Time Clock Hero Read Online Free PDF Page B

leaned forward, looking through the double glass doors, speaking softly among themselves.  One of them had his finger on the glass, probably pointing out something in the room.
    Phoenix hurried down the hall and, coming to the glass door to the lab, was nearly knocked down by a photographer coming out of the room.
    Chief Cobb removed his phone from his pocket and stared at the screen.  He looked up at Phoenix, then nodded towards the crime scene.  “Get to it – tell me what you see.  I gotta take this.”
    Not far into the room, leaning with his back up against a set of white, baked-enamel cabinets, and his head slumped down on his chest, was the body of Dr. Albin Demachi, the senior lab technician with NPD.  Both of his hands, both equally bloodied, were on the floor, steadying his torso in a grotesquely upright position, holding him in place so that he wouldn’t fall over.  Dark red blood nearly obscured the whiteness of his lab coat.  It covered the chest area completely and pooled down into his lap creating a small ocean.
    “You followed procedure, I take it?” Phoenix asked Alaia.
    “And for some reason, Chief Cobb wants you to go over everything,” she said.  “All we need is an autopsy and the bullet – not a thing more.  Yes, Phoenix, I’m finished here.”
    “You should have waited – I should have been notified earlier.”
    “Sure, I should have called you, but I didn’t because you needed the rest.  You would have been late anyway.”  She opened the glass door for one of the officers.  He and two others stepped into the room just behind Alaia, and the door quietly swung back and closed.
    Phoenix turned around.  The officers stood there with their hands in their belts like they had nothing better to do than enjoy the gore.   He glanced at their faces for a moment and gave them a little smile and a nod.  He got nothing in return.  He faced forward again, towards the body of Albin Demachi.  He focused intensely on the body of his old friend; and from the very corner of his peripheral vision he saw Alaia eyeing him, and he timed it so that he turned away just as she started to speak.
    “Let me guess,” Phoenix said.  He swung sharply around and so did the officers. “I did this – and you just know that one of my thirty-eights is sitting in Albin’s chest lodged right up against his spine.  Okay, I confess – I did it.  Now will you let me get to work here?”  His phone vibrated in his pocket.
    Alaia pursed her lips, dour-faced and disapproving.
    Phoenix, after a brief pause, smiled.  He stepped away from Albin and towards the other end of the room and he answered his phone: “Detective Malone.”
    “Thirty-eight bullet, you’re right,” a smooth, calm voice breathed through the phone.  “Dead on – from a Smith and Wesson.  And, yes, you did it.  Well, that’s what Cobb’s going to say.”
    “Who is this?”
    “Eaten any Krystal’s lately?”
    Chief Cobb came into the room.  The officers made a path, and he walked over to Alaia.  Cobb put his hand around her waist, which looked odd, and she turned her body around, moving as fluidly as fine champagne in a crystal glass.
    Phoenix didn’t say a word.
    “Your gun – you left it on your desk yesterday, making you the smartest man that ever lived,” the man on the phone said.  “It’s short one round.  And you can guess where that round is.”
    Phoenix lowered his chin against his collar to hide the chaos in his face, and he turned away so that nobody would see or hear him.  “Who is this?”
    “Look, I’m here to do you a favor,” the voice said.  “I owe you, big time, bigger than you will ever know – so listen closely.”
    With Alaia and Chief Cobb taking an interest in his direction, Phoenix took a few steps further away and turned his back on them.
    “I’m … I’m listening.”
    “Whether you like it or not, Alaia Jenkins will probably get your job – there’s too much stacked against