Several sharp-eyed bystanders spot the emblem on the hooded sniper’s chest—a cross overlapping a circle, gleaming white as bone against the background black…
He snaps out the expended magazine. Pockets it. Slaps in a fresh 50 rounds. Thumbs the selector switch from “burst” to “auto,” & aligns the crosshairs…
Traffic backs up behind the devastation of smashed cars & stalled-out school bus.
The pneumatic doors whoooosh, folding open, letting loose a panicked crowd of kiddies, tumbling over one another, head over heels, trampling each other as they come bouncing off the bus…
A dozen. Two dozen. Blubbering brats milling like ants evacuating a flaming lighter-fluid-doused hill & tunnel complex. In his sights. Three dozen. More piling out every second. Those who can still walk…
Bystanders running everywhichway, waving their arms, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” like a mad mantra of horror… BACK! GET BACK! TAKE COVER!… DOWN!…” Some trying to reach the kids & protect them. Most just standing slack-jawed, too numb to move or try to help…
& the gunman triggers off, laughing as his next barrage rips through school clothes & soft babyflesh, shattering bones, mowing the helpless kiddies down like wooden cutouts in a midway duckshoot…
Until the pavement is awash with the blood of innocents…
Disappearing into the cover of the Forest Preserve when he sees his work is done…
[ 273 ]
Later, the reports flood in.
A couple of folks with CB radios call 911 in the first few minutes, bringing a sweep of howling prowl cars down Archer Avenue & a SWAT team dropped into the woods by helicopter.
A silver Stingray was noticed nearby the scene of the sniping, pulled off among the trees along 95th Street, “in a suspicious manner.”
One lucky motorist even notes the plates as it drives off, “heading east toward Hickory Hills.”
DMV makes it as a match with the plates on Hawkes’ Vette, confirming the motorist’s pre-news-update hunch that it “belonged to that guy that killed those cops the other day…”
Another informant warns “the car was heading north, up Willow Springs Road…”
Half an hour after the shooting, a caller to the Downers Grove PD says, “I WANT TO REPORT A MURDER. A MASS MURDER. A SNIPER JUST KILLED A BUSLOAD OF KIDDIES. THE WEAPON WAS A 4.7-MM. IT HAPPENED DOWN ON ARCHER. OR SHOULD I SAY, ‘SAGITTARIUS,’ THE LATIN TERM. AFTER ALL, THIS IS THE ZODIAC SPEAKING. BEWARE. I HAVE RETURNED AMONG YOU TO FULFILL MY DIREST THREATS…”
The call is traced to a phone booth at O’Hare Airport, less than 12 miles to the north of the shootings.
[ 274 ]
Frank is just slipping on his coat, ready to ring up Hal Meyers & arrange a clean “meet,” when the APB comes in on his portable scanner. It’s an early bulletin, calling for backup, including a SWAT team, to investigate a school bus sniping with numerous fatalities. The short hairs bristle on the back of his neck. When he hears the locale mentioned as “near Willow Springs on Archer,” an aerial view from a roadmap vantage flashes in his mind. The proximity of jurisdictional boundaries & nearby river & canal. & the place names, Hell yes, the place names… Frank looks down at his trembling hands, feels the gooseflesh rising on his arms & scalp. This is Zodiac’s October 31, 1969 threat made real…
He flicks on the TV, & watches for a newsbreak while the scanner crackles in the background.
Soon, the station interrupts regular programming for an eye in the sky broadcast panning in on the scene of slaughter…
Someone from Downers Grove PD must be suffering from a greasy palm, slipping a hot lead to the local media—
“A CALLER, IDENTIFYING HIMSELF AS ‘ZODIAC’—THE SAME NAME USED BY THE INFAMOUS SAN FRANCISCO-AREA SERIAL KILLER DURING HIS REIGN OF TERROR MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS AGO—HAS LAID CLAIM TO PERPETRATING THIS TERRIBLE TRAGEDY … “
Again, he can hear the buzzing of the flies, the screams & whispers of the war dead breaking through from Devil’s Valley.
