James Patterson - Postcard killers

But she couldn't make three of the cards fit the pattern of the others.

The Tivoli pleasure gardens in Copenhagen.

The Olympic stadium from the Athens games of 2004.

And that anonymous shopping street in Salzburg.

What did they have to do with death?

Dessie let the pictures fal to the bed again.

Was she imagining this pattern?

Was it foolish to try to give any sort of order to the way these sick bastards thought?

She stood up and went over to the window. The rain had given way to 141 mist and fog. Cars and bicycles were crossing Kongens Nytorv below her.

Why was she real y bothering? Jacob had left her. The newspaper hadn't been in touch for days now. No one missed her.

To be or not to be.

As if you could choose to live or die.

Could you? And in that case, what sort of life would it be?

She knew she could do just as she liked, continue digging around in this story or go home: get involved or let go. Quite regardless of what other people thought, and what they thought about her, what did she actual y want to do now?

She turned around and looked at the mess on the bed.

Jacob hadn't managed to contact the Austrian reporter. He had never gotten hold of a copy of the picture of the bodies in Salzburg either.

She walked toward her mobile phone, then picked it up and held it to her chest for a few seconds before dialing International Directory Inquiries.

A minute later the phone rang at the reception desk of the Kronen Zeitung.

"Ich suche Charlotta Bruckmoser, bitte," Dessie said.

There were several clicks on the line, then the Austrian reporter was there.

Dessie introduced herself as a fel ow reporter from Stockholm.

"Before I start, I want to apologize for phoning and disturbing you," she said in her rusty schoolgirl German.

"I was the one who received the postcard and picture in Sweden," she explained. "I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions."

"I haven't got anything to say," the reporter said, but she didn't sound angry. Just watchful.

"I completely understand," Dessie said. "I know what you've been through."

"I read about the kil ings in Sweden," Charlotta Bruckmoser said, sounding slightly less guarded.

"Wel, here's something you might not know," Dessie said, and she told her story. About the photographs mimicking famous works of art, with a few exceptions; about the postcards of places where death and art mixed together, again with a few exceptions; about Jacob Kanon and his murdered daughter; about Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, their alibis and Jacob's conviction that, in 142 spite of everything, they were the Postcard Kil ers.

The only thing she left out was the night in Jacob's room in the hostel.

Two sharp beeping sounds told her that someone was trying to cal her, but she ignored them.

Charlotta Bruckmoser was silent for a few moments after Dessie had finished speaking. "I haven't read any of this in the papers," she eventual y said.

"No," Dessie said, "and I doubt you could get confirmation of it from any official sources."

"What about you, what do you think?" the reporter asked cautiously. "Are the Rudolphs guilty?"

Dessie took a moment to reply.

"I real y don't know anymore."

Silence again.

"Why are you tel ing me this?" the Austrian woman asked.

Two more beeping sounds. Someone was keen to get hold of her.

"The pictures you received," Dessie said. "I'd real y like to see the pictures you received."

"I'l e-mail you the card and the letter and everything," Charlotta Bruckmoser said.

Ten seconds later there was a ping from Dessie's mailbox. The pictures were here!

There was blood al over the room, as if the victims had been crawling about while they bled to death. Two lamps had been broken. The bodies had fal en forward onto their sides and lay about a meter apart on the floor.

"Is there any Austrian work of art that looks like this?" Dessie asked.

"Famous art?"

The reporter took her time replying.

"I don't think so," she said, "but I'm no expert. Famous art, though? I real y don't think so."

Dessie clicked open the PDF of the envelope and looked at the address. It was written in the same block letters as the others. But on the back was something she hadn't seen before: nine numbers, hastily written down.

"That number on the back," Dessie said, "what does that mean?"

"It's a phone number," Charlotta Bruckmoser said. "I tried cal ing it. It's for a pizzeria in Vienna. The police decided it had nothing to do with the case."

At that moment Dessie's inbox pinged again. She felt her stomach lurch.

It's Jacob, ran the thought going through her head. He's e-mailed me because he misses me.

It was from Gabriel a.

Tried to cal you. Another double murder in Oslo.

"I've got to go," Dessie said and hung up on Charlotta Bruckmoser.

Los Angeles,

USA

UCLA was as big as a decent-size town in California. More than thirty thousand students, some two hundred buildings, more than fifty thousand applicants to be freshmen every year.

Jacob had punched Charles E. Young Drive into the GPS, an address that was supposed to be in the university's northern campus, where the School of the Arts and Architecture was based.

His contact, Nicky Everett, was waiting for him outside room 140, on the first floor of the building. The young man was wearing chinos, a golfing shirt, boat shoes, and frameless glasses. Jacob had never met anyone studying for a PhD in conceptual art, but he'd been expecting something more bearded and absentminded.

"Thanks for taking the time to see me," Jacob said.

"I believe in art that communicates," Nicky Everett said seriously, looking at him through the sparkling clean lenses.

"Er…," Jacob said, "you knew Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph?"

"I wouldn't use the past tense," Everett said. "Even if we no longer have a physical relationship, there are other forms of contact, correct?"

Jacob nodded. Okay.

"Could we sit down outside perhaps?" he said, gesturing toward some benches just outside the main entrance.

They went out and sat in the shade of a few spindly trees.

"If I've understood this right, you studied here at the same time as the Rudolph twins – until they left – correct?"

"Absolutely," Everett said. "Sylvia and Mac were leaders in their field."

"Which was?"

"Let me quote Sol LeWitt: 'In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.'"

Jacob made an effort to understand, and also to keep his emotions in check. "So an event, or a series of events, can be a work of art?" he asked.

"Of course. Both Mac and Sylvia were determined to take their work to its ultimate limits."

Jacob remembered Dessie's stories of the art student who faked a psychotic attack for her examination piece, and the guy who smashed up a car on the subway and cal ed his artwork Territorial Pissing. He described these cases to Everett.

"Could the Rudolphs ever do anything like that?"

Nicky Everett pressed his glasses firmly onto his nose. "The Rudolphs were more meticulous in their expression. That al sounds rather superficial.

'Territorial Pissing'?"

Jacob ran his fingers through his hair. "So," he said, "explain it to me: 144 how can that be art? I want to hear this and understand it as best I can."

The student looked at him with complete indifference in his face.

"You think a work of art should be hung on a wal and sold on the commercial market?"

Jacob realized the futility of going any further down this road and changed the subject. "They started an art group, the Society of Limitless Art…"