The Postcard Killers

by James Patterson

  “Probably,” she said. “Mine’s vegetarian, by the way.”

  They sat on the bench inside a bus shelter and ate the sticky rolls. Jacob, who considered himself an expert in junk food, had to admit she was right: it was really good.

  He wolfed it down and thought he might even have another hot-dog-with-mashed-potatoes thing.

  Dessie Larsson had a calming effect on him. He’d known that almost from the beginning, but he’d never felt it more than he did right now.

  He looked at this woman next to him in the yellow glow of the streetlights.

  She was actually very beautiful without being conspicuously pretty. Her profile was classically clean and simple. She didn’t seem to wear any makeup at all, not even mascara.

  “What makes you think they’re guilty?” he asked, studying her reaction.

  She glanced at him and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “The bodies,” she said. “We know they’re arranged as works of art, and the Rudolphs are art students. I don’t know, but there’s something there, in that mix of art and reality. Also, I don’t believe them, especially her.”

  He threw the foil wrapping and the small remains of mashed potato into the bus shelter’s trash bin.

  “What do you mean, ‘that mix of art and reality’? Either it’s art or it’s reality, right?”

  Dessie gave him a serious look.

  “It’s not unusual for art students to blend them together. We had several cases like that a year or so ago.

  “First there was a girl who faked a nervous breakdown in a psychiatric ward as part of her degree show for the Art School. She had the resources of a whole ward focused on her for an entire night. Anyone who was sick or really suicidal had to wait because of her act.”

  “You’re kidding,” Jacob said.

  “Nope. Then we had a guy who smashed up a car on the subway. He covered it in black graffiti and broke several windows. He filmed the whole thing and called it ‘Territorial Pissing.’ Believe it or not, it was exhibited in an art show. The cost to repair the car was one hundred thousand kronor.”

  “And I thought we had a monopoly on crazies in the States,” Jacob said, looking at his watch. “Speaking of the States, there are a few things I have to check on there. Do you know where I can get hold of a computer?”

  She looked at him, her eyes large and green.

  “I’ve got one at home,” she said.

  Chapter 74

  IT WAS THE FIRST TIME in nearly six months that he’d been in somebody’s home.

  It felt odd, almost a bit ceremonial. He took off his shoes by the door because that’s what Dessie did.

  She lived in a minimally furnished four-room apartment with very high ceilings, a lot of mirrored doors, ornate plasterwork, and a wood-burning stove in every room.

  Jacob couldn’t help whistling out loud when he entered the living room. Three large windows opened onto an enormous balcony with a fantastic view over the entrance to Stockholm harbor.

  “How did you get hold of a place like this? It’s great.”

  “Long story,” she said. “The computer’s in the maid’s room. There’s no maid, of course.”

  She gestured toward a little room beyond the kitchen.

  “Have you got any wine around here?” he asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t drink that much. Maybe I will after this.”

  She turned the computer on for him. He noticed she smelled of fruit. Citrus. Very nice.

  He sent two e-mails on the same subject: one to Jill Stevens, his closest colleague on the NYPD, and one to Lyndon Crebbs, the retired FBI agent who had been his mentor once upon a time, and maybe still was.

  He asked them rather bluntly for information about Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, residents of Santa Barbara, California, and about Billy Hamilton, Sylvia Rudolph’s former boyfriend, reportedly living somewhere in western Los Angeles. Everything, no matter what it was, was of interest to him, absolutely everything they could find.

  Then he went back out to the kitchen, where Dessie was rummaging around.

  “I found a bottle of red,” she said. “Gabriella must have left it. I don’t know if it’s still good.”

  “Yeah, of course it is,” Jacob said.

  She seemed unfamiliar with how to extract a cork, so he helped her.

  They sat down on the sofas in the living room, leaving the lights off, admiring the stunning view.

  Jacob leaned back, sinking into her cushions.

  A white boat plowed toward the center of Stockholm out on the water.

  “A view like this makes coming home worthwhile,” he said. “What’s the long story you mentioned?”

  Chapter 75

  DESSIE FINGERED HER WINEGLASS. SHE’D never told anyone the whole truth about how she bought the apartment, not even Christer or Gabriella. So why should she tell Jacob Kanon?

  He was a cop on top of everything.

  “I inherited a large sum of money a while back,” she said. “From my mother.”

  Jacob raised an eyebrow.

  “I thought you said she worked with the elderly and the sick?”

  “That’s right, she did.”

  “So you’re upper class,” he said. “I hadn’t guessed that.”

  She knew exactly what he was thinking. He thought her mother was the sort who jangled their jewelry in front of the poor at charity galas.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Do you really want to know this story? I don’t do chitchat very well.”

  “I really want to know.”

  She put her glass down on the coffee table.

  “That security van raid I mentioned yesterday—you remember?”

  He nodded and emptied his glass, then filled it again.

  “Three of my uncles were involved,” she said. “They got hold of almost nine million kronor, which was something like eight and a half million more than they were expecting, and they panicked. They didn’t know what to do with all the money. They buried some of it, but they put most of it in my mother’s savings account.”

