Christa Faust - Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

The kind of girl that Matt would notice.

But every time she’d take that bottle of bleach out of her purse and set it on the edge of the sink, she’d chicken out at the last minute. What if it didn’t come out right? What if she ended up looking stupid, like Rita Bianchini back in eight grade, who’d tried to dye her black hair blond and turned it a terrible frizzy orange. Rita had to wear a hat for the whole rest of the year, and everyone teased her mercilessly about it. Miranda couldn’t take that kind of humiliation.

As she left the theater, walking alone down 16th Street toward Hoff, she decided that it was time to take the plunge. No more girly indecisiveness. She would bleach her hair that night, as soon as she got home. Of course, her mom would flip out, but so what? She was a grown woman now, just turned eighteen and ready to move out of her parents’ suburban house and find her own apartment in the city.

It was time for her to be her own person. She’d been a good girl for way too long.

Miranda was ready to be bad.

* * *

The ride back was a nightmare.

Nina drove like a maniac, flooring it the whole way, and Walter sat rigid in his seat, afraid at every second that she would wreck the car, or kill somebody, or attract the attention of the police. And he didn’t understand why she was trying. There was no way they were going to make it. It was too far, and there wasn’t nearly enough time.

Then, as they neared the city and he checked his watch, the nightmare got worse, because somehow she had managed it. She had driven so fast that the theater was within reach. As they came off the Golden Gate Bridge and started south into the steep hills of Divisadero Street they still had thirty minutes to spare.

That’s when they hit some kind of traffic jam that had everything snarled up for as far as they could see. Walter’s fingers dug into the seat as they crawled through the Fillmore district. Nina leapt at gaps, jerking the big car forward one second, then stomping on the brakes the next. But there was no point. There was nowhere to go.

Ten minutes later, they were only at Haight Street. And a few blocks later, when they turned left on 16 th, it got even worse, as a large multi-car accident was revealed at the intersection with Market.

He checked his watch as they inched past the pile-up and headed into the Mission District. Two minutes. Maybe the killer would be late. Maybe the girl wouldn’t show up. Maybe they would make all the lights and get there on time.

But four minutes later the bright marquee of the Roxie came into view. Nina pulled up in front and Walter jumped out of the back seat before the car had come to a complete stop, stumbling and catching himself at the last minute as he ran to the glass doors.

Locked.

He banged on the door, cupping his hands to peer inside, but he didn’t see anyone.

“Hello?” he called. “Hello!”

Nothing. No response. They must have just missed her.

Walter ran back to the car and dove into the back seat, rifling through the file for his translation of that last page of the Zodiac’s notebook.

“...she parks her car on Hoff Street,” Walter read out loud. “Where the hell is Hoff Street?”

“There,” Nina said, pointing through the windshield and stomping on the gas, cutting off a honking Dodge Dart. “Just a few blocks down.”

“For God’s sake,” Walter said. “Hurry.”

* * *

When Miranda turned down Hoff, a sudden cold wind whipped the ends of Matt’s purple scarf up into her face. She clutched it tighter around her neck and quickened her step, making a beeline for the parking lot where she kept the hated Honda CVCC she’d received for her birthday, instead of the cute Beetle she’d wanted.

“So much more practical,” her father had said. “ And better gas mileage. Next time OPEC pulls another oil embargo, you’ll thank me.”

Which pretty much summed up the entire 18 years of her life so far. Practical. Carefully thought out in advance. She was so ready to break out of that expectation. To be extravagant and wild. To hell with oil embargos.

She had her hand half raised to wave at Dio, the friendly parking lot attendant, but when she looked over at the little booth where he always sat, she was surprised to see that it was empty, the door left hanging open. Maybe he’d gone to the bathroom or something, but it seemed kind of weird that he would just leave the door open like that.

She took a step closer, frowning.

Inside the booth, Dio’s little portable heater was running at the foot of the stool he sat on. His transistor radio played the crackly religious station he always listened to. There was a half-eaten Zagnut bar sitting on top of the radio. A faded snapshot of Dio’s five daughters had fallen off the shelf and landed against the grate of the little heater, dangerously close to the glowing coils within.

She figured that she’d better move that photo before it caught on fire, and was bending down and reaching toward it when she noticed the blood.

There was a small red smear, about the size of a man’s shoe, on the floor to the left of the stool. Could have been anything, ketchup or maybe raspberry jam, but it was enough to turn Miranda’s own blood to ice.

She backpedalled, heart racing and thinking that she ought to try to call the police or something, but the nearest pay phone was two blocks back on 16 th’ and she was only a few feet away from her car.

The lot looked empty. No one was passing by on the street.

She should get in her car and get away, right away. Then she could maybe stop at a gas station and call the police. That was the sensible thing to do, and despite her fantasies to the contrary, Miranda had been raised to be a sensible girl.

Rooting through her overstuffed purse for her car keys, she walked around her little white Honda to the driver’s side.

There she found Dio.

He was dead, that much was clear, slumped up against her car as if propped there like a rag doll, ready for a tea party. His neat white shirt and navy blue uniform jacket were soaked with blood, but that wasn’t the worst thing about him. The worst thing about it was his face.

He didn’t have one.

Where his face should have been was a charred red crater lit from within by a strange pale glow emanating from a network of fissures in the red ruin that used to be his features.

Then she quickly realized that it wasn’t the worst thing after all. The real worst thing was the note.

A handwritten note, stuck to the center of his chest with a small folding pocket knife.

HELLO MIRANDA

Her purse fell from her numb, shaking hands, spilling its contents across the asphalt as she stood, frozen in horror. That’s when she started to notice her lips tingling unpleasantly, a weird itchy feeling that spread deep into her gums and tongue. There was a sensation sort of like heat radiating from the faceless corpse, causing her skin to tighten and pulse all along the front of her body.

That’s when a hand clamped down over her mouth. A large, calloused hand crawling with sparks. The sparks leapt from his fingers and burrowed like hungry maggots into her tingling skin, burning trails of excruciating agony deep into the meat of her cheeks.

She screamed against the muffing hand, but the sound was reduced to an impotent squeak. Then the fat blade of a large hunting knife appeared before her tear-blurred eyes. The terrible sparks flashed and reflected in the blade, then the knife buried itself in her vulnerable throat.

* * *

When Nina turned into the parking lot, she slammed on the breaks so hard that Walter banged into the back of Bell’s seat.

“Look,” she said.

In the pool of yellow cast by their headlights, Walter could see a pair of thin female legs in tan pantyhose, sticking out from behind a white Honda CVCC. One shoe was off, lying a few feet away.