Postcard killers

Chapter 136

It was the Rudolphs, he was sure of that much. He recognized Malcolm's relaxed movements and the woman's thick head of dark hair.

The kil ers were moving quickly through the parking lot, getting away.

People who saw him ru

Dessie was coming up behind him. She had her cel phone in one hand.

She was keying in a number as she ran.

The Rudolphs disappeared between two big buildings.

Jacob raised the pistol as he approached the corner. He didn't know what weapons the Rudolphs might have.

No one was there.

He rushed through the passageway and emerged from the far end.

Four buses, with toilets and curtains, were parked there. Even if one of the 181 vehicles was unlocked, they couldn't hide for long, not here.

With his Glock drawn he ran over to the first bus.

No one.

The second one.

No one.

The third…

"Drop the gun!"

The voice came from behind him, a woman's voice, struggling to stay calm and col ected.

He spun around, aiming the Glock, ready to kil.

Chapter 137

Sylvia Rudolph was holding Dessie in front of her as a shield. She had a knife to her throat. It was a carving knife, maybe a butcher's knife.

Jacob's head was spi

"Drop the gun," Sylvia Rudolph said. "Put it on the ground – or she dies.

I have no problem with that."

Dessie's face was deathly pale. Her cel phone was stil in her hand.

Malcolm Rudolph was standing some ten feet away, looking bewildered and lost.

Jacob stood stil, his weapon raised.

Al at once the situation was clear to him. Another part of the mystery had just been solved.

It wasn't the brother who was the kil er.

It was the sister, Sylvia. La senorita. The girl who found her parents dead in their beds, or who had kil ed them with her own hands. Why, though? For the sake of art?

"Do as I say," Sylvia said, "or I'l cut her throat! She'l die right here."

Her voice was becoming less control ed, but Jacob believed every word she said.

He tightened his hold on the grip of the pistol. Instinctively he adopted the posture he had practiced so many times back home in New York.

He closed an eye, focusing his aim, slowing his breathing as best he could.

He studied Sylvia's ice-cold expression next to Dessie's terrified face.

There she was, the woman who had kil ed his Kimmy, holding a knife to Dessie's throat. Another knife but the same kil er.

Suddenly he felt his pulse relax.

"Put the gun down!" Sylvia roared. "I'l cut her throat! Put it down! You 182 want her to die?"

So much for al her talk of art and conceptual creation.

When it came down to it, she just wanted to save herself. And maybe her crazy brother, her lover.

He squeezed the trigger: a cautious click, then the explosion and recoil.

Dessie dropped her cel and screamed. She screamed and screamed. Oh god, no, he'd missed!

Dessie must have moved at the last second.

What had he done?

Chapter 138

Dessie was covered in blood, and she was stil screaming. But then Jacob realized it wasn't her blood after al.

It was Sylvia's. It was pieces of Sylvia's brain that were splattered across Dessie's face and Windbreaker. It was Sylvia who sank to the ground, who dropped the knife, as Malcolm came ru

Dessie staggered away and leaned against one of the buses. Jacob rushed at Malcolm with his pistol raised.

"Get on your knees, hands above your head!" he shouted at the top of his voice.

He was screaming to make himself heard above the ringing in his own ears, but Malcolm seemed not to hear him. The man sank down beside his sister's body and took her in his arms. With a wild howl, he rocked Sylvia back and forth, back and forth, completely deaf to the uproar around them.

Jacob went up to him, weapon aimed at his chest.

He fished out the handcuffs from under the belt of his trousers with one hand as he tried to make contact with the dazed man.

"Malcolm Rudolph – the police are on their way. Put the body down. Get on your knees. Hands behind your head!"

The howling subsided. Malcolm's shoulders slumped. He laid his sister's body gently on the asphalt.

Jacob saw that he had hit her between the eyes, just above them in the forehead. The entry wound gaped red, and the woman's eyes stared blindly at the sky. The back of her head had been blown away.

"You kil ed her," Malcolm said. His arms hung by his sides. His back was bent like an old man's. "You kil ed my Sylvia."

"You and your sister kil ed my daughter," Jacob said.

He opened the handcuffs and leaned down to secure Malcolm Rudolph's arms behind his back.

From this angle, Sylvia's dead eyes seemed to be watching him.

He didn't see the knife coming.

In a fast move, the brother leapt up and stabbed the knife toward Jacob's 183 chest. Instinctively, Jacob shifted a few inches to the right.

The blade cut through the outside and lining of his suede jacket, biting into skin and sinew and muscle. Then it tore veins and arteries and lung tissue.

Jacob heard someone scream, a woman screaming.

He felt warm blood pulsing out of his body and saw the world spin and turn sideways, as if he could fal right off it. A shot rang out, the echo ringing through his head.

The kil er in front of him sank to the ground with his hands over his stomach.

Then someone was holding him, laying him on the ground, tearing his shirt away.

It was Dessie, his Dessie. No, it was Kimmy, his Kimmy. Of course it was!

"Kimmy," Jacob whispered. "I knew you'd come back."

Epilogue

Chapter 139

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,

USA

The wind carried with it the smel of the sea and also exhaust fumes from Leif Ericson Drive. It made the leaves above his head rustle, the electrical wires sing.

Jacob was sitting on the porch outside his smal house, watching the boys from the neighborhood play basebal on the patch of grass on the other side of the street.

The heat and extreme humidity had final y broken, leaving a hint of autumn behind it.

The sun was no longer high in the sky, and the leafy trees threw deep shadows along the street.

His lung had healed. The pain in his arm was almost gone. The wound had started to itch instead. Sometimes he thought that was worse.

He looked down toward Shore Road.

Stil no taxi.

He pul ed at the shoulder sling in irritation.

Next week he could take it off.

They said he must have had a guardian angel.

The little town on the Arctic Circle where his lung had been punctured and his arm almost sliced off had had no hospital, but there had been a local health center with an emergency room and a Hungarian doctor who specialized in microsurgery. The Hungarian had stitched his muscles and blood vessels together while they emptied the center's supply of blood plasma into his body, and somehow he had survived.

Malcolm Rudolph hadn't been so lucky.

Jacob's wild shot had hit his liver. The kil er bled to death in the helicopter ambulance. Good riddance to him, and his sister, too. Horrifying bastards.

When Jacob woke up and remembered what had happened, he started to prepare himself to face the Swedish judicial system. He assumed that he would get away with the actual shots. After al, Gabriel a had heard the whole sequence of events over Dessie's phone. It was obvious that he had fired only in self-defense.