Page 11 of In Her Bed
What caught Jenna’s attention, however, was not the mobile home itself, but the industrial-sized dumpster sitting nearby, overflowing with what looked like discarded electronics.They exited the car and took a closer look.Jenna saw circuit boards, computer monitors, smartphones, and various components she couldn’t identify.
“Wait until you see inside the trailer,” Morgan said.
Yellow police tape cordoned off the area around the mobile home’s wooden deck steps.At the base of the steps, Jenna noticed a patch of disturbed earth, the pine needles scraped away to reveal churned soil beneath.
Morgan came to stand beside her, pointing.“This is where we think the struggle happened.”
“Did you find the murder weapon?”Jake asked, joining them.
“Maybe,” Morgan pulled out his phone, swiped through several images, then showed them a photo of a black cord.“This was found tossed in the bushes over there.Lab says it’s consistent with the ligature marks on the victim’s neck.”
Jenna studied the image—a simple black cable, the kind used for electronics or appliances, and also the same kind that had been used to bind the body to the radio tower.
Then Morgan swiped his phone again and brought up another image—of a semiautomatic pistol lying on the ground.
“The gun was registered to Derrick.And it had been fired recently—the magazine was short just one round.It looks like he might have fired it in self-defense.But judging from the lack of blood, he didn’t hit anybody.A lot of good it did him.”
“Let’s see inside.”She nodded toward the mobile home.
Morgan lifted the police tape for them to duck under.The front door had been sealed with evidence tape, which Morgan broke to let them in.
The interior appeared undisturbed by the struggle that had taken place outside.A small living area opened directly into a kitchenette.Beyond that, Jenna could see a short hallway that presumably led to a bedroom and bathroom.
What dominated the space, however, was the equipment.Modern shortwave receivers, all of them in a curious state of disrepair, sat alongside vintage models, which were perfectly intact.Tools, soldering equipment, and component parts were organized on shelves along one wall.
But it was the centerpiece that drew Jenna’s attention like a magnet.On a sturdy oak table in the middle of the room sat an antique ham radio set.Unlike the dismantled digital equipment surrounding it, this was a behemoth of another era—its metal casing worn but polished, dials and meters arranged across its face like the controls of a time machine.
And rising from its back were eight vacuum tubes.
A chill ran down Jenna’s spine.Was that where she had been?The tubes were smaller, of course, nothing like the towering structures from her dream, but the parallel was undeniable.She moved closer, drawn by the eerie familiarity.
“That’s old school,” Jake commented, coming to stand beside her.“Must be sixty, seventy years old?”
“Vacuum tube technology,” Colonel Spelling noted.“Obsolete by the 1960s when transistors took over.”
Jenna barely heard them.In her mind, she was back in that strange dreamscape, Marcus’s paranoid voice echoing: “I know what you are.You’re one of them.”
She reached out, not quite touching the radio’s surface.“He was afraid,” she murmured.“Afraid of modern technology.”
Morgan made a sound of agreement.“Look at this place.Every modern device torn apart or discarded.But this old dinosaur—” he gestured to the vacuum tube radio, “—this he kept pristine.”
Jenna moved around the table, studying the radio from all angles.A notebook lay open beside it, pages filled with diagrams and notes in a cramped, urgent hand.She leaned closer, reading a passage circled several times in red ink: “THEY CAN’T TRACK THROUGH TUBES.NO CHIPS, NO SIGNALS.”
“He believed someone was tracking him through microchips,” she said, straightening.“Modern electronic components.”
“Paranoid delusion,” Spelling stated flatly.“Common among hermit types.”
But Jenna wasn’t so sure.Something about Marcus’s terror felt genuine to her, both in her dream and in the frantic notes.She turned to the dumpster visible through the window.
“He was purging his home of all modern electronics,” she said slowly.“Recent purge, based on that dumpster.Something spooked him badly enough to accelerate whatever fears he already had.”
She was silently connecting points.Something frightens Marcus badly enough to purge all modern electronics from his home.He’s murdered outside his home, then his body is transported to a radio tower miles away and wired up as some kind of message.Who was he so afraid of?Had he been threatened, or was he just suspicious of everyone?
Marcus’s voice echoed in her memory: “That’s what they all say before they slip the knife in.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Jenna’s fingers hovered over the vintage ham radio before settling on a worn dial.She turned it, her touch careful—after all she was handling an artifact from a bygone era.
