Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

After a few seconds of coughing and brushing off and sitting up, Bell squinted around, waving at the clouds of dust.

“So much for gently lowering anything to the ground.”

Walter looked toward the door.

“I thought I heard someone outside,” he said. “We should check. They might be...”

He cut off as the sirens they had been hearing in the background suddenly pushed to the foreground. They could see flashing red and blue lights through the windows of the trailer, and heard the slamming of doors.

“Or perhaps...”

“Wha... what the hell was that?”

They both looked down. The confused watchman was looking up at them, an expression on his face that was equal parts fear and embarrassment.

“I had another one of my fits again,” he said. “Didn’t I?”

Bell nodded, then shot another glance at the window.

“Er, yes, sir,” Walter said. “I’m afraid so. But you’re fine now, and there is an ambulance here to help you. We’ll just go let them know where you are.”

“Yes,” Bell said, edging toward the door. “We’ll send them your way.” He turned. “Come on, Walter.”

Walter didn’t want to leave the man alone. In fact, he wanted to question him, ask him about the experience. But trying to give the police a rational sounding explanation for what had happened here would be an exercise in futility. So he gave a guilty salute to the befuddled watchman, then edged around him.

“Right behind you,” he called after his friend.

* * *

Allan hurried away down the street, police sirens bouncing off the surrounding walls and painting the night in a wash of blue and red. He had been less than three feet from the trailer door and about to reach for the knob when all of the mysteriously suspended objects around him had suddenly lost their animation and dropped to the ground.

A large jagged chunk of rusty metal the size of a washing machine had dropped down an inch from his toes. So close that he could feel the wind of its passage. If he’d been reaching for the knob, his right arm would have been crushed, broken, or perhaps even severed.

He got the message. He was being impulsive, over-eager. He had been thinking of deviating from the plan. And look where that kind of thinking got him.

He would still have his special moment with those two, and with Miss Nina Sharp, as long as he stuck to the plan. He just needed to be patient. Let them make plans of their own. Watch it all play out, and act accordingly.

25

They got back to Nina’s house just as the sun was coming up. Pregnant Abby was curled up on a couch, dozing with Cat-Mandu. Looking down at her, Walter felt a pang of guilt for involving the father of her child in all this madness.

The three of them dragged themselves up the stairs to Nina’s room, mentally and physically exhausted.

“So what’s our next move?” Nina asked.

“Next move?” Walter ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know about you, but my next move is to collapse from exhaustion.”

“But what I want to know,” Bell said, “is how did he find us?”

Walter shuddered. He’d been thinking the same thing, and wasn’t happy with the conclusions he’d come to.

“There’s been something bothering me since last night,” Walter said. “But you know how bad my memory is, so I just told myself I was wrong.”

“What?” Bell asked.

“Well,” Walter said, “I’m pretty sure we never told Iverson about Reiden Lake.”

Bell got it. His eyes went wide.

“The classified ad,” he said.

“It said ‘regarding events at Reiden Lake,’ right?” Walter asked. “But we never told Iverson, or any other authorities about where the initial trip took place. There’s only one other person who knows that.”

“The killer,” Bell said.

“How could we have been so stupid?” Walter said.

“You know what this means,” Bell said. “This means he’s probably following us. He may be watching us right now!”

“But if he’s been watching us all this time, why doesn’t he just kill us?”

“Look,” Nina said. “It’s obvious that he wants to toy with you—with us. That’s his thing, right? Psychological torture, mind games, taunting letters.”

“Okay,” Walter said. “I see your point.”

“But what do we do now?” Bell asked.

“We beat him at his own game,” Nina said.

“Beat him how?” Bell asked.

“We’re no good at hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “We know that. But mind-to-mind combat, that’s a whole different ball game. Our ball game.”

“In theory, yes,” Walter said. “That’s likely to be a superior strategy.”

“But how...” Bell said again.

“Will you let me finish?” Nina asked.

“Right, sorry,” they both said simultaneously

“We talked about needing to get him through the gate, right?” Nina continued. “But clearly, even the rehearsal space isn’t remote enough. We need some place even more remote. I have a good location in mind, but then the problem becomes how to get him to that remote location.”

“Kidnapping seems a little more physically demanding than any of us are capable of,” Walter said. “Plus, we don’t know where he is.”

“Yet he knows where we are,” Nina said. “If he’s following us, we need to use that to our advantage.”

“You’ve lost me again,” Bell said.

Nina sighed like a teacher dealing with a recalcitrant student. She went over to her desk and slipped a blank sheet into the typewriter.

“Dear Special Agent Iverson,” Nina read aloud as she typed. “We want to warn you that the Zodiac has been imitating you in order to trick us, so be suspicious of any communication that is delivered by any method other than this, our previously arranged drop spot.”

“Excellent,” Bell said, catching on immediately.

“Brilliant,” Walter said. “The bit about him tricking us adds an extra element of credibility.”

“At this point in time,” Nina continued, “the danger has become too great, and for our own safety, we feel that we have no other choice but to return to the east coast. However, we have an encrypted notebook in our possession which we feel would be invaluable to your case.

“We will hide the notebook under the third flagstone from the left in the fireplace of a cabin up in Fairfax, CA. There is no address, but it’s the second building on a private, unmarked, and unpaved driveway off Iron Springs Road about 100 yards east of the junction with Timber Canyon Road.

“Please see included map.”

“Map?” Walter said.

“Yes,” Nina said, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a neatly folded map. She opened it and drew a neat red X to mark the location. “We can’t take chances that he might not find the cabin.”

“You are amazing,” Bell said. “Will you marry me?”

“Marriage is an outdated relic of patriarchal oppression,” Nina replied, arching a russet brow. “But if you ever need someone to run your business affairs, you just let me know.”

“Not to spoil your special moment,” Walter said, “but what are we going to do with our friend the Zodiac once he arrives? Chase him through the gate with harsh language?”

Nina reached into the box of chemicals that Bell had scored to mix the acid blend, and pulled out a large brown glass bottle.

“Chloroform,” she said. “As soon as he comes through the cabin door, we chloroform him and then toss him through the gate.”

“We’d need to seriously sedate him,” Bell said. “I mean, chloroform is fine for the initial knockout, but we’ll need to keep him under while we open the gate, and that will take time. It’s not like we can just flick a switch.”