Postcard killers

Chapter 30

The poet had gone back to Finland, leaving Jacob alone in his cel.

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 windowsil. 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 Juil iard.

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 smal 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.

Al the other kids on the block loved going down to Brighton Beach, but Kimmy never learned to swim wel. Instead she preferred the big forest parks on Staten Island, or up in Westchester or Putnam County, with their teeming wildlife, especial y deer.

There was only one thing she loved more than her graceful deer, and that was his aunt Isabel e'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 Juil iard, the most famous col ege 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 al applicants got in.

But Kimmy was special. She specialized in Franz Liszt, one of the most technical y 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 Juil iard, a budding classical composer. They got engaged and decided to get married as soon as they graduated.

Steven was a great guy, but Jacob thought they should see something of the world before they settled down.

So he had given them a trip to Rome as a Christmas present. 44 They were murdered the day before they were due to return to New York.

Jacob took a deep breath and found himself back in the narrow cel at the hostel.

The shrieking kids on the beach had vanished.

He sank onto the lower bunk with Kimmy's picture in his lap.

He had identified her dead body in the cold room of a mortuary on the outskirts of Rome on New Year's Day, the first day of what had been the very worst year of his life.

This year.

He picked up his pistol and put the muzzle in his mouth, just as he had done so many nights before, tasting the powder and metal, taking comfort from the idea that there could be an end to this. One slight movement of his finger and his desperate loss and longing would be over.

But not yet. Not until he found her murderers.