“How hard would it be to do it?”
“Not hard at all. I’ve already filled out the form.” His fingers danced across the keyboard. “Southeast Asia you say?”
“Yes, please. Can it go to EU and UK as well?”
“It’ll go there automatically. We just have to specify the other countries. So that would be the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore.” Kyle typed faster than I can talk.
“And East Timor and Brunei,” I reminded him.
“Okay, sent. But I don’t understand, didn’t the Zodiac copy cat just––you know––get blown away?”
“Probably. I just want to tie up some loose ends. Questions I can’t get out of my mind. Can I look at the form you filled out?”
“Hmm . . . I don’t know . . . don’t think I’m supposed to . . .”
“Hey, you said it yourself: it’s a closed case as of tonight.”
Kyle studied my face for a minute. I smiled, started to flirt, and then remembered what shit I looked with my snotty face, red nose, and swollen eyes, not to mention my filthy hair, with one side of my head shaved, and no makeup.
I guess I looked so pitiful that he took pity on me and turned the monitor around so I could look at the screen.
I noticed some things that either weren’t in Dad’s file, or I had missed.
Two sets of footprints were found in the dirt at the scene of the Jane Doe body dump: one pair of work boots, one pair of REI hiking boots. It was only time both boots were seen at one scene. But the hiking boots were at one other outdoor crime scene at Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. Another stabbing; the knife again.
The work boots showed up at Lake Berryessa, Benicia’s Lover’s Lane, and Lake Herman Road, both scenes of shootings.
“Kyle, don’t the two sets of footprints at this scene indicate there were two people?”
“It could,” he thought about it for a second, “but there are other explanations.”
“Like what?”
“The perp changed his shoes? Maybe he got blood on one pair. Or the site was contaminated.”
“Blood?” I asked, “Whose?”
“The Jane Doe.”
“I thought she didn’t bleed. The gunshot wound was inflicted after she died.”
“I was thinking from the knife wounds, but you’re right, postmortem wounds wouldn’t bleed.”
“Knife wounds?” My stomach lurched. “There were knife wounds?”
“The Z carved in her chest.”
CHAPTER
65
I sat in stunned silence. Knife wounds? A Z carved in her chest! REI hiking boots? Whoa, wait a minute. Mental pictures flashed through my mind. Snippets of conversations, papers from Dad’s file and moments from my childhood swirled in a confusion.
“Kyle, is there a way to track movements of Americans abroad?”
“Through the NSA. You’re supposed to have a warrant.”
“NSA . . . National Security Administration?”
Detective Schmidt joined us just as I considered begging Kyle to violate the Constitution and hack into NSA records to track movements of my uncles abroad.
Kyle stood, explained to the detective that we had just broadened the search for linkage on the Zodiac data.
Detective Schmidt turned to me with a puzzled look. “Say what? Alexandra, what’s going on here? Come in here.”
He waved his hand to an enclosed interview room.
“Kyle, thank you. You’ll let me know if anything interesting comes up?” I said.
“He’ll let me know,” Detective Schmidt said. “Right, officer?”
“Yes sir.” Kyle quickly turned his red face toward his screen.
Detective Schmidt waved me into a chair. He sat down and studied my face for minutes before speaking. “You doin’ okay?”
I nodded.
“What made you so sure it wasn’t Derek?” he asked.
How could I explain? I ran a few answers by myself. No way, every answer was either nonsense or made me sound nuts. I decided to try one out.
“Could craziness be hereditary? I think this kid picked up the mantle of the Zodiac, like the responsibilities got passed from generation to generation. He maybe had some idea––”
Detective Schmidt stared at me. He looked haggard. “Lian was not a blood relative of his step-grandfather.”
“Or maybe that sort of insane fantasy of cleaning up the world of promiscuity wasn’t hereditary.” I didn’t mention my real theory, which would probably have made the detective question my sanity. My theory that Lian and his grandfather were one and the same being, that Lian was the reincarnation of his step-grandfather.
I hesitated for a minute while the detective stared without seeing me, his eyes dropped to the tabletop.
“The crime scene guys found a diary in Lian’s room. Might explain something,” Schmidt said.
A diary? That must have made him really nervous when I was looking around his room, when he saw me re-enter the hall from his doorway. “Lian’s diary?”
“Looks to be his grandfather’s. But pages towards the back were written in different handwriting. Presumably Lian’s handwriting. He wrote about driving up to Tahoe and shooting Ron Bailey.”
“Why?” I asked.
The detective shook his head. “Who knows? Can’t explain nuttiness.”
“Was Ron––was there carving?”
“No. But his hair had been chopped, and a small piece was in the pages of the diary.” Detective Schmidt rubbed his forehead and heaved a sigh. “The diary explains how the transfer of info from one perp to another went down. We’ve got techies on it. Should clear up a lot of questions.”
“Detective Schmidt, there’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I waited until he returned my gaze. “I think there were two Zodiac killers back in the 60’s and 70’s, and one of them is still alive.”
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Detective Schmidt rubbed his forehead and his eyes without responding. He groaned and leaned back in the metal chair. “What? Doesn’t make sense, he hasn’t killed anybody in forty years.”
