We followed him into a dramatic high ceilinged living room two walls of which were glass overlooking the city and the bay. He motioned to a sofa.
We sat. He took a chair from nearby and pulled it closer to us.
“You’re Jeff’s kids?”
We nodded.
“And Lauren’s,” I said. “Remember her?”
A shadow of sad crossed his face, turning his eyes a deeper shade of blue. He nodded, turned his head away to look out at the bay. He stood and walked to the wall of window. Brushing his hand over a life-sized sculpture, he began to speak in a soft monotone.
“I was kidnapped the night Lexi was murdered. Held captive for a matter of weeks. I was drugged and woke up to find myself in Florence.”
“Italy?” Steven asked.
Derek gave him nod, turned back to the window and continued. “I found a note that said if I ever wanted to see my father again to keep my mouth shut and stay away from the police. In the end, I went to the polizia, but my Italian sucked and so did their English. I think they thought I was some crazy American student with a scheme to have some one else pay for a trip back home.”
“How did you get home?” I asked.
Derek studied my face for a few moments as if deciding how much to tell us. Or maybe something about me reminded him of someone else. “I didn’t for years. I went to the American embassy. They also thought I was up to no good, but did eventually help me get a passport. It took several months just to get papers. Meanwhile, I lived and worked at a restaurant washing dishes, sleeping in the basement. I even wrote to the Berkeley PD with no response.”
“What about your father? Couldn’t he help you?”
“I tried to call him, collect of course, but he didn’t accept the charges. I figured at the time that he thought it was a prank call or something. I mean why would he think his son would be calling him from Italy?”
Steven and I nodded our understanding.
“What about your mother?” I asked, realizing I knew next to nothing about this man with whom I, that is Lexi, had shared an intimate moment. And he still awakened my lustful urges.
“She left us many years before this happened, and as far as I know, she’s dead.”
“What about your father? Did he ever come through for you?” Steven asked.
“I wrote him, and my daily routine was to visit the American Express office looking for either a letter or money from him. Never happened.”
“What was his reaction when you turned up again?” Steven asked.
“He died before I got back.”
“Oh . . . sorry,” I said.
Derek shrugged.
“How long were you gone?” I asked.
“Three years.”
“Wow!”
“I met an artist who took me under his wing. He taught me to sculpt. Turned out I liked it. A lot. So I stayed to work with him.”
That explained the unusual sculptures of metal and plaster that lined two walls of the room. I thought I recognized one or two of them as having been exhibited and featured on art book covers. Looking at the house, I’d guess sculpture worked out well.
“I finally came back to the Bay Area to find my father. I intended to confront him, to find out why he didn’t respond to my letters. But he’d died in a car accident three months earlier.”
“So you never found out why he didn’t answer your letters?”
“Well. Yeah, I did. Sorta.”
We waited.
“I found my letters in his safe when I had a locksmith open it.”
“But why didn’t he answer them?” Steven asked.
“Why lock them up?” I asked.
“It was the other items I found in the safe that gave me the answer.” He stood. “Here, come with me, I’ll show you.” We followed him up floating curved staircase to a duplicate window walled room above the living room. He walked to a large writing table and opened a drawer. He pulled out a wooden box and set it on the table.
Inside the box were locks of hair of many different colors, blonde, brunette, auburn, platinum, light brown, strawberry blonde, some quite faded. At the bottom of the hair and a few aged pieces of paper, was a black hood with two holes cut out for eyes.
I sucked in a deep breath and held a hand to my head. I stared at the contents before I spoke. “Your father . . . was the Zodiac?”
“That’s what I think. And that’s what I told the police. But they weren’t interested.”
“Why?” Steven asked.
“They were convinced the Zodiac was this Allen guy. Didn’t care about a box of hair . . . even though they did admit that the Zodiac had taken hair from some of his victims. DNA wasn’t really a thing then or they would probably’ve been more interested.”
“How very strange.” I studied Derek’s face.
Could this be true? I wondered. Aloud, I said, “That’s why you weren’t in the file I saw. Because you turned up three years later, and they didn’t believe you.”
“And the Zodiac had been inactive for awhile. I gathered the press on the killer had whipped public opinion into such a fevered pitch that the police were being pressured beyond belief, yet they couldn’t come up with enough evidence to indict their best suspect. Bottom line, the police did not want to get the whole thing heated up again. They hoped the bad publicity and the killer would just quietly fade away and out of the public eye.”
“I don’t get it,” Steven said. “Why didn’t your father answer your letters if he got them and he wasn’t dead yet?”
I got it. “Because his father was the one who kidnapped him,” I said.
Derek returned my look and nodded. “That’s what I figured.”
“That’s why you were one of the two people he moved. Because he didn’t want to kill you, but he needed you out of the way. As your father he could take you on an airplane in a semi-drugged state. He probably made up some story about taking you to a medical specialist or something.”
Derek continued to nod.
“There was one woman, a Jane Doe, whose body turned up around the same time, and maybe was a Zodiac victim. Her body had been moved after she died. Did you know her?”
