Trail of the Zodiac - Debt Collector 10 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

  Romero put his hand on her shoulder. “Best of luck.”

  She nodded and took a deep breath before heading out to address the mob. Hudson stepped up behind a rich rosewood podium that had the emblem of the San Francisco Police Department on the front. Behind her was a blue curtain and an American flag.

  “Well, welcome everybody. I’m obviously Detective Nina Hudson of the San Francisco County and Metropolitan Police Department. This press conference will probably be a little different than what you have experienced before. It is going to be information instead of Q & A. So my intent today is to provide some clarification on some outstanding issues in the public forum. I’ll reference the timeline, the current victims and the progress we have made with the ciphers that were sent to us. I will then provide the opportunity for the FBI to address the audience, and then we will have a closing of this conference. Okay?” She squinted into bright lights and wondered if he was out there among the crowd, or viewing the live broadcast that was being streamed on TV and across the web. The media had already been alerted to the briefing, so they expected him to be watching, wherever he was. “Some of these items will be read from the narrative as I don’t want my comments to be misconstrued or changed. Okay, first and foremost I want to give you an update on the murders, and their relation to the recent death of a cab driver in the city,” she said looking up.

  Over the next twenty minutes she covered all manner of details related to the Zodiac victims before getting to the point of the whole conference which was to address the ciphers. “As you’re aware, four ciphers were sent in with instructions. We were informed that if they were cracked, it would provide the locations of the attacks that would take place, and the cipher key that would help us unlock the 340 code which has remained unsolved until this date. I can tell you that we had our best cryptographers looking at those and they were not able to crack them, however, we did make progress with the original 340. We can now report that we do have the identity of the original Zodiac killer from the late ’60s.”

  A hush fell over the crowd, and then she could see there were many wishing to ask questions. Of course she wasn’t going to allow them the opportunity. This was all about control and feeding out what they wanted him to hear.

  “Our department will be releasing that name to the media in the next forty-eight hours. That will be all. I’ll hand over the rest to FBI Agent Turner.”

  Hudson walked away and exited the room leaving the noise of the media asking for answers. She knew it would piss them off, but most importantly she had to believe that it was having the same effect on the killer.

  “Nice work, Hudson, now that we have forty-eight hours to burn, you want to go get that drink?”

  “Drink? Romero, I’m about to be wired up and led like a lamb to the slaughter. I need to have my wits about me. And besides, shouldn’t you be out there trying to find Winchester?” She soldiered on into a separate room, took off her jacket and approached Westbrook, another officer who was there to get her ready. While they still used the term “wire,” they no longer needed to wear one because everything had gone digital. It had actually made their job easier. Now an undercover cop could be frisked and no one would know that video and audio was being transmitted to a listening post. She removed her glasses, and they replaced them with ones that could provide video, she donned a pair of earrings that would transmit audio, and as a secondary measure they had her change out her shirt into another that was already set up with a tiny camera inside one of the buttons. Westbrook went through the process of checking that it was all operational before letting her know she was good to go. Romero leaned against a wall, smirking.

  “You do know that you’re going to be wearing that for the next forty-eight hours, and these guys are going to hear every noise you make, right? I mean, every noise.”

  “Damn, and I thought this was going to be the night we got it on,” she said brushing past him and scooping up her jacket.

  “What? Hold up, Hudson. What?”

  * * *

  Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital was a monstrous structure. The four-story, light brown building with a section of red brick was a huge facility. Upon entering, memories of visiting his sister in New York made him shudder. However, unlike that residence, this actually looked fairly modern, clean and well kept. Jack leaned against the front desk and was waiting for the nurse to bring up the details of Katherine Johnson. He was quite confident she wasn’t behind the string of murders but he had to rule out siblings.

  “And you are?”

  “A close friend of the family.”

  She scrutinized him, then asked him to wait there while she spoke with her supervisor. She’d only been working there four days and was a little unsure of procedure. Jack watched her enter the hallway with a deer in the headlights look. He gave it a few more minutes as she walked the corridor and looked to be asking several other colleagues where her supervisor was before returning to the front desk.

  “If you want to take a seat, my supervisor should be here soon, she’s with a patient.”

  He glanced at her nametag and smiled. “Mary, that’s a lovely name. Look, Mary, I’m kind of pressed for time. I actually have a plane to catch. I was in the area and I had told Katherine I would drop in and see her. I would hate to disappoint her again, especially the way her mental state is right now. Anything can trigger, well, you know…”

  He let what he said linger.

  “Why don’t I go down to see her, and you can just tell your supervisor where I am?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. They are quite particular about how things operate around here, and I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  “Exactly!” he said jabbing his hand in the air and reaching over and turning the monitor around. “Now if you just want to tell me what room she is in, I’ll keep this whole fiasco between you and me.”

  Within a matter of minutes of observing her, he could already tell she would be easy to manipulate. She had a timid look to her and had trouble looking him in the eye. He spotted it on the screen. “Room 14. Excellent.” He tapped the monitor. “Good work, Mary.”

