The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [19]
She went over to her desk, got out her laptop and camera, and downloaded the pictures she had taken of the yellow house in the archipelago, then sent them to the picture desk. She wrote down all the facts about the case and the killers that could be used as a basis by some other reporter.
“How was it out there?” Forsberg asked, suddenly materializing beside her desk.
“Terrible,” Dessie said, typing on her laptop. “Worse than I could ever have imagined.”
“Is it the same killers?”
“Looks like it,” she said, turning the computer so the news editor could read her background material.
He started skimming her copy. “Eyedrops?” Forsberg said.
“There were several previous cases in Sweden where women were drugged with eyedrops in their drinks. In Mexico City the drops are used by prostitutes to knock out their clients. At least five men have died there, probably more.”
“From eyedrops in their drinks?” Forsberg said doubtfully. “Sounds like the stuff of mystery novels.”
Dessie let go of the keyboard and looked up at him.
“Some girls put the drops directly on their nipples.”
Forsberg shuffled his feet and dropped the subject. She always won with him — if she needed to.
“How much of this can we publish?”
“Hardly anything,” Dessie said, going back to her computer. “The police want to suppress the information about the drugs, champagne, and other stuff they found at the crime scene. We can give the cause of death, though, and information about the victims. Their families were told at lunchtime.”
Forsberg sat down on the edge of her desk. He liked Dessie but was thoroughly confused because of her fling with Gabriella. Everyone was.
“The victims?”
Dessie stared at her screen, at the bare facts she had put together about the dead couple.
“Claudia Schmidt, twenty years old. Engaged to Rolf Hetger, twenty-three, both from Hamburg. Arrived in Stockholm on Tuesday, renting the house on Dalarö through an agency on the Internet. Rented a car at the airport, a Ford Focus. Car missing.
“They probably met their killers somewhere in town and invited them home,” Dessie said. “We’re getting photographs from Die Zeit. You’ll have everything in two to three minutes.”
“What are your sources? I need those as well, Dessie.”
She looked at him coolly.
“Confidential,” she said. “What are we going to do with the information about the postcard and the picture of the bodies?”
Forsberg stood up.
“The police have us on a short leash, so we still can’t use it. Did you take pictures of the house?”
“Of course. Just as backup. They’re with the picture desk. So sick.”
She held up the copy of the postcard of the Stock Exchange.
“Do you know what the American cop calls them? ‘Postcard Killers.’”
“Cool headline,” Forsberg said. “Almost even lines.”
Dessie looked at her watch.
“The last mail has just arrived. If there’s nothing there, I’m going to go.”
“A date?” Forsberg teased.
“Actually, yes,” Dessie said, “and I’m already late.”
Chapter 26
SHE REALLY HAD BEEN ASKED out, something that wasn’t exactly commonplace. In a way she had been looking forward to this evening: someone actually wanting to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant with candles and white napkins.
Right now, though, she would have given anything to get out of going.
Several weeks ago she had been contacted by Hugo Bergman, a successful crime writer and columnist, who needed help with the credibility of one of his characters: an incorrigible petty thief who had ended up the victim of a global conspiracy. As partial thanks for her work, he had offered to take her out to dinner.
Flattered, she had said yes. Hugo Bergman was famous, rich, and fairly good-looking. Also, he’d invited her to the Opera Cellar, one of the fanciest eateries in town.
She parked her bike outside the entrance, the smell of the corpses from Dalarö still in her nostrils. She took off her helmet, let her long hair down, and went in.
In her