“The other men––look, if he were any of the other suspects, they all lived for a long time after the murders without any more killings––that we know of, anyway.”
“We thought the Zodiac moved or broadened his field of operation.” Detective Schmidt explained to me with hard won patience. “Serial killers tend to start out close to where they live and then go farther and farther away as time goes on.”
I nodded. “Exactly. That’s what I think this second Zodiac did, except rather than elsewhere in California, he murdered elsewhere in the world.”
“That’s what you and Kyle were up to?” Schmidt raised an eyebrow at me.
“We were looking for MO’s and or signatures like the Zodiac where a knife was used in other parts of the world, like in Southeast Asia. With VICAP. Well actually, with I-24/7.”
The detective looked at me, looked away, then chuckled. “Okay, tell me what you’re thinking.”
“The Jane Doe found in Novato," I said, "who we now know was Jennifer––"
“We think. That hasn’t been confirmed by evidence yet,” Detective Schmidt interrupted to remind me that I was getting ahead of the results of the DNA testing. “I guess I should light a fire under the lab’s ass. They can rush those results when needed.” He smiled at me, picked up the receiver of a phone on the table and ripped the poor person on the other end of the line a new one. He wasn’t smiling.
“Okay, continue,” he said to me as he hung up the phone.
“So that crime scene, the one in Novato, was out of the norm for many reasons. It didn’t follow the same pattern that profiler’s would expect. One, he was way out of his territory. Two, he shot at two different scenes within 24 hours when usually there were weeks, sometimes months in between shootings. We know that was because Tom O’Connor sent the Zodiac––”
“Allegedly sent the Zodiac.” The detective was doing his best to keep me real.
“Okay allegedly, Tom has a conversation with this guy at the Monkey Inn, the Monk, in the sixties.” I saw the look on the detective’s face and knew he was about to correct me again. “Please, just let me tell you what I think. I’ve been very good in all my statements, the official shit, to leave out conjectures, opinions, anything I couldn’t testify to in court, but I’ve got these ideas and I really want to tell somebody, somebody who could do something about what I think I know. Okay?”
Detective Schmidt nodded. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair to listen.
“Tom is drinking in the Monk, sitting at the bar, worried about what to do with this dead girl who has overdosed at Jamie’s family’s place. Tom feels it’s his responsibility because he’s the one who picked up the girl hitchhiking and brought her to the farm. He did this in violation of the agreement that he had with the three other men who lived there. All of the men were planning to attend law school, and they knew they needed to protect their reputations. Drugs and a low level of criminality were rampant in the Bay Area in the late sixties, right? And crims justified their petty thievery and drug use by calling it a protest against the establishment.”
“But these guys at the farm want to be part of the establishment. They don’t want any part of crims. So they made this agreement: never bring or invite strangers to the farm. Only people already a part of their circle of trusted friends. Tom violated the agreement and now there’s this body. They don’t want to call the authorities to report a death from an overdose of what maybe heroin. That would never do.”
I took a swallow of water and continued, “After Tom brought the girl to the farm, she not only manages to OD, but not before she also has sex with all four of the guys, apparently being quite aggressive about seducing them. So the dead body potentially has semen from all of them. Of course in 1969, prior to DNA matching, the semen would only have told authorities blood types, but maybe the four of them have unusual blood types. They’re smart enough to know that dumping the body could be a real bad idea. Trace evidence at the scene might tie them to the girl. So what to do?”
“Tom meets this older guy at a bar. They’re drinking next to each other and the guy starts talking about the Zodiac murders. Tom’s a smart, perceptive young man. He realizes at some point in the conversation that maybe––make that probably––this guy is the Zodiac killer. He gets what seems like a real good idea after a half-dozen beers to get the guy to move the body. Then any trace evidence will point to the Zodiac.”
The detective kept nodding, looking less tired.
Encouraged, I continue the story I’d built around all I knew. “Tom tells the guy where to find the body. Maybe helps him draw a map, being careful not to touch the paper. Tom leaves, goes up to Northside Berkeley, to a house where a group of his friends live, and where his housemates are hanging out. He tells them what he’s done. But he’s overheard talking to his housemates.”
Was the detective going to let me get away without saying overheard by whom? He was still sitting back with his arms folded. Listening.
“Later that night, one of the girls who lives in the house is shot and killed. Now Tom is freaked. Did he lead the Zodiac killer to his friends? Is he responsible for Lexi’s death? He has to talk to someone so he discusses his concerns with someone else who lives or hangs out at the house. The next day, someone, probably the person he talked to, or Tom, but I don’t think so, goes to the ranch and helps the Zodiac move the body. That explains the two sets of shoe prints.”
Schmidt nodded, pursed his lips.
“She was the only victim who showed signs of both MO’s, both the gun and the knife, right?”
He lifted his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I believe so. That’s how I remember it.”
“Yeah, I just found out about the Z carved in her chest. Then there was the gunshot to the head, neither of which killed her. You see, I think she was the overlap; the way the second killer picked up or was infected with the signature, the cutting of the hair. The signature of the original Zodiac.” I slapped the table to emphasize my point.