  “Oh sir, I didn’t get your name. All visitors are issued a visitor’s pass, and it has to be worn at all times.”

  “Have your supervisor bring it down.”

  He hurried away and slipped into the elevator before she could protest any further. He adjusted the Beretta squeezed into his waistband at the small of his back. The numbers lit up above him as the elevator carried him up to the next floor where the Adult Inpatient Program was housed. When the elevator dinged, he entered the corridor, and looked both ways. On the wall, directions showing the room numbers indicated where to go. He moved by several patients looking into space, and a nurse who was having trouble restraining a young girl. The whole place gave him the creeps. The thought of what his own sister had to endure in a facility like this only added to the uneasy vibe.

  The door to room 14 was ajar. He peered inside and saw an older woman in her early sixties sitting in a chair staring out of her window. He knocked, and she didn’t even register it.

  “Ms. Johnson. Katherine?”

  He cast a glance down the corridor realizing that he couldn’t stay long. He expected the supervisor would be swinging by after catching wind of an unregistered guest. Jack stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He scooped up a chair and brought it over to where she was. The room was modest. A bed, a bedpan on the floor that was still full of shit and piss, and a bathroom on the opposite side. Nothing about the room felt inviting. The sickly yellow cream paint that covered the walls was a mismatch to the drab curtains that were dimly lit by fluorescent lighting.

  “Katherine, I’m Jack Winchester. I was hoping—”

  “Tom. I’m so glad you could come.”

  She brought a hand up to his face and caressed it.

  “Uh, no I’m not Tom. The name’s Jack.”

  “She won’t recognize you,” a voice said from behin
d him. Jack turned to find a lady with long dark hair sitting in a corner of the room. He hadn’t even noticed her because the curtains were closed on the far side. “She’s suffering from dementia.”

  “And you are?”

  “Her psychiatrist. Debra Steele.”

  She extended a hand, and he just looked at it.

  His eyebrows rose. “You work here?”

  “No. Katherine used to visit me for sessions, long before she wound up here. I visit her from time to time. She doesn’t get many visitors. She can hear you but getting her to respond is rare. A lot has changed over the past ten years.” She paused. “Are you a friend of the family?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “On Ricky’s side?” she asked.

  Jack purposely mumbled his reply. He turned his attention back to Katherine. He could tell this wasn’t going to be insightful, so he went to leave but before he did, he posed her a question. “Katherine was convinced her father was the Zodiac, wasn’t she?”

  “She was also convinced that she was the illegitimate child of Pope John Paul II.”

  “And that’s why they dismissed her case?”

  “That among other things. Katherine is a very sick woman. You can’t believe everything people tell you.”

  “Did you? I mean, believe her?”

  “Not at first, but that’s something Katherine was very good at, convincing others. It’s what got her air time on TV and even a press conference.”

  “Does her family visit much?” Jack was fishing for details about them.

  “No, they all but abandoned her, much like her father.”

  “Who she believed was the Zodiac.”

  “He was rumored to have had run-ins with the police around that time but he was no Zodiac killer.”

  “How come?”

  “He was one of the victims. At least, assumed victim. The police only confirmed five, but he claimed he’d killed thirty-seven.”

  Jack’s eyebrows rose.

  “I would have thought you knew? What was your name?”

  Right then a large nurse came in with a security guard as Jack turned to leave. He brushed by them before they could even say anything. He moved at a fast pace and was in the stairwell before they even figured out what was happening. Well, that cleared that up, he thought as he exited the building. His eyes glanced over the last name on the list, the one belonging to the man killed in the Philippines. Though he knew he couldn’t speak to him, he thought it was worth checking in with the surviving family.

  Chapter 21

  In an explosion of rage, he threw the glass at the wall, shattering it. Bourbon streamed down, staining the carpet. He paced back and forth in his darkened living room, his eyes fixed on his laptop. It was paused on the broadcast that had been streamed earlier that day.

  “Impossible. Impossible,” he kept muttering under his breath. “There’s no way you cracked it.” He shook his head, the cogs in his mind trying to figure out what this meant? He didn’t anticipate this. This wasn’t meant to happen. He wanted to be the one to provide his father’s name but in his own time, when he was ready, when they had suffered enough.

  The wallpaper on the walls had a pattern from the ’80s. His sofa was sagging and sorely in need of replacement. He didn’t own a TV. Instead, there was an array of books stacked on shelves, and in piles on the ground. Historic fiction mostly, he thrived on learning about the past and the mistakes that others had made. He snatched up his pack of smokes and tapped another one out. Nicotine. He needed something to calm his nerves, or he was going to snap. The stocky man took a seat and hit replay on the video. He’d gone over it six times already. He observed her closely, and the officers behind her, looking for any crack in the façade. Was this some kind of trick? A game they were playing? It had to be. Forty-eight years and not even the greatest minds in the world were able to crack 340, and they expected him to believe they had done it in a matter of seventy-two hours? Bullshit. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it with the remainder of the first. An ashtray on the table was full to the brim. He’d been chain-smoking since ten that morning.

