Postcard killers

by James Patterson

"But there's stil no evidence," Dessie said glumly. "We can't prove a damn thing."

  He handed her a mug.

  "Their gear must be somewhere. The eyedrops, the outfit he was wearing when he emptied those accounts, the things they've stolen and not managed to get rid of. And the murder weapon…"

  "Exactly," Dessie said. "That could be in any rubbish bin, and do you know why? Because I told them in that bloody letter that they were about to get caught. I gave them time to clean up."

  Jacob stopped beside the bed and looked at her.

  "There was nothing wrong with that letter. You were doing the right thing when you wrote it. You were very brave."

  "Was I?" Dessie said. "What did it actual y achieve? Apart from warning the Rudolphs and making a fool of me in front of every proper journalist in Sweden."

  He walked angrily across the bedroom floor, turned, and came back.

  "They didn't throw their stuff away," he said, "not al of it, anyway. Most serial kil ers keep trophies. They would have chosen a hiding place as soon as they got to Stockholm. It's entirely possible that it's al stil there. I think that it's even likely."

  He stopped midstride.

  "The little key!" he said.

  Dessie blinked.

  "What?"

  He reached across Dessie and her computer to grab her cel phone from the bedside table.

  "What's going on?"

  "At the bottom of page three of the official report, there's something about a key. My FBI friend noticed it. I can't help hoping it belongs to some left-luggage locker in Stockholm."

  Chapter 119

  Gabriella sighed heavily into the phone.

  "Of course we looked at the key," she said. "There was nothing to indicate that it actual y belonged to the Rudolphs."

  Jacob realized he was grinding his teeth again. This could be the second big error by the police in Stockholm. "What do you base that on?"

  "It was in the toilet cistern in the hotel room. It could have been there for weeks. Who knows for how long?"

  Jacob had to stop himself from slamming the phone against the bedroom wal. You didn't have to be an expert to know that water cisterns were a favorite hiding place for lots of people, and especial y criminals in a new city.

  Christ!

  "The key belongs to them!" he said. "It fits a locker, a postal box, or some other form of lockable space. And I hope that's where you'l find al the evidence. Please get on it immediately."

  "The Rudolphs have been ruled out of the investigation," Gabriel a said curtly, then hung up.

  Dessie took her cel phone away from him before he smashed it against the head of the bed.

  Jacob col apsed onto the bed, al his energy gone, his patience, too. He'd flown across the Atlantic twice within a week, and by now his body clock had practical y lost track of what century it was.

  "What was the name of that art group at UCLA?" Dessie asked, pul ing the laptop over.

  He had shut his eyes and was massaging his own neck. "The Society of Limitless Art," he muttered.

  What could he do to persuade the police to open the investigation again?

  Or even to act like real cops?

  He couldn't just let the Rudolphs disappear.

  "Here's something," Dessie said. "Look at this! You don't even have to move. Just open your eyes."

  She turned the laptop to face him.

  Welcome to the Society of Limitless Art

  You are visitor no. 4824 "The address is www.sola.nu," she said. "That's a domain registered on Niue, an island in the South Pacific. They let anyone register any sort of address in just a couple of minutes."

  Jacob took a look at the screen.

  "They set this up when they were at UCLA," he said.

  Dessie tried clicking on the first tab, Introduction. 159 "And here we have the background of conceptual art," she said. "Marcel Duchamp tried to exhibit a urinal in New York in nineteen seventeen. He was refused."

  "I wonder why," Jacob said.

  "Look here," Dessie said.

  Jacob sighed and sat up.

  The gal ery included a long sequence of strange photographs that he would hardly have associated with art: motorways, trash, an unhappy cow, and a few shaky home movies of – what a surprise! – motorways, trash, and presumably the same unhappy cow. It was hard to tel for certain.

  "This is ridiculous," Jacob said. "I feel like that cow, though. Does that make me a work of art?"

