Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

“What about Roscoe and the band?”

“They’re headed straight up to the lodge up on the top of the ridge,” Nina said. “Once we have the killer bound and sedated, we’ll contact them via the walkie-talkies and have them join us for the gate-opening trip.”

Nina pulled the big beast of a car into a weedy turnout in front of the burnt-out husk of some kind of structure. She killed the engine, and the three of them just sat there quietly for a minute, listening to oblivious birds and the soothing shush of wind in pine branches. It seemed so strange to Walter that the world around them just kept on keeping on, everything ordinary and normal, as if they weren’t about to commit this unthinkable offense against the very fabric of reality.

He rolled up the window and got out of the car, slinging the duffle bag full of supplies over one shoulder.

The walk up to the cabin was steep and roundabout, zigzagging back and forth along the safest, most stable ground. Nina took the determined lead, with Bell right behind her and Walter bringing up the rear. The bag on his shoulder was growing impossibly heavy by the time they reached the low, sloping back yard.

It was less like the old-fashioned log cabin Walter had pictured in his mind, and more like a small, rustic house. It was long and narrow, with a mossy stone chimney, weathered, grayish siding and a tall, A-frame roof.

They followed Nina around to the front door, which she opened with a large, old-fashioned key.

Inside, it was dim and dusty, furnished with minimal, utilitarian furniture that included a pair of tough plaid chairs set next to an oversized fireplace, and a hand-hewn wooden table. There was a really hideous lamp made from antlers, but Nina stopped Walter from flipping the switch to turn it on.

“Leave it,” she said, taking a small flashlight from her purse and thumbing it to life.

The curtains were closed, so the light was dim. The weak yellow illumination from the flashlight made the interior of the cabin seem more gloomy, rather than less. Dust spun and danced in the beam as Nina crouched down in front of the fireplace and pried up the third flagstone from the left.

When it finally came loose in her hand, she blew away the dust and replaced the stone loosely and slightly crooked.

“So,” Bell said. “He comes in through the door...”

“Right,” Nina said. “He comes in through the door and goes right for the fireplace. We should wait there.” She pointed to a dark doorway. “In the bedroom. When we hear him come in...”

“I grab him from behind,” Bell said.

“And I’ll put the rag with the chloroform over his mouth and nose,” Walter said.

“Then I cuff him and bind his legs together with duct tape,” Nina said.

“While I prepare and administer the sedative,” Bell finished.

“What’s through there?” Walter asked, gesturing to a second dark arched doorway.

“Kitchen and back door,” Nina replied.

“So that’s that,” Walter said. “We are as ready as we can be. All we have to do now is wait.”

30

Waiting, however, turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated. With no real idea of when the killer would arrive, and no way to watch for his arrival without exposing that they were there, the three of them were forced to sit in the bedroom, away from any windows, and try to remain on alert for what soon started to feel like an eternity.

For the first hour, none of them could relax enough to do anything but sit and stare distractedly at each other. Nina on the bed, Bell in an old rocker, and Walter sitting on an old leather trunk with a musty moth-eaten blanket folded to form a meager cushion. They jumped at every sound, the settling of the cabin or the creaking of a tree branch outside.

By the second hour, Nina was flipping through old issues of Field & Stream magazine that she had found on the bedside table, while Bell and Walter were playing chess on a pocket set Bell had brought. They were so distracted by listening to the sounds of the cabin that they kept forgetting whose turn it was.

By hour three, Nina lay on the bed with an arm flung over her eyes, though judging from her breathing and body position, Walter didn’t think she was actually asleep. He and Bell had finally given up on chess after three stalemates. Bell had read through all the Field & Stream issues and had resorted to searching for the hidden pictures on the back of a copy of Highlights magazine for children.

“Is that a fish?” he asked. “Or a water stain?”

* * *

Soon dusk fell over the little cabin, and Nina was anxious that any light would give them away. So they were forced to sit in the dark, waiting.

Walter tried to nap, but his brain would not allow it. Instead, he pulled the musty old blanket over his head and turned on the flashlight, like he used to do when he was a boy, up late and reading under the covers long past bedtime. He knew that if even the tiniest sliver of light appeared, Nina would take it away from him.

He took out the photocopies he’d made of the pages from the killer’s notebook and laid them on the floor around him, trying to figure out the key for that last fragment of text.

He got nowhere.

He had hoped that the keyword was in some way related to the word for the already translated page, whether phonetically, thematically, or structurally, but if it was, he could not discover the connection.

Then he went back into the file from Iverson, and starting reexamining the original cryptogram included in the August 1969 letters—the ones that had been sent to the newspapers. The code that had been solved by the teachers.

I like killing people because it is so much fun.

At the end of that message, a grouping of 18 extra letters whose meaning or significance had never been determined.

EBEORIETEMETHHPITI

Strange, when the rest of the message had been based on a relatively simple substitution code. But the way these last letters were grouped, there was no way they fit in.

In fact, the more Walter stared at them, the clearer it became that this segment had been created with a code so complex that each letter had more than one meaning. That first E was clearly an I, but then the second and third E seemed to have a totally different meaning.

I am? Could those first three letters spell out “I am?”

Walter concentrated on that third E. If there was a sliding key being used, then what was the numerical distance between the letter I and the letter M? Five. Move five more letters down the alphabet and you get R. But then at the fourth E, the key seemed to switch again, leaving him with a D.

Frustrated, he went back to the O-R-I, and after several false starts and aborted attempts, he wound up with S-C-H, which he added to the letters he’d already deduced.

I AM SCHR_D_________

That couldn’t be right. It seemed as if he was stuck with too many consonants in a row, and couldn’t think of any English words that began with SCHR. He decided to tackle the last three letters, I-T-I.

If the Es did not have the same value, then the Is must not, either. It seemed to Walter that the last I was actually a T, but the neighboring T seemed to be an A.

The number of three-letter English words ending in AT was enormous. Bat, rat, mat, sat, hat, fat, cat...

Cat.

I AM SCHR_D______CAT

Like lightning, it hit him. There was only one thing it could be, only one way to make those seemingly unrelated letters spell something. Something eerily apropos.

I am Schrodinger’s cat.

“My God,” he said out loud, throwing the blanket off his head and shoulders.

Bell looked up, squinting at the sudden light. Nina raised her head from the pillow and opened her eyes.