The Postcard Killers

by James Patterson

  “What happened to her mother?”

  “Lucy? Yes, I’ve often wondered that, too.”

  He pulled back his hand. The air in the restaurant suddenly felt cold on her skin.

  He met her eyes and gave a little smile.

  “I wasn’t the one who leaked that stuff to the Dagens Eko,” she said.

  “I know that perfectly well,” he said, emptying his glass. “It was Evert Ridderwall.”

  She blinked.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He’ll change with the wind,” Jacob said. “He doesn’t have any principles, he just wants to avoid criticism. That leak was a test. He wanted to see what the media think of the Rudolphs.”

  His knee ended up between hers under the table.

  Neither of them changed position.

  “Did you hear who they want as their lawyer?” Dessie said, emptying her second glass of wine. “Andrea Friederichs.”

  “And?” Jacob said, filling her glass.

  Dessie took a deep sip.

  “She isn’t an expert on criminal law. She’s a copyright lawyer. Doesn’t that seem a bit strange to you?”

  Chapter 86

  THE MEDIA CROWD OUTSIDE Dessie’s front door hadn’t gotten any smaller. It actually seemed bigger. It was starting to resemble the mob that gathers outside courtrooms for notable court cases in New York. Jacob knew all about them. He’d had to fight his way through a phalanx of reporters and microphones on numerous occasions.

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I take it they aren’t hungry yet. Nobody’s leaving.”

  She was standing close to Jacob, hiding behind him so as not to be seen from the top of the narrow street.

  He resisted an impulse to push a strand of hair away from her face.

  “I don’t know that I want to see myself darting into a doorway in all the papers and newscasts tomorrow,” she said in a low voice.

  “No need,” he said.

  She looked at him with her big eyes. He took a deep breath before going on.

  “My roommate has gone back to Finland. You can have the lower bunk in my cell on Långholmen. It’s not a problem.”

  He said it in a light, joking way, careful not to show any feeling. It’s not a problem.

  She hesitated a few seconds before answering, her eyes still on his.

  Then she made up her mind. “Okay,” she said and turned her bicycle around.

  It started to rain as they passed the Zinkensdamm metro station, almost halfway to the hostel.

  They started walking quickly. Jacob turned up the collar of his suede jacket, but the water still trickled down his back. He shivered in the cold.

  “I can give you a ride if you like,” she said. “If you have the guts to get on.”

  “On the bike?”

  She nodded. “Of course. Only if you dare.”

  He sat on the narrow luggage carrier at the back, holding on to her hips with both hands. She set a good pace, and they flew past a large church with two identical spires. Her thighs moved rhythmically and methodically. She was strong and obviously in good shape.

  He was suddenly overwhelmed with a memory of Lucy. She had once given him a ride like this in Brooklyn, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, before Kimmy, before the drugs and adulthood with all its complications came into the picture and shattered a perfect life for all of them.

  He jumped off as Dessie rolled into the parking lot in front of the youth hostel.

  “What are the rules?” she asked, taking off her helmet. “Are you allowed lady visitors in your room?”

  “I’m not about to ask for permission or about any rules,” Jacob said. “I’m a big boy now.”

  “Are you?”

  He pulled her to him, her body shaping itself to his. Her hair smelled fresh, like fruit again. He closed his eyes and felt her warmth through his jacket. She breathed lightly against his neck.

  Then he kissed her.

  She tasted of rain and corn on the cob.

  Chapter 87

  THEIR CLOTHES ENDED UP in a heap just inside the door of the former prison cell.

  They didn’t even make it to the Finn’s lower bunk before she drew him to her. They landed on the floor and he slid into her with no resistance, his eyes catching hers.

  He could feel the room starting to spin and had time to think no, no, no, not yet before he came inside her with a hoarse roar.

  He sank down on top of her, hiding his face in her hair.

  Damn, what a failure. Coming after ten seconds. What must she think?

  But she kissed his hair as he lay there panting and trying to pull himself together. Then her hips started to move beneath him.

  At first he thought she wanted to get up, but when he went to move, she took a firm grip on his buttocks and held him to her, held him right there.

  “Relax and go with it,” she whispered in his ear as the swaying beneath him started up again. “Stay with me.”

  To his surprise he felt himself getting hard again almost immediately.

  He did as she said and allowed himself to be swayed by her rhythmic movements. Her whole body was sucking and pulling him into her, harder and deeper.

  He noticed he was starting to breathe heavily and join in, his pulse speeding up and throbbing in his head, and when he felt the dizziness come, he stopped and looked into her eyes. Her gaze was completely unfocused. She wasn’t far off now.

  “Come here,” he said in a gravelly voice, pulling out of her and lifting her up onto the bed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Relax and go with it.”

  She stretched out on the lower bunk, her legs hard and sinewy, her stomach soft as velvet and her breasts firm and well shaped. He let his hand glide up along her thighs as he leaned forward to suck one of her nipples. Dessie groaned and her whole body shuddered.

