Girl With a Past (34 page)

My cell phone flew out of my pocket, landed
under the armchair.

The rest of the pieces of the puzzle swirled
through my mind and fell into place.

Dave. He was never really an accepted member
of the inner circle of the farm. Dave, who always insinuated that
he was left out because he grew up poor without the social
connections, the advantages of the others. Who was extraordinarily
driven by ambition. Dave, who couldn’t afford a gap year, or law
school, instead went straight to work after graduation. Who, all of
a sudden, shortly after Lexi was murdered, found investors for his
fledgling waterbed business with enough capital that he was able to
quit his day job and concentrate on booming his business. Dave who
used his private plane to fly all over the world, especially to
southeast Asia where he dealt with factories and suppliers for his
furniture lines.

Dave was the knife wielding Zodiac who was
happy to let the Zodiac, the original one, take credit for Dave’s
killings as well as his own. Who learned everything he needed to
know the day he helped the Zodiac move Jennifer’s body.

And whenever he needed an influx of capital,
well, he had four wealthy benefactors, always happy to help
out.

Dave, the dandy of the group, always
perfectly correct in his dress in the way that those who are
worried about fitting in, about being good enough are so
careful.

The irony, the dichotomy of his meticulous
cleanliness wasn’t lost on me. It made some strange kind of sense:
it was the very contrast, the release from the constraints of
correctness that motivated the messy killing with a knife.

It also required a constant supply of new
clothes. Bloody old clothes had to be destroyed. I remembered his
housekeeper’s comments that he got new suits when he traveled. He
never brought home the old ones. Most of his associates wrote that
one off to the fact that he traveled to places where new suits were
cheap and fast to get tailored. Convenient if you
ruined––bloodied––a set of clothes every time you went abroad.

I imagined blood all over the Peter Marino
designed white interior of his gulf stream.

All this raced through my mind when I
should’ve been figuring out how to get out of this danger, how to
get away from him.

Flat on my back on the floor, the phrase
frozen with fear flashed through my mind.

I propped myself on my elbows, slowly pulled
my knees up, posed to jump up.

Dave sat in the chair and cleaned his nails
with the very sharp, curved tip of the knife. His face twisted ugly
with a jack-o-lantern grin. Cold eyes studied his fingers.

Finally he spoke, “That shot to your head
did something to your senses, cutie pie. You’ve been getting some
very funny ideas. You gotta cut that out,” he chuckled, “or I
should say, I gotta cut that out.” He cackled at his clever play on
words.

“You see, I got a very funny phone call
tonight, from my pilot. Someone’s tracking my movements abroad for
the last forty years. Then I learned that you and that snotty
brother of yours have not only spent the last couple of weeks
stirring up trouble by going around asking lots of questions, you
spent the day at the SFPD headquarters.”

Could I reach my cell?

It was less than four feet away, but if I
made a move for it, would he pounce on me?

Would I be stabbed, sliced, cut before I got
a call out?

“Now, I could threaten to decorate the
pretty face of yours if you don’t just go back to class and mind
your own damn business. Or I could just fix one side, one beautiful
cheek, to serve as a reminder, to mind your own god damn business.
I think a Z would do it.”

Roll it

Pat it

Mark it with Z

And throw it in the oven

For Baby and me

He sang, then he sighed. “But then, I don’t
think that’s gonna work. You’re too stubborn for that, too
independent, too self-reliant. Reminds me of some one. Can’t think
who.” A scowl replaced the grin.

“You,” I whispered. “It was you. You
poisoned Carol. You tripped her, wrecked the brakes in the
car.”

Dave looked startled. “I always hated that
cold, beautiful,” he spit the words, “arrogant bitch. I enjoyed
seeing her suffer when Lexi died. I saw Tom buying drinks for that
guy. I was curious what they were up to so I followed that guy,
that Zodiac from the Monk and saw him shoot her. Even gave him a
hand with drugging that guy she was with.” He watched my face for a
reaction.

