Girl With a Past (5 page)

Mom stopped to let an ambulance pass
her.

I watched the vehicle pull to a stop twenty
feet from where we stood in the street. A cluster of officers
stepped back to let EMTs through.

The group of police opened their circle. One
kneeling officer stood up and moved aside. A body lay face down on
the sidewalk in front of our house. Long tan legs extended from
jogging shorts to end in feet clad in running shoes. Blonde hair
was colored with bright red at the back of the head.

My world stood still. Who was that?

“Al, what in the––?” Mom slammed the car
door then rushed to gather me in her arms. “O my god, I thought . .
. maybe that was you.” She hugged me so tight I had to struggle to
breathe.

But I hugged her back and then waited until
she wiped away tears and blew her nose before I asked, “Who is
that?”

She shook her head and grabbed me again. I
held her while she struggled to get a hold of herself.

Mom can be a bit emotional. My brother and I
figure her protectiveness had something to do with the struggle she
went through to have us, the number of miscarriages and stillborn
babies she endured.

Mom showed her ID, assuring the waiting
officers that I was her daughter and not a bad guy.

“Mom, do you recognize the person they’re
putting on the stretcher?”

“Oh, no, no, please no. I think it might be
Kira, Margaret’s daughter.” Mom pulled her phone out, pushed
buttons as we walked toward the ambulance. “Margaret? Are you home?
Is Kira with you?” She paused. “Come outside.”

Mom hurried to the back doors of the
ambulance as the gurney was loaded. I didn’t know Kira, but Mom’s
face and a sharp cry told me it was Margaret’s daughter.

A tall blonde hurried from a walled house
two doors down and rushed to where we stood. Mom reached out to
squeeze her neighbor’s shoulder.

“Kira.” Margaret caught a sob. “Oh, oh.
That’s my daughter.”

The EMT extended a hand, helped Margaret
into the vehicle.

“Margaret, I’ll call Sid.” Mom assured her
friend. She walked to the front of the ambulance. “I’m calling the
father. What hospital?” she asked the driver.

The driver told Mom which hospital and that
he would let Margaret know her husband had been called.

Mom pulled me with her to Margaret’s open
gate where she got Sid’s cell number from the housekeeper and made
the promised call.

“Will she be okay? I asked as we walked hand
in hand back down the sidewalk.

Mom choked back a sob, shook her head, “The
wound looked bad . . . really bad. But head wounds bleed a lot.
Let’s pray she’ll be okay.”

“Is there anything else we can do Mom?” I
couldn’t stand the thought of how crushing the loss of their
daughter would be to Margaret and Sid.

Tears ran down Mom’s cheeks. I slid my hand
around her waist and held her close while I wiped away my own
tears.

We entered the house with the policeman. All
appeared normal until we got to Dad’s study. The safe was still
open. The desk and floor were strewn with papers; every drawer had
been ripped from the desk and now littered the floor. Books were
helter skelter below emptied shelves.

“How did they get the safe open?” Mom
asked.

“I opened it.” I explained what I’d done and
seen.

“Do you know what they were looking for?” a
policeman asked.

Mom and I both shook our heads, indicated we
didn’t know and were told to leave the area.

“This is part of the crime scene, ma’am. I’m
sorry but you’ll have to leave the premises.”

“We’ll wait for my husband in the back of
the house.” Mom told the policeman who looked dissatisfied that we
were not leaving immediately.

“Is she . . . is Kira going to be okay?” I
asked the officer.

He lowered his chin, shook his head slowly.
"She's going to have a long recovery."

Mom flinched, sighed. My heart fell.

We went into the kitchen and called Dad.
When his voicemail answered, I called his office.

“I’m pretty sure he’s on his way home,” his
secretary said.

I was still shaking.

Mom’s trembling hands wrapped me in a
cashmere throw, poured each of us a glass of Pinot Noir, and we sat
in the seat of the bay window in the kitchen in silence for several
minutes. Mom continued to wipe tears and her nose.