  He sucked and licked her entire body, and when he finally pushed inside her again she leaned her head back and yelled. While the contractions were still convulsing her lower body, he felt the rushing noise in his head grow into an explosion that made all sound and vision disappear for him.

  When he came to his senses again, he realized he was freezing.

  He rolled to one side, sliding out of her. He fumbled for the covers beneath them and pulled them over their bodies.

  She looked at him, wide-eyed and surprised.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Chapter 88

  DESSIE WAS STILL ASTONISHED at what had happened.

  When she accepted his invitation to stay at his place, she had made up her mind that nothing like this was going to happen. Her life was so turbulent just now that a messy affaire was the last thing she needed. Probably the last thing Jacob needed, too.

  “Wow?” he replied, and smiled.

  Now his eyes were warm again, that crazy blue, completely focused on her.

  This really wasn’t good at all. How could it be?

  She ought to get up at once and leave and face the damn reporters at her house.

  Instead she smiled back.

  “Dessie,” he whispered. “Dessie, Dessie, you’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

  She felt a warmth spread inside her, out from her stomach, her core.

  “Dessie,” he said again, this time in a questioning tone. “What sort of name is that anyway? Dessie?”

  She cuddled up next to him. He pulled her closer so that she could rest her head on his chest. She let her fingers play on his skin, small, featherlike strokes.

  “I was christened Désirée,” she said, “the least known of the Swedish princesses.”

  She could see her mother in front of her, Eivor, her dear, sweet mom, born in 1938, the same year as Désirée Elizabeth Sibylla, the second-youngest of the Haga princesses, the “Hagacesses,” daughter of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf and his wife, Sibylla av Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha. Princess Désirée was Eivor’s great role model, so it was obvious that that was what her daughter
would be called.

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Jacob said.

  She laughed.

  “You can imagine how much fun it was being called Désirée when you’re ten years old and living in Ådalen. ‘Désirée, have you got diarrhea?’ ”

  “Poor Désirée,” said Jacob, stroking her hair, then her face, his fingers lingering.

  “It was lucky my cousin Robert from Kalix came to visit sometimes,” Dessie said, lifting her face to look at Jacob’s. “Robert was big and strong, and he protected me.”

  He kissed her, and she felt an immediate little shiver between her legs.

  She felt him react the same way.

  She rolled over to sit on top of him and nibbled gently at his earlobe, then his cheek.

  If this was wrong, how come it felt so right?

  Dessie kissed Jacob’s eyes one at a time.

  Chapter 89

  Friday, June 18

  SHE WAS WOKEN BY a muffled electronic noise. It was coming from somewhere beneath them, and she waited quietly until the annoying sound stopped.

  Carefully she laid her head back on Jacob’s chest and breathed in his smell, a combination of sweat and aftershave. Everything was quiet. The sun was already high in the sky, drowning the little room in white light.

  Dessie wondered how long she had been asleep.

  An hour, maybe two.

  She wanted to lie here forever. Never have to get up from this bed or leave this man, never do anything else for the rest of her life but make love to him until the day they died, or possibly until the lack of caffeine made her change her mind.

  It would soon be unbearably hot in here. In his cell. That much was a certainty.

  She wriggled her way out of his embrace, pulled herself up on one elbow, and looked at his sleeping face.

  He looked so young when his face was relaxed and all his worries were far away.

  His hair curled over his forehead and spread out on the pillow. He couldn’t have had it cut for at least six months.

  Not since Kimmy. She thought about Jacob’s daughter now, picturing her face. How unbearably sad to lose her like that… to outlive your own child.

  The electronic noise started up again, longer and more persistent this time.

  It was her cell phone.

  Damn, it was in her knapsack, which had slid under the bed the night before, during their somewhat chaotic entry into the little room.

  She waited until it stopped buzzing. Jacob stirred in his sleep beside her.

  She leaned over the edge of the bed, pulled out the knapsack, and fished out her phone.

  One missed call.

  One new message.

  She clicked on the message.

  It was a news flash from the main Swedish news agency, short and concise as usual.

  She gasped, “Oh, no.”

  Jacob’s heavy breathing stopped and she realized he was awake. She’d woken him. She felt his warm hand on her back, a caress that carried the promise of something more.

  She turned to face him, meeting his radiant eyes.

  His smile faded when he saw the look on her face.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s happened?”

  Oh god, oh god, how was she going to tell him?

  He sat up so abruptly that he hit his head on the top bunk. “Just say it, for god’s sake!”

  She shrank from his words.

  “They’re out,” she said. “Ridderwall has let the Postcard Killers go free.”

  Chapter 90

  DESSIE HELD HER ARMS out to him, wanting to catch him as he fell into despair at the news. She wanted to hold his face in her hands and reassure him that everything would sort itself out, that this was just a mad, stupid mistake, that Kimmy would get justice and he would be able to move on with his life, and that the rest of his life started right here in this bed with her.

  But Jacob leapt up from the bunk, making his way across her and stumbling onto the floor.

  He grabbed his jeans, pulling them on without bothering with his underwear.

