The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [22]
Who knew if it would ever get finished?
She sighed. She was actually extremely interested in her research subject, so she didn’t know why she never got it done. She had already spent several years of academic life on it, studying minor criminals and their thought processes, patterns of behavior, and motives.
She had grown up among petty thieves on a farm out in the forests of Norrland in the north of Sweden.
The great majority of her family hadn’t done an honest day’s work in the whole of their miserable lives.
She scrolled up and down the text, reading sentences and whole paragraphs at random.
Maybe she could get going on it again, finish it, and finally get her degree.
Why on earth did she find it so difficult?
Everything she did ended up half done, no matter whether it was work or relationships.
She switched off the computer and went back into the kitchen.
The perfect partner didn’t exist, she knew that much, and, god knows, her knowledge was based on extensive research. The idea of finding your other half was a myth and a lie. You had to compromise, make allowances, be tolerant.
Gabriella was a great girl, beautiful and sexy and seriously in love with her.
There had been nothing wrong with Christer either. If he hadn’t asked for a divorce, she’d probably still be married to him.
She drank another glass of water and looked at the clock on the wall. 1:43.
Why had she told the American she’d been on a date? Why had she mentioned Bergman’s name? Was it that she wanted Jacob Kanon to know that she dated men as well? Why would she want him to know that?
She put the glass down on the draining board and realized that she was quite hungry. All she had eaten were those damn mashed potatoes!
Chapter 30
THE POET HAD GONE BACK to Finland, leaving Jacob alone in his cell.
There was no space for a chair or table in the narrow room, so he had settled down on the Finn’s abandoned lower bunk. He had put his pistol and the framed photograph of Kimmy on the deeply recessed windowsill. He’d bought the gun in Rome with the help of an old cop friend who had retired to Italy.
He leaned forward and ran his finger along his daughter’s smiling cheek.
This was the picture he had given the press after she died, taken the day she’d been accepted at Juilliard.
Jacob got up, went over to his duffel bag, and opened a bottle of wine. He stood with the bottle in his hand, staring out at the light summer night.
There was a small beach under his window. A few alcohol-fueled youngsters wearing mortarboards were noisily soaking one another without taking their clothes off.
He let his eyes roam over the dark water.
Kimmy didn’t like swimming.
All the other kids on the block loved going down to Brighton Beach, but Kimmy never learned to swim well. Instead she preferred the big forest parks on Staten Island, or up in Westchester or Putnam County, with their teeming wildlife, especially deer.
There was only one thing she loved more than her graceful deer, and that was his aunt Isabelle’s piano. Kimmy would go and play on it after school every afternoon, and every day in the summer. She was gifted, so Jacob paid for lessons with the best teacher available in Brooklyn.
But that afternoon a couple of years ago when she told him she’d applied to Juilliard, the most famous college in the world for music, drama, and dance, he’d felt almost terrified. He’d never heard of anyone from Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge area even getting close to being accepted there. He’d checked: only five percent of all applicants got in.
But Kimmy was special. She specialized in Franz Liszt, one of the most technically demanding composers in the world, and she had chosen his suggestive piano concerto Totentanz no.1 as her audition piece.
He had been so proud that he’d burst into tears when the acceptance letter came — and back in those days, he hardly ever cried. Not like the present.
Kimmy had met Steven on her very first day at Juilliard,