  “What!” Jacob exclaimed, almost choking on his wine. “You’re kidding me.”

  “It was pretty smart of them, as it turned out. All the money they buried was found, but no one thought to check my mother’s account.”

  She watched carefully for his reaction. Was he about to turn his back on her? Dismiss her as the daughter of a scheming criminal?

  “Your uncles can’t have been the sharpest knives in the drawer,” he said.

  She avoided his gaze as she went on with the story.

  “They all got the same punishment, five and a half years for aggravated robbery. They were due to be released in May four years ago. That winter had been unusually snowy in Ådalen, and my mother helped the old folks clear the snow, which she wasn’t supposed to do because the doctor told her… But she was stubborn. And proud.”

  Dessie picked up her glass and turned it slowly in her hand.

  “She died on Hilding Olsson’s drive with a snow shovel in her hand.”

  She took a careful sip. “The amount in her savings account was completely untouched, and I was her only heir.”

  Chapter 76

  “SHIT,” JACOB SAID. “THAT’S A hell of a story.”

  He didn’t seem horrified, more like impressed.

  “Didn’t your uncles come and ask for their money when they got out?”

  She sighed.

  “Of course. They were pretty persistent until I called my cousin Robert in Kalix and asked him for a favor. For two hundred thousand and a bottle of Absolut every Christmas, he’s promised to make sure the rest of the family leaves me alone. Which they pretty much do.”

  Jacob was staring at her, wide-eyed.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Robert’s two meters tall and weighs a hundred and thirty kilos,” Dessie said. “He’s very persuasive.”

  “I might have guessed,” Jacob said.

  She looked at him
.

  The story of how she had been able to afford the apartment had gnawed away at her for almost four years now. She had been terrified that someone would find out what had really happened. Now she had dragged her secret out, and Jacob didn’t seem the least bit bothered. Instead, he seemed amused.

  All of a sudden she realized she was weak with tiredness from all the tension of the day.

  She stood up, clutching her glass like someone’s hand.

  “I really have to go to bed,” she said.

  Jacob took the almost empty bottle back to the kitchen. He pulled on his shoes by the door and stood up straight again. He hesitated by the door.

  “You’re pretty cool,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “You’re pretty weird,” she said. “Do you know that?”

  He shut the door soundlessly behind him.

  She leaned her forehead against the door and listened to the sound of his footsteps as they disappeared down the marble staircase.

  “Plus, I’m stubborn. And proud,” said Dessie.

  Chapter 77

  Thursday, June 17

  MALCOLM RUDOLPH HAD DRAPED HIS body so that he was half lying in his chair in the interrogation room. His legs were wide apart and one arm was hooked around the back of the chair.

  His tousled hair had fallen across his forehead, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone.

  “It was cool. We were traveling around, studying art and life,” he said over the sound coming from the television monitor.

  And death, Jacob thought as he sat in the control room, listening to the murderer talk.

  Above all, you studied death, you bastard.

  “It was really great to begin with,” the fair-haired man said and yawned. “Although it’s gotten a bit boring in recent weeks, actually.”

  So, to start with, they thought it was fun killing people, Jacob thought. Then that became routine as well. How would you like an axe through your skull? Would that be cool, or just half cool?

  Mats Duvall and Sara Höglund were going through the log of the Rudolphs’ movements in Europe over the past six months.

  Their passports showed that Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph had landed at Frankfurt airport eight and a half months ago, October 1.

  Since then, according to Malcolm, they had been traveling around, looking at paintings and enjoying life. They had kept within the part of the European Union governed by the Schengen Agreement—in other words the countries that no longer insisted you show a passport when you crossed between them. So they had no stamps to show where they had been.

  The investigating team therefore had to look for that information elsewhere, which was more easily said than done.

  Apparently neither of them owned a cell phone, so there were no calls that could be traced.

  They each had a credit card, both Visa, which they very rarely used.

  They had withdrawn cash with a credit card on two occasions—in Brussels on December 3, and in Oslo on May 6. A credit card had also been used to pay for Malcolm’s medical treatment in Madrid in February. On March 14 a hotel bill in Marbella in the south of Spain had been paid with Sylvia’s card, and on May 2 Malcolm had bought four theater tickets in Berlin with his. The cruise to Finland over the coming weekend was the last time the cards had been used.

  Jacob followed the questioning out in the control room with his jaw clenched. Dessie was sitting next to him, just as absorbed in the interrogation as he was.

  “The murders in Berlin took place on May second. Did they really go to the theater afterward?” she whispered, but he shushed her.

  “To go back to our discussion about Stockholm,” Sara Höglund said on the screen. “Why did you decide to come here?”

  Malcolm Rudolph gave a nonchalant shrug.

  “It was Sylvia who insisted we come,” he said. “She’s interested in form and design, in the whole Scandinavian simplicity thing. Personally, I think it’s seriously overrated. I find it cold and impersonal and rather a bore.”

  He yawned again. His grief at the death of his Dutch friends had evidently faded.