I fought back my revulsion determined not to
give him the satisfaction of affecting me.

“I guess I’m not surprised she told you
about her, quote, ‘accidents.’ She has an extraordinary love for
you. Has from the day you were born. She’s gonna suffer even more
this time.” He stood up, took a step toward me.

I jumped to my feet.

I ran.

I ran up the curved stairs.

He was only as far as the bottom of the
stairs, in no apparent hurry. He must have figured he had me
trapped. He’d probably looked around long enough to see there was
no way out from the upper floors.

But if I could get to a bathroom, I could
lock myself in.

And him out.

At the top of the stairs, I realized what
would happen when my housemates came home. He’d stab and carve
them.

I couldn’t hide in a locked bathroom.

I had to deal with this lunatic.

He grinned at me from the foot of the
staircase, that horrid, twisted grin.

He swung the knife in an arc, and cackled,
getting off on my fear.

69

I came part way down the stairs and reached
out to the head of the grizzly.

I threw out my arms at the ten-foot tall
bear, and, with both hands, shoved the massive body towards
Dave.

Dave was so intent on cutting me, he never
saw it coming. The toppling giant knocked the knife out of his hand
onto the stairs and Dave to the floor.

I dashed down the rest of the stairs for the
knife and had it in my grip before he got up.

From where I stood on the second step, my
eyes were level with his.

He laughed, that horrible cackle of a laugh.
“You won’t use that. You sweet little cutie pie. You wouldn’t hurt
anyone. Especially not your old Uncle Dave.” He took a slow step
toward me.

“I wouldn’t bet on it.” I waved the blade at
his neck. “You shouldn’t bet on it either. Bad bet. Remember the
odds: I’m one for one.”

Dave squinted at me like he thought I’d lost
my mind, but I was betting he was scared of knives.

After all he knew how much damage they could
do.

He growled at me like a bear, and swung a
paw. Asshole thought he could use my fear of bears, the fear my
family knew so well, against me.

I scraped his hand with the sharp edge of
the blade.

He grabbed his hand, hugged it to him. “You
cut me!” he whined.

“And I’ll do it again,” I blasted at his
face. “Next I’ll stab you in the throat.” A sudden flash of my
memory, the mugger in Golden Gate Park. Uncle Dave always in
turtlenecks or cravats, it wasn’t just meticulous dressing. He had
to hide that knife scar.

He grabbed his neck with his good hand.

“Remember that! It was only forty years ago.
I almost got you right in the jugular, could’ve killed you that
time.” I slashed the knife at him.

He jumped back.

His stupefied look said he didn’t remember,
but on some level, his unconscious was flashing warning signs.

I swung the blade, aiming for the arm that
came up to protect his face.

I wasn’t afraid to cut him.

In fact, I wanted to hurt him, to make him
feel some of the pain, both physical and emotional, he’d caused so
many others.

The blood that spurted from his hand shot a
thrill through my body.

Fear that he would get the knife away from
me vanished, replaced by an animal lust for revenge.

I charged at him aiming the dagger at his
chest.

He turned sideways like a matador.

I slid by, turned back, and glared.

His eyes bugged. He clutched his wounded
hand to his waist and grabbed the door handle to get the hell out
of there before the crazy woman cut him––again!

He opened the door and collided with
Schmidt. Steven was behind the Detective.

Dave tried to push past them. “I’ve got to
get medical attention. She’s crazy. She cut me.”

“Not so fast.” Detective Schmidt pulled out
his handcuffs.

Dave shoved the Detective down the porch
steps then broke into a run for his Porsche.

Steven chased him. He jumped on Dave’s back,
wrestled him to the ground in the front yard, but couldn’t hold him
there.

Detective Schmidt caught up to them and
pulled his gun. He trained it on Dave.

“Back up, son!” Schmidt ordered Steven.

“DO NOT KILL HIM!” I screamed, “Whatever you
do, don’t kill him.”

70

Detective Schmidt cuffed Dave and read him
his rights while Steven and I collapsed on the steps of the front
porch and watched.

