Girl With a Past (32 page)

“He’s not here.”

“The gunshot gives us probable cause to
search the premises.” Detective Schmidt pushed Derek out of the
door and went into the entry hall. Derek stumbled, recovered and
followed.

The quiet of the neighborhood was broken by
what sounded like a gunshot. A second gunshot rang out. The body of
the uniformed driver jerked. He fell onto the courtyard paving.

A third explosion, the force of a bullet
hitting his chest, knocked one of the uniforms backwards off the
wall. The other officer dropped into the shrubbery that ringed the
inside of the courtyard.

63

Steven and I exchanged startled looks.

“Where did those shots come from?” Steven
asked.

“I think from over there. ” I pointed to a
yard behind us. “In that hedge.”

“He was hit, right? The cop?” Steven looked
from the officer to where he imagined the shots were fired.

“Either that or he was ducking out of the
line of fire.” Remain calm. Stay cool. My god, we were like ducks
in a barrel, trapped in this car.

Schmidt ran from the house. He motioned with
his arm, yelled, “Get down!” from where he crouched behind the
courtyard wall.

We ducked down, but when a loud thud hit the
car, Steven jumped off the seat and grabbed my arm. He yanked me
down to the floor, on top of his legs.

“Two hit.” Steven said as he punched 9-1-1
into his phone. He didn’t wait to be asked questions. “This is
Steven Nichols, I am with Detective Schmidt, SFPD, at California
and Scott in Pacific Heights. His driver and another officer have
been shot. He needs back up. We need paramedics. Officers
down.”

The rear window shattered at the same moment
we heard the bang. The bullet entered the back of the seat above
our heads. A bullet slammed into the trunk, another bounced off the
rear bumper.

Steven pulled me tighter to the floor then
threw himself on top.

We heard the percussion of projectiles
striking the body of the car, the whack of slugs on metal.

Detective Schmidt fired from behind the low
courtyard wall drawing attention away from the car. We heard the
thud of bullets hitting the concrete courtyard wall.

“Who the hell is that?” Steven asked, his
voice tight with fear.

“Lian, probably. Or Harold, but I’m betting
Lian.”

“Why?”

“Why do I think that? Or why is he shooting
at us?” I didn’t even try to control the quaver in my voice. “I
think whichever one it is, he sees himself as carrying on for the
Zodiac. Lian could’ve got the missing gun from Harold.”

I clinched my teeth to stop them chattering.
“And he is scary weird.” I remembered the cyclist who was outside
Ron’s townhouse and realized why he looked familiar. It was Lian I
saw there and in Pacific Heights. Had he followed us to Ron’s
condo? Why would he carry on where his step-grandfather, a man he
wasn’t actually related to, left off? Perhaps it was pointless
trying to understand craziness.

Gunfire, sirens, the arrival of a swat team,
and paramedics distracted Steven from asking more questions.

Steven allowed me to lift my head to steal a
peek out the bottom of the window just in time to see a barrage of
bullets hit the hedge. Lian’s bullet ridden body fell forward out
of the shrubbery, down the property line wall and onto the
sidewalk.

Deathly silence followed when even the usual
sounds of the city were muted in ears scarred by gunshot
explosions.

64

Detective Schmidt opened the car door. We
slid out like snakes on our bellies, then struggled to stand and
regain our dignity, but our limbs wouldn’t stop shaking.

The detective looked us up and down checking
for damage. “As that was going down, I kept seeing myself trying to
explain to your father how I managed to get his children shot.
You’re okay, right?” Hearing his voice tremble made me feel less
like a scaredy cat.

“I have to deal with this for awhile.”
Schmidt yelled over the sirens of numerous vehicles arriving on the
scene. “Please call your parents before the media gets here.”

I glanced over to where Lian’s body lay on
the ground, but I had to look away when Derek knelt next to his
son’s body. He held his son to his chest, and sobbed. Horrible
wracking, gut wrenching sobs. The sight ripped my heart. My tears
couldn’t relieve my pain.

Crime scene investigators swarmed the area
to document the justified, unavoidable killing. Paramedics tended
three wounded officers who all looked like they might make it.