So many questions went through my mind. What
was going on? Why did that photo trigger my strange reaction?

“Mom. Alexandra Johnson, I mean Lexi, and
the boy . . . man, who disappeared the night she was killed, they
look familiar to me. Did you and Dad have photos of them around
when I was younger?”

Mom shook her head. A scowl marred her
lovely heart shaped face. “Definitely not. Your Dad didn’t need any
reminders.”

“But yet you named me for her.”

Mom looked at me. Her brown eyes studied my
face for a minute as though she were deciding how much to tell me.
“Yes.” No explanation was offered.

“Why?” I asked.

Mom shook her head. “I always liked the name
Alexandra. And your Dad . . . I guess he wanted to somehow continue
Lexi’s existence.” She hesitated. “I don’t really know. I only met
Lexi once, but . . . it wasn’t the name we had agreed upon, but
when we saw you, well, Al just seemed right for a baby who was
obviously going to grow up to be a beautiful woman. As you have.”
Mom gave me a weak smile, squeezed my hand.

“Lauren! Al!” Dad’s voice echoed from the
garage. “What the hell is going on here?” He bound up the stairs to
the kitchen and pulled us into a hug. “What’s with the police cars?
Are you alright?” His fingers turned my face to examine the
scratches from the manzanita bush. “What happened?”

We had just finished filling him in on
everything we knew when a Detective Schmidt entered the kitchen and
greeted Dad. “Sir, I’m sorry. We need to seal the crime scene. Come
to think of it, I’m sure you understand that.” The detective
referred to Dad’s position as a prosecuting attorney. “Just a few
questions before you leave. What would someone be looking for in
your safe? Did you have valuables in there?”

Dad jumped to his feet and strode to his
study. We heard his exclamation when he saw the condition of the
room.

I followed him down the hall. The open safe
was now empty.

“Al, what did you take from the safe?”

“Just the file we’d talked about,” I
said.

Dad described the missing contents of his
safe, papers, documents, passports, a half dozen jewelry boxes, and
a gun. He answered several more questions for the police.

“Okay, girls, grab some overnight things.
We’ll go to dinner and spend the night at the St. Francis. That’ll
give these gentlemen the chance to do whatever they need to do
without us under foot.”

“Do you really think that’s necessary
darling?” Mom’s husky voice sounded much calmer than I felt, but I
knew she was faking it.

“It’ll take awhile to process the scene.” He
wrapped his arms around his trembling wife. “Plus, I don’t like the
idea of spending the night here with that window broken. Tomorrow
we’ll have it repaired and have some new locks installed.”

“I could just go home after dinner, Dad,
back to Berkeley.”

“I’d rather you stuck with us until we know
what this is all about.”

“Sir, if I may,” Detective Schmidt addressed
Dad. “I’d like to ask Alexandra a few more questions.” The
detective turned to me. “You opened the safe?”

I nodded.

“Why?” he asked.

“I was looking for some papers.”

“Valuable? Something the perps might have
wanted?”

“I can’t imagine why. It was just a file
from an old case that I wanted to use for my criminal anthro
class.”

He studied my face for a full minute. “One
of the neighbors mentioned that you bear more than a casual
resemblance to the young woman who was shot––both of you being
tall, slender and blonde."

“Oh shit! That’s just awful.”

4

After dinner with Mom and Dad in the St.
Francis dining room, I crawled into the luxury hotel bed with the
file folder. Even without the letter to the Chronicle, authorities
had seen a connection between Lexi’s murder and the Zodiac killer.
Hers was just one of the 37 deaths the self-named Zodiac had
claimed as his victims. And she had been killed by the same caliber
of bullet as other victims also thought to be his.

He had shot and stabbed several young
couples. The nutcase seemed to have a knack for spotting and
attacking couples on their first date.

The police were sure he’d killed at least
four women and three men. There were three more young lovers who
had been wounded, but recovered, and several more unsolved cases
that could have been the Zodiac’s doing.

