First Thrills

The Plot by Jeffery Deaver

When J. B. Prescott, the hugely popular crime novelist, died, millions of readers around the world were stunned and saddened.

But only one fan thought that there was something more to his death than what was revealed in the press reports.

Rumpled, round, middle-aged Jimmy Malloy was an NYPD detective sergeant. He had three passions other than police work: his family, his boat, and reading. Malloy read anything, but preferred crime novels. He liked the clever plots and the fast-moving stories. That’s what books should be, he felt. He’d been at a party once and people were talking about how long they should give a book before they put it down. Some people had said they’d endure fifty pages, some said a hundred.

Malloy had laughed. “No, no, no. It’s not dental work, like you’re waiting for the anesthetic to kick in. You should enjoy the book from page one.”

Prescott’s books were that way. They entertained you from the git-go. They took you away from your job, they took you away from the problems with your wife or daughter, your mortgage company.

They took you away from everything. And in this life, Malloy reflected, there was a lot to be taken away from.

“What’re you moping around about?” his partner, Ralph DeLeon, asked, walking into the shabby office they shared in the Midtown South Precinct, after half a weekend off. “I’m the only one round here got reason to be upset. Thanks to the Mets yesterday. Oh, wait. You don’t even know who the Mets are, son, do you?”

“Sure, I love basketball,” Malloy joked. But it was a distracted joke.

“So?” DeLeon asked. He was tall, slim, muscular, black-the opposite of Malloy, detail for detail.

“Got one of those feelings.”

“Shit. Last one of those feelings earned us a sit-down with the Dep Com.”

Plate glass and Corvettes are extremely expensive. Especially when owned by people with lawyers.

But Malloy wasn’t paying much attention to their past collars. Or to DeLeon. He once more read the obit that had appeared in the Times a month ago.

J.B. Prescott, 68, author of thirty-two best-selling crime novels, died yesterday while on a hike in a remote section of Vermont, where he had a summer home.

The cause of death was a heart attack.

“We’re terribly saddened by the death of one of our most prolific and important writers,” said Dolores Kemper, CEO of Hutton-Fielding, Inc., which had been his publisher for many years. “In these days of lower book sales and fewer people reading, J.B.’s books still flew off the shelves. It’s a terrible loss for everyone.

Prescott’s best known creation was Jacob Sharpe, a down-and-dirty counterintelligence agent, who traveled the world, fighting terrorists and criminals. Sharpe was frequently compared to James Bond and Jason Bourne.

Prescott was not a critical darling. Reviewers called his books, “airport time-passers,” “beach reads,” and “junk food for the mind-superior junk food, but empty calories nonetheless.”

Still, he was immensely popular with his fans. Each of his books sold millions of copies.

His success brought him fame and fortune, but Prescott shunned the public life, rarely going on book tour or giving interviews. Though a multimillionaire, he had no interest in the celebrity lifestyle. He and his second wife, the former Jane Spenser, 38, owned an apartment in Manhattan, where she is a part-time photo editor for Styles, the popular fashion magazine. Prescott himself, however, spent most of his time in Vermont or in the countryside of Spain, where he could write in peace.

Born in Kansas, John Balin Prescott studied English literature at the University of Iowa and was an advertising copywriter and teacher for some years while trying to publish literary fiction and poetry. He had little success and ultimately switched to writing thrillers. His first, The Trinity Connection, became a runaway hit in 1991. The book was on The New York Times bestseller list for more than one hundred weeks.

Demand for his books became so great that ten years ago he took on a co-writer, Aaron Reilly, 39, with whom he wrote sixteen bestsellers. This increased his output to two novels a year, sometimes more.

“We’re just devastated,” said Reilly, who described himself as a friend as well as a colleague. “John hadn’t been feeling well lately. But we couldn’t get him back to the city to see his doctor, he was so intent on finishing our latest manuscript. That’s the way he was. Type A in the extreme.”

Last week, Prescott traveled to Vermont alone to work on his next novel. Taking a break from the writing, he went for a hike, as he often did, in a deserted area near the Green Mountains. It was there that he suffered the coronary.

“John’s personal physician described the heart attack as massive,” co-author Reilly added. “Even if he hadn’t been alone, the odds of saving him were slim to nonexistent.”

Mr. Prescott is survived by his wife and two children from a prior marriage.