“No,” Derek said, “and there’s no evidence that she was definitely one of his victims. He didn’t usually move their bodies. In fact, from the research I’ve done, she’s the only body that was moved.”
“Aside from you, that is.” I pointed at the creepy box of hair. “Would you be willing to give these to the San Francisco PD now?”
“Sure . . . if they were interested.”
“Let’s ask them.” I punched numbers on my cell. “If they’re not, I’ll have the DNA tests done.”
“We’ll need to have evidence samples for comparison.” Derek pointed out.
“We’ll get them. Some evidence from bodies of victims must’ve been saved.” I frowned while I listened to Dad’s voicemail. “There’s one big problem with this theory.”
Derek and Steven both looked at me.
“If your father was the Zodiac, and he’s dead, who wanted the papers in Dad’s file? Who the hell shot at me? And who has our mother?”
CHAPTER
38
“Good question.” Derek answered while he rubbed his hand over his chin. “I’m afraid I may not be that much help to you.”
Steven looked at me. “Did you call Dad?”
“Voicemail,” I answered.
Steven took his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call the SFPD detective who’s looking for Mom. Schmidt should want to help us.” Steven wandered into the hall at the top of the stairs, speaking into his phone.
“So Derek, were you your father’s only heir?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” he shook his head. “My cousin Harold, that is Harry, occasionally stayed in my Dad’s house in Vallejo while I was gone.”
“Where’s your cousin now?”
“Maybe traveling?” He sat down in the desk chair. “I don’t know. We aren’t close. A
fter we sold Dad’s house and divvied up the estate, we haven’t really seen much of each other.”
“Shit.” I plopped in the guest chair across the writing table. “Well, the police ought to be able to track him down.”
“What for?” Derek asked.
Steven came back into the room and sat in the other guest chair. “The detective’s on his way over here.”
“I guess he was interested?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Steven answered, “very.”
“Where did we meet before?” Derek asked me.
I shrugged my shoulders, I really didn’t feel up to explaining that the last time we met, we’d fucked, and then his father killed me.
I wasn’t too sure of the reaction I would get. From him, or Steven. I decided keeping some of what I knew, or how I knew it, to myself, had advantages . . . like people wouldn’t decide I was nuts.
“When does your wife get home?” I asked.
Derek gave me a puzzled look. “My wife?”
“Lynn?” I answered. “On your voicemail, it says you and Lynn are not available.”
“Lian is my son. My wife died ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I hesitated. I seemed to have developed a knack for putting my foot in it. “Where’s your son?”
“At school. Basketball practice.” Derek pressed his palms against the desktop. “He’ll be home soon.”
A glance at his hands stirred feelings I didn’t want. I fought the urge to reach across the desk, to place my palm on his.
The doorbell rang. Derek and Steven went downstairs to answer it. I took advantage of the opportunity to look through the writing desk drawers. I was curious about the newspaper clippings I saw when Derek pulled out the box of hair. I found a thick file of newspaper articles. I recognized some of the same ones I’d seen in Dad’s file. And a whole bunch more from various newspapers around the country.
Everything else looked like the usual desk shit. I heard the three men on the stairs, replaced the file, closed the drawer, and sat back down in the chair.
“Al, you know Detective Schmidt.”
I stood and shook his outstretched hand.
“You look a little better than the last time I saw you, miss.” Detective Schmidt looked to be somewhere in his fifties, with close-cut gray hair, a clean-shaven face, and twenty extra pounds.
“I guess that must’ve been in the hospital.” I smiled at him.
Derek pointed out the box of hair. The detective called for lab technicians to deal with it and then asked Derek enough questions to get him talking. Derek told the detective pretty much the same story he’d told us.
I waited for him to mention the file of newspaper clippings, but he didn’t.
So I did. It was pretty much an admission that I’d been digging in his desk, but nobody seemed to notice, or at least to comment.
Derek looked startled. Perhaps he’d forgotten the clippings were in the desk.
Detective Schmidt and Derek re-hashed the whole story. I figured the detective was listening for discrepancies in Derek’s explanations, but I knew any differences found would be meaningless. Derek had not shot Lexi.
When the detective continued to ask Derek questions that I failed to see would help with finding Mom. I wandered down the hall that ran the length of the oval stairwell. A master suite was straight ahead. To the right was a room lined with shelves full of video games, shiny unused sports helmets, candles, a few books about vampires, CD’s, a couple of basketball trophies, a photo or two, and a few wood boxes. Black curtains that matched a black comforter on the bed covered the window wall.
I opened one wood box. Trinkets. String. A ring. A harmonica.
I looked at the drawers under the bed and nudged one open.
A voice from the bottom of the stairs called out, “Hey Dad, wassup here?”
I shoved the drawer closed and hurried to step into the hall.
A familiar looking, tall, dark-haired, skinny young man with teenage acne and Derek’s light blue eyes ran up the stairs, and threw a backpack on the sofa.