“Hmm, could be. It’s one explanation, that’s for sure.”
“One of my so-called uncles must have helped the Zodiac to dispose of the body.”
“We’ve been checking into that day in prep for building a case against Tom O’Connor," Detective Schmidt said. "They all have alibis for the day she was moved.”
I nodded my agreement. “I figure that was why they stayed in Berkeley. All four guys made a point of being seen elsewhere until after she was gone from the ranch––for the most part, until after she was found. Hell, they were even being interviewed by the police the day she was dumped.”
I thought for a minute. “God, they must’ve been scared to death that the police would decide to go to the farm.” I took a deep breath. “Then there was the shit about Mrs. Mac and Tom being sick. Mrs. Mac says she was never sick. It was just an excuse to keep Carol and Nancy away from the farm until they’d cleaned up any trace of the body. Airing out the room, burning the bedding. That kind of stuff.”
“The boys––men––could’ve paid someone else or somehow got another person to do it––someone other than the Zodiac. Can’t help but wonder what will be O’Connor’s defense,” Detective Schmidt mused.
“One of my uncles made a point of saying he was nowhere near the farm the Wednesday after Lexi died, or any time around then. But Carol and Nancy and Mrs. Mac happened to mention Elliott was around. He told the girls that Mrs. Mac was sick. You could question the three of them. The stories they told me had some conflicts. It’s understandably hard to remember exactly after forty years, although Mrs. Mac’s got one hell of a memory.”
“I’ll talk to them all," Detective Schmidt said. "It’ll be good to tie up all the loose ends in connection with all these incidents.”
“Kyle says you have to get a warrant to track American citizen’s movements abroad?”
“If you go through the State department, or NSA, yes, you’re supposed to have a warrant. I’ll help him with that tomorrow. Meanwhile, there are other ways he can try, I’ll have a word with him.”
I leaned across the table. “There’s just one more thing––now that you know, or at least suspect that the Jane Doe was named Jennifer, can you use databases to find a match with missing girls named Jennifer and matching her description?”
“Yes, we can––and will.”
“It would be good to give her family some closure.”
“If any of them are still around, yes it would be.” The detective stood, “So that’s it?”
I nodded and stood also.
“Let’s get you and your brother back to school, huh?”
CHAPTER
67
The drive to Berkeley was uneventful this time. Detective Schmidt drove Steven and I in his personal car. He was on his way home for the first time in several days.
He pulled the car into the driveway in front of the big, old brown shingle house I shared with seven other students.
“Looks quiet here. Dark in there,” he commented.
For once my housemates must have remembered to turn off all the lights. Just the porch light was on.
“The other people who live here won’t be home from the library until ten, maybe eleven tonight,” I explained.
“Maybe I ought to walk you in?” The detective said without much enthusiasm. He had to be exhausted.
I knew he was really tired, besides I wasn’t afraid of my own house. “I’ll be fine, it’s cool.”
Steven got out of the car, opened my door, walked onto the porch with me and waited for me to unlock the door. Once I had the door open, he kissed me on the cheek, gave me a big hug, and waved good-bye as he went back to the car. I leaned out the door to wave to Detective Schmidt. “Thanks,” I called out.
What a relief to be home! I could hardly wait to get
into my own bed, in my own room, sleep in my own nightgown and rest enough to visit my professors in the morning to see what I could salvage of my classes.
“Nah, nah, nah,da nan, nah, I’m not scared of you anymore, la di da,” I said to the full sized taxidermy bear that resided in our entry hall at the bottom of the stairs.
Okay, I am weird, I talk to dead bears, but see, this bear was in the entry hall when I moved into the house. I moved in second semester of my junior year. The house was already full of three girls and four guys. I’d sublet from a friend who was studying abroad. I loved the room I’d rented from her, but that damn bear, which had apparently lived in that hall forever, used to scare me every time I entered the house.
The golden bear was an easy ten feet tall, towering in watch over the front door. He was dressed in a navy blue Cal watch cap, navy and yellow striped scarf, and a letterman’s sweater with a block ‘C’ on the chest. The tattered sweater must have belonged to a very big football or basketball player from many years ago. I suspected the bear had been a school mascot once upon a time and was stolen in some prank. Most students and alums laughed to see the school mascot, the golden bear, Oski in our stairwell.
Not me. I’d always been afraid of bears, even dead ones, and this one freaked me every time I came in the house. But now I was too elated, too buzzed to be scared.
I used to rush up the stairs without turning on the light in the entry so that I needn’t look at the bear. This time, I reached out from the stair landing and touched, yes touched, the bear’s head. My laugh echoed in the quiet, empty house.
I glanced through the archway into the unlit living room. My laughter caught in my throat, my stomach jumped to join it. The outline of a dark figure, a man sat in the armchair. Was this one of my housemates, sitting quietly in the dark?
“Hello?” I called out.
No answer
“Hey, what’s up?” I said.
I crept down to the bottom of the stairs and flipped on the light in the hall.
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