“So what’s this feeling you’re talking about?” DeLeon asked, reading over his partner’s shoulder.

“I’m not sure. Something.”

“Now, there is some evidence to get straight to the crime lab. ‘Something.’ Come on, there’s some real cases on our plate, son. Put your mopey hat away. We gotta meet our snitch.”

“Mopey hat? Did you actually say mopey hat?”

A half hour later, Malloy and DeLeon were sitting in a disgusting dive of a coffee shop near the Hudson River docks, talking to a scummy little guy of indeterminate race and age.

Lucius was eating chili in a sloppy way and saying, “So what happened was Bark, remember I was telling you about Bark.”

“Who’s Bark?” Malloy asked.

“I told you.”

DeLeon said, “He told us.”

“What Bark did was he was going to mark the bag, only he’s a Nimrod, so he forgot which one it was. I figured it out and got it marked. That worked out okay. It’s marked, it’s on the truck. Nobody saw me. They had, I’d be capped.” A big mouthful of chili. And a grin. “So.”

“Good job,” DeLeon said. And kicked Malloy under the table. Meaning: Tell him he did a good job, because if you don’t the man’ll start to feel bad and, yeah, he’s a little shit Nimrod, what ever that is, but we need him.

But Malloy was remembering something. He rose abruptly. “I gotta go.”

“I dint do a good job?” Lucius called, hurt.

But he was speaking to Jimmy Malloy’s back.

Jane Prescott opened the door of the town house in Greenwich Village. Close to five-eleven, she could look directly into Malloy’s eyes.

The widow wore a black dress, closely fitted, and her eyes were red like she’d been crying. Her hair was swept back and faint gray roots showed, though Malloy recalled that she was only in her late thirties. Three de cades younger than her late husband, he also recalled.

“Detective.” Hesitant, of course, looking over his ID. A policeman. She was thinking this was odd-not necessarily reason to panic but odd.

“I recognize you,” Malloy said.

She blinked. “Have we met?”

“In Sharpe Edge. You were Monica.”

She gave a hollow laugh. “People say that, because an older man falls in love with a younger woman in the book. But I’m not a spy and I can’t rappel off cliffs.”

They were both beautiful, however, if Malloy remembered the Prescott novel correctly. But he said nothing about this, she being a new widow. What he said was, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Oh, please come inside.”

The apartment was small, typical of the Village, but luxurious as diamonds. Rich antiques, original art. Even statues. Nobody Malloy knew owned statues. A peek into the kitchen revealed intimidating brushed-metal appliances with names Malloy couldn’t pronounce.

They sat and she looked at him with her red-rimmed eyes. An uneasy moment later he asked, “You’re wondering what a cop’s doing here.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Other than just being a fan, wishing to pay condolences.”

“You could’ve written a letter.”

“The fact is, this is sort of personal. I didn’t want to come sooner, out of respect. But there’s something I’d like to ask. Some of us in the department were thinking ’bout putting together a memorial evening in honor of your husband. He wrote about New York a lot and he didn’t make us cops out to be flunkies. One of them, I can’t remember which one, he had this great plotline here in the city. Some NYPD rookie helps out Jacob Sharpe. It was about terrorists going after the train stations.”

“Hallowed Ground.”

“That’s right. That was a good book.”

More silence.

Malloy glanced at a photograph on the desk. It showed a half dozen people, in somber clothing, standing around a gravesite. Jane was in the foreground.

She saw him looking at it. “The funeral.”

“Who’re the other people there?”

“His daughters from his first marriage. That’s Aaron, his co- writer.” She indicated a man standing next to her. Then, in the background another, older man in an ill-fitting suit. She said, “Frank Lester, John’s former agent.”

She said nothing more. Malloy continued, “Well, some folks in the department know I’m one of your husband’s biggest fans, so I got elected to come talk to you, ask if you’d come to the memorial. An appreciation night, you could call it. Maybe say a few words. Wait. ‘Elected’ makes it sound like I didn’t want to come. But I did. I loved his books.”

“I sense you did,” she said, looking at the detective with piercing gray eyes.

“So?”

“I appreciate the offer. I’ll just have to see.”

“Sure. What ever you’d feel comfortable with.”

“You made him feel bad. He nearly got capped on that assignment.”