Steven had his arm around my shoulders,
trying to comfort me while I shook violently. “I- I really would’ve
stabbed him. I didn’t want to . . . but all of a sudden I was
overwhelmed with anger at all the pain and emotional suffering he’s
caused countless people.”

Detective Schmidt shoved his prisoner into
the back seat of the car and returned to where we sat. “You gonna
be okay?” he asked me.

I nodded in answer to his question, but the
violence of my shaking hadn’t subsided, and I doubted I was very
convincing. I was mostly shocked at what I had almost done. At what
I had wanted to do.

I handed him the knife. “That’s his.”

“I didn’t figure it was yours, but you
looked pretty intimidating the way you held it.” Detective Schmidt
chuckled as he put the knife in an evidence bag.

He dialed his headquarters. “I need a patrol
car at Piedmont and . . .” he looked at the street sign, “and Rose
in Berkeley. A prisoner needs transport back to the city.”

“Do you want me to take you to your
parents?”

I shook my head.

“We better give them a call, let them know
you two are both okay before the media blows everything that
happened since we left them all out of proportion.” He grimaced.
“Well, come to think of it, maybe they won’t need to exaggerate
much. And to think I assured your father that you’d be perfectly
safe with me.” He shook his head, smiled at the irony, but quickly
stopped as though he had thought of something totally awful.

“God Damn. Come to think of it, we’re gonna
have to go back to the city, back to headquarters. You gonna make
it okay?”

I nodded, after several deep breaths.

“What are you guys doing here anyway?” I
asked once we were back in the car.

“Got a call from Kyle. Your I-24/7 got lots
of hits, lots of matches all over Southeast Asia, even a couple in
EU. He couldn’t get anything out of the State Department, but he
was able to get some data from the log of Dave’s plane with several
links. We were just coming over to tell you that you were right.”
Schmidt turned the car onto Ashby Avenue. “There was a second
Zodiac killer.”

November 2008

There was no point in going back to school:
I’d missed too much. I retook my classes in the fall. I did some
research into reincarnation too but what I learned, well, that’s
another story. But I do know I'm a girl with a past.

As it turned out, I was ok with taking the
term off because that left the spring and summer free to work on
the Obama presidential campaign. And even after getting back in
school, I snuck off to North Carolina for the five days leading up
to Election Day to get out the vote. I caught a plane as the polls
closed in the East and, thanks to the time difference, managed to
get back to Berkeley in time to dance in the streets, wave American
flags, sing the
Star Spangled Banner
and chant U-S-A with
the tens of thousands of Cal students and Berkeley residents who
took to the streets, not to protest this time, but to celebrate. To
celebrate one more forward step in the dream of equality.

I assumed I was one of the few students with
enough perspective to fully appreciate the contrast between the
tears of joy that November night in both Sproul Plaza, where
students celebrated, and Grant Park, where Obama accepted the
election, with the tears from gas in those same two locations forty
years earlier. In those forty years, we had gone from Jack Weinberg
being arrested for talking about racial equality to electing an
African American president.

Thanks for encouragement from my fellow
writers including members of Mystery Writers of America and the
teachers and students of UCLA Extension Writer's Program especially
my first mystery writing instructor, Jerrilyn Farmer.

Thanks to my writing group, Shari Shattuck,
Mark Hosack, and Sharon Doyle for the laughs, advice, gentle
criticism, and putting up with a newbie.

My brave early readers, Michael James, Joan
Goddard, Del Boles, and Elisabeth James deserve special gratitude
for their kind comments.

Editors Candy Samoza and Alison Farr Brisker
rose to the challenge of dealing with an inexperienced author and
are much appreciated.

Michael James suffered through every version
of this story and then applied his usual meticulous attention to
details to do the final preparations for publishing.

Kate James not only designed my covers,
website, and Facebook banner, she patiently answered gazillions of
questions about computers, the internet, eBooks, and all the other
gadgets that were barely dreamt of in 1969.