Fringe - the Zodiac Paradox Read online

5

  When Allan woke, stiff and horribly dehydrated on the bathroom floor, it was already nighttime again. The little window above the bathtub was black. He’d slept through the entire day without even realizing it. Clearly his body and brain needed the downtime.

  He got cautiously to his feet and leaned heavily on the edge of the sink, turning on the cold water and drinking deeply for several minutes, right from the faucet. He splashed the icy water on his face and neck, running his fingers over his bristly crew-cut hair. All things considered, he didn’t feel all that bad. Looking over his blurry and haggard reflection in the mirror, he made himself a promise.

  I’m done with acid. Clearly the risks were too great.

  Toweling his face dry and stretching his sore muscles, he began to feel in control again. He felt around on the floor until he found his glasses where they had fallen the night before. He stood and wiped the lenses with a fold of his shirt, making a mental list of tasks to triage after whatever mess he must have made the night before.

  Once that was done, he’d close up shop as quickly and efficiently as possible. Clearly, it was time for another move. Rural New York State was no longer viable.

  A new state, a fresh start.

  New girls. New victims.

  He felt almost cheerful, with a spring in his step as he put on his glasses, unlocked the bathroom door and turned the knob.

  The door wouldn’t open. Something was blocking it from the other side.

  He put his shoulder to it, forcing it with all his strength. He could feel the heavy mass on the other side yield to his efforts as it was slowly pushed out of the way. When the door was open about six inches, Allan could see something on the other side.

  A pair of naked, hairy legs, tinged a dark bruised blue along the bottom.

  The corpse of his murdered doppelganger was still in the hallway. Worse, the doppelganger clearly hadn’t been quite dead after all, and had somehow managed to crawl a few feet across the floor before finally expiring against the bathroom door.

  It was real. It was all real.

  Allan slammed the door again, pressing his back against it and then sliding down to a sitting position. He drew his knees up to his chest as the panic bloomed inside him, threatening to send his sanity spinning away into oblivion.

  Now that he had his glasses on, everywhere his eyes went inside the claustrophobic bathroom, he saw things he didn’t recognize. Brand names he’d never heard of on the toothpaste and shaving cream. A framed painting of a happy frog holding an umbrella—he never would have chosen that. Even the rug he’d slept on, a garish, burnt orange and olive striped monstrosity that was totally unlike the simple navy blue one he’d chosen for his own bathroom.

  He wasn’t tripping anymore. He really was somewhere else. Somewhere that looked very much like the real world, but was filled with mirrored doubles of everything.

  This wasn’t his house, it was a double of his house, complete with another him who lived there and chose that god-awful rug and that god-awful frog. He really had gone through some kind of gateway the night before.

  A gateway to a parallel universe.

  It was hard to believe, theoretically impossible, yet there he was.

  So he began to gather his thoughts. A lesser mind might have been crushed by this kind of paradox, but Allan was better than that. He had no choice but to take this bizarre new world in stride.

  He had to start formulating a plan.

  Because there was no doubt in his mind that the corpse on the other side of the door was real. Which meant he needed to get away from the scene of his crime, as quickly as possible.

  West. He would go west. Would the cities on the crazy mirror version of the West Coast still be the same as the cities in his old familiar universe?

  Only one way to find out.

  6

  AUGUST, 1969

  Allan sat at the cheap, second-hand desk that came with this, the latest of several furnished rooms he’d rented. A forgettable room in a long line of forgettable rooms in forgettable neighborhoods in and around his new hunting ground of San Francisco.

  After that strange, twisted nightmare he’d left behind in upstate New York, Allan had adapted quickly and efficiently to this new, slightly different version of the world, settling right back in to his familiar routines. Being mechanically inclined, he’d picked up a variety of odd jobs to pay the meager bills while pursuing his true mission.

  The result was that his life was better than ever.

  His last escapade had been a little problematic, and the boy had somehow managed to survive the attack, but Allan wasn’t worried that he would be identified. After all, he was a ghost in this funhouse mirror world, a man who had never been born. He had nothing to fear.

  In retrospect he was starting to think that he might be getting over the concept of preying on couples. Outgrowing that scenario. He fingered the crude, handmade black hood sitting on the desk beside his gun, thinking of the next murder he had in mind. He’d planned to find a couple enjoying a romantic date in the park, and had no intention of abandoning his plan. But he decided that this would be his last couple, and it would be his finest work yet.

  After that, who knew what he would do next?

  He found himself suddenly thinking of Betty Lou, the pretty and vivacious teenager that he would forever think of as the Lake Herman girl. He’d tortured and killed several bums and hobos on his journey across the country, but she was his first female victim in this new world. He could still picture the terror in her big blue eyes when she saw her hapless boyfriend shot in the head at point blank range, knowing she would be next.

  There was something so special about her, because her death had proven to him that although everything around him was different and strange, some things never changed. The sacred perfection of that moment when a young girl realizes that she is about to die—that never changed.

  Maybe he ought to start focusing entirely on single women, he mused. Allowing himself more time with each individual girl, indulging in a more hands-on kind of methodology.