Malloy said to his partner, “I’ll send him a balloon basket. ‘Sorry I was rude to my favorite snitch.’ But right now I’m on to something.”

“Give me particulars.”

“Okay. Well, she’s hot, Prescott’s wife.”

“That’s not a helpful particular.”

“I think it is. Hot… and thirty years younger than her husband.”

“So she took her bra off and gave him a heart attack. Murder- by-boob isn’t in the penal code.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean she wanted somebody younger. So do I. So does everybody. Well, not you, ’cause nobody younger would give you the time of day.”

“And there was this feeling I got at the house. She wasn’t really in mourning. She was in a black dress, yeah, but it was tighter than anything I’d ever let my daughter wear, and her red eyes? It was like she’d been rubbing them. I didn’t buy the grieving widow thing.”

“You ain’t marshalling Boston Legal evidence here, son.”

“There’s more.” Malloy pulled the limp copy of Prescott’s obit out of his pocket. He tapped a portion. “I realized where my feeling came from. See this part about the personal physician?”

“Yeah. So?”

“You read books, DeLeon?”

“Yeah, I can read. I can tie my shoes. I can fieldstrip a Glock in one minute sixteen seconds. Oh, and put it back together, too, without any missing parts. What’s your point?”

“You know how if you read a book and you like it and it’s a good book, it stays with you? Parts of it do? Well, I read a book a few years ago. In it this guy has to kill a terrorist, but if the terrorist is murdered there’d be an international incident, so it has to look like a natural death.”

“How’d they set it up?”

“It was really smart. They shot him in the head three times with a Bushmaster.”

“That’s fairly unnatural.”

“It’s natural because that’s how the victim’s ‘personal physician’ ”-Malloy did the quote things with his fingers “-signed the death certificate: cerebral hemorrhage following a stroke. Your doctor does that, the death doesn’t have to go to the coroner. The police weren’t involved. The body was cremated. The whole thing went away.”

“Hmm. Not bad. All you need is a gun, a shitload of money, and a crooked doctor. I’m starting to like these particular particulars.”

“And what’s particularly interesting is that it was one of Prescott’s books that Aaron Reilly co-wrote. And the wife remembered it. That was why I went to see her.”

“Check out the doctor.”

“I tried. He’s Spanish.”

“So’s half the city, in case you didn’t know. We got translators, hijo.”

“Not Latino. Spanish. From Spain. He’s back home and I can’t track him down.”

The department secretary stuck her head in the doorway. “Jimmy, you got a call from a Frank Lester.”

“Who’d be?…”

“A book agent. Worked with that guy Prescott you were talking about.”

The former agent. “How’d he get my number?”

“I don’t know. He said he heard you were planning some memorial service and he wanted to get together with you to talk about it.”

DeLeon frowned. “Memorial?”

“I had to make up something to get to see the wife.” Malloy took the number, a Manhattan c ell-phone area code, he noticed. Called. It went to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.

Malloy turned back to his partner. “There’s more. An hour ago I talked with some deputies up in Vermont. They told me that it was a private ambulance took the body away. Not one of the local outfits. The sheriff bought into the heart-attack thing but he still sent a few people to the place where Prescott was hiking just to take some statements. After the ambulance left, one of the deputies saw somebody leaving the area. Male, he thinks. No description other than that, except he was carrying what looked like a briefcase or small suitcase.”

“Breakdown rifle?”

“What I was thinking. And when this guy saw the cop car, he vanished fast.”

“A pro?”

“Maybe. I was thinking that co-author might’ve come across some connected guys in doing his research. Maybe it was this Aaron Reilly.”

“You got any ideas on how to find out?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Standing in the dim frosted-glass corridor of a luxurious SoHo condo, Jimmy Malloy made sure his gun was unobstructed and rang the buzzer.

The large door swung open.

“Aaron Reilly?” Even though he recognized the co-author from the picture at Prescott’s funeral.

“Yes, that’s right.” The man gave a cautious grin.

Which remained in place, though it grew a wrinkle of surprise when the shield appeared. Malloy tried to figure out if the man had been expecting him-because Jane Prescott had called ahead of time-but couldn’t tell.

“Come on inside, detective.”

Reilly, in his late thirties, Malloy remembered, was the opposite of Jane Prescott. He was in faded jeans and a work shirt, sleeves rolled up. A Japanese product, not a Swiss, told him the time and there was no gold dangling on him anywhere. His shoes were scuffed. He was good-looking, with thick longish hair and no wedding ring.

