The Immorality Clause Read Online Free PDF

the room.
    Printed in blood was the phrase, “ JOB 36:14 .”
    “Looks like a biblical verse,” Drake sighed.
    I nodded and tapped my phone lightly. “Andi, what does ‘job 36:14’ mean?”
    “It’s not job , it’s Job ,” Andi replied over the speaker, correcting my pronunciation to make the word sound like robe, except with a capital J at the beginning. “Job was a biblical character who was tempted by Satan, but remained faithful to God throughout his trials. The most common translation of the verse is, ‘They die in youth, and their life ends among the cult prostitutes.’
    “So now we have a religious nutjob on our hands? Okay, thank you, Andi. Keep digging for any type of cross-reference to this verse that may be pertinent.”
    “On it, boss.”
    I disconnected the phone and squished my way across the floor to peek into the bathroom. It looked clean and unused. The towels were still folded on the rack. “Hey, Drake,” I called.
    Squelch. Squelch. Squelch . The sound of his shoes slopping through the drying blood made me wish I wore headphones on an investigation. He stepped up beside me, “What’s up, sir?”
    I pointed at the towels, “The manager said the john had already finished fucking the sex bot and was showering.”
    “Yeah, so… Oh!”
    “See what I mean?” I asked.
    “Yeah. The bed’s made—which isn’t necessarily odd. People come to these places to carry out their fantasies, do things with the robots that their spouse would never let them do in the bedroom. Maybe he was into bathroom sex or something.”
    I nodded, “Yeah, I hear you, Drake. I’m not concerned with his sexual preferences, though. Why are all the towels dry if he showered after having sex?”
    “Maybe the killer dragged him out of the shower.”
    “Nah, the floor’s dry. If someone dragged Wolfe out of the shower, there would be water everywhere.” I paused as I worked through what it meant. “I don’t know about you, but I put a towel down on the floor so I don’t slip when I step out of the shower. The mat’s still folded on the towel rack and…” I reached inside to pat the mat. “It’s still dry.”
    “Hold on,” Drake muttered as he pushed past me into the bathroom, leaving a bloody trail of size fourteen footprints across the tile. “We’re over-thinking this.”
    He stopped shy of the shower and put on a glove before opening the door from the top, not the handle. “Shit.”
    “What is it?”
    “Shower’s wet. I thought he didn’t take a shower.”
    Someone turned the shower on, but didn’t use it. “Lift every fingerprint from that shower door,” I ordered. “Get the handle, but scan up high too. The killer may have opened it by pulling from the top like you did.”
    “On it,” the sergeant said. He pulled a fingerprint scanner from the satchel on his shoulder and ran it slowly over the possible places where clients, or the murderer, could grasp the shower door to open it.
    The victim didn’t use the shower, but the Diva’s water usage log showed that it ran for four minutes before the motion sensor turned it off. Who turned it on and why? The easy answer would be that either the killer turned on the shower to keep up the appearance of a normal pleasure house transaction or that he came in and killed him while Wolfe waited for the shower to warm up.
    “Hey, Drake.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Get a scan on the shower too. See if any blood was washed off recently.”
    It would take him a few minutes, so I turned around and looked at the body. Whoever you were, Chuck Wolfe, you sure were a fat bastard , I chuckled. The body snatchers would have a fun time trying to get him into a bag for transport to the morgue, where he’d be autopsied.
    Ragged gashes covered the body; several of them large enough to reach inside the body cavity. I pulled a disposable prod from my pocket and placed it gently against the sides of the wound on his chest, flipping over a large flap of skin.
    “Well, if the