  But for the moment, he had other business to attend to. On the desk was a clutter of crumpled papers and an open notebook. There were several different ciphers, and experiments with substitution codes of various kinds. It had been a real chore for Allan to devise a code that would be basic enough for unevolved mongoloids like the police and local newspapermen to solve. And, unsurprisingly, they had failed even then. It had required a pair of clever civilians—a teacher and his wife—to crack it, no matter how elementary it was.

  The pigs in this universe were just as stupid as their counterparts in his own world. That didn’t surprise him in the slightest.

  It was hot and oppressively stuffy in the little room, but he still kept the thick, cigarette-scented drapes tightly shut on the single window. To combat the swelter, he’d discarded his clothing and sat naked on the rickety wooden folding chair. Naked, except for a pair of leather gloves.

  He checked and compulsively rechecked a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, then set it down on the desk and picked up a pen. He turned to a fresh page in the notebook and began to write.

  Dear Editor, This is the Zodiac speaking.

  7

  OCTOBER, 1969

  The cabbie was chatty.

  Allan didn’t mind. He planned to kill the man as soon as he arrived at the Presidio Heights street corner he’d selected as his destination. This had no effect on his willingness to engage in casual, friendly dialog along the way. It was actually somewhat enjoyable. Freeing, almost, because he knew that any memory of this conversation would soon be decorating the taxi’s dashboard, along with the rest of the cabbie’s brain.

  “Tell me,” Allan said, “do you believe in alternate realities?” He closed a gloved hand around the grip of the 9 mm pistol in his jacket pocket.

  “Say what?” The cabbie pulled up to a red light, signaling a left turn.

  “Other universes,” Allan said. “Universes, not unli
ke this one, but just a little bit different.”

  “You mean like a place where I’m four inches taller, four inches longer and married to Jane Fonda?” The cabbie let out a husky, sandpaper laugh. “Sign me up!”

  Allan persisted.

  “Do you believe it’s possible, through the use of mind-altering chemicals, to open doorways and travel from one universe to the other?”

  “Say, you don’t look like one of them hippies,” the cabbie said. “But you sure sound like one.”

  “Surely you’re familiar with Schrodinger’s cat?”

  “Whose cat?” The cabbie shrugged and made the turn. “I got a pet cat myself. Cute little Siamese. I guess you could say I’m more of a cat person than a dog person.”

  “It’s a theory,” Allan continued, ignoring the digression. “A kind of paradox. It posits that if you were to put a cat in a box containing an automated mechanism that had a fifty-fifty chance of releasing a poison and killing it, the cat would be simultaneously alive and dead inside the box until you open it and observe the outcome. At that point, your perception would lock it down into one state or the other, but until that solidifying moment of observation, the cat would exist in two universes at once.”

  “Jeez, that’s terrible,” the cabbie said. “Who would do something like that to a poor little cat?”

  “Don’t you see?” Allan said, looking out the window at the passing houses. Nice, upscale houses, lights on to chase away the night. “I’m like that paradoxical cat. A creature of two worlds, alive and dead at the same time.”

  “Whatever you say, mister.”

  Allan could see that the cabbie was becoming uncomfortable with their conversation. His shoulders hunched down, eyes locked on the road. Allan was about to try another, more mundane conversational gambit when he realized that they were arriving at their destination.

  “Just a little farther down,” he told the driver. “There, at the corner of Cherry.”

  “You got it.”

  The cabbie pulled over.

  “Do me a favor, would you?” Allan said, gripping the gun a little too tightly. “Put the car in park.”

  “Sure.” The cabbie shrugged and did what was asked. “But what for?”

  Pressing the barrel close, Allan shot the cabbie in the back of the head.

  He pocketed the gun and got out of the back of the vehicle, casting a quick glance around him. The quiet, classy street was deserted. Only just before 10 p.m. and all the little human animals were already tucked into their upscale beds. Allan felt fine. Calm and warm inside, as if he’d just taken a slug of good whiskey.

  He swiftly pulled the front passenger side door open and got in. He dragged the lifeless cabbie across the seat by his bloody shirtfront until the corpse slumped across his lap. He took the man’s wallet and keys and then, using a small folding utility knife, he cut a large square of fabric out of the back of the cabbie’s striped shirt.

  Then, as he was holding that blood-stained trophy in his gloved hand, it started to happen.

  The hot, unbearable itch in his hands, burning between his fingers. Like insects crawling under his skin.

  Maddened by the sensation, he dropped the swatch, stripped the smoking gloves off his hands and threw them away, into the back seat, sure they were about to burst into flame. Once his hands were bare, he saw to his horror that the sparks were back. Just like that terrible night back in New York.

  Just like every time since then. No matter how he tried to deny it. But this time it was more intense than ever.

  He made himself breathe deeply, struggling to remain calm. Nothing was on fire. Nothing was hot or burnt. He would be able to control it this time. With each breath, the terrible sparks faded, their strange energy dissipating until they were gone.

  He reached down and plucked his trophy off the floor of the cab, tucking the bloody fabric into his jacket pocket. He was about to push the dead cabbie back over to the driver’s side and exit the cab, and he actually had his right hand on the door when he suddenly realized the implication of having taken off his gloves.

