That Nietzsche Thing Read Online Free PDF Page B

around at the apartment, at
the comfortable but simple decorations and the small, kitchen table
set for two. Maybe, for the first time in my life, I should care
about something more than my next paycheck.
    After all, people like Vivian Montavez
deserved better.

 
     
     
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    I awoke to two phones ringing at once.
    One was my cell, chirping like a disposable
little bird in my bomber. A sat up and dug around desperately for
it, my half-awake brain somehow sure the call was critically
important.
    The source of the other ringing phone I
couldn’t quiet place. There was a moment of dislocation as I tried
to remember where I’d fallen asleep.
    I looked around, pausing in the search for my
cell phone, to examine my surrounding: four walls and a heavy door,
the skirting of the walls curved to allow easy sluicing. That’s
right, I’d found an empty drunk tank and bedded down for the night.
The second ringing was from beyond the crack in the open door.
    “Hello,” I said wearily into my phone. The
other phone continued to ring outside the jail cell.
    “Funny, Sasha. Really funny,” the
phone said. Was it? I didn’t remember playing any jokes. Someone,
somewhere answered the other phone. I was eternally grateful.
    “What? O’Day?” I asked my handset.
    “Yeah, really funny Sasha. I always
appreciate the Seattle Police wasting time and computational
resources like that.”
    Johnny O’Day. The Mick bastard. He was my guy
at the university. The guy with the computers and the time to
decode the e-reader I’d found in Montavez’s apartment.
    Yesterday, while waiting on the Fed’s
Forensic team, I’d done the regular footwork and interviewed the
girl’s neighbors. Nothing out of line there. She was quiet,
well-behaved, no boyfriend, no loud parties. When the CSI guys
showed up, I’d hopped a bus and paid a visit to O’Day.
Uncharacteristically, I was in rush to return downtown to occupied
Seattle and submit my report to the Special Agent. Maybe I figured
a little brown-nosing couldn’t hurt.
    But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember
playing any joke.
    “Did you decode that e-reader?” I asked. “Was
it something stupid?”
    “What?” O’Day replied. He faltered, now as
confused as I was. “No, of course not. I didn’t decrypt your
e-book, ass-hat.”
    “Then, why are you calling me?”
    “Because—” O’Day exhaled. “Are you kidding
me? Are you trying to tell me you have no idea?”
    “No. What?”
    “Wow, great work, Sherlock,” he said
sarcastically.
    “Look, Day, you woke me up and now you’re
starting to piss me off. Do you want me to come over there and
start checking your pill bottles against prescriptions? ‘Cause I’m
betting your Oxy count doesn’t exactly add up.”
    “Relax, relax,” O’Day said, defensively.
“Jesus, Sasha, calm down. I thought this was some stupid joke,
that’s all. If you’re saying it isn’t, it isn’t. Okay?”
    “Okay,” I took a breath. “Now, Day, slowly
and in words of two syllables or less: Why haven’t you decoded that
e-reader?”
    “‘Cause it can’t be decoded, Sasha. Everyone
knows that. It’s Dark’s Novel.”
    “What’s that?” I asked. “A dark novel?”
    “No—”
    A head popped around the open cell door. It
was the Duty Officer. “Hey Fonseca, phone for you.”
    I put my hand over the mic of the cell.
“What? Oh, thanks. Just a sec.”
    “It’s one of those FBI douches.”
    “What? Constantine?”
    “Yeah, that was it.”
    “Thanks, tell him I’ll be right there.”
    “He didn’t sound like the kind of guy you put
on hold.”
    “Just...” I looked at my cell phone then at
the Duty Officer. “Just tell him to cool the fuck off, okay?”
    “Okay.” The Duty Officer shrugged and
disappeared from the doorway.
    “O’Day? Are you still there?” I asked my
phone.
    “Yeah. Are you listening, Sasha?”
    “No, what was that about a dark novel?”
    “Not a dark novel,” the irritation in