  "Their ridiculous art project got them thrown out of school," Dessie said.

  "This sort of thing matters to them."

  Jacob stood up now, looking for his jeans.

  He found them out in the hal. He stopped there, trousers in one hand, and stared back into Dessie's living room.

  So this was where it al ended, in an apartment halfway to the North Pole.

  He'd done his best, but it wasn't enough. Kimmy's kil ers were going to walk free. Could he live with that? Who cared? What was the alternative?

  "Hey!" Dessie cal ed. "Look here!"

  "What?"

  He went back toward the bed.

  "Sections of the site are locked. It's a puzzle to be solved. We need a password."

  Chapter 120

  A box had appeared against a gray background, with the message Log in!

  Dessie typed "sola" for Society of Limitless Art in the box and pressed Enter. The screen flickered.

  Sorry – wrong password.

  "I didn't think it would be that easy," she said.

  Suddenly an idea came into Jacob's head. There was a key with no lock in the report. Here was a lock but no key.

  "We could be onto something here," he said. "Try 'Rudolph.' Maybe it is that easy."

  Sorry – wrong password.

  Jacob stared at Dessie. He remembered the last conversation he'd had with Lyndon Crebbs: What if there are other kil ers? What if the Rudolphs have inspired copycats?

  He heard his own reply echo in his head: If there are more kil ers, they have to be working together.

  "If the Rudolphs have got an accomplice," Jacob said slowly, "then they need some way of contacting him, them, whoever it is. Could they be using this site to communicate with one another?"

  Dessie tried a hundred other possibilities. Again and again:

  Sorry – wrong password.

  "We're lucky the site is stil letting us try new ones. Most sites wil block you after three tries," Dessie said.

  "Where are the postcards?" Jacob asked.

  Dessie reached for her knapsack on the floor beside the bed. She tipped out the copies, letting them fan across the bed.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  "Let's try al the words on the cards," Jacob said. "What's this one here?"

  He picked up a photograph he hadn't seen before. It was of two dead or seriously wounded people in a room that showed clear evidence of a struggle.

  "That's the picture from Salzburg," she said. "I spoke to the reporter. She mailed it to me."

  Dessie tried word after word: "Rome," "Paris," "Madrid," "Athens."

  Sorry – wrong password.

  "What are these numbers?" Jacob asked, pointing at the back of the Salzburg envelope.

  "The phone number of a pizzeria in Vienna. The reporter already checked it. Nothing to do with the case," Dessie said.

  Next she went through al the sites on the postcards: "Tivoli,"

  "Coliseum," Las Ventas."

  Jacob picked out the pictures from Copenhagen and Oslo.

  Oslo was done by the Rudolphs.

  Copenhagen was the copycat.

  "What if they've got a password that isn't a word but something else?" he said.

  Dessie looked at him intently.

  "When would you need that information?" Jacob asked. "When are you most in need of instructions? The moment you're about to carry out your task, wouldn't you say?"

  Dessie stared at him. "I don't know, I've never been a murderer. I've been tempted a couple of times.
"

  "Where would you write the password you need to get your instructions for the kil s? On the nearest thing available maybe?"

  He picked up the copy of the back of the envelope from Salzburg.

  "The Rudolphs had an alibi for the murders in Austria," he said. "So that must have been carried out by their accomplice. Try these numbers."

  Dessie picked up the laptop again and careful y typed in the nine numbers.

  She pressed Enter.

  The screen flickered.

  A new image appeared.

  "Holy fucking Christ," Dessie said.

  Chapter 121

  The investigating team had gathered in Mats Duval 's office. Their faces were pale and drawn.

  "Do we have any idea where the hel the Rudolphs have gone?" Jacob asked, sitting down opposite Sara Hoglund.

  The head of the unit shook her head. She looked to be in utter despair. As she ought to be.

  "They were let out the back door of the Grand Hotel this morning. No one's seen them since then."

  "And the key? The key that no one on the team paid much attention to?"