“Fuck this shit!” Frank snarls to himself, “I’m not about to end up on the sidelines sitting this one out, tied up in some courtroom battle with the shysters doin’ a long, slow verbal arm-wrassle for months on end, while there’s the slightest chance Zodiac may really be behind all this…
“After all, this is where the fax came from with my name crossed out by His goddamned crosshairs signature.”
Frank stares down at his Rolex: 10:48…
Holy shit! Three hours fugued through while glued to the boob tube, listening to calls on the sguawkbox drifting in & out on subconscious wavelengths as he stares enraptured at the media carnival, flicking station to station in a montage of Hellish images of devastation burning themselves into his retinas & down down into his brain’s seething, molten core…
He grabs his bags & heads for the Vette. Living out his chosen role of Lone Gun upon the stretch of Endless Highway, knowing the black mask of the mysterious Outlaw Man hides the face of the Last Ranger, closing fast on the Final Showdown…
[ 275 ]
ZODIAC RETURNS TO CARRY OUT HIS THREATS IN CHILD-SLAYING TRAGEDY?, in one form or another, is front-page headlines from coast to coast.
John Walsh, celebrated Pro-Child/Anti-Crime advocate & spokesman, host of America’s Most Wanted, is flown in to Chicago with the program’s crew to film a special, hour-long segment, scheduled to air next Saturday night on the Fox Network.
& Robert Stack, of Untouchables fame, & Virginia Madsen fly out to San Francisco, then back to the stomping grounds of Eliot Ness to film the Friday special edition of Unsolved Mysteries, expanding upon his earlier coverage, several years ago, detailing the history of the notorious Zodiac case…
[ 276 ]
Three separate letters arrive at the mailrooms of the targeted newspapers—
The Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Sun-Times
The Daily Calumet
—early on the morning of October 13th.
All spotted quickly among the flood of incoming postage by wary mailroom staff alerted by CPD advisory bulletins warning of the need for utmost priority in processing any envelopes or packages received bearing the established “signatures” of the Zodiac from his barrage of taunting missives to San Fran area dailies during his early “reign of terror,” in ’69 & early ’70, & the scattered collection of altered greeting cards & postcards & letters that trickled in up until the very last in late April of ’78.
All indeed bearing the doubled postage & the words “PLEASE RUSH TO EDITOR” or simply “RUSH TO EDITOR” scrawled across them.
All are routed directly to the special Zodiac Task Force set up in the wake of the school bus slaying.
In this age of sophisticated, lethal letterbombs, cooperation is 100 percent by the editors of the respective papers. None wish to make their personal splash on the headlines.
Each envelope is carefully placed in a “containment canister,” & held for fluoroscopic examination by Bomb Squad specialists before opening. The envelopes are immediately forwarded to SSD for analysis, the letters photographed (not photocopied, lest some minute bit of evidence be lost or damaged in the process). The copies are sent to ZTF members for evaluation. The originals are rushed to SSD for hair & fiber inspection, then lasered for latents, & sprayed with Ninhydrin in the hopes of turning usable prints. Nothing. Not that they expected any. Zodiac was always scrupulous.
The text of the letters reads:
This is the Zodiac speaking
I have ben quiet for quite some time now.
Bet you pigs thougt I had retired? No way. Kiling peopple is simply too muuch fun. Guess you blue meannies thought I would never carrie off my promise re using a San Fran scholl. buss for target pracktice. So, sue me, The Lord High Executioner moved east too Lake Micchigan. The Yellow Submarine just sank. It was postively ventalated. Unless you wish Me to prove My bomb thret of anilating more kiddies is no less valid, then you hadd better see the following ciper appears o
n today’s front pge. I have three death machines alredy in plase. Wht a blast! No bluff ing. Remember. All it takes is a bag of ammonium nitrate fertlizer & 1 gal of gas stove oil & a few bags of gravvel & perhapps some roofing tacks. San Fran pigs have seen My diaghran & know I can do My Thing!!!!!!
SFPD - 0
Guess??? -
PS. you shall never NAIL Me: I am to smart for you! Bee shure the television news is also alerted ore the results could be DISASSTROUS!!! I become very nervis if I get lonly! My triger finger gets itchy. & I shall detonat a bomb for each unpublshd cipher!