The condo-in chic SoHo-had every right to be opulent, but, though large, it was modest and lived-in.

Not an original piece of art in the place.

Zero sculpture.

And unlike the Widow Prescott’s abode, Reilly’s was chock- a-block with books.

He gestured the cop to sit. Malloy picked a leather chair that lowered him six inches toward the ground as it wheezed contentedly. On the wall nearby was a shelf of the books. Malloy noted one: The Paris Deception. “J.B. Prescott with Aaron Reilly” was on the spine.

Malloy was struck by the word, “with.” He wondered if Reilly felt bad, defensive maybe, that his contribution to the literary world was embodied in that preposition.

And if so, did he feel bad enough to kill the man who’d bestowed it and relegated him to second-class status?

“That’s one of my favorites.”

“So you’re a fan, too.”

“Yep. That’s why I volunteered to come talk to you. First, I have to say I really admire your work.”

“Thank you.”

Malloy kept scanning the bookshelves. And found what he’d been looking for: two entire shelves were filled with books about guns and shooting. There had to be something in one of them about rifles that could be broken down and hidden in small suitcases. They were, Malloy knew, easy to find.

“What exactly can I do for you, detective?”

Malloy looked back. “Just a routine matter mostly. Now, technically John Prescott was a resident of the city, so his death falls partly under our jurisdiction.”

“Yes, I suppose.” Reilly still looked perplexed.

“Whenever there’s a large estate, we’re sometimes asked to look into the death, even if it’s ruled accidental or illness related.”

“Why would you look into it?” Reilly asked, frowning.

“Tax revenue mostly.”

“Really? That’s funny. It was my understanding that only department of revenue agents had jurisdiction to make inquiries like that. In fact, I researched a similar issue for one of our books. We had Jacob Sharpe following the money-you know, to find the ultimate bad guy. The police department couldn’t help him. He had to go to revenue.”

It was an oops moment, and Malloy realized he should have known better. Of course, the co-author would know all about police and law enforcement procedures.

“Unless what you’re really saying is that you-or somebody-think that John’s death might not have been an illness at all. That it was intentional… But how could it be?”

Malloy didn’t want to give away his theory about the crooked doctor. He said, “Let’s say I know you’re a diabetic and if you don’t get your insulin you’ll die. I keep you from getting your injection, there’s an argument that I’m guilty of murder.”

“And you think somebody was with him at the time he had the heart attack and didn’t call for help?”

“Just speculating. Probably how you write books.”

“We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.”

“So that’s how it works.”

“Yes.”

“I wondered.”

“But, see, the problem with what you’re suggesting is that it would be a coincidence for this ‘somebody,’ who wanted him dead, to be up there in Vermont at just the moment he had the attack… We could never get away with that.”

Malloy blinked. “You-?”

Reilly lifted an eyebrow. “If we put that into a book, our editor wouldn’t let us get away with it.”

“Still. Did he have any enemies?”

“No, none that I knew about. He was a good boss and a nice man. I can’t imagine anybody’d want him dead.”

“Well, I think that’s about it,” Malloy said. “I appreciate your time.”

Reilly rose and walked the detective to the door. “Didn’t you forget the most important question.”

“What’s that?”

“The question our editor would insist we add at the end of an interrogation in one of the books: Where was I at the time he died.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“I didn’t say you were. I’m just saying that a cop in a Jacob Sharpe novel would’ve asked the question.”

“Okay. Where were you?”

“I was here in New York. And the next question?”

Malloy knew what that was: “Can anyone verify that?”

“No. I was alone all day. Writing. Sorry, but reality’s a lot tougher than fiction, isn’t it, detective?”

“Yo, listen up,” the scrawny little man said. “This is interesting.”

“I’m listening.” Malloy tried look pleasant as he sat across from Lucius the snitch. Before they’d met, Ralph DeLeon reminded him how Malloy had dissed the man earlier. So he was struggling to be nice.

“I followed Reilly to a Starbucks. And she was there, Prescott’s wife.”

“Good job,” DeLeon said.

