Postcard killers

Chapter 49

Dessie was holding up the color reproduction of Dardel's masterpiece in one hand and the photograph from Dalaro in the other.

Her hunch had to be right. Jeez, she was better at this than the police!

Gabriel a's desk was covered with Jacob's postcards and the photographs of the bodies. Beside them were pictures Dessie had printed from the Internet.

Gabriel a looked at the pictures one by one, her eyes opening wider and wider.

"God," she said, picking up the picture of the murdered Germans, "you're right, Dessie."

"Sorry," said Jacob, "but what are you talking about?"

Dessie looked at his unruly mop of hair. He looked like he'd been quite literal y tearing it out. Suddenly she felt so sorry for him, for his pain, his terrible loss.

"The kil ers arrange the bodies to imitate famous works of art," she said.

"Look at this one, Jacob."

Dessie picked up the photograph from Paris. Emily and Clive Spencer's bodies were sitting side by side in bed, both with their right hand over the left resting on their stomachs.

"The Mona Lisa," she said, putting a copy of da Vinci's masterpiece alongside the photograph.

Jacob clumsily grabbed the pictures, crumpling them slightly.

The mysteriously smiling woman on the painting was holding her right hand over her left and resting both on her stomach.

"Christ," he said final y, "you're right. That's what they've been doing."

"Karen and Bil y Cowley," Dessie said.

She put down the picture of the couple murdered in Berlin, showing them in profile, the side with their uninjured eye looking toward the camera.

Beside it she laid a printout of an Egyptian statue.

"The bust of Nefertiti, probably the most imitated work of art from Ancient Egypt. It's in the Neues Museum in Berlin. The kil ers saw it there, I guarantee you."

Gabriel a leaned forward. Her face was flushed, two red marks glowing on her cheeks. Dessie glanced at her. They had been there, too, to the Neues Museum, on their first trip away together.

Jacob picked up the picture and studied it intently.

"What do you mean?" he asked Dessie. "What do their gouged-out left eyes have to do with it?"

"The bust of Nefertiti is missing its left eye," Gabriel a said. "Everyone knows that."