The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [92]
Jacob stopped the car and looked around wildly.
“Where the hell have they gone? We’ve lost them! They got away!”
“I think they were heading for where the buses park,” Dessie said, pointing. “There. There! That’s Sylvia Rudolph, isn’t it?”
The dark-haired woman opened the door and started to run. She was athletic, fast on her feet.
“No!” Jacob cried, trying to drive after her. An entire family — grandma, mother, four kids, and a dog — blocked his way. Then the driver of the Peugeot suddenly appeared, banging furiously on the windshield. Jacob showed him the pistol, and the man backed away, hands up.
“To hell with this!” Jacob said, throwing the door open and racing toward the buses.
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 killers were moving quickly through the parking lot, getting away. People who saw him running with his pistol drawn screamed and threw themselves out of his way. Someone yelled, “Madman!” at him. That was correct.
Dessie was coming up behind him. She had her cell 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 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 collected.
He spun around, aiming the Glock, ready to kill.
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 spinning. For a moment he imagined it was Kimmy standing there with the knife to her throat. He couldn’t let her die.
“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 cell phone was still in her hand.
Malcolm Rudolph was standing some ten feet away, looking bewildered and lost.
Jacob stood still, his weapon raised.
All 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 killer.
It was the sister, Sylvia. La señorita. The girl who found her parents dead in their beds, or who had killed them with her own hands. Why, though? For the sake of art?
“Do as I say,” Sylvia said, “or I’ll cut her throat! She’ll die right here.”
Her voice was becoming less controlled, 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 killed his Kimmy, holding a knife to Dessie’s throat. Another knife but the same killer.
Suddenly he felt his pulse relax.
“Put the gun down!” Sylvia roared. “I’ll cut her throat! Put it down! You want her to die?”
So much for all 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 cell 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 still screaming. But then Jacob realized it wasn’t her blood after all.
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