James Patterson: Postcard killers

"Ready?" she asked, pul ing her hair up into a ponytail.

They took off their own clothes and folded them and put them as far away from the bed as possible.

Sylvia started with the man, not for any sexist reasons, just because he was the heavier of the two. She sat behind him and hauled him into her lap, his slack arms flopping by his sides. He grunted as though he were snoring.

Mac straightened the man's legs, crossed his arms over his stomach, and handed Sylvia the stiletto, which she took in her right hand.

She held the man's forehead in the crook of her left arm to keep his head up.

She felt with her fingertips for the man's pulse on his neck and estimated 5 the force of the flow.

Then she thrust the stiletto into the man's left jugular vein. She cut quickly through muscle and ligaments until she heard a soft hiss that told her that his windpipe had been cut.

Unconsciousness had lowered the brit's pulse and blood pressure, but the pressure in his jugular stil made the blood gush out in a fountain almost three feet from his body.

Sylvia checked that she hadn't been hit by the cascade.

"Bingo," Mac said. "You hit a geyser."

The force of the flow soon diminished to a rhythmic pulsing. The bubbling sound as the air and blood mixture seeped from the severed throat gradual y faded away until final y it stopped altogether.

"Nice work," Mac said. "Maybe you should have been a doctor."

"Too boring. Too many rules. You know me and rules."

Sylvia careful y moved away from Clive, propping him against the cheap headboard. She got blood on her arms when she arranged the man's hands on his stomach, right on top of left, but didn't bother to wash it off yet.

"Now it's your turn, darling," she said to the doped-up Englishwoman.

Emily Spencer was thin and light. Her breathing had almost stopped already. Her blood scarcely spurted at al.

"How much champagne did she actual y drink?" Sylvia asked as she arranged the woman's smal hands on her stomach.

She looked down at her bloody arms and went into the shower. Mac fol owed her.

They pul ed off the latex gloves. Careful y they soaped each other and the stiletto, rinsed themselves off, and left the shower running. They dried themselves with the hotel's towels, which they then stuffed into the top of Sylvia's backpack.

Then they got dressed and took out the Polaroid camera.

Sylvia looked at the bodies on the bed, hesitating, deciding if the look was right.

"What do you think about this?" she asked. "Does it work?"

Mac raised the camera. The brightness of the flash blinded them momentarily.

"Works pretty damn wel," he said. "Maybe the best one yet. Even better than Rome."

Sylvia opened the room's door with her elbow and they stepped out into the corridor. No security cameras, they'd made sure of that on the way up.

Mac pul ed his sleeve down over his fingers and hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign outside the door. The door closed with an almost inaudible click.

The sounds of the night faded into silence. The gentle patter of the shower 6 inside the room could just be heard above the hum of the ventilation system.

"Stairs or elevator?" Mac asked.

"Elevator," Sylvia said. "I'm tired. Murder is hard work, darling."

They waited until the doors had closed and the elevator was descending before they kissed.

"I love being on honeymoon with you," Sylvia said, and Mac smiled bril iantly.

Part One

Thursday, June 10

Berlin, Germany

The view from the hotel room consisted of a scarred brick wal and three rubbish bins. It was probably stil daylight somewhere up above the al ey, because Jacob Kanon could make out a fat German rat having itself a good time in the bin farthest to the left.

He took a large sip from the mug of Riesling wine.

It was debatable whether the situation inside or outside the room's thin pane of glass was more depressing.

He turned his back on the window and looked down at the postcards spread out across the hotel bed.

There was a pattern here, wasn't there, a twisted logic that he couldn't see.

The kil ers were trying to tel him something. The bastards who were cutting the throats of young couples al over Europe were screaming right in his face.

They were shouting their message, but Jacob couldn't hear what they were saying, couldn't make out their words, couldn't understand what they meant, and until he could work out their language, he wouldn't be able to stop them.

He drank the rest of the wine in his mug and poured some more. Then he sat down on the bed, messing up the order he had just arranged for the postcards.

"Let's look at it this way, then. Let me see who you are!"

Jacob Kanon, a homicide detective from the NYPD's 32nd Precinct, was a long way from home. He was in Berlin because the kil ers had brought him here. He had been fol owing their progress for six months, always two steps 7 behind, maybe even three or four.

Only now had the magnitude of their depravity started to sink in with the police authorities around Europe. Because the kil ers carried out only one or two murders in each country, it had taken time for the pattern to emerge, for everyone except him to see it plainly.

Some of the stupid bastards stil didn't see it, and wouldn't take help from an American, even a fucking smart one who had everything riding on this case.

He picked up the copies of the postcard from Florence.

The first one.

The postcard showed the basilica di San Miniato al Monte, and on the back was the now familiar quote. He read the lines and drank more wine, then let the card fal and picked up the next one, and the next, and the next.

Athens: a picture of the Olympic Stadium from 2004.

Salzburg: an anonymous street scene.

Madrid: Las Ventas.

And then Rome, Rome, Rome…

Jacob put his hands over his face for a few seconds before getting up and going over to the rickety desk by the wal.

He sat down on the Windsor chair and rested his arms on his notes, the notes he had made about the various victims, his interpretations, the tentative connections he had made.

He knew very little about the Berlin couple yet, just their names and ages:

Karen and Bil y Cowley, both twenty-three, from Canberra in Australia.

Drugged and murdered in their rented apartment close to Charite University Hospital, for which they had paid two weeks in advance but which they hadn't had the chance to ful y enjoy. Instead, they had their throats cut and were mutilated on their second or possibly third day in the apartment.

It was four days, maybe five or six, before they were even found. Stupid, arrogant German police! Acting like they knew everything, when they knew so little.

Jacob got up, went over to the bed again, and picked up the Polaroid picture of the couple that had been posted to the journalist at the Berliner Zeitung. This was the point where his brain had reached the limit for what it could absorb.

Why did the kil ers send first postcards and then grisly photographs of the slaughter to the media in the cities where they carried out their murders?

To shock?

To get fame and acclaim?

Or did they have some other intention? Were the pictures and postcards a smoke screen to conceal their real motive? And if so, what the hel might that be?

What the hel, what the hel, what the hel?

He examined the photograph, its macabre composition. There had to be a meaning, but he couldn't see what it was.

Instead, he picked up the picture of the couple from Paris.

Emily and Clive Spencer, just married, propped up next to each other against a pale-colored headboard in a Montparnasse hotel room. They were both naked. The streams of blood that covered their torsos had gathered in congealed little pools around their genitals.