Postcard killers

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 cel phone was stil in her hand.

Malcolm Rudolph was standing some ten feet away, looking bewildered and lost.

Jacob stood stil, his weapon raised.

Al 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 kil er.

It was the sister, Sylvia. La senorita. The girl who found her parents dead in their beds, or who had kil ed them with her own hands. Why, though? For the sake of art?

"Do as I say," Sylvia said, "or I'l cut her throat! She'l die right here."

Her voice was becoming less control ed, 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 kil ed his Kimmy, holding a knife to Dessie's throat. Another knife but the same kil er.

Suddenly he felt his pulse relax.

"Put the gun down!" Sylvia roared. "I'l cut her throat! Put it down! You 182 want her to die?"

So much for al 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 cel and screamed. She screamed and screamed. Oh god, no, he'd missed!

Dessie must have moved at the last second.

What had he done?