I am sorry to shatter your illusions of what a private detective is.  If you grew up watching movies and television shows where guys like Bogart carried guns and faced off against big and scary bad guys, well, the real world and the real job is nothing like that.  I spend most of my time in front of a computer, or looking things up at the library.  Sometimes I get to follow people around and take sneaky photos with a telephoto lens from the front seat of my car.  Sometimes I actually talk to the people I am following, but that is very rare.  Most of the time, they have no idea I am even there.  Sometimes, if the job is just doing a background check, they aren’t even aware that anything has been done at all.  I’m like a ghost in a lot of ways.  
I am not a brave guy.  I am a nosy guy.  I like to pry into people’s lives and then I like having someone to report back to about it.  It’s just that simple.  I get paid a lot of money to do it and I have gotten very good at doing it and I did a lot of it for cops and that gets me on their good side, but that doesn’t mean I am a cock-sure braveheart.  So, when the guy who spoke to me so strangely in the alley walked away, I was terrified.
In my defense, even my dog was terrified.  The same dog that would go head-to-head with a Rottweiler or a Doberman had run and hid under the bed.  This is the same dog that barks at the garbage men and other men much larger and, in my mind, much scarier than this guy was terrified.
I opened the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water.  I felt the cold liquid slide down my throat.  I was amazed at just how badly my throat hurt and how dry it was.  I felt cold even though the heat was on full blast in my apartment.  I swear I could hear the wind clawing at the building around me, searching for a place to get in, tear open the roof, and charge at me, slicing through my bones.  It was like hearing something alive, outside, trying to get to me.
I headed for the living room and I paused to root through the pocket of my jacket.  I found the small wooden box and sat down on my couch.  I placed the small box on the coffee table in front of me.  Suddenly this box was the most important thing in the world.
Here is what I knew.  I knew that my best friend and former partner was dead.  It looked like it was a suicide.  However, when I went over there I discovered that his hard drive and materials on his desk were gone.  I knew that the police had not taken the things off the desk.  I had found a hidden box in a secret hiding place in his bathroom, the very place where he had died.  I met some very strange people outside his apartment and it appeared a person of equal strangeness had appeared behind my apartment.  The police were convinced Carl had killed himself.  I had no proof that these strange people had anything to do with his death.  I had a strange box that may or may not have something hidden inside it and a threat that more strange people would visit me at my office the next day.
The lack of information was giving me a headache.  I stared at the grain of the wooden box.  I wanted so badly to see something that would indicate how to open the damn thing.  I had seen similar puzzleboxes before.  Carl had shown me puzzleboxes like this before.  Most of the time if you twisted it a certain way or press your finger against a certain section a panel might slide away.  Then, the top would open and the inside would be revealed.
I could have gotten a hammer out of a drawer and smashed the damn thing.  For a moment I considered that.  The problem was I had no idea what was hidden inside it.  If I smashed it to pieces along with the box, then where would I be?  I would have even less evidence of anything.  So, I had to figure out how to open the damn thing.
I picked it up and began turning it around.  I tried twisting it.  I tried poking every area I could find.  I pressed and picked at areas of the grain in the wood that I felt looked different.  Nothing seemed to open it.  Without a doubt, this was the best constructed puzzlebox I had ever run across.  Not that I collected them or anything, but from what I had seen, this one was a doozy.
I leaned back and rubbed my eyes.  It was starting to get late.  I needed to get to bed.  However, every time I closed my eyes I saw the face of the man in the alley.  I had this sudden an certain feeling that he was standing outside my place right now.  I had this feeling eyes were watching me.  
I was tempted to go online and try looking up some of the names he had thrown out at me.  I even went so far as to pull my laptop out of my briefcase.  Then, my head began to pound and I suddenly felt exhausted.  I had been through several emotional wringers and it looked like tomorrow would be as crazy as this one.  
I walked into my bathroom and shook out two pills.  I downed them by drinking water directly from the tap.  I walked into the bedroom and decided it was a night to sleep naked.  So, I undressed.  I made sure my bedroom door was locked and then I put a fan in front of it.  I turned on the fan for the noise and laid down.  I figured I would be awake four hours.  I stared at the ceiling and had images of strange men in my alley and of Carl’s bloated and dead face staring at me.  My dog jumped on the bed next to me and then curled up pressed against me.  Second later, I was asleep.
I did not have any good dreams that night.