That Nietzsche Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

us, with the
skyline of downtown beyond.
    It was certainly no Genie flop.
    It was warm, the radiator under one window
still pumping out heat. A small flat screen stood in one corner,
before a futon and a rickety looking chair. It wasn’t fancy, maybe
a little dirty, but it wasn’t anything like the thousand Genie
flops I’d seen in my days.
    This wasn’t the apartment of someone who
didn’t give a shit. It was...homey. At least, I felt instantly at
home. As if I’d been in the room before.
    There was well-used ashtray on the coffee
table before the futon. I put out my cigarette as Constantine
holstered his gun.
    “This is it?” he said, somehow
dissatisfied.
    “This is it,” I said. What did he want?
    “We’ll get the Forensics guys in,” he said,
pointing at the ashtray. “So, maybe you don’t want to contaminate
the crime scene too much.”
    Crime scene? “It’s just the girl’s
apartment,” I said. “There’s no reason to believe she was killed
here.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Constantine dismissed.
“We’ll still have Forensics give it a sweep.” He looked around,
hands on hips, examining the small, cozy living room. The art on
the walls was eclectic, like it’d been built up from thrift store
shelves. There were a few nick-nacks and a whole wall of books. I
could tell by watching Constantine’s stance, he had no idea what he
was doing.
    I just wandered around, getting a feel for
the place.
    I don’t know if it’s how most cops do it, but
I always tried to get in the head of my victim first. Accepted
wisdom probably considered murder cases about the perpetrator –
method, motive, opportunity and all that – but I never subscribed
to that theory. Nine times out of ten, I’d always found, people get
themselves killed for some reason. Murderers hardly ever hang out,
hiding in bushes to leap out at random victims. More often than
not, the corpse did something that caused their life to
collide with that of the murderer: pissed off the wrong asshole at
the wrong time, humped the wrong guy’s woman, or snorted the wrong
dope. Facts about the victim were always a hell of a lot easier to
uncover, too. Chiefly because they were conveniently dead and
couldn’t interfere with the investigation.
    And if you could figure out what the victim did , what positive action they took that inextricably sent
them down the path to oblivion, you were a whole shit-can closer to
figuring out who killed them.
    Sometimes that small detail came along almost
as an after though.
    What had Vivian Montavez been into that’d
gotten her beaten and thrown into a dumpster?
    It just didn’t add up.
    Nice girl. Rich, powerful family. Artsy,
beatnik apartment. Kitchen full of food, bathroom full of perfume.
No, Vivian was no Genie. But according to the labs from the corpse,
she’d tested positive to the genetic markers of Geneing. Her DNA
was altered. Was she that weird border case of people who could
actually handle the dope? Use the triggers to successfully turn it
off? No, they didn’t exist. All my time on the force, and I’d never
met one. Sure, you’d find a husband and father who said he could
turn it on and off when he wanted to, but dig a little deeper and
you’d always find a rotten core. A life about to implode on itself.
But I didn’t smell anything rotten about Vivian’s apartment. Just
that slight scent of lavender from the bathroom.
    Then I saw it on a side table. It took all my
physically effort not to react for it and tipoff Constantine.
    “Perhaps the Senator will want her personal
effects,” Constantine said across the room, he’d picked up a
tchotchke off a table. “At least, we can give him that.”
    “You should get the number off the land
line,” I said, thinking quickly. I was making it up on the spot,
but it was not a half-bad idea. “Run her calls. We should do a full
canvas of anyone she’d had contact with.”
    Constantine turned to the classic handset
hanging in the kitchen. He