Danny Messer reached for his glasses and checked the red illuminated numbers on the bedside clock. It was a few minutes after four. He touched his face. He would need to shave when he got up. He would do it in the shower. He would think about it later. He rolled on his left side in search of a comfortable position, found it instantly, and fell into dreamless sleep.

Sheldon Hawkes lay on a cot in his laboratory reading a book about an archaeological find in Israel. There was a photograph of a skull located at the site. The text, by someone whose name he didn't recognize, said that the skull was about three thousand years old and had been damaged by some natural disaster. Hawkes shook his head. The hole in the skull was the result of a blow with a rough-edged rock. It was the only damage to the specimen. No scratches, no bruises. The skull was almost perfectly preserved. If the hole had been caused by nature, there would be other signs of lesser trauma. Hawkes needed the original skull or a good set of photographs. There was no doubt the long-dead man had been killed by a blow from a rock, and, since it was assumed from artifacts discovered near the body that the dead man was royalty, Hawkes was curious about who might have murdered him and why. When he finished the book, he would send an E-mail to the archaeologist. Hawkes kept reading. He had already had the four hours of sleep he needed. He was near the bodies in the drawers. The wind was going wild in the streets. He had a good book. He was content.

Don Flack may have dreamt, but he didn't remember his dreams, which was just as well because the detective had seen much that could cause him nightmares. The alarm would go off at seven, and he would be awake instantly. It had been like that since he was a boy. He hoped it would be like that the rest of his life.