Malloy nodded. The whole reason to talk to the co-author had been to push the man into action, not to get facts. When people are forced to act, they often get careless. While Malloy had been at Reilly’s apartment, DeLeon was arranging with a magistrate for a pen register-a record of phone calls to and from the co-author’s phones. A register won’t give you the substance of the conversation, but it will tell you whom a subject calls and who’s calling him.

The instant Malloy left the condo, Reilly had dialed a number.

It was Jane Prescott’s. Ten minutes after that, Reilly slipped out the front door and headed down, moving quickly.

And tailed by Lucius, who had accompanied Malloy to Reilly’s apartment and waited outside.

The scrawny snitch was now reporting on that surveillance.

“Now that Mrs. Prescott, she’s pretty-”

Malloy broke in with “Hot, yeah, I know. Keep going.”

“What I was going to say,” the snitch offered snippily, “before I was interrupted, is that she’s pretty tough. Kind of scary, you ask me.”

“True,” Malloy conceded.

“Reilly starts out talking about you being there.” Lucius poked a bony finger at Malloy, which seemed like a dig, but he let it go-as DeLeon’s lifted eyebrow was instructing. “And you were suspecting something. And making up shit about some police procedures and estate tax or something. He thought it was pretty stupid.”

Lucius seemed to enjoy adding that. DeLeon, too, apparently.

“And the wife said, yeah, you were making up something at her place, too. About a memorial ser vice or something. Which she didn’t believe. And then she said-get this. Are you ready?”

Malloy refrained from glaring at Lucius, whose psyche apparently was as fragile as fine porcelain. He smiled. “I’m ready.”

“The wife says that this whole problem was Reilly’s fucking fault for coming up with the same idea he’d used in a book-bribing a doctor to fake a death certificate.”

He and DeLeon exchanged glances.

Lucius continued, “And then she said, ‘Now we’re fucked. What’re you going to do about it?’ Meaning Reilly. Not you.” Another finger at Malloy. He sat back, smugly satisfied.

“Anything else?”

“No, that was it.”

“Good job,” Malloy said with a sarcastic flourish that only DeLeon noted. He slipped an envelope to the snitch.

After Lucius left, happy at last, Malloy said, “Pretty good case.”

“Pretty good, but not great,” the partner replied slowly. “There’s the motive issue.”

“Okay, she wants to kill her husband for the insurance or the estate and a younger man. But what’s Reilly’s motive? Killing Prescott’s killing his golden goose.”

“Oh, I got that covered.” Malloy pulled out his BlackBerry and scrolled down to find something he’d discovered earlier.

He showed it to DeLeon.

Book News.

The estate of the late J.B. Prescott has announced that his co-author, Aaron Reilly, has been selected to continue the author’s series featuring the popular Jacob Sharpe character. Prescott’s widow is presently negotiating a five-book contract with the author’s long-time publisher, Hutton-Fielding. Neither party is talking about money at this point but insiders believe the deal will involve an eight-figure advance.

Ralph DeLeon said, “Looks like we got ourselves a coupla perps.”

But not quite yet.

At 11:00 P.M. Jimmy Malloy was walking from the subway stop in Queens to his house six blocks away. He was thinking of how he was going to put the case together. There were still loose ends. The big problem was the cremation thing. Burning is a bitch, one instructor at the academy had told Malloy’s class. Fire gets rid of nearly all important evidence. Like bullet holes in the head.

What he’d have to do is get wiretaps, line up witnesses, track down the ambulance drivers, the doctor in Spain.

It was discouraging, but it was also just part of the job. He laughed to himself. It was like Jacob Sharpe and his “tradecraft,” he called it. Working your ass off to do your duty.

Just then he saw some motion a hundred feet head, a person. Something about the man’s mannerism, his body language set off Malloy’s cop radar.

A man had emerged from a car and was walking along the same street that Malloy was now on. After he’d happened to glance back at the detective, he’d stiffened and changed direction fast. Malloy was reminded of the killer in Vermont, disappearing quickly after spotting the deputy.

Who was this? The pro? Aaron Reilly?

And did he have the break-down rifle or another weapon with him? Malloy had to assume he did.

The detective crossed the street and tried to guess where the man was. Somewhere in front of him, but where? Then he heard a dog bark, and another, and he understood the guy was cutting through people’s yards, back on the other side of the street.

The detective pressed ahead, scanning the area, looking for logical place where the man had vanished. He decided it had to be an alleyway that led to the right, between two commercial buildings, both of them empty and dark at this time of night.

