Postcard killers

Chapter 95

Saturday, June 19

Los Angeles, USA

The landing gear hit the ground with a thud at LAX, Los Angeles International Airport.

Jacob was back on American soil for the first time in six months.

This wasn't how he had imagined his return, if he had actual y come back at al. But he'd had to come back. This was where the Rudolphs had lived and created their scheme.

The air outside the terminal building was thick with exhaust fumes. He stood for a moment looking at his surroundings from the parking lot outside the rental-car office. It was such a familiar scene: the sea of private cars spreading out around him, the advertising bil boards, the voices, the sound of traffic in the streets.

The U.S. was just as he remembered it, just a bit more… unsubtle.

He rented a Chrysler with GPS. He didn't know his way around L.A. and had no desire to learn right now, not on this trip.

Programming Citrus Avenue into the wretched machine turned out to be tougher than finding the address on a map, so he gave up and drove north along Sepulveda Boulevard in heavy city traffic. God, the traffic. It was even worse than in New York.

He would never come to grips with Los Angeles, he was thinking to himself.

A sort of romantic shimmer lay over the whole city. Here was Hol ywood and the dream factory and a glamorous life in the sun. For some people, anyway.

Personal y, he could see only the crass advertisements, the elevated freeways, and the endless blocks of ugly single-story vil as.

California wasn't exactly his bag of potato chips.

He ignored the freeways and fol owed Sepulveda for miles, until he reached Santa Monica Boulevard.

He swung off right and drove on until he nearly fel asleep at a streetlight.

He'd been warned that jet lag from Scandinavia was no joke. It sure wasn't.

The time difference was nine hours. Here it was only seven in the evening, but after six months in Europe, his body thought it was four in the morning.

Exactly one day before, he had been lying in a narrow bunk in an old prison cel, feeling more alive than he had since Kimmy died.

He hadn't showered since he left her, and he could stil make out the smel of fruit from her body on his…

He pushed the confusing thought aside and parked the car near a loading bay on Beverly Drive.

Two quick coffees and a parking ticket later, he was more or less ready to go on.

Number 1338 Citrus Avenue was a fairly rundown two-story rental with a flat roof and a walkway, just a few blocks from Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hol ywood Boulevard.

Lyndon Crebbs opened the door before Jacob had time to even ring the bel.