  "We know it belongs to a left-luggage locker."

  Jacob slammed his fist on the table so hard that the coffee cups jumped.

  "We've put out a national alert and informed Interpol," Mats Duval added quickly. "Arlanda, Skavsta, Landvetter, Vasteras, Sturup, and every other airport with international connections is on increased alert. The Oresund Bridge to Denmark is blocked and every vehicle is being searched. The ports have been informed. The border posts are on the alert. Surveil ance of al highways and European routes has been intensified. They won't get out of Sweden."

  Jacob stood up.

  "For fuck's sake, they've just gotten hold of three and a half mil ion dol ars! They can buy their own plane!"

  "The whole amount is in an account in the Cayman Islands," Gabriel a said, reading from a document in front of her. "The transfer has been confirmed by the bank they used here in Stockholm."

  Jacob was close to upending the table and al the useless paperwork on it.

  "So they haven't got much cash at the moment," Dessie said, just to be clear.

  Jacob leaned back in his chair, pressing the palms of his hands to his forehead.

  Dessie had already given him the hopeless details. The Rudolphs were free and had vanished, in a country with fewer inhabitants than New York and 162 an area almost as big as Texas. There were thousands of miles of unguarded borders with both Norway and Finland, and just as much coastline. A couple of hours in a fast boat would get them to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Denmark, or Germany.

  Silence fel around the table.

  Gabriel a Oscarsson was concentrating on a bundle of papers, Mats Duval was fiddling with his BlackBerry. Evert Ridderwal, the hotshot prosecutor, was staring blankly out the window.

  Jacob clenched his fists at the sight of the fat little man.

  He was the one who had let the bastards out in the first place.

  "What does the analysis of the website tel us?" Dessie eventual y asked.

  Sara Hoglund leaned forward.

  "Your first assumption turned out to be correct," she said. "The Rudolphs have set themselves up as masters of their own universe. Their project aims to integrate life, death, and art, to find the ultimate form of expression. The Society of Limitless Art is their own university. As far as we can make out, they've got about thirty-five fol owers around the world. There could be more.

  Other art students who share their worldview and admire their ambitions."

  Dessie looked down at her hands. "Three other couples have taken the 'exam' that the Rudolphs provide. Hard to believe, isn't it? So many crazies out there."

  The pages of the website contained detailed instructions on how to pass the exam, or "graduate," as the Rudolphs cal ed it, in the special project of the Society of Limitless Art. By causing death in a particularly artistic way, humankind could become a creating divinity, and thus immortal.

  The procedure of "the Work" was described in detail, from the dialogue to be spoken when the victims were seduced, to how the champagne, eyedrops, and knife were to be used. Al the postcards and Polaroid pictures had been uploaded as JPEG files onto the site. Links and PDFs of the media coverage in each of the countries were also cataloged. It seemed that the press clippings were an important part of the artwork.

  "But none of the so-called graduates have actual y passed the exam,"

  Jacob said, aware of how hoarse his voice sounded. "The amateurs always messed up the murders somehow. Sometimes there was no symbolism in their choice of postcard. Or they didn't manage to imitate famous works of art with their Polaroids."

  No one responded; they just listened to the American now.

  "It isn't easy to kil, no matter how motivated or focused you are," Jacob said in a low voice. "The others have al panicked and lost their grip on the situation."

  "Athens, Salzburg, and Copenhagen were probably carried out by different members of the group," Sara Hoglund confirmed. "The police in each country are tracing the IP addresses of computers that accessed the site. We'l 163 have located them by this evening."

  Mats Duval stood up, holding his electronic gadget. "The perpetrator in Copenhagen has just been identified," he said. "He's a repeat sex offender. His DNA was on file."

  "He's a member," Dessie said softly. "His user ID is Batman. "

  "How do you know that?" Gabriel a asked.

  "He graduated on Sunday," she said. "They had a ceremony on line."