  “You can’t change the decision,” Dessie said, forcing herself to sound calm and collected. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  His hair was a mess, still damp with sweat. His face was almost completely drained of color.

  “No,” he said, pulling his black T-shirt over his head. “But I can follow them. So that’s what I’m going to do, right to the ends of the damn earth, if I’m not there already…”

  Dessie sat up in bed now, lifting the covers over her breasts, suddenly very conscious of her nakedness. She felt incredibly vulnerable, too. A little sad.

  “They were let out at six this morning, to avoid the media. They could be halfway across the Atlantic by now. They could be anywhere.”

  He pushed his feet into his shoes without bothering to untie them and tugged his suede jacket on. Then he stopped by the door, hesitating.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean… I’m just sorry!”

  The door frame shook as he slammed the door shut behind him.

  Jacob is gone, Dessie thought. The policeman is back.

  Chapter 91

  THE NEWSROOM WAS EMPTY, deserted as though a bomb had gone off inside. Forsberg was sitting on his own behind his desk, half asleep, his eyes rimmed with red, watching a TV screen. His jowls seemed to have grown larger overnight.

  “Where is everyone?” Dessie asked, sitting down next to him.

  The news editor nodded toward the television.

  “The Grand Hôtel,” he said. “Our favorite killers have booked into the honeymoon suite, if you can believe that. The whole of the world’s press is there, including all our esteemed colleagues.”

  Dessie stared at him.

  “Are you serious?”

  “They’re giving a press conference at two p.m.”

  “The Grand?”

  Forsberg rubbed his hedgerow of stubble. He hadn’t shaved for three days or more.

  “The Rudolphs have decided to speak. They want to tell the world how innocent they are.”

  Dessie leaned back in her chair. This had to be a very bad dream. Soon she’d wake up with Jacob’s arms around her and the Postcard Killers safely locked back away in Kronoberg Prison.

  “This is surreal. What in hell are they up to?” she said. “Those bastards are guilty as hell. Now they’re holding press conferences?”

  Forsberg gave a long yawn.

  “So anyway, how are we doing with our journalist’s objectivity these days?”

  Dessie stood up.

  “Shouldn’t you go home and get some sleep?”

  The phone on the desk rang. Forsberg grabbed it.

  “What is it?”

  He gestured that Dessie should stay, then listened carefully for more than a minute.

  Dessie shook her head to say that she wasn’t there and pulled her knapsack on.

  “Just a moment…”

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “It’s a Danish journalist. He wants to talk to you specifically. Says it’s important.”

  “I’m not giving any interviews,” she said, fastening her helmet strap under her chin.

  “I think you should talk to him. He says he received a postcard in this morning’s mail—postmarked yesterday in Copenhagen. He thinks it’s from the Postcard Killers.”

  Chapter 92

  JACOB CAME TOWARD HER in the departure hall of the Central Station and something fluttered in Dessie’s chest, something that made her catch her breath and break into a broad, genuine smile. Even here, even now.

  But then she saw his eyes and clenched jaw, and the smile froze on her lips.

  “Have you got the copies?” he asked in a monotone.

  Dumbly she handed over the faxed copies of the Danish postcard, front and back. He put his duffel bag down beside him, clutching the sheets of paper, staring at them.

  The card was a picture of the Tivoli pleasure gardens. She knew the place well.<
br />
  Apart from the name of the city, the back of the postcard had exactly the same capital letters and layout as Dessie’s.

  TO BE OR NOT TO BE

  IN COPENHAGEN

  THAT IS THE QUESTION

  WE’LL BE IN TOUCH

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, studying the copies. “It’s quicker to get hold of evidence through the media than through useless bloody Interpol. That’s unbelievable.”

  She swallowed hard. So that was why he’d agreed to meet her, because she had access to information that the police hadn’t yet gotten hold of.

  “What do you think about the handwriting?” she asked, trying to sound neutral. “Is it the same person?”

  He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. She thought of last night, couldn’t help it. What had she been thinking?

  “It’s impossible to tell with this lettering. Looks like it. Can I keep this?”

  She nodded, unsure if she would be able to control her voice if she tried to say anything.

  “You’ve heard about the Grand Hôtel?” she finally managed to say.

  “The press conference at two o’clock, yeah.”

  He heaved his duffel bag onto his shoulder again.

  She tried to smile.

  “So at least you know where they are,” she said. “You don’t have to go to the ends of the earth after all.”

  He stopped in the middle of what he was doing and looked at her, and she suddenly wanted the floor to swallow her up.

  How could she be so clingy? She wasn’t that way—not ever—not even as a kid, especially not then.

  “I’ve had a reply from the States,” he said. “From my contacts, those e-mails I sent from your computer.”

  “That’s good,” she said.

  “I’m on my way to Los Angeles right now,” he said, looking at his watch. “My plane leaves in two hours.”

  She felt like someone had just poured a bucket of ice cold water over her.

  “You’re—Los Angeles? But…” She’d been about to say, “But what about me?”

  She bit her cheek so hard she could taste blood.

  She was acting like an idiot. She wanted to shrivel up, to be anywhere but here.