Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

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.