"Is there any Austrian work of art that looks like this?" Dessie asked.
"Famous art?"
The reporter took her time replying.
"I don't think so," she said, "but I'm no expert. Famous art, though? I real y don't think so."
Dessie clicked open the PDF of the envelope and looked at the address. It was written in the same block letters as the others. But on the back was something she hadn't seen before: nine numbers, hastily written down.
"That number on the back," Dessie said, "what does that mean?"
"It's a phone number," Charlotta Bruckmoser said. "I tried cal ing it. It's for a pizzeria in Vienna. The police decided it had nothing to do with the case."
At that moment Dessie's inbox pinged again. She felt her stomach lurch.
It's Jacob, ran the thought going through her head. He's e-mailed me because he misses me.
It was from Gabriel a.
Tried to cal you. Another double murder in Oslo.
"I've got to go," Dessie said and hung up on Charlotta Bruckmoser.
Chapter 108
Los Angeles,
USA
UCLA was as big as a decent-size town in California. More than thirty thousand students, some two hundred buildings, more than fifty thousand applicants to be freshmen every year.
Jacob had punched Charles E. Young Drive into the GPS, an address that was supposed to be in the university's northern campus, where the School of the Arts and Architecture was based.
His contact, Nicky Everett, was waiting for him outside room 140, on the first floor of the building. The young man was wearing chinos, a golfing shirt, boat shoes, and frameless glasses. Jacob had never met anyone studying for a PhD in conceptual art, but he'd been expecting something more bearded and absentminded.
"Thanks for taking the time to see me," Jacob said.
"I believe in art that communicates," Nicky Everett said seriously, looking at him through the sparkling clean lenses.
"Er…," Jacob said, "you knew Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph?"
"I wouldn't use the past tense," Everett said. "Even if we no longer have a physical relationship, there are other forms of contact, correct?"
Jacob nodded. Okay.
"Could we sit down outside perhaps?" he said, gesturing toward some benches just outside the main entrance.
They went out and sat in the shade of a few spindly trees.
"If I've understood this right, you studied here at the same time as the Rudolph twins – until they left – correct?"
"Absolutely," Everett said. "Sylvia and Mac were leaders in their field."
"Which was?"
"Let me quote Sol LeWitt: 'In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.'"
Jacob made an effort to understand, and also to keep his emotions in check. "So an event, or a series of events, can be a work of art?" he asked.
"Of course. Both Mac and Sylvia were determined to take their work to its ultimate limits."
Jacob remembered Dessie's stories of the art student who faked a psychotic attack for her examination piece, and the guy who smashed up a car on the subway and cal ed his artwork Territorial Pissing. He described these cases to Everett.
"Could the Rudolphs ever do anything like that?"
Nicky Everett pressed his glasses firmly onto his nose. "The Rudolphs were more meticulous in their expression. That al sounds rather superficial.
'Territorial Pissing'?"
Jacob ran his fingers through his hair. "So," he said, "explain it to me: 144 how can that be art? I want to hear this and understand it as best I can."
The student looked at him with complete indifference in his face.
"You think a work of art should be hung on a wal and sold on the commercial market?"
Jacob realized the futility of going any further down this road and changed the subject. "They started an art group, the Society of Limitless Art…"
"It was more of a web project. I don't think anything ever came of it."
"What was their social life like otherwise? Family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends."
Nicky Everett seemed not to understand, as though the very idea that he might possess such insignificant facts was completely ridiculous.
"Do you know if they were upset when their guardian died here in L.A.?"
"Their what?"
Jacob gave up.
"Okay, I think we're good," he said, standing up. "It's a shame the Rudolphs couldn't afford to stay on here. Imagine al the incredible art they could have created…"
He turned to go back to his car.
Nicky Everett had also stood up, and for the first time, a genuine expression showed on his face. "'Couldn't afford to stay on here'? Sylvia and Mac were exceptional talents. They both had scholarships. There was no problem with fees."
Jacob stopped short.
"No problem? So why did they leave, then?"
Everett blinked a few times, a sure sign that he was agitated.
"They created the work Taboo and were expel ed. They showed up the bourgeois limitations and the hypocrisy of our society, and of this institution, of course."
Jacob stared at the student.
"What did they do? What was Taboo? What was it that got them expel ed?"
Nicky Everett's mouth curved into a smile.
"They committed an act that was entirely relevant within the frame of their art. They had intercourse in a case in the exhibition hal."
Chapter 109
Jacob sat in the car with the GPS switched off and his duffel bag beside him on the passenger seat. The more he found out about the Rudolphs' background, the weirder they became. Taboo went way beyond Territorial Pissing.
If he started with this latest piece of information, the signals he had picked up on from the recording at the Museum of Modern Art had been correct. The siblings had an erotic relationship. It was possible that people had different preferences within the world of conceptual art, but in Jacob's reality, you didn't have intercourse with your twin in public, not unless you had a whole toolbox ful of loose screws.
The long trail of slashed throats they had left behind them couldn't be a coincidence either. The question was, What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Had Sylvia discovered her murdered parents and been traumatized for life? Was she trying to get over the experience by repeating it, again and again, in the form of macabre works of art? Or was she the one who had kil ed her mother and father at the age of thirteen? Was that even physical y possible?
Would she have had the strength to do it? The neck was tough. It was ful of muscles, sinews, and ligaments. But above al, why would she have kil ed her parents?
He took it for granted that the twins had murdered the guardian who had embezzled the whole of their inheritance.
And who was Sandra Schulman, the friend mentioned by the gardener?
He would have to track her down, too. And the boyfriend, Wil iam Hamilton.
For some reason he suddenly saw Dessie Larsson before him, her long hair and graceful profile, her slender fingers, her vigilant green eyes.
Had the mob of journalists final y given up waiting outside Dessie's door?
Had she gone back to her old routine?
Was she thinking of him? Was she al right?
Irritated, he shrugged off the thought. He had more work to do in L.A.
Chapter 110
William Hamilton,or Billy as his friends cal ed him, opened the door with his long, dirty blond hair standing on end and wearing nothing but a pink bath towel.
"What?" he said abruptly, blinking in the dim light from the stairwel.
"What now?"
"Police," Jacob Kanon said, holding up his badge, obscuring the NYPD.
"Can I come in? Of course I can."
"Shit," Bil y said, frowning, but letting the door swing open.