  Chapter 122

  The meeting broke up and the members of the investigating team went back to their respective rooms. Everyone was excited about the new leads but also shocked about the Rudolphs being on the loose.

  Jacob and Dessie ended up sitting beside the coffee machine in the unofficial staff room on the fourth floor. On the table in front of them was a map of northern Europe.

  "They never go back to where a murder was committed," Jacob said.

  "They keep moving on to new places, new countries."

  Dessie ran her hand over the map.

  "So we can probably discount Denmark, Norway, and Germany," she said.

  "They know things are heating up," Jacob said. "They'l want to lie low for a while now. So they'l avoid any transport that involves passenger lists.

  They won't pay with credit cards or anything that means they have to provide ID. So where the hel are they going, and how?"

  Dessie put both hands over the Stockholm district on the map.

  "They're pretty much broke," she said, "and they're on the run."

  "So?" Jacob said.

  "They'l steal a car," Dessie said. "If you're right, they're heading for Finland."

  Jacob looked at the map, his finger landing on the Baltic Sea.

  "Why not a boat? It's only a couple of inches to the Baltic states."

  "In this country we guard our leisure craft like they were gold reserves.

  It's much easier to steal a car. Then they'l have to get up to Haparanda."

  She indicated a point on the map where the two countries met. "That's over a thousand kilometers from here."

  "So they're behaving like petty criminals again," Jacob said.

  "There are no motorways north of Uppsala. The E-four isn't bad, but there are speed cameras the whole way. They'l have to drive up inland, past Ockelbo, Bol nas, Ljusdal, Ange…"

  Jacob fol owed her finger as it moved along the narrow, winding roads 164 leading up the oblong country.

  "Your home territory," he said. "When wil they get to the border? How long?"

  Dessie bit her lip.

  "They'l have to stick to the speed limit – they can't risk getting stopped for speeding. And there's a lot of wildlife out on those roads. Elk, deer, maybe reindeer farther north…"

  "Are there self-serve gas pumps where they can pay cash to refuel without being seen?"

  "They're everywhere," Dessie said.

&nb
sp; Jacob ran his hands through his hair.

  "We've got to check al cars stolen in Stockholm this morning, and any that are stolen in the north of Sweden over the next few hours."

  He put his index finger on the map and screwed his eyes shut. Postcard Kil ers, he thought, where the hel are you?

  Chapter 123

  The stolen mercedes WAS speeding over a bridge with glittering bright blue water on both sides.

  Smal, wooded islands strewn with light gray rocks rose on the left and right.

  "Do I turn off up here?" Mac asked, leaning in toward the windshield.

  "What do you think?"

  Sylvia looked down at the road atlas and started to feel sick. She always got carsick when she tried to read on a car trip.

  "Left onto the two-seven-two," she said grouchily. "Somewhere on the other side of this lake."

  She fixed her eyes on the horizon, the point where the road disappeared in the distance, just as her mother had taught her.

  Mac slowed down.

  "There's no need to be so miserable about it," he said. "This was your idea, after al. I'm doing the best I can."

  She swal owed and glanced at him, leaning close and giving him a quick kiss on the ear.

  "Sorry, darling," she cooed. "You're driving bril iantly."

  She ran her hand lazily along the dashboard. There was no longer any 165 reason to hide their fingerprints or DNA. On the contrary, it was time to let the world know their message.

  Soon they would be able to sit back and enjoy what they had achieved.

  Mac braked, signaled, and turned off to the left. They drove past fields with sheep and cattle, past thick groves of trees.

  "It's kind of beautiful in its own way, don't you think?" Sylvia said, putting the atlas away. She wasn't planning to look at it again. They were almost there now.

  Mac didn't answer.

  The landscape opened up around them as they drove through a smal town. To the left were a few houses, to the right a farm. They passed a row of what was once laborers' housing, a school, and an apartment block. Then they were out the other side. So much for civilization on this road trip.