Glenn Cooper - Library of the Dead

It was Courier 12 point, the same as the Doomsday postcards.

He had forgotten his initial puzzlement at the postcard font, an old standby from the days of typewriters but a more uncommon choice in the computer/printer age. Times New Roman, Garamond, Arial, Helvetica-these were the new standards in the world of pull-down menus.

He jumped onto the Internet and had his answer. Courier 12 was the mandatory font for screenplays, completely de rigueur. If you submitted a script to a producer in another format you'd be laughed out of town. Another tidbit: it was also widely used by computer programmers to write source code.

A mental vision slammed into his thoughts. A couple of screenplays authored by "Peter Benedict" and a few black Pentel pens sat on a white desk near a bookcase filled with computer programming books. Mark Shackleton's voice-over completed the imagery: "I don't think you're going to catch the guy."

He spent a short while contemplating the associations, odd as they were, before dismissing as absurd the notion there might be a connection between the Doomsday case and his college roommate. Schackleton, the grown-up nerd, running around New York, stabbing, shooting, sowing mayhem! Please!

Still, the postcard font was an unplumbed clue-he strongly felt it now-and he knew that to ignore one of his hunches would be foolhardy, especially when otherwise they were at a complete dead end.

He grabbed his cell phone and excitedly texted Nancy: U and I are going to be reading scripts. Doomie may be a screenwriter.

S he felt the smooth, cool fourteen-carat links of the wrist-band and ran her fingertip over the rough border of diamonds around the narrow rectangular watch face.

"I like this one," she murmured.

"Excellent choice, madame," the jeweler said. "This Harry Winston is a popular choice. It's called the 'Avenue Lady.'"

The name made her laugh. "Hear what it's called?" she asked her companion.

"Yep."

"Isn't that perfect!"

"How much?" he asked.

The jeweler looked him in the eye. If the man had been Japanese or Korean or an Arab, he'd have known the sale was in the bag. As it was, Americans in khakis and baseball caps were a tough call. "I can sell it to sir today for $24,000."

Her eyes widened. This was the most expensive one. Still, she loved it, and let him know by nervously touching the bare skin of his forearm.

"We'll take it," he said without hesitation.

"Very good, sir. How would sir like to pay?"

"Just put it on my room. We're staying in the Piazza Suite."

The jeweler would have to pop into the back room to confirm the sale but he was feeling solid. The suite was one of their best, fourteen-hundred square feet of marble and opulence, with a spa and sunken living room.

She was wearing the watch when they left the shop. The sky over St. Mark's Square was perfectly baby blue with just the right assortment of fluffy cumulus clouds. A gondola ferrying a rigid, unsmiling Swiss couple glided by. The gondolier launched into song to stir up some emotion in his charges, and his rich voice echoed off the dome. Everything was perfect, her companion thought. The non-Mediterranean temperature, the absence of brackish smells from real canals, and no pigeons. He hated the dirty birds ever since his parents had taken him to the authentic St. Mark's Square as a shy and sensitive boy and a tourist lobbed a handful of bread crumbs near his feet. The pigeon swarm nightmarishly overwhelmed him, and even as an adult he recoiled when he saw flapping wings.

She was wearing the watch as they strolled arm in arm through the lobby of the Venetian Hotel.

She was wearing the watch in the elevator, cocking her hand at an angle to catch the attention of the three ladies riding with them.

And she was wearing the watch and nothing else up in the suite when she gave him the best sex he'd ever had.

He let her call him Mark now, and instead of Lydia, she let him use her real name, Kerry. Kerry Hightower.

She was from Nitro, West Virginia, a river town founded at the turn of the century around a gunpowder plant. It was a gritty place notable for little except that Clark Gable once worked there as a telephone repairman. Growing up poor, she watched old Clark Gable movies and dreamed of becoming a Hollywood actress.

In junior high she discovered her acting skills were not abundant but she doggedly tried out for every school play and community production, landing small supporting roles only because she was so earnest and attractive. But in high school she discovered a higher talent. She loved sex, was extremely good at it, and was completely and charmingly uninhibited. In a revelation, she settled on a new amalgamated calling: she decided she would become a porn star.

A fellow cheerleader, two years older, had moved to Las Vegas and was working as a card dealer. To Kerry, Vegas was nine-tenths on the way to California, where, as she understood it, the adult film business flourished. A week after graduation from Nitro High, she bought a one-way ticket to Nevada and moved in with her old chum. Life there wasn't easy, but her sunny disposition kept her afloat. She bopped around from one low-paying job to another until she landed, if not on her feet, on her back at an escort agency.

When she'd met Mark at the Constellation, she was on her fourth agency in three years, finally accumulating a little money. She only worked for higher-end outfits where her non-pierced, nontattooed, girl-next-door persona was valued. Most of the men she dated were nice enough fellows-she could count the number of times on one hand when she felt abused or threatened. She never fell for any of her customers-they were johns, after all-but Mark was different.

From the start she found him nerdy and sweet with no macho pretenses. He was wicked smart too, and his job at Area 51 drove her crazy with curiosity because, when she was ten, she was certain she'd seen a flying saucer one summer night, darting high over the Kanawha River, as bright as a jar of lightning bugs collected on the riverbank.

And in the past few weeks, he had dropped the pseudonym and started buying up all of her time and lavishing presents on her. She was starting to feel more like a girlfriend and less like a call girl. He was getting more self-assured by the day, and while he was never going to be Clark Gable, he was beginning to grow on her.

She was unaware that with $5 million sitting high and dry in an offshore bank account, he was feeling more confident about the accomplishments of Mark Shackleton. Peter Benedict was gone. He wasn't needed anymore.

Even the bathrooms in the suite had flat-screen TVs. Mark got out of the shower and started toweling himself. There was a cable channel on. He wasn't paying attention until he heard the word Doomsday and looked up to see Will Piper on a replay of the weekly FBI press conference, standing tall at a podium speaking into a crop of microphones. The sight of Will on TV always made his heart race. He reached for his toothbrush without taking his eyes off the screen and began brushing his teeth.

The last time he'd seen Will at a media briefing, he looked lackluster and dispirited. The postcards and killings had stopped and the wall-to-wall coverage was no longer sustainable. The long unsolved case had drained the public and law enforcement alike. But he seemed more energized today. The old intensity was back. Mark pushed the volume button.

"I can say this," Will was saying. "We are pursuing some new leads and I remain completely confident we will catch the killer."

That irritated Mark and he said, "Oh, bullshit! Give it up, man," before turning off the TV.

Kerry was snoozing on the bed, naked underneath a thin sheet. Mark cinched his bathrobe and retrieved his laptop from his briefcase in the suite's sunken living room. He went online and saw he had an e-mail from Nelson Elder. Elder's list was longer than usual-business was good. It took Mark the better part of half an hour to complete the job and reply via his secure portal.