The contents consisted of a used, 12-gauge Remington police riot gun, with a truncated, eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. He had bought it from an individual at a gun show in Virginia, before he had driven north out of the state. He found the box of double-ought shells he had bought. And loaded the weapon, leaving the chamber empty. He wouldn’t need more than one or two rounds, he figured.

He took some tissues and wiped the shotgun clean of any stray prints that might have found their way to it, then returned the loaded weapon to its paper wrapping, now a sheath, from which he would fire it. Therefore, there would be no gunpowder residue on his hands or clothing, and, of course, no fingerprints on the shotgun or the shells. When he had completed his mission, he would dispose of the weapon in a dumpster at some construction site and it would vanish into a landfill somewhere.

Should the shotgun ever be found, it could not be traced to him. His mission satisfactorily completed, he would then drive his car to California. He had always wanted to drive across the United States, and, with his new and quite legal passport and Virginia driver’s license, obtained a few weeks ago, he would be safe from an unexpected arrest. He had already begun to grow a beard, and it was looking quite attractive, he thought.

After a look at California he would drive across the border to Tijuana, and thence down to Baja, where he would, eventually, move the funds he had mailed to a bank in the Cayman Islands to a neighborhood Mexican bank, then buy a little house.

He would then begin his new career as a novelist, the mysterious E. Gifford, and he just knew he would be successful at it.

Kelli had just left the Post building for the day when her cell phone buzzed. “Hello?”

“Kelli Keane?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“This is Karen Kohler at Vanity Fair. Prunie Wheaton sent me your manuscript this morning.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Everybody here loves it,” she said. “I walked it through the office, and nobody could put it down. We just had to cancel a piece in the next issue that couldn’t pass fact-checking, so we can slip it right in, instead of waiting for the usual two or three months.”

“Wonderful!”

“Do you have an agent?”

Kelli gave her the name and phone number.

“Well, assuming we can make a deal, and if the piece gets through fact-checking with no major changes, you’ll see it in the next issue.”

“That’s great news, Karen,” Kelli said.

“There’s one more thing we need, though.”

“What’s that?”

“A decent photograph of this suspect, Tim Rutledge. A head shot will do, but get the best one you can.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Kelli said.