Fog rolled in obliterating the stars and
black evening sky. Mist haloed the streetlights and wrapped the
half-block of the incident location in an obscuring haze that shut
out the rest of the city. Damp cold caused us to shiver and our
teeth to chatter severely as we stood around watching, waiting to
leave.

Detective Schmidt had ignored us once he
determined we were not hurt. An hour later he stood next to me,
handed me a handkerchief to wipe my nose and face instead of the
sleeve I’d soaked with snot and tears. “Back to headquarters, time
for another statement, you’re getting to be pros. I’ll catch up
with you soon as I can, and take you home, I promise, straight
home.”

Steven and I nodded. We allowed ourselves to
be ushered into the back seat of another police car. I leaned on my
brother and he put an arm around my shoulders. I closed my swollen
eyes for the drive back.

The officers who drove us back to the
station escorted us to the room where our statements would be
taken, fetched us terrible, but thankfully hot, coffee that sat
badly in our empty stomachs. We spotted snack machines and bought
stale crackers and faux cheese. It had been twelve hours since we
last ate.

While Steven was giving his statement, I
found a restroom and felt the déjà vu as I used it, splashed cold
water on my face, then soaked a paper towel and held it to my eyes.
I made the mistake of looking in the mirror and blew out of the
room.

Kyle, the young officer who had typed a
statement into a computer for me earlier in the day, shook my hand.
“Sorry to see you back again.”

“Me too,” I answered with a heavy sigh.

I described with as much objectivity as I
could muster what I had just seen happen in front of Derek’s house.
Kyle was patient. He waited calmly while I cried, wiped my nose,
got water. My hand shook violently enough to slosh and spill the
water.

“Thanks,” he said when I couldn’t think of
anything more to say about the shooting.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Sure.” Kyle smiled gently, “Shoot.” He
caught himself, “I mean, please go right ahead.”

“Are there ways of comparing or locating
similar crimes, crimes with the same MO or signature?”

“Sure, we call it linkage. When forensics or
the profile, or really any aspect of a crime links to another
crime, there are a number of databases we can access. There’s this
really long form you fill out with all the info you have about a
certain crime and the database finds matches. The one most law
enforcement agencies use is VICAP, stands for Violent Crime
Apprehension Program. It’s an FBI program.”

“So is that a national program?”

“Yep.” Kyle nodded.

“What about internationally? Is there a way
to compare international crimes?”

“Yep, via the International Criminal Police
Organization, or Interpol.”

“How does that work?” I asked.

“Same way really. We use an access known as
I-24/7 to get to the Interpol National Central Bureau that links us
to all the national databases throughout the world.”

“In southeast Asia?”

“Yes. It’s not as instant as with EU or UK,
but we definitely exchange data.”

“Am I correct in assuming that the Zodiac
data has already been entered into Vi-i-i––”

“VICAP?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Yep, in fact I just updated the Zodiac data
a couple days ago.”

“Did you send it to Interpol?”

Kyle blushed. “No, nobody said anything
about that.”

“How hard would it be to do it?”

“Not hard at all. I’ve already filled out
the form.” His fingers danced across the keyboard. “Southeast Asia
you say?”

“Yes, please. Can it go to EU and UK as
well?”

“It’ll go there automatically. We just have
to specify the other countries. So that would be the Philippines,
Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Taiwan,
Singapore.” Kyle typed faster than I can talk.

“And East Timor and Brunei,” I reminded
him.

“Okay, sent. But I don’t understand, didn’t
the Zodiac copy cat just––you know––get blown away?”

“Probably. I just want to tie up some loose
ends. Questions I can’t get out of my mind. Can I look at the form
you filled out?”

“Hmm . . . I don’t know . . . don’t think
I’m supposed to . . .”

“Hey, you said it yourself: it’s a closed
case as of tonight.”

Kyle studied my face for a minute. I smiled,
started to flirt, and then remembered what shit I looked with my
snotty face, red nose, and swollen eyes, not to mention my filthy
hair, with one side of my head shaved, and no makeup.