  Mats Duvall adjusted his tie.

  “You have to take this more seriously,” he said. “You were the last people to see Peter Visser and Nienke van Mourik alive. You were caught on the security cameras in the corridor. Don’t you realize what that means?”

  Jacob leaned forward, inspecting the bored young man: Was the little shit just sitting there smiling? What did he know that the police clearly didn’t?

  “We can’t have been the last people to see them alive,” Malcolm Rudolph said. “Because they were still alive when we left. Someone else killed them. Obviously. You can’t have looked at the recordings long enough.”

  Sara and Mats glanced at each other, and their faces showed signs of alarm.

  Had anyone actually watched the security recordings in their entirety? One would hope so, but it had been so chaotic. Sometimes things were missed or got messed up when a case was really hot.

  They broke off the interrogation and ordered all of the security recordings from the Grand Hôtel to be taken out once more.

  Chapter 78

  NO ONE HAD WATCHED THE entire tapes. Or paid proper attention. It was a terrible mistake.

  Now they were watching the tapes, though.

  Tuesday afternoons in the middle of June weren’t exactly rush hour in the corridor on the fourth floor of the Grand Hôtel.

  During the forty-three minutes that Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph were inside room 418, two cleaners and a plumber went along the corridor outside.

  A woman who had evidently forgotten something in her room ran in and then out again and back to the elevators.

  At 3:02 the door to room 418 opened.

  A triangle of light from inside the room fell on the floor and the wall opposite. The door stood open for a few seconds before Malcolm Rudolph stepped out onto the thick carpet.

  He turned and smiled back into the room, said something, laughed.

  Then Sylvia Rudolph came out into the corridor. She stopped, half hidden by the open door, and seemed to be talking to someone as well.

  The brother and sister stood by the door for another fourteen seconds, facing back at the room, talking and laughing.

  Finally they leaned through the door to exchange kisses with someone. The door closed and they headed for the elevators.

  “The Dutch couple were alive when they left the room,” Sara Höglund said. “It’s obvious. How could this happen?” She stared daggers at Mats Duvall.

  “And they didn’t hang a sign on the door,” Gabriella said.

  “What?” Dessie asked.

  “ ‘Do not disturb,’ ” Jacob said through clenched teeth. “The sign was hanging on the door when the bodies were found.”

  The hotel corridor shown on the recording lay empty and dark once more.

  Jacob could feel the adrenaline tearing through his veins.

  “Can we fast-forward a bit?” he asked.

  Gabriella sped up the playback.

  At 3:21 an elderly couple came out of the lift, walked slowly along the corridor, and opened a door on the rear side of the hotel.

  A few minutes later a cleaner passed through the whole length of the corridor with her trolley and disappeared into a stairwell.

  “Will it play any faster?”

  Jacob couldn’t hide the impatience in his voice. Or the anger at whoever was responsible for this bungle.

  A middle-aged couple went past.

  A man in a suit carrying a briefcase.

  A family with three children, a tired mother, and a very irritated-looking father.

  And then he came.

  Midlength coat, light shoes, brown hair, cap, and sunglasses.

  “Shit,” Jacob said.

  The man knocked on the door of the Dutch couple’s room, waited a few seconds, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind him.

  “They let him in,” Sara Höglund said. “At least it looks
that way. Impossible to tell from this angle.”

  “Make a note of the time,” said Mats Duvall.

  4:35.

  The corridor was deserted once more.

  The seconds crept past.

  Jacob had to make an effort to stop himself from screaming.

  Twenty-one minutes later the goddamn door opened.

  The man in the coat stepped into the corridor. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle, closed the door after him, and walked quickly toward the lifts. He kept his eyes on the floor, his face hidden from the camera.

  “I’ve been holding the wrong people,” Evert Ridderwall said with despair in his voice.

  Chapter 79

  THEY WERE SITTING IN MATS Duvall’s room when the press spokesman of the Criminal Investigation Department contacted them and confirmed that the situation with the media was chaotic, almost completely out of control. This sort of thing just didn’t happen in Sweden. And imagine if they discovered the police had made mistakes.

  Stockholm was besieged by foreign newspapers and television crews—especially American ones. The Postcard Killers saga had all the ingredients of a really juicy criminal scandal. Good grief—two young Americans with Hollywood good looks who were either notorious serial killers or the victims of a terrible miscarriage of justice. It didn’t matter which of these it was, they were both “Breaking News.”

  “We’ll have to hold a press conference,” Sara Höglund said. “We have no choice.”

  “And say what?” Jacob wondered. “That we haven’t found a thing that connects them to the crime? That the prosecutor thinks we’ve been holding the wrong people?”

  “Well,” Mats Duvall said. “We’ve got something. They’ve been traveling throughout Europe all the while these murders have been going on.”

  “And can come up with alibis for several of them,” Jacob said. “When the Athens murders were committed, they were definitely in Madrid. They were in the south of Spain when the couple was found in Salzburg. And in the countries where they withdrew cash, Norway and Belgium, there haven’t been any murders at all.”