PPS. BEWARE! each letter & cipher MUST be run in its entirety for 3 consecutiv dayz to avoid My retribution!!!!!!
««—»»
Underneath is a series of apparently random letters interspersed with occult symbols. The body of each uncoded message is the same, save for a number of misspellings that each is rife with (suggested but not duplicated above)—some extra letters added “unnecessarily,” some “unintentionally” omitted.
But each of the coded messages is different. The Tribune’s consists of 39 letters & no occult symbols. The Sun Times’ includes 15 symbols & 35 letters. The Daily Calumet’s has four symbols & 41 letters.
Each of the letters also includes a grisly memento to assure the messages are taken seriously, a reminder of Zodiac’s love for puns & wordplay—a bloody human fingernail, obviously ripped loose, with plier-marks visible upon microscopic examination. SSD is able to identify them as belonging to a WMA of approximately 40 to 45 years, an office worker or the like, not engaged in manual labor, who indulged himself in professional manicures. The blood type is O RH Negative, the same as the victim of Zodiac’s 1969 cabbie slaying (now a matter of public record, so not absolutely conclusive of “insider” knowledge only available to the actual killer & SFPD staff…).
An urgent request to SFPD for copies of the original Zodiac letters has to be forwarded along to Sacramento & the State Department of Justice who have taken over most of the investigating officers’ files. There is a slight delay as Records clerks hurriedly sort through the now-disordered remains of what once was immaculately cross-referenced data.
Half an hour later, CPD receives the faxed copies. Handwriting experts identify them as “consistent with the samples, matching on nearly every major point of authentication, considering a degree of variation in keeping with a timespan of over three decades…”
Police psychologists & psycholinguists with the FBI all concur that “the phrasing & tone indeed appear consistent with known semantic & thematic choices by the San Francisco-area serial killer known as ‘Zodiac.’” “The chances that this is the work of a typical ‘copycat’ killer or a ‘crank writer’ in our estimation are very slight.” “There is a clear & present danger that, should his demands not be met, further violence, as threatened, will ensue as a result.”
They also agree with detectives that the enclosed fingernails display the same grim sense of humor, the “paranoid wordplay,” associated with Zodiac’s greeting card missives to SFPD via area newspapers. The capitalized word “NAIL” in the text of the postscript is obvious. But additional associations suggest themselves: the writer, assumedly Zodiac, is giving them the exact opposite of the fingerprints they no doubt searched feverishly for, & the only believed existing evidence of Zodiac’s fingerprints are the right-middle & ringfinger partials in blood lifted from the vehicle in the ’69 cabbie slaying. The writer appears to be functioning in a “methodical & well-ordered” manner, despite what appear to be “paranoid-delusionary power references that betray severe megalomania & clear evidence of magickal thinking.” Cited is his care in avoiding the chance of Post Office delays by using local children or teenagers as couriers, leaving the envelopes in night letterslots or with receptionists. Strangely, they fail to mention the fact that all three couriers have since vanished, leaving police with no firsthand witnesses to who employed them…
[ 277 ]
Truman Gilmore once more drifts up out of the beckoning black rift of unconsciousness & the raging sea of nightmares that separates the Now-Sweet Promise of Death from the Reality of Pain & Horror. & a fevered fragment from Revelations whispers over & over in his mind—
& in those days shall men seek Death, & shall not find it; shall desire to die, & Death shall flee from them…
