“Who’s there?”
This was a little creepy. I hesitated in the doorway before I decided my imagination was running away with me after all the violence and excitement of the last few days.
I got brave, went into the living room, and turned on a lamp. I turned around to face the dark male figure and nearly jumped out of my skin.
CHAPTER
68
“Uncle Dave? What are you doing here? You scared me to death.”
My uncle Dave, the meticulous dresser who always wore the "correct" gear appropriate to the activity at hand; like topsiders for sailing, après ski boots after skiing, high top Converse for basketball, cleats for baseball––even REI hiking boots for climbing around the countryside when disposing of bodies.
Dave didn’t answer. He grinned at me, the scariest goddamn grin. In his hand was the biggest, longest, scariest goddamn knife you ever saw. He didn’t move.
I backed away, but I was afraid to turn my back to him. I tripped over the ottoman, and plopped onto the floor.
My cell phone flew out of my pocket, landed under the armchair.
The rest of the pieces of the puzzle swirled through my mind and fell into place.
Dave. He was never really an accepted member of the inner circle of the farm. Dave, who always insinuated that he was left out because he grew up poor without the social connections, the advantages of the others. Who was extraordinarily driven by ambition. Dave, who couldn’t afford a gap year, or law school, instead went straight to work after graduation. Who, all of a sudden, shortly after Lexi was murdered, found investors for his fledgling waterbed business with enough capital that he was able to quit his day job and concentrate on booming his business. Dave who used his private plane to fly all over the world, especially to southeast Asia where he dealt with factories and suppliers for his furniture lines.
Dave was the knife wielding Zodiac who was happy to let the Zodiac, the original one, take credit for Dave’s killings as well as his own. Who learned everything he needed to know the day he helped the Zodiac move Jennifer’s body.
And whenever he needed an influx of capital, well, he had four wealthy benefactors, always happy to help out.
Dave, the dandy of the group, always perfectly correct in his dress in the way that those who are worried about fitting in, about being good enough are so careful.
The irony, the dichotomy of his meticulous cleanliness wasn’t lost on me. It made some strange kind of sense: it was the very contrast, the release from the constraints of correctness that motivated the messy killing with a knife.
It also required a constant supply of new clothes. Bloody old clothes had to be destroyed. I remembered his housekeeper’s comments that he got new suits when he traveled. He never brought home the old ones. Most of his associates wrote that one off to the fact that he traveled to places where new suits were cheap and fast to get tailored. Convenient if you ruined––bloodied––a set of clothes every time you went abroad.
I imagined blood all over the Peter Marino designed white interior of his gulf stream.
All this raced through my mind when I should’ve been figuring out how to get out of this danger, how to get away from him.
Flat on my back on the floor, the phrase frozen with fear flashed through my mind.
I propped myself on my elbows, slowly pulled my knees up, posed to jump up.
Dave sat in the chair and cleaned his nails with the very sharp, curved tip of the knife. His face twisted ugly with a jack-o-lantern grin. Cold eyes studied his fingers.
Finally he spoke, “That shot to your head did something to your senses, cutie pie. You’ve been getting some very funny ideas. You gotta cut that out,” he chuckled, “or I should say, I gotta cut that out.” He cackled at his clever play on words.
“You see, I got a very funny phone call tonight, from my pilot. Someone’s tracking my movements abroad for the last forty years. Then I learned that you and that snotty brother of yours have not only spent the last couple of weeks stirring up trouble by going around asking lots of questions, you spent the day at the SFPD headquarters.”
Could I reach my cell?
It was less than four feet away, but if I made a move for it, would he pounce on me?
Would I be stabbed, sliced, cut before I got a call out?
“Now, I could threaten to decorate the pretty face of yours if you don’t just go back to class and mind your own damn business. Or I could just fix one side, one beautiful cheek, to serve as a reminder, to mind your own god damn business. I think a Z would do it.”
Roll it
Pat it
Mark it with Z
And throw it in the oven
For Baby and me
He sang, then he sighed. “But then, I don’t think that’s gonna work. You’re too stubborn for that, too independent, too self-reliant. Reminds me of some one. Can’t think who.” A scowl replaced the grin.
“You,” I whispered. “It was you. You poisoned Carol. You tripped her, wrecked the brakes in the car.”
