Hero To Zero 2nd edition Read Online Free

the bald, nerdy, middle-aged and overweight drunk who had been getting loud and obnoxious at the strip club was wanted for multiple counts of rape in several neighboring states.
    He was a serial rapist who would set up appointments with female real estate agents and then get them alone in vacant homes, rape them, tie them up, and then leave. He had been on the run for several years and was very successful at not getting caught.
    Until he ran into Ray. Ray ended that cocksucker’s free ride in a few short minutes while giving a clinic on what it means to be an outstanding cop.
    Ray bounced from one great assignment to another. He was the go-to guy for the brass. If they had a problem Ray was an easy, obvious choice. He was photogenic, politically correct (in public), and a mass of moving energy that could not be stopped.
    He bounced from one special assignment to another. Anything that required total dedication and boundless energy Ray was plugged into until the next quick fix was needed, and then he was moved to the new problem. He was a rising star in the police department, surely headed to at least the rank of lieutenant—possibly assistant chief.
    Watching Ray, though, you could see he had something deep and dark inside that haunted him. Like I said, he was constantly in motion.
    I remember stopping to talk to him and one of the senior officers in a parking lot one slow night. The older guy was calm, seasoned. He was watching us both like a father watches his sons: seeing everything through the filter of experience, making very few comments, but always listening.
    It was never more obvious to me than that night just how wound up Ray was. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of the patrol car. The car was stationary; Ray was not. He never stopped moving the entire time. He looked like a meth addict, constantly moving—twitching, leg bouncing, laughing too loud, talking too fast.
    It really struck me then the amount of nervous energy that Ray constantly burned off. Obviously, something very deep bothered him a lot. Something he could barely contain.
    Ray had one true passion aside from women. He loved sports. Any and all sports. He could talk sports, any sport, with the most rabid fan. He could talk at length about the most obscure stats of almost any player in almost any sport. I was amazed and mystified at what he found time to study and obsess over. He was a mystery to me.
    I was working one of many part-time jobs in a department store when I ran into a girl who dated a friend of Ray’s. She started to tell me about their double dates. She said Ray had a different girl with him every single night and “lived fast.”
    I said, “Yeah, Ray is the golden boy of the department.”
    “Yeah…I guess if they knew what I knew, he’d be fired in a second!”
    I stopped cold. There was something in her voice and eyes that told me she knew something about that deep, dark secret that Ray kept so tightly under wraps.
    On the outside I appeared casual, but made a mental note. I started to listen to her very carefully. I wanted to know what she knew, and I knew it would only be a matter of time and earning her trust, and then she would spill it
    Several months went by, and the woman split from Ray’s running buddy. She was heartbroken. Ray’s friend had left his wife and moved in with her, they had rented an apartment together, set up house and home. Then she came home from work one day to find that he had left her and moved back in with his wife.
    Simple as that, he left her with a lease she could not afford, bills she could not pay. She was devastated. I listened as she poured out the last few months of their relationship: dates, drinking, parties.
    She got really quiet and said, “Do you remember that day I mentioned to you about Ray and his secret?”
    I was instantly on alert. I remembered, but I didn’t act like I was interested. I said, “Ray and his secret? No, not really.”
    She laid it all out. When she was