James Patterson - Postcard killers

Maybe it was the contrast to Hugo Bergman's supercilious sense of selfcongratulation that made Dessie notice it. And now that she could see what he looked like behind al the grime, he was actual y pretty good-looking. And those eyes of his were something.

Watch yourself, she thought and crossed her arms.

"What's this got to do with me?" she asked.

Jacob held up a smal sports bag that she hadn't seen before.

"Al we've got is a pattern," he said. "I've got copies of the pictures of most of the bodies in here, and postcards from almost al of the murders. The kil ers are communicating through these pictures, but I can't work out what they're saying. Can you help me?"

"I don't know anything about murder," she said.

He laughed, a sad, hol ow laugh.

"Who else can I turn to?"

Of course. He was here, outside her door, because he had nowhere else to go.

"Look," she said, "I'm tired and I have to be up in a couple of hours."

The timed lights in the stairwel went out. Dessie didn't bother to switch them on again.

"You've been working late," Jacob Kanon said in the darkness. "Has something happened? They didn't kil again, did they?"

She realized to her surprise that her mouth was dry.

"I've been on a date," she said.

She could see only his silhouette against the lead-framed window in the stairwel.

"With Hugo Bergman," she went on. "A famous crime writer. Maybe you've heard of him?"

Jacob pressed the light switch again and the lights came on.

"Time's passing," he said. "The kil ers usual y stay only a few days in a place once they've already done their kil ing. They're probably stil here, but they'l soon be moving on."

He took a step closer to her.

"Kimmy dies," he said. "Kimmy dies over and over again, and we have to stop them."

Dessie backed away.

"Tomorrow," she said. "Come to the paper tomorrow. If you're lucky I'l get you a cup of coffee from the machine."

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked like he was about to say something but changed his mind.

Instead he disappeared down the marble staircase.

Dessie went in and closed the door behind her, put the safety lock on, and clenched her fists.

She pul ed off her clothes and thought about taking a shower but dropped the idea.

She crept under the covers in her double bed without turning the lights on.

The room was gloomy but not dark. The sun had gone down but would be up again in a few hours. She lay there quietly, looking around her bedroom. 42 Restless, she threw off the covers, pul ed on a dressing gown, and went out to the kitchen.

She drank a glass of water and then went into what was once the maid's room, a little cubbyhole behind the kitchen where she had set up her office. She switched the computer on, hesitating a few moments before opening her halffinished doctoral thesis.

Who knew if it would ever get finished?

She sighed. She was actual y extremely interested in her research subject, so she didn't know why she never got it done. She had already spent several years of academic life on it, studying minor criminals and their thought processes, patterns of behavior, and motives.

She had grown up among petty thieves on a farm out in the forests of Norrland in the north of Sweden.

The great majority of her family hadn't done an honest day's work in the whole of their miserable lives.

She scrol ed up and down the text, reading sentences and whole paragraphs at random.

Maybe she could get going on it again, finish it, and final y get her degree.

Why on earth did she find it so difficult?

Everything she did ended up half done, no matter whether it was work or relationships.

She switched off the computer and went back into the kitchen.

The perfect partner didn't exist, she knew that much, and, god knows, her knowledge was based on extensive research. The idea of finding your other half was a myth and a lie. You had to compromise, make al owances, be tolerant.

Gabriel a was a great girl, beautiful and sexy and seriously in love with her.

There had been nothing wrong with Christer either. If he hadn't asked for a divorce, she'd probably stil be married to him.

She drank another glass of water and looked at the clock on the wall. 1:43.

Why had she told the American she'd been on a date? Why had she mentioned Bergman's name? Was it that she wanted Jacob Kanon to know that she dated men as wel? Why would she want him to know that?

She put the glass down on the draining board and realized that she was quite hungry. Al she had eaten were those damn mashed potatoes!

The poet had gone back to Finland, leaving Jacob alone in his cel.

There was no space for a chair or table in the narrow room, so he had settled down on the Finn's abandoned lower bunk. He had put his pistol and the framed photograph of Kimmy on the deeply recessed windowsil. He'd bought the gun in Rome with the help of an old cop friend who had retired to Italy.

He leaned forward and ran his finger along his daughter's smiling cheek.

This was the picture he had given the press after she died, taken the day she'd been accepted at Juil iard.

Jacob got up, went over to his duffel bag, and opened a bottle of wine. He stood with the bottle in his hand, staring out at the light summer night.

There was a smal beach under his window. A few alcohol-fueled youngsters wearing mortarboards were noisily soaking one another without taking their clothes off.

He let his eyes roam over the dark water.

Kimmy didn't like swimming.

Al the other kids on the block loved going down to Brighton Beach, but Kimmy never learned to swim wel. Instead she preferred the big forest parks on Staten Island, or up in Westchester or Putnam County, with their teeming wildlife, especial y deer.

There was only one thing she loved more than her graceful deer, and that was his aunt Isabel e's piano. Kimmy would go and play on it after school every afternoon, and every day in the summer. She was gifted, so Jacob paid for lessons with the best teacher available in Brooklyn.

But that afternoon a couple of years ago when she told him she'd applied to Juil iard, the most famous col ege in the world for music, drama, and dance, he'd felt almost terrified. He'd never heard of anyone from Brooklyn's Bay Ridge area even getting close to being accepted there. He'd checked: only five percent of al applicants got in.

But Kimmy was special. She specialized in Franz Liszt, one of the most technical y demanding composers in the world, and she had chosen his suggestive piano concerto Totentanz no.1 as her audition piece.

He had been so proud that he'd burst into tears when the acceptance letter came – and back in those days, he hardly ever cried. Not like the present.

Kimmy had met Steven on her very first day at Juil iard, a budding classical composer. They got engaged and decided to get married as soon as they graduated.

Steven was a great guy, but Jacob thought they should see something of the world before they settled down.

So he had given them a trip to Rome as a Christmas present. 44 They were murdered the day before they were due to return to New York.

Jacob took a deep breath and found himself back in the narrow cel at the hostel.

The shrieking kids on the beach had vanished.

He sank onto the lower bunk with Kimmy's picture in his lap.

He had identified her dead body in the cold room of a mortuary on the outskirts of Rome on New Year's Day, the first day of what had been the very worst year of his life.

This year.

He picked up his pistol and put the muzzle in his mouth, just as he had done so many nights before, tasting the powder and metal, taking comfort from the idea that there could be an end to this. One slight movement of his finger and his desperate loss and longing would be over.