Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

by Christa Faust

  “Astounding,” Walter said. “Unprecedented.”

  “And worse, that was only the first time.”

  Iverson fanned out a handful of photos, each one featuring a different woman. All beautiful. All dead. Thirty-two total.

  “The unusual gamma radiation was only found in six out of the thirty-two, but that’s because the bodies of those women were discovered within three hours or less of their deaths. It seems to be getting stronger with each new victim, but after the three-hour mark, the radiation still dissipates without a trace, leaving behind nothing but garden variety water.

  “Regardless, the killer has claimed responsibility for all of them, proving it with samples of their hair or clothing in the letters he mailed to me.”

  “This is horrible,” Walter said. “It’s so much worse than we ever could have imagined.”

  “But what exactly is going on here?” Bell asked. “Could this be some kind of unique, short-burst radiation that’s as normal as sunshine in his world?”

  “Or,” Walter continued, “maybe the killer’s very atoms have been somehow destabilized by passing through the gateway, resulting in a mirrored gamma-raylike effect within the flesh of his victims.”

  “But why does he only seem to emit radiation when he’s killing someone?” Iverson asked. “We’ve tried tracking him with Geiger counters, figuring that anyone as close as he was to so many repeated radioactive events must give off some trace radiation—something that would be detectable. But that hasn’t been the case. It’s as if he lets off this intense burst at the climax of each murder and then... nothing.”

  “Agent Iverson,” Walter asked, dreading the answer. “In the letters he’s sent you, has he mentioned anything more about a city bus?”

  “It’s a recurring theme,” Iverson replied. “Repeated over and over again in almost every letter. He claims the women he’s killed are all tramps—easy prey that nobody cares about, anyway—but that shooting senior citizens would be the ultimate thrill. Not so much for the sheer pleasure of killing, although that’s clearly a factor. He claims that killing innocent grannies would provoke the maximum amount of outrage.

  “He sees public outrage as a kind of ovation for his symphonies. Makes him feel powerful. Look at this.” He handed Walter another handwritten letter. “In his most recent message to me, he expressed a lot of anger because details of his activities had been kept out of the media.

  “The fact that he was able to get a few cards and letters through our net, and made it into the newspapers, has made him cocky. He claimed responsibility for several murders we know he had nothing to do with, just to mess with us. But that score at the bottom of his last public letter, ‘Me = 37, SFPD = 0,’ that’s the only hint the media ever got of what he’s really been up to, over the past five years.”

  “Listen,” Walter said, unsure if it was the right thing to do, but unable to stop himself. “I think we might know where the Zodiac Killer will be tomorrow...”

  A pair of headlights pierced the gloom, refracting off the condensation on the rear windshield. A car pulled up behind them, and two ill-defined, fuzzy silhouettes got out and started walking toward Iverson’s car.

  The agent rolled down his window and peered back at the approaching men.

  “Latimer!” he said, cranking the ignition and flooring the gas pedal.

  Walter, who wasn’t prepared for such sudden acceleration, bounced off the seatback, dropping the letter he was holding as he braced himself against the dashboard and the door with his palms.

  Bell swore in the back seat as an avalanche of files slid into his lap, burying his feet.

  It took Walter a second to realize that Iverson was headed straight for a chain-link fence, with no sign of slowing.

  “Are you nuts?” Bell cried, voice constricted with fear.

  Instead of answering, Iverson just crashed through the fence, dragging a large section of chain-link that had hooked onto the wipers as the Cutlass slalomed down a dirt embankment and cut across honking traffic. At that point, Walter covered his face with his hands, convinced he was about to die in a flaming wreck.

  Bell’s swearing in the back seat became louder and more creative, but Iverson was disturbingly silent. The pounding of Walter’s heart seemed like the loudest sound in the car.

  Then, just as suddenly as he’d taken off, Iverson screeched to a halt.

  “Out!” he cried, reaching across Walter’s body to open the passenger side door. “Go, run. I’ll distract them.”