As he came to the alley, Malloy pulled up. He didn’t immediately look around the corner. He’d been moving fast and breathing hard, probably scuffling his feet, too. The killer would have heard him approach.

Be smart, he told himself.

Don’t be a hero.

He pulled out his phone and began to dial 9-1-1.

Which is when he heard a snap behind him. A foot on a small branch or bit of crisp leaf.

And felt the muzzle of the gun prod his back as a gloved hand reached out and lifted the phone away.

We’re a little more organized than that. We come up with a detailed plot, all the twists and turns. Then we execute it. We know exactly how the story will end.

Well, Prescott’s wife and co-author had done just that: come up with a perfect plot. Maybe the man on the street a moment ago was Reilly, acting as bait. And it was the professional killer who’d come up behind him.

Maybe even Jane Reilly herself.

She’s pretty tough…

The detective had another thought. Maybe it was none of his suspects. Maybe the former agent, Frank Lester, had been bitter about being fired by his client and killed Prescott for revenge. Malloy had never followed up on that lead.

Hell, dying because he’d been careless…

Then the hand tugged on his shoulder slightly, indicating he should turn around.

Malloy did, slowly.

He blinked as he looked up into the eyes of the man who’d snuck up behind him.

They’d never met, but the detective knew exactly what J.B. Prescott looked like. His face was on the back jackets of a dozen books in Mal-loy’s living room.

“Sorry for the scare,” Prescott explained, putting away the pen he’d used as a gun muzzle-an ironic touch that Malloy noted as his heart continued to slam in his chest.

The author continued, “I wanted to intercept you before you got home. But I didn’t think you’d get here so soon. I had to come up behind you and make you think I had a weapon so you didn’t call in a ten- thirteen. That would have been a disaster.”

“Intercept?” Malloy asked. “Why?”

They were sitting in the alleyway, on the stairs of a loading dock.

“I needed to talk to you,” Prescott said. The man had a large mane of gray hair and a matching moustache that bisected his lengthy face. He looked like an author ought to look.

“You could’ve called,” Malloy snapped.

“No, I couldn’t. If somebody had overheard or if you’d told anyone I was alive, my whole plot would’ve been ruined.”

“Okay, what the hell is going on?”

Prescott lowered his head to his hands and didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, “For the past eighteen months I’ve been planning my own death. It took that long to find a doctor, an ambulance crew, a funeral director I could bribe. And find some remote land in Spain where we could buy a place and nobody would disturb me.”

“So you were the one the police saw walking away from where you’d supposedly had the heart attack in Vermont.”

He nodded.

“What were you carrying? A suitcase?”

“Oh, my laptop. I’m never without it. I write all the time.”

“Then who was in the ambulance?”

“Nobody. It was just for show.”

“And at the cemetery, an empty urn in the plot?”

“That’s right.”

“But why on earth would you do this? Debts? Was the mob after you?”

A laugh. “I’m worth fifty million dollars. And I may write about the mob and spies and government agents, but I’ve never actually met one… No, I’m doing this because I’ve decided to give up writing the Jacob Sharpe books.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s time for me to try something different: publish what I first started writing, years ago, poetry and literary stories.”

Malloy remembered this from the obit.

Prescott explained quickly: “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think literature’s any better than commercial fiction, not at all. People who say that are fools. But when I tried my hand at literature when I was young, I didn’t have any skill. I was self- indulgent, digressive… boring. Now I know how to write. The Jacob Sharpe books taught me how. I learned how to think about the audience’s needs, how to structure my stories, how to communicate clearly.”

“Tradecraft,” Malloy said.

The author gave a laugh. “Yes, tradecraft. I’m not a young man. I decided I wasn’t going to die without seeing if I could make a success of it.”

“Well, why fake your death? Why not just write what you wanted to?”

“For one thing, I’d get my poems published because I was J.B. Prescott. My publishers around the world would pat me on the head and say, ‘Anything you want, J.B.’ No, I want my work accepted or rejected on its own merits. But more important, if I just stopped writing the Sharpe series my fans would never forgive me. Look what happened to Sherlock Holmes.”

Malloy shook his head.

