James Patterson - Postcard killers

The Mansion, my ass. More like the Fortress. To protect what secrets?

He got out of the car and went up to the phone to the left of the gate.

"Si?" a crackling voice said.

So it wasn't entirely uninhabited.

"Hola," Jacob said. "Speak English?" He had many good qualities, but a 137 talent for languages wasn't one of them.

"Si. Yes."

"Jacob Kanon, NYPD. New York City police. I'd like to ask a few questions about the Rudolph family. It's important that I speak to someone."

"Can you hold your ID up to the camera beside the phone?"

Opening his wal et, Jacob pul ed out his badge and held it up to the camera.

"Come in!" the crackling voice said, and the tal gates started to glide apart.

A smal Tudor-style gatekeeper's lodge was situated some fifty yards in on the left. The door opened and an elderly man limped out onto the drive.

Jacob stopped the car again and climbed out.

"You've no idea how long I've been waiting," the man said, holding his hand out and saying that he was Carlos Rodriguez.

"What for?" Jacob said, surprised.

The man hastily crossed himself. "The kil ing of Mr. Simon and Mrs.

Helen has been unsolved for too long! It is like a heavy weight I carry."

"So you knew the Rudolphs?" Jacob asked.

"Knew?" Carlos Rodriguez exclaimed. "I've been the gardener here for more than thirty years. I was here the night it happened. I cal ed the police."

Carlos Rodriguez and his wife, Carmela, had lived in the smal gatekeeper's lodge at the Mansion ever since he returned from the Vietnam War in the spring of 1975. Both of their children had grown up there.

"Children are the future," Rodriguez said. "Do you have children?"

"No," Jacob said, putting his ID back in his wal et. "But I'm interested in the Rudolphs' children. What happened to them after the murder?"

The gardener sucked his teeth.

"The twins were looked after by Senor Blython," he said. "He took them down to Los Angeles, to the big house he bought in Beverly Hil s."

The man moved closer to Jacob and lowered his voice, as if someone might overhear him.

"Senorita and Junior didn't real y want to move," he said. "They wanted to stay in their house here, but it was up to Senor Blython to decide. He was 138 their legal guardian, after al."

"Who owns this place these days?" Jacob asked.

He remembered that Lyndon said it had been in the hands of a bankruptcy agency.

Rodriguez's face darkened.

"The children inherited it, along with everything else: paintings, jewelry, stock shares, and small businesses. Senor Blython was charged with managing these assets until the children were twenty-one. But when that day came, the money was gone."

Jacob raised an eyebrow. "Their guardian defrauded them?"

"He took every last penny. The house was sold at an executive auction.

The company that bought it was going to turn it into a conference center. But they went bankrupt in the financial crisis."

"What did Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph say about what happened?"

The man's gaze wavered.

"They couldn't stay on at UCLA. There was no money, not even for the fees. So they had to get jobs. But they managed," he said. "They're very resourceful."

Jacob's jaw tightened. If the old man only knew.

"When did you last see them?" he asked.

Carlos Rodriguez didn't need to think about the answer. "The weekend before the house was sold at auction," he said. "They came to col ect a few mementos, photo albums and things like that."

"They were both here?"

"And Sandra," the gardener said. "Sandra Schulman, Sylvia's best friend.

They only stayed a few hours on that last visit, and then they left, in the middle of the night…"

"And then Senor Blython was murdered," Jacob said.

Carlos Rodriguez snorted.

"If you hang around with putas in Los Angeles…," he said.

Jacob nodded and let the subject drop. The gardener had told him more than he had expected.

"The main building," he said, "is it stil here?"

Carlos Rodriguez's face broke into a smile again.

"Pero claro que si! I'm not formal y employed anymore, of course. I get a little from the bank. Mostly we live on my pension. But I look after the Mansion."

"Could you show me around?" Jacob asked.

"Si, claro! Of course I can."

Lyndon was right .

The house was enormous, and it looked like something from a horror film set in the English countryside. Senor Rodriguez may have done his best to keep the building in good condition, but his lame old body had no chance against the wind, the damp, the weeds, and the ivy. One window frame had slipped its hinge and was squeaking in the wind.

This was where it al began, wasn't it? The murders – the mystery of the Rudolphs.

"The electricity has been cut off in the main house," the gardener said apologetical y as he unlocked the oak door.

Jacob's footsteps echoed in the grand stone hal way. Doors stood half open, leading into high-ceilinged rooms and down long, dark corridors.

He took a quick look into the various rooms where Sylvia and Malcolm had once lived.

The whole building seemed to have been emptied of its contents. Jacob noticed a single curtain in a library that was empty of books.

"The master bedroom is on the second floor. Fol ow me."

A magnificent curved staircase led up to the more private parts of the mansion.

Pale rectangles on the wal s revealed where paintings had once hung. A battered rococo sofa, its stuffing hanging out, stood alone and dusty on the first landing.

"Straight ahead," Carlos Rodriguez said.

The bed was stil there, an ornate four-poster without curtains or bedclothes. Otherwise the room was empty.

"So this was where it happened?" Jacob said.

The gardener nodded.

"And you were here that night?"

He nodded again.

"What did you see? Tell me anything you remember. Please. It's important."

The man swal owed.

"Terrible things," he said. "Blood al over this room. Mr. and Mrs. were lying dead in that bed. They must have been asleep when it happened."

"Did you see their injuries close up?"

The man ran his index finger like a knife across his throat.

"Deep cuts," he said. "Almost through to the bone at the back of the neck."

He gave an involuntary shudder as Jacob watched him closely.

How did you come to be here, in your employers' room in the middle of the night? I don't understand."

The man took a deep breath, then spoke.

"I was asleep with my family when Senorita rang. I hurried here straightaway."

"It wasn't you who found them?"

"No, no. It was little Sylvia."

Monday, June 21

Copenhagen, Denmark

There was still a pattern here. It had just changed slightly.

Dessie kept thinking she could see it clearly, just for a few seconds. Then it would slide out of her reach again.

She was sitting on the unmade bed in her hotel room with al the pictures and postcards around her, al of Jacob's crumpled copies. She picked them up, even though she had seen them a hundred times, maybe more. Al the buildings and people and details were already imprinted in her memory.

The postcard from Amsterdam of the plain building on Prinsengracht 267: the house where Anne Frank was hidden during the war, where she wrote her famous diary.

Then Rome and Madrid: the Coliseum and Las Ventas, gladiatorial combat and bul fights. Arenas for theater based on kil ing.

The Paris card was of La Conciergerie, the legendary antechamber of the guil otine.

Berlin was a view of the bunker built by Hitler, the most famous failed artist in history.

Stockholm showed the main square, Stortorget, the site of the Stockholm Bloodbath.