  He scooped up the file of letters off the floor and pressed it into Walter’s hands.

  “Find him!” he said, his haunted gaze locked on Walter. “You have to find him and stop him.”

  Walter took the file and scrambled out of the car. Looking back, he saw that another vehicle had pulled in behind them. Its lights were on, but it was just sitting there.

  They were in a narrow alley, and there was an open loading dock on their right. The moment Walter and Bell got out of the Cutlass, Iverson threw it into reverse and drove backward until he slammed into the pursuing car, wedging it in tightly between two dumpsters and blocking it from proceeding down the alley.

  “Come on,” Bell said, climbing onto the high loading dock and giving Walter a hand up.

  Walter looked back down the alley at the furious agents who were waving their arms and trying to climb out the windows of their trapped car. Then he stuffed Iverson’s file down the front of his trousers and ran with Bell into the building attached to the loading dock.

  * * *

  It was a warehouse of some kind—stocking smoked and pickled fish, by the smell of it. But Walter barely had time to register his surroundings or the quavering protests of the ancient night watchman before the two of them burst out through the front door and onto a neighboring street.

  “Belly,” Walter said. “Maybe we should...” Before he could finish, Bell gripped his arm and dragged him across the street, into one end of a narrow greasy spoon café.

  The place had its own oniony atmosphere so thick that it felt like walking into a lard sauna. It was nearly empty except for a thin, cadaverous fry cook doubling as a waiter and a single morose, genderless patron bundled up in multiple threadbare sweaters and an oversized tam-o’-shanter.

  The fry cook’s jaded, wordless greeting turned to baffled disbelief as Bell charged straight through the restaurant’s narrow boxcar length, dragging Walter in tow like a reluctantly leashed cocker spaniel.

  “Sorry...” Walter called back over his shoulder at the frowning fry cook, not even sure what exactly he was apologizing for.

  They burst out of the back door of the restaurant, which led to yet another alley, this one redolent of old frying oil and slick rotting garbage. Walter was so turned around at that point that he had no idea where he was in relation to the FBI building, or the parking lot where they’d talked with Iverson, or even the other alley where they’d seen him last.

  He had a vague notion that their current alley might be parallel to the previous one but he would not have sworn to it in a court of law. For all he knew it was perpendicular.

  What he did know was that he was glad Bell was there to take the lead.

  “Where the hell are we going, Belly?” he asked between gasps and huffs. “I’m afraid I can’t possibly...”

  “There!”

  Bell pointed to a pickup truck parked near the mouth of the alley with its engine running. No driver in sight. When they reached it, he opened the driver’s side door, then shoved Walter in and across the bench seat before getting in behind the wheel.

  “We can’t just...” Walter began, but he swallowed his protest as Bell punched the gas and peeled out of the alley.

  “Listen,” Bell said, blowing through a red light and making a squealing left turn. The plastic hula girl on the dashboard wobbled fetchingly, seeming to wink at Walter. “We need a safe harbor. Somewhere we can hunker down and formulate a plan. And we’re going to need a native guide. Someone w
ho knows this city and can help us find the location of the bus shooting before it happens.”

  “And then what?”

  Bell didn’t reply, but they both knew the answer already.

  They had to find a way to stop the killer. Linda’s grandma and the rest of the passengers were counting on them.

  6

  Walter was so deeply exhausted by the impossible events of the past six hours that he found himself dozing off to the hypnotic sound of their borrowed truck’s tires humming as they crossed over a long bridge and into San Francisco.

  He was awakened an unknown time later by Bell’s gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “Where’s ‘here’?” Walter asked, suddenly alarmed when he realized the steep downward slant of the street on which the truck was precariously balanced.

  “Nina’s place,” Bell replied with a little private smile. “Let’s go.”

  Walter went to open the door and gravity pulled it out of his hand so that it bounced on its hinges, and then settled wide open. He cautiously put one foot on the impossibly steep ground, but was reluctant to let go of the frame of the truck.

  “Are you sure it’s safe to park on a hill like this?” Walter asked.

