the dog next to
me, my ego felt about five inches tall. I was acutely aware of his
miniature size when we walked.
    “Is that the new guard dog?” he said, opening the
door.
    I’d done it again, somehow found another animal to
save.
    “Yes, and if you make him angry he turns into a
two-hundred-pound Rottweiler.”
    He let a laugh escape him, shaking his head and
locked the door behind us as we headed toward the back of the
shop.
    “First of all, where’d you get this?” he said.
    “Off a dead guy.”
    He looked up at me for a moment, ripping his
attention away from the box. It was just another piece of the
puzzle for him. There was no way I was going to tell him it was
evidence to a current homicide case that I shouldn’t have in my
possession.
    The box was opened into two parts on the table, as if
it had a seam that I hadn’t noticed before and it was filled with
wires. We sat down in front of it at an antique table covered with
books and a chessboard with brass pieces. He turned on a desk lamp
and pointed into the right half.
    “Now that it’s open… I can tell you what it’s not,”
he said.
    I waited, noticing the excitement in his face.
    “It’s not: a phone, mp3 player, GPS, portable
scanner, or a weapon.”
    That didn’t leave much.
    “You want to hear something strange?”
    “What?”
    “There’s no battery in it. No charging port.”
    “So?”
    “It’s glowing.” He hit the lights next to the back
door and it was glowing, although it was dim, or at least the wires
were.
    Aaron was smiling now, like we had something amazing
in our possession, a foreign technology of some kind. It didn’t
make any sense. He turned the lights back on after a few
seconds.
    “You see this space?” he said, pointing to a hollow
socket in the box. “It