Dave looked startled. “I always hated that cold, beautiful,” he spit the words, “arrogant bitch. I enjoyed seeing her suffer when Lexi died. I saw Tom buying drinks for that guy. I was curious what they were up to so I followed that guy, that Zodiac from the Monk and saw him shoot her. Even gave him a hand with drugging that guy she was with.” He watched my face for a reaction.
I fought back my revulsion determined not to give him the satisfaction of affecting me.
“I guess I’m not surprised she told you about her, quote, ‘accidents.’ She has an extraordinary love for you. Has from the day you were born. She’s gonna suffer even more this time.” He stood up, took a step toward me.
I jumped to my feet.
I ran.
I ran up the curved stairs.
He was only as far as the bottom of the stairs, in no apparent hurry. He must have figured he had me trapped. He’d probably looked around long enough to see there was no way out from the upper floors.
But if I could get to a bathroom, I could lock myself in.
And him out.
At the top of the stairs, I realized what would happen when my housemates came home. He’d stab and carve them.
I couldn’t hide in a locked bathroom.
I had to deal with this lunatic.
He grinned at me from the foot of the staircase, that horrid, twisted grin.
He swung the knife in an arc, and cackled, getting off on my fear.
CHAPTER
69
I came part way down the stairs and reached out to the head of the grizzly.
I threw out my arms at the ten-foot tall bear, and, with both hands, shoved the massive body towards Dave.
Dave was so intent on cutting me, he never saw it coming. The toppling giant knocked the knife out of his hand onto the stairs and Dave to the floor.
I dashed down the rest of the stairs for the knife and had it in my grip before he got up.
From where I stood on the second step, my eyes were level with his.
He laughed, that horrible cackle of a laugh. “You won’t use that. You sweet little cutie pie. You wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially not your old Uncle Dave.” He took a slow step toward me.
“I wouldn’t bet on it.” I waved the blade at his neck. “You shouldn’t bet on it either. Bad bet. Remember the odds: I’m one for one.”
Dave squinted at me like he thought I’d lost my mind, but I was betting he was scared of knives.
After all he knew how much damage they could do.
He growled at me like a bear, and swung a paw. Asshole thought he could use my fear of bears, the fear my family knew so well, against me.
I scraped his hand with the sharp edge of the blade.
He grabbed his hand, hugged it to him. “You cut me!” he whined.
“And I’ll do it again,” I blasted at his face. “Next I’ll stab you in the throat.” A sudden flash of my memory, the mugger in Golden Gate Par
k. Uncle Dave always in turtlenecks or cravats, it wasn’t just meticulous dressing. He had to hide that knife scar.
He grabbed his neck with his good hand.
“Remember that! It was only forty years ago. I almost got you right in the jugular, could’ve killed you that time.” I slashed the knife at him.
He jumped back.
His stupefied look said he didn’t remember, but on some level, his unconscious was flashing warning signs.
I swung the blade, aiming for the arm that came up to protect his face.
I wasn’t afraid to cut him.
In fact, I wanted to hurt him, to make him feel some of the pain, both physical and emotional, he’d caused so many others.
The blood that spurted from his hand shot a thrill through my body.
Fear that he would get the knife away from me vanished, replaced by an animal lust for revenge.
I charged at him aiming the dagger at his chest.
He turned sideways like a matador.
I slid by, turned back, and glared.
His eyes bugged. He clutched his wounded hand to his waist and grabbed the door handle to get the hell out of there before the crazy woman cut him––again!
He opened the door and collided with Schmidt. Steven was behind the Detective.
Dave tried to push past them. “I’ve got to get medical attention. She’s crazy. She cut me.”
“Not so fast.” Detective Schmidt pulled out his handcuffs.
Dave shoved the Detective down the porch steps then broke into a run for his Porsche.
Steven chased him. He jumped on Dave’s back, wrestled him to the ground in the front yard, but couldn’t hold him there.
Detective Schmidt caught up to them and pulled his gun. He trained it on Dave.
“Back up, son!” Schmidt ordered Steven.
“DO NOT KILL HIM!” I screamed, “Whatever you do, don’t kill him.”