“This is my son, Lian.” Derek introduced Steven, Detective Schmidt, and me. And then explained to Lian that we were interested in the evidence of his grandfather being the Zodiac killer. Lian shrugged it off as though it was an old story, history of little interest to him.
But his eyes hovered on the news clipping in Schmidt’s hand for a few extra seconds.
“Gotta meet a dude at the library.” Lian headed to the kitchen. “Gonna grab a sandwich.”
I wondered if going to the library was still code for “I’m gonna hang with friends tonight.” It sure had been in each teen hood I could recall. The vacant look in Lian’s eyes indicated a stronger interest in drugs than libraries.
I stared after Lian, trying to catch the thought the sight of him had sparked. He was a skinnier version of young Derek. Lian. Was he the kid on the bike? Yes. The kid from last summer, the one in Pacific Heights. No wonder my heart fluttered at the sight of him, my déjà vu recognition triggering nightmares.
Derek caught me staring after Lian. “He’s had a rough time since my wife died.”
I nodded, wondering how many pharmaceuticals Lian was on. They might explain his nobody-home-look.
I followed Lian down the curved stairs where a skateboard rested against the frosted glass window in the entry hall. I stepped into the kitchen where he was spreading peanut butter on bread.
“I’ve seen you riding a bike around the neighborhood. My aunt lives nearby here,” I explained. My attempts to start up a conversation were met with grunts.
“That was awhile back. Guess you’re into skateboarding now?”
He nodded while he crammed the sandwich into his mouth. Before the last morsel disappeared, he picked up his board and hurried out the front door.
The lab guys showed up to bag the hair, the box, the hood, and the articles. Then Detective Schmidt asked Derek what else he had.
He opened a sliding door to a large compartment in the paneled wall. A wall mounted gun rack held two rifles and two pistols. “Those were my Dad’s. My cousin Harry has the other half of his collection.”
Detective Schmidt looked very interested. I couldn’t help but wonder why the Berkeley police had been so uninterested years ago.
CHAPTER
39
It was almost midnight before Steven and I started home. “Are you going to stay here tonight?” I asked my brother.
“Who else is going to keep an eye on you?” He smiled and pulled into the driveway. “Besides getting a good night’s rest, what are we going to do next?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll think of something.”
“Why were you asking about heirs?” Steven asked.
“I was wondering if anybody else had access to the guns and the hood.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.” Steven gave me a quizzical look. “So you think Derek has taken his father’s place?”
“Or Harold.” I hadn’t been thinking Derek but why didn’t he tell the detective about the newspaper clippings? Did the collection of clippings belong to Lian?
“So what are we going to do next?” Steven asked.
“There’s that whole list of people to question.”
“Why didn’t you give the list to the police? To Schmidt?”
“I don’t know how to explain the list, or why to question them. Not to mention, all of them being pillars of the community, the police are not likely to see them as suspects. I just have a feeling that at least one of them knows something," I paused. Maybe all of them. Crooks stick together, right?”
“What? The old birds-of-a-feather theory of crime?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” I yawned and waved goodnight as I watched him close my door. I peeled off my clothes and fell into bed.
Sleep came easier than I expected, considering the way my heart raced every time I thought of my missing mother.
CHAPTER
40
I woke up with the su
n, feeling guilty for sleeping while Mom was still missing. I hurried into my clothes, woke up Steven, and crammed down toast as I located the list of addresses map questing a couple.
“We can use the GPS,” Steven said over the top of his coffee mug.
“Yeah, yeah, I just want to be efficient, not zigzagging from one end of the Bay Area to the next.”
We caught Dad’s oldest friend, Uncle Dave, at breakfast in his Victorian paneled dining room. I recognized the dining table as one mother and I had bought for him at a London auction on Lots Road. We sipped the coffee his housekeeper Maria served.
Steven managed to eat a second breakfast, filching bacon and muffins off our “Uncle’s” neglected plate while I distracted him with questions.
“Remember the night that Lexi was killed?” I asked.
“Sure, one of those moments you never forget.” He gave me a glance then drank from his porcelain coffee cup.
“Moments?”
“Yeah, you know like where you were when you heard Kennedy was killed? Well actually you wouldn’t remember that, but . . .”
You might be surprised Uncle. I kept that to myself.
He tried again. “Like the moment you first heard about September 11.”
“We get it.” I nodded. “So?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night to the doorbell ringing. I heard Carol screaming, ‘No-o-o,' and crying. Commotion, lots of people in the hall.” He put the cup down in its saucer and fiddled with a piece of toast. His eyes studied his plate.
Was he hiding emotions? I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Dave truly emotional.
My Uncle Dave had a pervasive hollowness to his character. Like he had a shell that on the surface looked good, but on the inside he was missing a heart. He seemed to have no ability to sympathize. Or empathize. Like other people were not quite real to him. He said and did all the right things in a practiced manner, but his act never came off as quite real to me.
I wondered if other people felt the same way about him. My sympathetic mom, of course, said he was hiding a soft heart and a lack of self-esteem behind that hard shell.
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