James Patterson - Postcard killers

Dessie could feel the room starting to spin. There was a very good chance that she'd throw up. That was pretty much all she was thinking about now.

"So the kil ers drug their victims?" Mats Duval said, stepping over and putting his hand on Gabriel a's shoulder. "With eyedrops in the champagne?"

Gabriel a cast a furious glance at Dessie and moved even closer to Jacob Kanon.

"And cut their throats once they're unconscious," he said. "The kil er is right-handed and uses a smal, sharp implement. He does it from behind, sticking the knife right into the left jugular vein, then cutting deeply through the sinews and windpipe."

He mimed the act with his arms as he spoke. He'd obviously done it before.

Dessie realized that al the colors and sounds were starting to fade away.

"Pulse and breathing probably stop after a minute or so," Jacob said.

"Sorry," Dessie said, "but I have to get out."

She went out onto the gravel drive, raised her face to the sky, and took several long, deep breaths. Her first big case, she thought, and probably her last.

"They're charming, pleasant people, these killers," Jacob said 34 to Dessie, stretching his back in the thin sunlight. "They find it easy to make new friends. Are you sure you don't want a cinnamon bun?"

Dessie shook her head, letting the American eat the last one.

They were sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Bel evue on Dalaro, with a coffeepot, cups, and an empty plate in front of them. There was a sharp wind from the sea.

It was real y too cold to be sitting outside, but Dessie couldn't bear Jacob Kanon's body odor after feeling sick at the murder scene.

"So, you think there's two of them? A couple – a man and a woman?

Why?"

Jacob nodded, chewing hungrily on the bun. He seemed completely unaffected by the grisly scene they had just witnessed.

"A couple is less of a threat. They're probably young, attractive, a pair of carefree travelers meeting others doing the same thing. People who drink champagne, smoke dope, live it up a bit…"

He drank some coffee.

"And they probably speak English," he said.

Dessie raised her eyebrows quizzical y.

"The postcards. They're written with perfect grammar, and most of the victims have been native English speakers. I'm guessing the rest have been fluent."

Dessie pul ed her long hair up into a bun on her neck and pushed her pen through it to keep it up. Her notepad was already ful of information about the victims, the murders, and the kil ers.

"These postcards," she said. "Why do they send them?"

Jacob Kanon looked out over the water. The wind pul ed at his messed-up hair.

"It's not unusual for pattern kil ers to communicate with the world around them to get attention," he said. "There are lots of examples of that."

"They kil to get in the paper?"

Jacob Kanon poured himself some more coffee.

"We had our first Postcard Kil er in the U.S. over a hundred years ago, a man named John Frank Hickey. He spent more than thirty years kil ing young boys along the East Coast before he was caught. He sent postcards to his victims' families, and that was what gave him away in the end."

He drained his cup again and seemed strangely content.

Dessie was freezing her ass off in the bitter wind.

"But why me? " she asked.

Jacob Kanon did up his suede jacket, the first sign that he felt anything.

"You're talented, ambitious, and your career comes first above almost everything else in your life. You're wel educated – real y too wel for the 35 type of journalism you're involved in, but that doesn't seem to bother you."

Dessie made an effort to look cool and neutral as she sipped her coffee.

"Why do you think that?"

"Am I right?"

She cleared her throat quietly.

"Wel," she said. "Maybe a bit. Some of that is true. Continue, please."

He gave her an indulgent look.

"It's not rocket science," he said. "I think I've worked out what they do when they pick their contacts."

Dessie wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Everything about this was so creepy and unreal.

"What?"

"They buy the local papers the day they decide to set to work. The paper, and the reporter, with the biggest crime news that day is the one they pick as their contact."

Dessie blinked several times.

"Burglar Bengt," she said. "My interview with Burglar Bengt was on the front page of Aftonposten on Thursday."

Jacob Kanon looked out at the sea.

"But how could you know?" she said. "That bit about ambition and education?"

"You're a woman and you write about typically male subjects. That requires talent, and also stubbornness. Where I come from, crime reporting isn't very highly regarded, even if it sel s papers. That's why the journalists involved in it tend to be competent but not too hung up on prestige."

"That's not always the case," Dessie said, thinking of Alexander Andersson.

Jacob Kanon leaned toward her.

"I need to work with you," he said. "I need a way into the investigation and the media. I think I can get them this time. I do."

Dessie got up, holding down the payment with the coffeepot so it wouldn't blow away.

"Have a bath and burn your clothes," she said. "Then we'l see."

The story had quickly grown into something unusual – a top international news story playing out right there in Stockholm.

Al the top boys and girls at the paper were keen to have a headline that might get quoted on CNN or in the New York Times. Photographers swarmed around the picture desk, waiting for a crumb to fal their way. Poor Forsberg sat there tearing at his remaining strands of hair, talking into two cordless phones at the same time.

Alexander Andersson held court in the newsroom, reading out loud from his own articles.

For the first time in history the editor in chief, Stenwal, had come into the paper on a Sunday. Dessie saw him sipping a cup of coffee in his glass box.

She went over to her desk, got out her laptop and camera, and downloaded the pictures she had taken of the yel ow house in the archipelago, then sent them to the picture desk. She wrote down al the facts about the case and the kil ers that could be used as a basis by some other reporter.

"How was it out there?" Forsberg asked, suddenly materializing beside her desk.

"Terrible," Dessie said, typing on her laptop. "Worse than I could ever have imagined."

"Is it the same kil ers?"

"Looks like it," she said, turning the computer so the news editor could read her background material.

He started skimming her copy. "Eyedrops?" Forsberg said.

"There were several previous cases in Sweden where women were drugged with eyedrops in their drinks. In Mexico City the drops are used by prostitutes to knock out their clients. At least five men have died there, probably more."

"From eyedrops in their drinks?" Forsberg said doubtful y. "Sounds like the stuff of mystery novels."

Dessie let go of the keyboard and looked up at him.

"Some girls put the drops directly on their nipples."

Forsberg shuffled his feet and dropped the subject. She always won with him – if she needed to.

"How much of this can we publish?"

"Hardly anything," Dessie said, going back to her computer. "The police want to suppress the information about the drugs, champagne, and other stuff they found at the crime scene. We can give the cause of death, though, and information about the victims. Their families were told at lunchtime."

Forsberg sat down on the edge of her desk. He liked Dessie but was thoroughly confused because of her fling with Gabriel a. Everyone was.

"The victims?"

Dessie stared at her screen, at the bare facts she had put together about the dead couple.