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

Chapter 94

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.

Chapter 95

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.

The air outside the terminal building was thick with exhaust fumes. He stood for a moment looking at his surroundings from the parking lot outside the rental-car office. It was such a familiar scene: the sea of private cars spreading out around him, the advertising bil boards, the voices, the sound of traffic in the streets.

The U.S. was just as he remembered it, just a bit more… unsubtle.

He rented a Chrysler with GPS. He didn't know his way around L.A. and had no desire to learn right now, not on this trip.

Programming Citrus Avenue into the wretched machine turned out to be tougher than finding the address on a map, so he gave up and drove north along Sepulveda Boulevard in heavy city traffic. God, the traffic. It was even worse than in New York.

He would never come to grips with Los Angeles, he was thinking to himself.

A sort of romantic shimmer lay over the whole city. Here was Hol ywood and the dream factory and a glamorous life in the sun. For some people, anyway.

Personal y, he could see only the crass advertisements, the elevated freeways, and the endless blocks of ugly single-story vil as.

California wasn't exactly his bag of potato chips.

He ignored the freeways and fol owed Sepulveda for miles, until he reached Santa Monica Boulevard.

He swung off right and drove on until he nearly fel asleep at a streetlight.

He'd been warned that jet lag from Scandinavia was no joke. It sure wasn't.

The time difference was nine hours. Here it was only seven in the evening, but after six months in Europe, his body thought it was four in the morning.

Exactly one day before, he had been lying in a narrow bunk in an old prison cel, feeling more alive than he had since Kimmy died.

He hadn't showered since he left her, and he could stil make out the smel of fruit from her body on his…

He pushed the confusing thought aside and parked the car near a loading bay on Beverly Drive.

Two quick coffees and a parking ticket later, he was more or less ready to go on.

Number 1338 Citrus Avenue was a fairly rundown two-story rental with a flat roof and a walkway, just a few blocks from Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hol ywood Boulevard.

Lyndon Crebbs opened the door before Jacob had time to even ring the bel.

Chapter 96

"You old bastard!" the FBI agent said with feeling, hugging him.

"Come in, for god's sake!"

Jacob stepped into a sparsely furnished room with a deep-pile beige carpet that had seen better decades.

His mentor had aged. His hair was white and his suntanned face was covered in a network of wrinkles. But his eyes were the same, dark brown and crackling with intel igence. And suspicion.

"God, Lyndon, you look like an old man."

The FBI agent laughed hard and closed the door behind him.

"Prostate trouble, Jacob. The cancer's eating me up, slowly but surely."

Jacob let his duffel bag fal to the floor and sank down on a chair at Lyndon's round dining-room table. "So – what have you heard? Anything?"

"I got a message from Jil in New York," Lyndon said, taking out two Budweisers. "They're wondering when you're going to stop running round Europe chasing murderers. They say they've got enough of those in the Thirtysecond and could do with your help. Today, if not sooner."

Jacob laughed so loud and long that the noise almost shocked him.

"Wel," he said, "I'm certainly not planning to settle in this dump of a city."

Lyndon smiled.

"You know what they say: L.A. isn't a cat that jumps into your lap and licks your face. But with a little time and patience, it just might."

And Jacob replied the same way he had for the past twenty years whenever pets were mentioned.