Truman tries to conjure the image of his beloved Bertha’s face & to hear the soothing of her soft, steady voice as a comforting talisman against his excruciating pain & the waking nightmares that will beset him. But his wife’s face is only a blank blur. Instead, he sees & hears only the twisted, mindless face of the Nameless Child, echoing her no-longer human shrieks through the passageways of the subterranean tunnel complex, hanging suspended by her chained wrists from the ceiling beams as, with sadistic glee, Snuff & Julie & Mal smash the delicate bones of her hands & feet, her elbows & her kneecaps, both arms & legs, her ribs & pelvis. Each of the 206 bones of her skeleton slowly, systematically demolished with a wide variety of hammers—tackhammers & ball peens & claws & blacksmith’s & sledges. & in between! merciful Jesus, in between!… The chains rattle as they lower her & throw her on the other mattress, & Mal forces him to watch… …& Mal masturbates onto her crushed & battered body, dreaming His waking dreams of the Gilles de Rais & remembering His pastlife infamies… & the girl, Juliette, fondles & fellates Truman, & they laugh as they make him touch the Broken One & do things to her, or else they jab his shattered kneecaps with the tips of icepicks. & last among the 206 are the bones of her skull…
Whether it was days or weeks or hours that she suffered, the Bible salesman does not know. It is all one eternal Hell of screams & suffering & then, finally, they take her away… & he hears them laughing as they drag her body out—still living, if but barely—hears them joking about how they’ll dispose of her: like all the others down the outhouse sump, as Snuff giggles, “asses to asses & dump to dump…” & Julie says, “Ding dong Hell, pussy’s down the well…” & then Mal says, “a little white lye or two would hardly hurt her now, just a bag or two to help speed decomposition…” & something about how He showed that trick to the narcosatanistas down in Mexico a few years back, & how He helped to “raise the consciousness” of the mayomberos of the Palo path, weaning them to His own fusion of the darker secrets of Abakua & a “revival of the ancient Aztec rites…” reminding them that Elegua, The Master of the Paths, shadowside mask of Santerian St. Peter, had tired of the chicken blood & talcum powder offered at the doors & crossroads & would grant Power to those who wielded the human shinbone & wore the crown of ceiba leaves & who stirred the nganga cauldron fed with the “most potent” living sacrifice, & how Shango’s favor could be coaxed if the “Goat Without Horns” is practiced as proscribed by rite…
But Mal’s references are beyond his limited ken of understanding, & all he senses is the Evil the presence of the Great Night unfolding to suck down his soul & trap it in Hell’s Circle…
&, as he awakens, as he lies in a nightmare world halfway between the World of Death & the World of the Living, Truman mumbles broken phrases from the Twenty-Second Psalm—
“But Thou art He that took me out of the womb—
& all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels—
the Assembly of the Wicked have inclosed me—
they have pierced my hands & my feet—
I may tell all my bones; they look & stare upon me—”
His naked body is lying on the filthy, blood-stained mattress in the damp cellar beneath Mal’s Iowa farmhouse hideout.
But his spirit watches down upon his flesh, sees the cracked & yellowed chamberpot of water that they bring him to slake his thirst & the plate of disgusting hogslop that tastes of organ meat, & he wants to puke instead of eating it but his hunger is too great & he eats & vomits at its foulness & then he eats again for the urging of his body’s hunger is far far stronger than his mind & soul’s revulsion…
& he
sees the red, festering swelling around his ravaged kneecaps & he sees the slow blackening as necrotic tissues rot away within the twin wounds, & he can smell the stink…
& then Mal comes creaking down the wooden staircase, & He’s cursing about “some son of a bitch copycat imposter that used My name in vain & the fucker is going to die slow as I swallow his pathetic soul,” & how “the fucking television showed the school bus bloodbath & the cretin could not even get the date right…if he was going to do it he should have done it on either the 13th, the date of My threat to do My thing with a school busload of slaughtered kiddies, or, at the very least, the 11th, the date of the cabbie killing…”
& he sees the hacksaw Mal holds in His hand as He stands above him, & the Medic of Mutilations says to His assistants: “Looks like contamination of the wounds. Alas, with all of our fiddling & farting around with that little gash, it seems My ‘field treatment’ of Bible Boy was insufficient. The bits of shattered bone & shredded flesh, & necrosis has set in, &, of course, I failed to remove the remnants of the slugs, & My diagnosis is severe gangrene infection of them both—
“I. Fear. The. Legs. Shall. Have. To. Come. Off…”
[ 278 ]
The furor on the nightly news alerts Maldoror to the recent developments by this newest daring copycat who has stolen His glory & used the sacred name of “Zodiac” in vain.
Duet for the Devil Page 45