  Fingerprints. He’d left fingerprints.

  It was too late just to get the gloves out of the back seat and put them back on. It’d be like closing the barn door after the horses were out, anyway. No, the only option was to wipe down the surfaces of the cab as best he could.

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped down the dashboard, the seat, and the interior of the door. Then he got out and wiped first the outside of the passenger door and then the driver’s door. He was fairly certain he hadn’t touched the driver’s door, but he couldn’t be too careful.

  He heard sirens in the distance. Growing closer.

  Time to go.

  He walked away, heading north on Cherry Street. When he made a right on Jackson, he spotted a police prowler driving slowly toward him.

  His heart stopped, then revved like a race car. His throat constricted, suddenly dry and parched. The sparks flared in his hands, and he shoved them deep into the pockets of his slouchy blue jacket, terrified that the pigs would see the glow.

  One of them turned toward him, looking right at him. Allan wrapped his fingers around his pistol. There was no way he was going to surrender without a fight.

  The cop turned away, and the prowler continued down Jackson without slowing.

  He felt a surge of elation so powerful it was almost sexual. He’d beaten them again. He imagined the young pig being forced to explain that he’d seen the legendary Zodiac Killer in the flesh, but hadn’t bothered to stop him. A small, private smile played over his lips as he turned on Maple and headed north, into the Presidio.

  PART TWO

  1

  SEPTEMBER 20, 1974

  Walter stood alone beside a small, cheaply produced poster for the paper he and Bell had just presented— Use of Fluorescent Probes to Investigate Hepatic Microsomal ‘Drug’-Binding Sites.

  The paper had been very well received, although he couldn’t help but notice that more than half the audience was female. Striking odds when contrasted against the fact that the attendance for the annual conference of the American Biochemical Society tended to be more than 75 percent male.

  But Walter was an enthusiastic supporter of women’s lib and was pleased to see so many vigorous and inquisitive female minds seeking to embrace and decode the intricacies of the natural world. He stood by, ready, willing and able to discuss the finer details of sigmoidal reaction velocity with any one of these eager young scholars.

  Yet for some reason, they all ignored him and clustered around Bell.

  Maybe Bell was right about Walter’s jacket. He had only one jacket, which he had worn every day for ten years. It had originally belonged to his father, a tweed Norfolk that had a few moth holes and was a little frayed around the cuffs, but was still perfectly serviceable. It had deep pockets that could hold up to a dozen rolls of Necco wafers, as well as his notebook and several spare pens. He seemed to lose pens like a shark loses teeth.

  Yet Bell had repeatedly threatened to throw that jacket away or set it on fire while Walter was sleeping. He had even gone so far as to buy his friend a new jacket, a snazzy plaid double-knit sport coat like the ones that Bell favored, but the pockets on the outside were fake, sewn shut and just for show, and the one inner pocket could barely hold two rolls of Necco wafers and a single pen. So that jacket stayed in his closet back at MIT, and Walter had worn the Norfolk jacket again to U. C. Berkeley, just like last year.

  And none of the women wanted to talk to him, just like last year.

  Bell, on the other hand, was holding court in the center of a crowd of enraptured females. Bell, with his sharp sport coat and rust-colored turtleneck and charming smile. The scientist in Walter liked to believe that he could replicate the results by duplicating the methods, but in his heart he knew there was something about Bell that couldn’t be duplicated.

  Off to the left, he noticed an older, slightly mannish woman and her chubby friend deep in
conversation. They were the only two females who seemed unaffected by Bell’s charisma, and Walter found himself eavesdropping on them.

  “Can you believe he’s back?” the older one was saying, pointing to an article in a folded newspaper. “I swear I was just starting to feel safe at night.”

  “But how can they be sure the new letters are from the same guy?”

  “They used handwriting analysis. It’s him, alright. I wonder if the killings are going to start back up again.”

  “Jesus,” the older woman said. “I took a cab to work for two years after I saw that letter where he threatened to shoot senior citizens on a city bus.”

  Walter’s blood suddenly felt like liquid nitrogen in his veins.

  “Excuse me,” he said, stepping closer to the two women. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear. What were you saying about a letter threatening to shoot people on a city bus?”

  “It’s the Zodiac Killer, man,” the chubby woman said. “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m...” Walter’s throat was so dry he could barely form words. “I’m from the east coast. I guess I don’t really keep up on national news.”

  “Well,” the chubby woman said, warming to the topic. “This psycho killer was running around murdering people about four or five years back. He sent letters to the paper and used this... what did they call it? Like a code.”

  “A cipher,” the mannish woman said.

  Nausea bloomed and twisted in Walter’s gut.

  “But the bus...?”

  “He said he was gonna shoot senior citizens on a city bus, wrote it in one of his letters,” the mannish woman replied. “What was that, ’69?”

  “October, ’69,” the chubby woman said, shivering slightly and wrapping her thick arms around her body. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “But he never followed through,” the mannish woman said. “Not yet anyway. Here, look.”

  She handed him the paper.

  He looked down at the article, but the headline and the text below never registered. All he saw was a crude police sketch of the suspect. A sketch he recognized instantly.