Christa Faust: Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

The librarian in charge of the archives was a man, just a little bit older than Walter, with bushy sideburns and frizzy hair bullied into an ill-advised Afro. He wore a baggy green suit and a joke tie featuring monkeys with typewriters. His name badge read “Mr. Sternberg.”

“How you doing?” he asked, revealing a hard New York accent. “What can I do for you?”

“Fine, thank you,” Walter replied. “We are looking for information on the Zodiac murders.”

“Man,” he said. “You’re lucky that Graysmith guy’s not here today. He’s in here all the time, pulling every single thing we have on the Zodiac and going over it with a fine-toothed comb.” He turned around and grabbed a large cardboard box from a metal library cart behind his desk, setting it in front of Walter and Bell. “You’re also lucky that I’m a lazy bastard and haven’t re-shelved all his microfilms since his last visit. This is pretty much everything. Enjoy.”

Walter couldn’t imagine that he would “enjoy” reading up on the murders that had been committed by the man from Reiden Lake, but he made himself smile and thank the librarian. Bell grabbed the box and headed over to the closest available reader.

He set the box on a nearby table, sat down, and sorted through the microfilm reels to find the one labeled with the earliest date.

“December, 1968,” Bell said, opening the cardboard box and holding up the reel. “Why, that’s just two months after...”

His voice trailed off, and he looked around at the other people in the archives.

Walter nodded, understanding Bell’s unfinished point. He held out his hand for the microfilm, and Bell handed it over. Walter pulled up an extra chair for himself.

He threaded the microfilm into the reader with a sense of dread, simultaneously wanting and not wanting to know the awful truth.

* * *

The two of them spent nearly three hours glued to the reader, studying article after horrifying article of the torture and mayhem caused by the man from Reiden Lake.

It began with a young couple at Lake Herman, in Vallejo. The boy was seventeen, the girl only sixteen, and the pair had been parked in the Lover’s Lane area near the lake when they had been approached by a man with a 22. caliber semi-automatic pistol. According to the police report, their killer shot the boy first, point blank in the head, then shot his terrified girlfriend five times in the back.

Worse, Walter instantly recognized the pretty blueeyed brunette from his vision at Reiden Lake. He’d seen her death, exactly as it happened two months before it occurred!

The next two unsuspecting teens were shot in a Lover’s Lane area, as well, this time at Blue Rock Springs, also near Vallejo. Only this time, the boy actually survived the brutal attack, describing the killer exactly the way Walter remembered him.

The police had received a phone call from a man claiming responsibility for the shootings, describing details of the crime that could only have been known by the killer. That caller also took credit for the previous shootings, and the police knew they had a serial killer on their hands.

The third attack, at Lake Berryessa near Napa, was by far the most bizarre and frightening. A young couple were approached by a man wearing a black hood, with a white crossed circle painted on a flap of fabric that hung down over his chest. After some surreal conversation, the man tied the couple up and started stabbing them repeatedly. When he was finished, he just walked away, leaving them bound and bleeding. After being discovered by a local fisherman, both victims were rushed to the hospital. The young woman didn’t make it, but her boyfriend survived the attack to relate all the horrifying details to the press.

Again the killer made another call to police, as well as leaving a written message on the victims’ car door, listing the dates of previous murders. It was signed with the same crossed circle symbol.

Walter was appalled to find so many details that he remembered from his vision. The more he read, the more he started to feel punch drunk and overwhelmed.

The last case that was confirmed as a Zodiac murder was the shooting of a cab driver in the city, in an upscale neighborhood known as Presidio Heights. Another grimly familiar story. Walter was starting to wish he’d never found out about the killings.

Having gone through the details of all the murders, Walter and Bell began to examine the letters and ciphers that the killer had sent to various newspapers in the area, including the letter in which he threatened to shoot school children on a bus.

The more they read, the more a dull, drowning sense of hopelessness began to wash over Walter.

“What have we done?” he asked Bell.

“I think a more important question,” Bell replied, “would be, what are we going to do about it?”

3

Walter paced up and down the length of the Howard Johnson hotel room he’d shared with Bell for the conference. They had spent nearly the entire day in the newspaper archive, digging up every single scrap of information they could find on the Zodiac Killer.

More and more, Walter was haunted by the faces of the victims. The teenage girl at Lake Herman. The cab driver with the mustache. But the one face he just couldn’t get out of his mind was the face of that old black woman in the red coat.

LINDA’S GRANDMA.

On the scratchy bedcover beside him was a copy he’d had printed out of one of the Zodiac letters. His eye kept coming back again and again to the bottom of the page.

Senior citizens make great targets. Okay, I think I shall wipe out a city bus some morning, just shoot out the front tire + then pick off the grannies as they come bouncing out.

“We have to contact the authorities,” Walter said. “I just don’t see any other option.”

“That’s brilliant, Walt,” Bell replied. “What are you going to do? Tell the police that you saw the future while you were on acid? That’ll go over well—I’m sure they’ll leap into action.”

“I’m going to tell them the truth, Belly.” He picked up the receiver of the bedside telephone. “I have a moral obligation, as a scientist.”

“Would you just stop and think for a moment...” Bell began.

Walter ignored him, dialing the operator.

“Yes, hello,” he said when she came on the line. “Give me the San Francisco police department.”

“Just a moment,” she replied.

“Come on, Walter...”

A gruff male voice answered on the first ring.

“SFPD,” it said.

“I’d like to speak to someone in charge of the Zodiac case, please.”

A long, weighty sigh on the other end, then, “Please hold.”

Bell looked away, exasperated, and started studying a Xerox copy of one of the ciphers.

Walter waited patiently until a woman came on the line. She had a gentle voice, like someone’s mother.

“Hello and thanks for calling the Zodiac tip line,” she said. “Please state your information.”

“Yes, I...” Walter looked over at Bell, who was deliberately ignoring him. “I need to speak to someone in charge of the case. It’s extremely urgent.”

“I’m sure it is, sir, and if you’d go ahead and let me know why you’re calling, I’d be happy to pass your information on to the detectives, right away.”

“But...” Bell was still ignoring him. “Well... This is probably going to sound pretty out there.”

“Go ahead, honey,” the woman said. “It can’t be more out there that half the cranks I hear from every day.”

“I’m a scientist,” Walter said. “Specializing in biochemical processes within the human brain. I believe I may be responsible for bringing the man you’ve been calling the Zodiac into our world.”