James Patterson - Postcard killers

She watched him go until he was swal owed up by the mass of people and disappeared in the crowd.

"See you."

CNN, SKY NEWS, and BBC World were al broadcasting live from the Hal of Mirrors in the Grand Hotel. The overblown decor with its gold pil ars, mirrored doors, and crystal chandeliers made Dessie think of Versail es or some other wedding-cake chateau. Journalists and photographers and cameramen and radio reporters were al pushing and shoving to get the best places.

It was so crowded that the television people were standing shoulder to shoulder as they spoke to the cameras.

Usual y she did al she could to avoid press conferences.

There was something humiliating in al the pushing and shoving to get close, packed in with other reporters and turned into a babbling crowd.

The hierarchy was ridiculously strict as wel.

The television people always got to sit at the front. The bigger and noisier the channel, the closer their reporter got to the center of the action. 123 Then came the radio reporters with their antennas, the news agencies, the national press, and then the specialist and local press. Researchers and editorial staff like her were let in only if there was room.

Today she decided to behave like Jacob, storming through everybody like an express train, quickly showing her press pass at the door and forcing her way into the back of the room, not taking no for an answer, not caring what anybody thought of her.

The room could hold five hundred, but the hotel management had limited the number to three hundred because of al the equipment needed for live television broadcasts.

She leaned back against the wal, craning her neck to see. What an absurd circus.

At the front of the room was a smal, important-looking podium with metal steps on both sides.

The jungle of microphones shouted out the fact that this was where the siblings were going to proclaim their innocence to al the world.

The level of sound in the room was rising steadily, like the tension in a stadium during the World Cup final.

Dessie closed her eyes.

She felt almost completely paralyzed inside. Events in the room were reaching her through a thick, toughened, glasslike material. It felt like that, anyway.

How could everything have gone so wrong? And so quickly.

Her cel rang and she only noticed it because she was holding it in her hand.

It was Forsberg.

"How does it look? Did you manage to get inside? How close are you?"

"I thought this whole spectacle was going out live on seventeen channels,"

Dessie said. "Can't you see for yourself?"

"They're just showing a forest of microphones. I can't tel anything. Have you seen Alexander Andersson?"

"I don't think we're in quite the same place," Dessie said. "I'm standing right at the back."

Forsberg took a deep breath.

"Is it true that you interviewed them?" he said. "While they were being held?"

She kept her eyes fixed on the podium. Something was happening in the front.

"Don't believe everything you hear. They're coming in now!"

The Hal of Mirrors exploded in a storm of flashbulbs and spotlights.

From a door on the left Malcolm Rudolph walked into the room. He was wearing a light blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck and a pair of fashionably torn jeans.

His sister, Sylvia, was walking behind him, her bil owing chestnut brown hair glittering in the flashing lights. She was dressed entirely in white.

"Shit," Forsberg said in her ear. "She's beautiful! How does she look in person?"

"I'l cal you later," Dessie said, ending the cal.

After Sylvia came a tal, thin woman whom Dessie recognized as Andrea Friederichs, their lawyer – their copyright lawyer.

The central characters stopped in front of the jungle of microphones and stood there for three long minutes so that they could be photographed properly.

Then the lawyer leaned forward and said in the queen's English: "If we could get started with this press conference…"

The Rudolphs' message to the world was crystal clear: a miscarriage of justice had narrowly been avoided today.

This was repeated time after time during the forty-five-minute live broadcast.

The emcee for the performance was Andrea Friederichs, and Dessie had to admit that she performed her duties with aplomb.

She said that thanks to the civic-minded courage of Prosecutor Evert Ridderwal, these innocent young people had been spared yet another day of stressful interrogation, and another night in a Swedish prison cel.

Obviously, the Rudolph siblings had nothing to do with the Postcard Kil ers.

The very idea was preposterous.

The lawyer systematical y went through al the points that proved they were innocent. She reeled them off from memory, no notes:

They were in Madrid when the kil ings took place in Athens.

They were in the south of Spain at the time of the Salzburg murders.

They were buying theater tickets when the murders in Berlin were carried out.

The Dutch couple, Nienke van Mourik and Peter Visser, were clearly stil alive when the Rudolphs left their hotel room.

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

"I have never seen such an extreme case of high-handed policing," Andrea 125 Friederichs said.

Dessie looked around the room, noting her col eagues' 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 swal owed 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 col ected – but at the same time extremely humble and likable.

The Postcard Kil ers were the worst murderers ever seen on the European continent. She appreciated that the police had to investigate every lead, she real y did. The fact that she and her brother had coincidental y and innocently been drawn into it al 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 real y have carried out a brutal double murder and then gone to buy tickets to A Streetcar Named Desire?" she asked, her eyes fil ing with tears.

"What do they think we are? A couple of cal ous 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 cel 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.

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 actual y come back at al. But he'd had to come back. This was where the Rudolphs had lived and created their scheme.