Postcard killers

Epilogue
Chapter 139

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,

USA

The wind carried with it the smel of the sea and also exhaust fumes from Leif Ericson Drive. It made the leaves above his head rustle, the electrical wires sing.

Jacob was sitting on the porch outside his smal house, watching the boys from the neighborhood play basebal on the patch of grass on the other side of the street.

The heat and extreme humidity had final y broken, leaving a hint of autumn behind it.

The sun was no longer high in the sky, and the leafy trees threw deep shadows along the street.

His lung had healed. The pain in his arm was almost gone. The wound had started to itch instead. Sometimes he thought that was worse.

He looked down toward Shore Road.

Stil no taxi.

He pul ed at the shoulder sling in irritation.

Next week he could take it off.

They said he must have had a guardian angel.

The little town on the Arctic Circle where his lung had been punctured and his arm almost sliced off had had no hospital, but there had been a local health center with an emergency room and a Hungarian doctor who specialized in microsurgery. The Hungarian had stitched his muscles and blood vessels together while they emptied the center's supply of blood plasma into his body, and somehow he had survived.

Malcolm Rudolph hadn't been so lucky.

Jacob's wild shot had hit his liver. The kil er bled to death in the helicopter ambulance. Good riddance to him, and his sister, too. Horrifying bastards.

When Jacob woke up and remembered what had happened, he started to prepare himself to face the Swedish judicial system. He assumed that he would get away with the actual shots. After al, Gabriel a had heard the whole sequence of events over Dessie's phone. It was obvious that he had fired only in self-defense.

On the other hand, he would have to explain his weapon, the one he'd purchased in Italy.

The Europeans were very serious about the il egal possession of firearms.

When Mats Duval had visited him in the hospital, Jacob had been expecting to face charges.

But the police superintendent had merely informed him that a preliminary investigation could not be carried out. Al suspicions had been dropped through lack of evidence. That was what happened in cases like this, he had explained curtly.

The Swedes weren't quite as rigid as he had thought.

But his gun was confiscated when he left the country.

Jacob watched as the neighbor's son got a clean hit on the other side of the street. The bal shot off like a missile toward Johnson's Garage (which, natural y, was no longer Johnson's, but belonged to a Polish family, whatever their name was). Jacob held his breath until the bal hit the brick wal, just inches from a window.

Once upon a time he had played basebal on that same patch of grass. He had broken the windows of Johnson's Garage on a couple of occasions. He stil lived in the house where he'd grown up, where his father had grown up, where Kimmy had grown up.

Maybe he could take off the wretched rag around his neck. What was the worst that could happen? His arm was hardly going to fal off, was it?

A taxi came slowly along the street and stopped at the sidewalk below the porch.

Jacob raised his good arm and waved. He even managed to smile.