The Postcard Killers

    LYNDON PUT TWO MORE bottles of beer on the table. Jacob grabbed one of them.

    “I didn’t think my sources would have much to say about Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, but I was wrong,” he said, sitting down heavily at the table.

    “Are they really twins?” Jacob asked, opening the bottle. The time difference was helping him feel a little high. He didn’t mind.

    “Oh yeah, they really are. Born fifteen minutes apart. Why do you ask that?”

    Jacob thought back to the video from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, how the couple had held on to each other, her hand sneaking inside the waistband of his trousers.

    “Don’t know,” he said, taking a deep swig of beer.

    “The really interesting thing happened when the twins were thirteen.”

    Lyndon raised his bottle and drank, and Jacob could see his hand trembling. How ill was he exactly? He looked bad, which upset Jacob. He didn’t have a lot of friends like Lyndon.

    “Their parents, Helen and Simon Rudolph, were murdered in their bed eleven years ago.”

    Jacob blinked.

    “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Let me guess. They were naked and their throats had been cut?”

    The FBI agent chuckled. “Precisely. The bedroom evidently looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood everywhere.”

    “Who did it?”

    Lyndon Crebbs shook his head.

    “The case was never solved. The father was an art dealer. There was talk that he was transporting more than just Renaissance paintings in the containers he shipped between South America and the U.S., but nothing was ever proved.”

    The ingenuity of the drug cartels knew no limits. Cocaine and Renaissance art?

    “What happened to the kids?”

    “Some relative looked after them. My contact thought it was a cousin of the mother’s, but he didn’t have a name.”

    Jacob drank some more.

    “Sounds like they were pretty well-off,” Jacob said.

    “You’re not wrong there,” Lyndon said. “Their home was evidently some sort of manor house, slightly smaller than the Pentagon. It’s empty these days, owned by some bankruptcy agency.”

    “Is it far from here?”

    “Not really. Just east of Santa Barbara. Why? You thinking of going there?”

    “Possibly. Did you get anything on the boyfriend, William Hamilton?”

    Lyndon snorted.

    “He was hardly in Rome last Christmas. He’s never even had a passport. He’s never been out of the States.”

    Jacob groaned.

    “I’ve got an address in Westwood,” Lyndon said, “but I don’t know if it’s current. The Rudolphs used to hang out around that area, too. Looks like they studied art at UCLA, started some sort of group called the Society of Limitless Art…”

    All of a sudden Jacob realized that he could no longer sit upright without a lot of concentration. He looked at his watch.

    She’s just woken up, he thought. The boats are gliding to and from the quays of Gamla Stan beneath her living-room windows, the sun has been up for hours and she’s sitting on her sofa watching the sails flap in the wind, drinking coffee and eating a flatbread roll…

    “Come on, I’ll help you to the sofa,” Lyndon Crebbs said. “You don’t look so terrific yourself.”

Chapter 99

Sunday, June 20

Copenhagen, Denmark

    IT WAS RAINING.

    Dessie was sitting at a table by the window of a packed cafй on Strшget, a long pedestrian street, watching people hurry past with umbrellas and raincoats. She was surrounded by families with young kids out for the weekend, the youngsters sleeping in buggies or sitting in kids’ seats and gurgling while their mothers drank lattes and their dads had a Sunday beer.

    “Is this seat taken?”

    She looked up.

    A young father with tousled blond hair and a little girl in one arm had already taken hold of the chair opposite her.

    “Yes,” she said quickly. “I’m waiting for someone. Sorry. He’ll be here shortly.”

    The father let go of the chair and gave her a sympathetic look. “Sure. No problem.”

    She had been sitting at the table on her own for over an hour now. But she actually was waiting for somebody.

    Nils Thorsen, a crime reporter on the Danish paper Extra-Avisen had been chosen as the Postcard Killers’ Danish contact: a position he was as enthusiastic about as she had been in Sweden.

    During the past twenty-four hours, the two of them had gone through all the details, pictures, and evidence that Jacob had left behind when he disappeared.

    About an hour ago Thorsen had been called back to the office: a letter had arrived in the afternoon mail, addressed to him. White, rectangular, capital letters.

    Dessie watched the father go back to the mother. He said something and nodded in her direction. The woman snickered, and they both laughed. She looked down at the table again and pretended she hadn’t seen them. The fact was, she had a lot in common with Nils Thorsen. They had the same profession, the same interests, and even the same moral principles. He wasn’t bad-looking either. A bit thin on top, maybe…

    Why couldn’t she feel the same way about him as she did about Jacob Kanon? God, she was starting to get loony, wasn’t she? It was pretty pathetic, but it was out of her control now.