“Conan Doyle killed off Holmes. But the fans were furious. He was hounded into bringing the back the hero they loved. I’d be hounded in the same way. And my publisher wouldn’t let me rest in peace either.” He shook his head. “I knew there’d be various reactions, but I never thought anybody’d question my death.”

“Something didn’t sit right.”

He smiled sadly. “Maybe I’m a better at making plots for fiction than making them in real life.” Then his long face grew somber. Desperate, too. “I know what I did was wrong, detective, but please, can you just let it go?”

“A crime’s been committed.”

“Only falsifying a death certificate. But Luis, the doctor, is out of the jurisdiction. You’re not going to extradite somebody for that. Jane and Aaron and I didn’t actually sign anything. There’s no insurance fraud because I cashed out the policy last year for surrender value. And Jane’ll pay every penny of estate tax that’s due… Look, I’m not doing this to hurt or cheat anybody.”

“But your fans…”

“I love them dearly. I’ll always love them and I’m grateful for every minute they’ve spent reading my books. But it’s time for me to pass the baton. Aaron will keep them happy. He’s a fine writer… Detective, I’m asking you to help me out here. You have the power to save me or destroy me.”

“I’ve never walked away from a case in my life.” Malloy looked away from the author’s eyes, staring at the cracked asphalt in front of them.

Prescott touched his arm. “Please?”

Nearly a year later Detective Jimmy Malloy received a package from England. It was addressed to him, care of the NYPD.

He’d never gotten any mail from Europe and he was mostly fascinated with the postage stamps. Only when he’d had enough of looking at a tiny Queen Elizabeth did Malloy rip the envelope open and take out the contents: a book of poems written by somebody he’d never heard of.

Not that he’d heard of many poets, of course. Robert Frost. Carl Sandburg. Dr. Seuss.

On the cover were some quotations from reviewers praising the author’s writing. He’d apparently won awards in England, Italy, and Spain.

Malloy opened the thin book and read the first poem, which was dedicated to the poet’s wife.

Walking on Air Oblique sunlight fell in perfect crimson on your face that winter afternoon last year. Your departure approached and, compelled to seize your hand, I led you from sidewalk to trees and beyond into a field of snow- flakes of sky that had fallen to earth days ago. We climbed onto the hardened crust, which held our weight, and, suspended above the earth, we walked in strides as angular as the light, spending the last hour of our time together walking on air.

Malloy gave a brief laugh, surprised. He hadn’t read a poem since school, but he actually thought this one was pretty good. He liked that idea: Walking on the snow, which had come from the sky-literally walking on air with somebody you loved.

He pictured John Prescott, sad that his wife had to return to New York, spending a little time with her in a snowy Vermont field before the drive to the train station.

Just then Ralph DeLeon stepped into the office and before Malloy could hide the book, the partner scooped it up. “Poetry.” His tone suggested that his partner was even more of a loss than he’d thought. Though he then read a few of them himself and said, “Doesn’t suck.” Then, flipping to the front, DeLeon gave a fast laugh.

“What?” Malloy asked.

“Weird. Whoever it’s dedicated to has your initials.”

“No.”

DeLeon held the book open.

“With eternal thanks to J. M.”

“But I know it can’t be you. Nobody’d thank you for shit, son. And if they did, it sure as hell wouldn’t be eternal.”

The partner dropped the book on Malloy’s desk and sat down in his chair, pulled out his phone, and called one of their snitches.

Malloy read a few more of the poems and then tossed the volume on the dusty bookshelf behind his desk.

Then he, too, grabbed his phone and placed a call to the forensic lab to ask about some test results. As he waited on hold he reflected that, true, Prescott’s poems weren’t bad at all. The man did have some skill.

But, deep down, Jimmy Malloy had to admit to himself that, given his choice? He’d rather read a Jacob Sharpe novel any day.

A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, JEFFERY DEAVER is an international number-one bestselling author. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including The New York Times, The Times of London, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Los Angeles Times. His The Bodies Left Behind was named Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers Association, and his Lincoln Rhyme thriller The Broken Window was also nominated for that prize. He’s been nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, an Anthony Award, and a Gumshoe Award. He was recently short-listed for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Best International Author.

His book A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel The Bone

Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His most recent books are Roadside Crosses, The Bodies Left Behind, The Broken Window, The Sleeping Doll, and More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II. And, yes, the rumors are true: he did appear as a corrupt reporter on his favorite soap opera, As the World Turns. Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.