CHAPTER
70
Detective Schmidt cuffed Dave and read him his rights while Steven and I collapsed on the steps of the front porch and watched.
Steven had his arm around my shoulders, trying to comfort me while I shook violently. “I- I really would’ve stabbed him. I didn’t want to . . . but all of a sudden I was overwhelmed with anger at all the pain and emotional suffering he’s caused countless people.”
Detective Schmidt shoved his prisoner into the back seat of the car and returned to where we sat. “You gonna be okay?” he asked me.
I nodded in answer to his question, but the violence of my shaking hadn’t subsided, and I doubted I was very convincing. I was mostly shocked at what I had almost done. At what I had wanted to do.
I handed him the knife. “That’s his.”
“I didn’t figure it was yours, but you looked pretty intimidating the way you held it.” Detective Schmidt chuckled as he put the knife in an evidence bag.
He dialed his headquarters. “I need a patrol car at Piedmont and . . .” he looked at the street sign, “and Rose in Berkeley. A prisoner needs transport back to the city.”
“Do you want me to take you to your parents?”
I shook my head.
“We better give them a call, let them know you two are both okay before the media blows everything that happened since we left them all out of proportion.” He grimaced. “Well, come to think of it, maybe they won’t need to exaggerate much. And to think I assured your father that you’d be perfectly safe with me.” He shook his head, smiled at the irony, but quickly stopped as though he had thought of something totally awful.
“God Damn. Come to think of it, we’re gonna have to go back to the city, back to headquarters. You gonna make it okay?”
I nodded, after several deep breaths.
“What are you guys doing here anyway?” I asked once we were back in the car.
“Got a call from Kyle. Your I-24/7 got lots of hits, lots of matches all over Southeast Asia, even a couple in EU. He couldn’t get anything out of the State Department, but he was able to get some data from the log of Dave’s plane with several links. We were just coming over to tell you that you were right.” Schmidt turned the car onto Ashby Avenue. “There was a second Zodiac killer.”
EPILOGUE
November 2008
There was no point in going back to school: I’d missed too much. I retook my classes in the fall. I did some research into reincarnation too but what I learned, well, that’s another story. But I do know I'm a girl with a past.
As it turned out, I was ok with taking the term off because that left the spring and summer free to work on the Obama presidential campaign. And even after getting back in school, I snuck off to North Carolina for the five days leading up to Election Day to get out the vote. I caught a plane as the polls closed in the East and, thanks to the time difference, managed to get back to Berkeley in time to dance in the streets, wave American flags, sing the Star Spangled Banner and chant U-S-A with the tens of thousands of Cal students and Berkeley residents who took to the streets, not to protest this time, but to celebrate. To celebrate one more forward step in the dream of equality.
I assumed I was one of the few students with enough perspective to fully appreciate the contrast between the tears of joy that November night in both Sproul Plaza, where students celebrated, and Grant Park, where Obama accepted the election, with the tears from gas in those same two locations forty years earlier. In those forty years, we had gone from Jack Weinberg being arrested for talking about racial equality to electing an African American president.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks for encouragement from my fellow writers including members of Mystery Writers of America and the teachers and students of UCLA Extension Writer's Program especially my first mystery writing instructor, Jerrilyn Farmer.
Thanks to my writing group, Shari Shattuck, Mark Hosack, and Sharon Doyle for the laughs, advice, gentle criticism, and putting up with a newbie.
My brave early readers, Michael James, Joan Goddard, Del Boles, and Elisabeth James deserve special gratitude for their kind comments.
Editors Candy Samoza and Alison Farr Brisker rose to the challenge of dealing with an inexperienced author and are much appreciated.
Michael James suffered through every version of this story and then applied his usual meticulous attention to details to do the final preparations for publishing.
Kate James not only designed my covers, website, and Facebook banner, she patiently answered gazillions of questions about computers, the internet, eBooks, and all the other gadgets that were barely dreamt of in 1969.
David Oh demonstrated extreme patience by reworking cover art until the color picky designer in me was happy.
Berkeley in the sixties was an experience for which I am still grateful. With our shared ambition to make the world a better place, my fellow idealists encouraged a direction in life that had adventures and disappointments, but ultimately brought me all that I hold dear: my husband, children, grandchildren, extended family, and good friends. Thanks guys!
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