  Bell chuckled.

  “What do we care?” he said with a shrug. “It’s not our truck.”

  Walter felt an irrational pang of sympathy for the now abandoned plastic hula girl on the dashboard. While Bell wasn’t looking, he detached her from her magnetic base and put her into one of the deep pockets of his Norfolk jacket, before shouldering the heavy door closed and joining Bell on the sidewalk.

  They were standing in front of a dilapidated group of identical Victorian row houses, distinguishable only by their peeling pastel paint jobs. The one on the far end of the block had been cheaply renovated, its delicate gingerbread details buried under bland aluminum siding. There was a faded “for sale” sign out front, but it didn’t look as if there had been much interest. That one house reminded Walter of an older guy trying to impress women while his shabby, drunken buddies crowded around him.

  That’s when Walter noticed the tower.

  Although he wasn’t familiar with this city or its landmarks, he instantly recognized the looming gun-muzzle tower on the top of a nearby hill. It was just like his vision, only at night it was lit with a ghostly pale glow that made it seem even more sinister.

  A bad omen.

  He shivered, pulling his collar closer for protection against the chilly night air.

  The house that Bell approached might once have been a delicate shade of lavender, but over the years the accumulated grime had rendered it more the color of an asphyxiated corpse. In contrast to the grim, faded exterior, the warmly glowing windows were all covered with colorful Indian scarves, tie-dyed flags, rock and roll posters, and whimsical hand-made stained glass. It seemed like a friendly house. A sanctuary.

  Bell took the front steps two at a time and knocked decisively on the door. Walter was close behind when a man appeared in the long multi-paned window set into the door.

  The guy wasn’t exactly handsome, with a long dour face and large ears that protruded comically from long brown hair that had apparently never met a comb, but his dark, deeply shadowed eyes were intelligent, intense, and compelling. He was dressed in tight, brick-red corduroy pants that laced at the fly, a large, gaudy pendant, and nothing else.

  “Is Nina home?” Bell asked, silently bristling at the sight of this unexpected shirtless person—although Walter couldn’t imagine why. It seemed to him that Bell should feel some sense of kinship with the stranger, since the two of them had very similar eyebrows.

  “Sure, man,” the guy said, seemingly unfazed or unaware of Bell’s unspoken hostility. He set to work unlocking what seemed to be a preposterous number of locks and chains. “Come on in.”

  Once the door was open, the man just turned and walked away without another word. Walter and Bell had no choice but to follow him in.

  The stranger led them past a narrow staircase and down a musty hallway lined from floor to ceiling with taped-up psychedelic posters, and into a large common room shaped like a rectangle married to half an octagon. There were several mismatched sofas from various eras, all hiding their imperfections under colorful blankets, and clusters of mirror-studded pillows.

  Every wall was covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Lamps were shrouded in sheer or metallic scarves. Candles burned in cracked teacups. Instrument cases were clustered against one wall, most of them approximately guitar shaped, but also for a banjo, an autoharp, and a fiddle.

  A strong miasma of strawberry incense and marijuana overlaid a faint old-house mustiness and the distinct tang of a cat’s litter box.

  There were two other young men in the room already, one on a couch and one sitting cross-legged on the floor. They were sharing a joint and seemed to be in the midst of a spirited debate.

  “I’m not saying that we should compromise who we are as artists,” the one on the floor said. He was a tall, lanky guy with a mournful, horsey face and astounding blond mutton chops. “I’m just saying we gotta get with the times, man.”

  “No way,” the guy who let them in said, as if he’d never left the conversation. “The minute you compromise to fit into the top-forty status quo, you lose the right to call yourself an artist.”

  The guy on the couch, a stocky Latin fellow with arms like a bricklayer and brambly black beard spoke up.

  “Did you sleep through Altamont, or what?” He passed the joint to the shirtless guy. “The summer of love is over, Roscoe. Janis and Jimi are dead. Times, they are a-changing, whether you like it or not.”