I guess I looked so pitiful that he took
pity on me and turned the monitor around so I could look at the
screen.

I noticed some things that either weren’t in
Dad’s file, or I had missed.

Two sets of footprints were found in the
dirt at the scene of the Jane Doe body dump: one pair of work
boots, one pair of REI hiking boots. It was only time both boots
were seen at one scene. But the hiking boots were at one other
outdoor crime scene at Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco.
Another stabbing; the knife again.

The work boots showed up at Lake Berryessa,
Benicia’s Lover’s Lane, and Lake Herman Road, both scenes of
shootings.

“Kyle, don’t the two sets of footprints at
this scene indicate there were two people?”

“It could,” he thought about it for a
second, “but there are other explanations.”

“Like what?”

“The perp changed his shoes? Maybe he got
blood on one pair. Or the site was contaminated.”

“Blood?” I asked, “Whose?”

“The Jane Doe.”

“I thought she didn’t bleed. The gunshot
wound was inflicted after she died.”

“I was thinking from the knife wounds, but
you’re right, postmortem wounds wouldn’t bleed.”

“Knife wounds?” My stomach lurched. “There
were knife wounds?”

“The Z carved in her chest.”

65

I sat in stunned silence. Knife wounds? A
Z
carved in her chest! REI hiking boots?
Whoa, wait a minute. Mental pictures flashed through my mind.
Snippets of conversations, papers from Dad’s file and moments from
my childhood swirled in a confusion.

“Kyle, is there a way to track movements of
Americans abroad?”

“Through the NSA. You’re supposed to have a
warrant.”

“NSA . . . National Security
Administration?”

Detective Schmidt joined us just as I
considered begging Kyle to violate the Constitution and hack into
NSA records to track movements of my uncles abroad.

Kyle stood, explained to the detective that
we had just broadened the search for linkage on the Zodiac
data.

Detective Schmidt turned to me with a
puzzled look. “Say what? Alexandra, what’s going on here? Come in
here.”

He waved his hand to an enclosed interview
room.

“Kyle, thank you. You’ll let me know if
anything interesting comes up?” I said.

“He’ll let
me
know,” Detective
Schmidt said. “Right, officer?”

“Yes sir.” Kyle quickly turned his red face
toward his screen.

Detective Schmidt waved me into a chair. He
sat down and studied my face for minutes before speaking. “You
doin’ okay?”

I nodded.

“What made you so sure it wasn’t Derek?” he
asked.

How could I explain? I ran a few answers by
myself. No way, every answer was either nonsense or made me sound
nuts. I decided to try one out.

“Could craziness be hereditary? I think this
kid picked up the mantle of the Zodiac, like the responsibilities
got passed from generation to generation. He maybe had some
idea––”

Detective Schmidt stared at me. He looked
haggard. “Lian was not a blood relative of his
step-
grandfather.”

“Or maybe that sort of insane fantasy of
cleaning up the world of promiscuity wasn’t hereditary.” I didn’t
mention my real theory, which would probably have made the
detective question my sanity. My theory that Lian and his
grandfather were one and the same being, that Lian was the
reincarnation of his step-grandfather.

I hesitated for a minute while the detective
stared without seeing me, his eyes dropped to the tabletop.

“The crime scene guys found a diary in
Lian’s room. Might explain something,” Schmidt said.

A diary? That must have made him really
nervous when I was looking around his room, when he saw me re-enter
the hall from his doorway. “Lian’s diary?”

“Looks to be his grandfather’s. But pages
towards the back were written in different handwriting. Presumably
Lian’s handwriting. He wrote about driving up to Tahoe and shooting
Ron Bailey.”

“Why?” I asked.

The detective shook his head. “Who knows?
Can’t explain nuttiness.”

“Was Ron––was there carving?”

“No. But his hair had been chopped, and a
small piece was in the pages of the diary.” Detective Schmidt
rubbed his forehead and heaved a sigh. “The diary explains how the
transfer of info from one perp to another went down. We’ve got
techies on it. Should clear up a lot of questions.”