Glenn Cooper - Library of the Dead

Elder was certain he had not. He had a firm recollection that the company visits were handled by more junior bankers. Apart from the closing dinner in New York, the two men didn't see each other again.

Had they communicated over the years?

Elder recalled an occasional phone call here and there.

And when was the last?

A good year ago. Nothing recent. They were on each other's corporate holiday card lists but this was hardly an active relationship. When he read about Swisher's murder, Elder said, he had of course been shocked.

Will's line of questioning was interrupted by his Beethoven ring tone. He apologized and switched off the phone, but not before recognizing the caller ID number.

Why the hell was Laura calling?

He picked up his train of thought and fired off a list of follow-up questions. Had Swisher ever talked about a Las Vegas connection? Friends? Business contacts? Had he ever mentioned gambling or personal debts? Had he ever shared any aspect of his personal life? Did Elder know if he had any enemies?

The answer to all these was no. Elder wanted Will to understand that his relationship with Swisher was superficial, transient and transactional. He wished he could be more helpful but plainly he could not.

Will felt his disappointment rise like bile. The interview was going nowhere, another Doomsday dead end. Yet there was something niggling about Elder's demeanor, a small discordant something. Was there a note of tension in his throat, a touch of glibness? Will didn't know where his next question came from-maybe it sprung from a well of intuition. "Tell me, Mr. Elder, how's your business doing?"

Elder hesitated for more than an imperceptible moment, a long enough pause for Will to conclude that he'd struck a nerve. "Well, business is very good. Why do you ask?"

"No reason, just curious. Let me ask you: most insurance companies are in places like Hartford, New York, major cities. Why Las Vegas, why Henderson?"

"Our roots are here," Elder replied. "I built this company brick by brick. Right out of college, I started as an agent in a little brokerage in Henderson, about a mile from this office. We had six employees. I bought the place from the owner when he retired and renamed it Desert Life. We now have over eight thousand employees, coast-to-coast."

"That's very impressive. You must be very proud."

"Thank you, I am."

"And the insurance business, you say, is good."

That tiny hesitation again. "Well, everybody needs insurance. There's a lot of competition out there and the regulatory environment can be a challenge sometimes, but we've got a strong business."

As he listened, Will noticed a leather pen holder on the desk, chock-full of black and red Pentel pens.

He couldn't help himself. "Could I borrow one of your pens?" he asked, pointing. "A black one."

"Sure," Elder replied, puzzled.

It was an ultrafine point. Well, well.

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper in a clear plastic cover, a Xerox copy of the front and back of Swisher's postcard. "Could you take a look at this?"

Elder took the sheet and retrieved his reading glasses. "Chilling," he said.

"See the postmark?"

"May eighteenth."

"Were you in Las Vegas on the eighteenth?"

Elder was palpably irritated by the question. "I have no idea, but I'd be happy to have my assistant check for you."

"Great. How many times have you been to New York in the past six weeks?"

Elder frowned and replied testily, "Zero."

"I see," Will said. He pointed to the photocopy. "Could I get that back, please?"

Elder returned the sheet, and Will thought, Hey, buddy, for what it's worth, I've got your fingerprints.

After Will departed, Bertram Myers wandered in and sat down in the still warm chair. "How'd it go?" he asked his boss.

"As advertised. He was focused on David Swisher's murder. He wanted to know where I was the day his postcard was mailed from Las Vegas."

"You're joking!"

"No I am not."

"I had no idea you were a serial killer, Nelson."

Elder loosened his tightly knotted Hermes tie. He was starting to relax. "Watch out, Bert, you may be next."

"So that was it? He didn't ask a single troubling question?"

"Not one. I don't know why I was worried."

"You said you weren't."

"I lied."

Will left Henderson to spend the rest of the day working out of the FBI field office in North Las Vegas before his scheduled return to New York on the red-eye. Local agents had been working up unidentified fingerprints on Doomsday postcards. By cross-tabbing with prints taken from postal workers at the Las Vegas Main Office they managed to ID a few latents. He had them throw Elder's prints into the mix then settled into the conference room to read the newspaper and wait for the analysis. When his stomach started rumbling he took a walk down Lake Mead Boulevard to look for a sandwich shop.

The heat was blistering. Doffing his jacket and rolling up his shirtsleeves didn't help much so he ducked into the first place he found, a quiet, pleasantly air-conditioned Quiznos manned by a crew of desultory workers. While he waited at a table for his sub to toast he called his voice mail and cycled through the messages.

The final one set him off. He cursed out loud, drawing a dirty look from the manager. A snot-nosed voice informed him his cable was about to be cut off. He was three months overdue and unless he paid today he'd be coming home to a test pattern.

He tried to remember the last time he'd paid any of his household bills and couldn't. He visualized the large stack of unopened mail on his kitchenette counter-he needed this like head lice.

He'd have to call Nancy; he owed her one anyway.

"Greetings from Sin City," he said.

She was cool.

"What's going on with Camacho?" he asked.

"His diary checked out. He couldn't have done the other murders."

"No surprise, I guess."

"Nope. How was your interview with Nelson Elder?"

"Is he our killer? I seriously doubt it. Is there something fishy about him? Yeah, definitely."

"Fishy?"

"I got a sense he was hiding something."

"Anything solid?"

"He had Pentel ultrafines on his desk."

"Get a warrant," she said, bone dry.

"Well, I'll check him out." Then, sheepishly, he asked her to help with his little cable problem. He had a spare key in his office. Could she stop by his apartment, pick up the overdue bill, and give him a call so he could take care of it with a credit card?

Not a problem, she told him.

"Thanks. And one more thing." He felt he had to say it: "I want to apologize for the other night. I got pretty loaded."

He heard her taking a breath. "It's okay."

He knew it wasn't but what more could he say? When he hung up, he looked at his watch. He had hours to kill before his red-eye back to New York. He wasn't a gambler so there was no tug toward the casinos. Darla was long gone by now. He could get loaded, but he could do that anywhere. Then something occurred to him that made him half smile. He opened his phone to make another call.

Nancy tensed up as soon as she opened the door to Will's apartment.

There was music.

An open travel bag was in the living room.

She called out, "Hello?"

The shower was running.

Louder. "Hello?"

The water stopped and she heard a voice from the bathroom. "Hello?"

A wet young woman hesitantly emerged wrapped in a bath towel. She was in her early twenties, blond, lissome with a prepossessing naturalness. Puddles were forming around her perfect, small feet. Awfully young, Nancy bitterly thought, and she was blindsided by her initial reaction to the stranger-a tug of jealousy.

"Oh, hi," the woman said. "I'm Laura."

"I'm Nancy."