  “Forty-eight hours. You expect me to wait that long?” Were they hoping he wouldn’t kill again?

  He slapped his head multiple times as it felt like his brain was about to burst. He got up and went over to the window and pulled the drapes back ever so slightly. If they knew his name, they would come looking. He was giddy with excitement and yet nervous at the same time. What does this mean? he thought. Outside the neighborhood street was quiet. A kid rode past on a bicycle and rang a small bell. One of his neighbors across the street was outside working on their yard, picking up trash that had blown into it from the previous day.

  Although he knew it was impossible to decipher the code without the key, he entertained the thought that perhaps someone had figured it out. If they had, who was it? How did they do it? Why hadn’t she told the media? Why were they stalling? It didn’t make sense. Forty-eight years of being left in the dark and now they were making everyone wait? Or was it him they were making wait? He slapped the side of his head again trying to regain control. The questions continued to bombard, torturing and eating away at his mind.

  He was going to get his answers. That bitch was going to tell him. Did she really think she was smarter than him? The way she stood there behind that podium acting as if she had finally put an end to the killings. He’d only just begun.

  Trudging back down into his unfinished basement he walked over to the steel cabinet and unlocked it. He just needed a boost, something to remind him that he was still in control of this. He took out his father’s execution hood and slipped it over his head, he grabbed up a .45 and walked over to the mirror. He breathed in the scent of his father and raised the gun at the mirror. His father’s voice came back to him, the memory of that night, the first time he’d taken him along for the kill. He wasn’t lying when he taunted the police saying he’d killed thirty-seven. He had killed that many, and one of those he’d witnessed. A flash of memory and he was right back there in the mid-seventies. Four long years after his father’s reign of terror.

  The sound of the car’s engine, the warmth of the heater as they prowled around the streets of San Francisco. He was sitting in the back while his father listened to the police scanner. He was always listening to it. His father hadn’t said much to him that evening before they left, only that he wanted to show him something — something that would change his life forever.

  He recalled the vehicle stopping, and his father killing the engine before turning in his seat. “Now listen, boy, they want you to blend in, follow the rules and do as they say but that’s not you, understand?”

  He nodded; having no clue what his father was on about.

  “Stay in the car and watch. I’ll show you how easy it is.”

  Metal groaned as the door pushed open and he stepped out. He heard boots against gravel and then the trunk being opened. He twisted in his seat hoping to see what his father was doing, but it was too dark. The only light came from a lamppost farther down the street. There was a bang as he closed the trunk and then he saw his father come around wearing the executioner’s hood, he stopped and glanced at him in the back before continuing on another twenty yards towards a vehicle that was parked. He could hear his own heart pumping as his father shone a light in the face of whoever was inside the vehicle. Crack, crack and again. The sound of the gun echoed, and he felt his heart skip. His father pulled open the door to the car and the arm of a body slipped out, hanging, just hanging there, blood streaming down to the fingertips under the glow of the flashlight. His father was looking back at him, then he made a gesture for him to come.

  He shook his head. Could he see him?

  When he didn’t exit the car, his father trudged back, picking up the pace. He pulled open the door and reached in and grabbed him, dragging him out of the vehicle.

  “You are going to see this.”

  “Dad, please.”

&nbs
p; “One day you will understand.”

  His short legs barely made contact with the ground as his father hauled him over to the grotesque scene. A male, drenched in blood, a female wearing nothing but a bra slumped against the driver’s door.

  “Do you see? Do you see it?”

  The male was still alive. Barely hanging on by a thread, he was choking on his own blood and had this wild look in his eyes. He stared directly at him.

  “Here, take this and squeeze the trigger.”

  He shook his head, frozen in horror.

  His father forcefully wrapped his small hand around the heavy gun and assisted him in holding it. His father’s trigger finger wrapped over his, pressing it until it made contact with the cold metal. He trembled, and his heart pounded.

  “Now squeeze it.”

  His father had it aimed at the young man who would have died from a loss of blood.

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t.

  “I said squeeze it!”

  He wasn’t sure if he did it or not, or if his father contributed.

  All he remembered was the loud pop, a muzzle flash and the young man no longer breathing.

  “You did it. You did it, son.”

  He nodded, so scared and unable to contain himself that he pissed his pants with fear.

  It was his initiation. A rite of passage to become what he was today. Seeing his father in that executioner’s hood was seared in his memory. But the sight of that young man’s face inhabited his dreams.

  He snapped back into the present moment, still staring at himself in the mirror.

  “You want to play detective? Let’s play.”

  Right then, he heard someone knocking on a screen door.

  His head jerked towards the stairs.

  “Hello, anyone home?”

  Chapter 22

  Earl Bernard was listed as dead at the age of thirty-eight. His death certificate recorded the event as blunt force trauma resulting from a high-speed collision in the Philippines. That’s why Jack didn’t expect to find much when he arrived outside the Victorian style home in the middle of the afternoon. He figured at the bare minimum he could rule out family members.