The Postcard Killers

    The Swedish police had arrested and held them because they were lookingat art.

    “I have never seen such an extreme case of high-handed policing,” Andrea Friederichs said.

    Dessie looked around the room, noting her colleagues’ sympathetic demeanors. They clearly shared the lawyer’s righteous indignation. Maybe she was wrong?

    Had she let herself be misled by Jacob, a man who clearly wasn’t able to be objective in this case? How could he be? He had lost a daughter. Were the Rudolphs innocent?

    She swallowed nervously and was forced to consider the possibility. Then it was the siblings’ turn to speak for themselves. Malcolm went first. He was in tears again as he described his sorrow when he was told of the deaths of their Dutch friends. The photographers’ flashes reached a crescendo as he hugged himself around the chest and the tears ran down his handsome face.

    Sylvia was more collected - but at the same time extremely humble and likable.

    The Postcard Killers were the worst murderers ever seen on the European continent. She appreciated that the police had to investigate every lead, she really did. The fact that she and her brother had coincidentally and innocently been drawn into it all was a great shame. She at least was grateful that the Swedish judicial system more or less worked, and that two innocent suspects were no longer being held, even though there were some reactionary police officers who were happy to ignore such things as motives and evidence.

    “Would we really have carried out a brutal double murder and then gone to buy tickets to A Streetcar Named Desire?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears.

    “What do they think we are? A couple of callous monsters? No. We came to Europe on vacation. To see museums. To visit your great cities. Is that a crime?”

    A cascade of flashes exploded everywhere in the room. There was even some applause.

    Dessie pushed her way to the door, took out her cell phone, and rang Forsberg.

    “What a show!” the news editor exclaimed. “We’re the lead on CNN!”

    She noted his empathy toward the Rudolphs.

    “I’m going away for a few days,” Dessie said. “Just so you know.”

    “What do you mean, ‘away’? Where to?”

    “Copenhagen,” Dessie said, closing her phone.

Chapter 95

Saturday, June 19

Los Angeles, USA

    THE LANDING GEAR HIT the ground with a thud at LAX, Los Angeles International Airport.

    Jacob was back on American soil for the first time in six months. This wasn’t how he had imagined his return, if he had actually come back at all. But he’d had to come back. This was where the Rudolphs had lived and created their scheme.

    The air outside the terminal building was thick with exhaust fumes. He stood for a moment looking at his surroundings from the parking lot outside the rental-car office. It was such a familiar scene: the sea of private cars spreading out around him, the advertising billboards, the voices, the sound of traffic in the streets.

    The U.S. was just as he remembered it, just a bit more… unsubtle. He rented a Chrysler with GPS. He didn’t know his way around L.A. and had no desire to learn right now, not on this trip.

    Programming Citrus Avenue into the wretched machine turned out to be tougher than finding the address on a map, so he gave up and drove north along Sepulveda Boulevard in heavy city traffic. God, the traffic. It was even worse than in New York.

    He would never come to grips with Los Angeles, he was thinking to himself.

    A sort of romantic shimmer lay over the whole city. Here was Hollywood and the dream factory and a glamorous life in the sun. For some people, anyway.

    Personally, he could see only the crass advertisements, the elevated freeways, and the endless blocks of ugly single-story villas. California wasn’t exactly his bag of potato chips.

    He ignored the freeways and followed Sepulveda for miles, until he reached Santa Monica Boulevard.

    He swung off right and drove on until he nearly fell asleep at a streetlight. He’d been warned that jet lag from Scandinavia was no joke. It sure wasn’t. The time difference was nine hours. Here it was only seven in the evening, but after six months in Europe, his body thought it was four in the morning. Exactly one day before, he had been lying in a narrow bunk in an old prison cell, feeling more alive than he had since Kimmy died. He hadn’t showered since he left her, and he could still make out the smell of fruit from her body on his…

    He pushed the confusing thought aside and parked the car near a loading bay on Beverly Drive.

    Two quick coffees and a parking ticket later, he was more or less ready to go on.

    Number 1338 Citrus Avenue was a fairly rundown two-story rental with a flat roof and a walkway, just a few blocks from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

    Lyndon Crebbs opened the door before Jacob had time to even ring the bell.

Chapter 96

    “YOU OLD BASTARD!” THE FBI agent said with feeling, hugging him.

    “Come in, for god’s sake!”