  A fat Himalayan cat appeared suddenly, weaving in and out of Walter’s legs, seemingly oblivious to the brewing argument among his human companions.

  “So what,” the shirtless guy replied, flushing a dangerous crimson. “You want to get a couple of Swedish bimbos with tambourines to take over the lead vocals? Or maybe I should start dressing up like a satanic wizard or a hooker from Mars.” He gave the other men in the room a baleful glare. “In fact, why don’t we just change our name to Violet Sedan Starship?”

  “Please forgive the interruption,” Walter said, unable to keep quiet for another second, and forgetting about everything else for a brief happy moment. “But you gentlemen wouldn’t happen to be... Violet Sedan Chair?”

  The shirtless guy took a deep toke off the joint and squinted at him.

  “Yeah,” he said, smoky voice hard and sarcastic. “Sure. Maybe you remember us from back when we used to be cool.”

  “And you...” He pointed right in the center of the shirtless guy’s chest, ignoring the self-deprecating sarcasm. “You’re Roscoe Joyce, aren’t you?” Walter couldn’t keep the big, enthusiastic smile off his face, and his words seemed to fall all over each other as they rushed to get out. “I loved ‘Seven Suns’! Absolutely transcendent! ‘Hovercraft Mother’ is my personal favorite, not to take away from the rest of the tracks. But I have to know, is it true what they say about the eleventh song?

  “I, myself, am very interested in the scientific study of the various methods by which one can induce hallucinatory effects to the human brain.”

  “William?” A new voice. A female voice. “William Bell?”

  Walter turned toward the source and was treated to the sight of two young women. One was a waifish Keane-painting blonde in gingham granny dress whose delicate, slender limbs seemed barely up to the task of supporting her massively pregnant stomach. But that husky, arresting voice belonged to a stunning redhead with a thick spill of russet waves around her pale, serious face and sharp blue eyes that he would wager missed nothing. She wore green velvet flared trousers and a tight, cream-colored sweater. It was embarrassingly clear to Walter that she was not wearing a brassiere.

  He made himself focus his eyes on her brown suede platform shoes, instead.

  He needn’t have bothered. She went right to Bell
as if there was no one else in the room, and snaked her arms around him. She said something to him that was too soft to hear, even though the whole room had gone silent as soon as the women had appeared.

  Bell smiled in response to whatever she was saying and hooked an arm possessively around her waist.

  Meanwhile the pregnant blonde drifted over to Roscoe, who put a hand on her belly and passed her the joint.

  “How’s little Bobby?” Roscoe asked her.

  “You’re so sure it’s going to be a boy, aren’t you?” she asked, wrapping a dreamy smile around the moist end of the rapidly shrinking joint.

  “Sure I’m sure,” Roscoe said, tapping his temple. “Just like I’m sure he’s going to be a rock star. Like his daddy.” He spoke directly into her tummy. “Isn’t that right, Bobby?”

  “Nina,” Bell said, waving a hand in Walter’s direction. “I’d like you to meet my colleague Walter Bishop. Walter, this is Nina Sharp.”

  Walter wanted to say oh, yes she is, but he bit his tongue.

  “Walter,” Nina said with a knowing smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you. These are my housemates Roscoe Joyce and his lady Abby. The guy under the sideburns is Chick Spivy...”

  “And you,” Walter jumped in, gesturing at the guy with the black beard. “You’re Iggy, right? Ruben ‘Iggy’ Ignacio. Drummer. But where are Alex and Oregon Dave?”

  Roscoe shook his head, unable to suppress a smile.

  “We don’t all live in the same house, you know,” he said. “We ain’t the Partridge Family.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s to be expected.” Walter nodded, thoughtful. “But I can’t tell you how pleased I am to meet you three.”

  “You’re pleased now,” Roscoe said, eyes going strange and unfocused. “But when we meet again, far, far in the future, we won’t remember having met.”

  Walter cocked his head and touched his chin, curious.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Sometimes I think Roscoe is psychic,” Abby said, offering the joint to Walter. “He knows things.”