Early victims had been shot, but later the
Zodiac seemed to switch between using a gun and a knife. One Jane
Doe, the only one to have been moved from the primary scene, that
is, from where she had been killed, was both shot and stabbed.

I flipped through horrible, gruesome photos
of mutilated bodies with Z’s carved into their flesh. What a sicko
this Zodiac was!

Notes in Dad’s handwriting and in a variety
of inks, evidenced Dad going over this file on several
occasions.

At dinner, Dad had asked that I give the
file back, forget the whole thing.

No way was I going to do that––now I
suspected somebody else wanted the file––or maybe didn’t want me to
have it. I wanted to know why.

But Dad wouldn’t let me keep it if he
thought it was dangerous. I tried a diversion. “Maybe there was
something else in your safe they were after? I mean, we don’t
know
they were after the file, do we?”

Dad shrugged but when we returned upstairs
he left the door between our rooms ajar. “Don’t hesitate to come
into our room if you hear anything,” Dad said as he kissed my
forehead. “Sleep tight.”

“Won’t let the bed bugs bite,” I responded
and, even though my head hurt like hell, I smiled at my handsome
Dad as he went into my parents’ room.

I wasn’t going to sleep tight, or it seemed
at all. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the sickening photos of
carved bodies, chests with Z’s slashed through young breasts. I
hated knives. The mere sight of a large, or even small, blade
creeped me out.

I read through the file a second time
relieved to learn that most of the carving had occurred when the
victims were dead, or at least unconscious. Still I avoided the
photos of the corpses.

Even the photos of the victims that had been
taken before their encounter with the Zodiac made me feel heavy
with grief. They were all so young. And beautiful. Except for the
taxi driver.

I guess I fell asleep during my third time
through the file. I woke with a start to find my face on top of
scattered papers.

A noise, I thought a noise had woken me.
Someone was jiggling the handle of the hotel room door.

“Who is it?” I asked, “Dad?”

No answer.

The door opened two inches, caught on the
chain.

Panic hit me. I grabbed the folder and was
across the room before I realized I’d left pages on the bed.

I turned, scrambled to pick up papers. But
then lock cutters appeared in the open crack, the door opened into
the room.

I dropped everything, dashed to the door
connecting to my parent’s room. I ran into their room, slammed the
connecting door closed, and pounced on their bed.

“Dad! Somebody’s opened my door.”

Dad leaned over, picked up the phone on the
nightstand, and pushed a button. “I need hotel security.”

He jumped out of bed, rushed to each door,
flipped the dead bolts, and attached the security chains. He picked
up the phone, “Someone has broken into our connecting room.”

As soon as Dad came back to the bed, I fell
between my parents. Mom put her arms around me. Dad put his arms
around both of us. “Security is on the way up.”

We waited. Sounds of movement next door grew
louder.

Dad responded to a knock on the hall door.
“Who is it?”

“Hotel Security, sir. Could you please look
at the room? See if anything is missing?”

Dad and I opened the connecting door and
looked into the room.

“Did you move the papers that were on the
bed?” I asked hopefully.

“No ma’am.”

I saw a few sheets of paper scattered on the
floor and sticking out from beneath the bed. My overnight bag that
I’d brought from Mom and Dad’s was upside down, my clothes strewn
across the floor.

The file folder was gone.

5

After Detective Schmidt left and Mom had
dozed off, I asked, “What’s going on here, Dad? Who took your
file?”

“Al, your guess is as good as mine. I really
have no idea why the sudden interest in that file after all these
years.”

“Why did you put it away?”

“It seemed hopeless. There’s no new evidence
and the killer might’ve died by now.” Dad was silent for a moment,
then he said, “I was ready to move on.”

I slept next to my mother that night while
Dad sat guard in the armchair.

I awoke to the sounds of lowered voices
talking in the bathroom.

“Take Al to your father’s for awhile,” Dad
said. “He’ll be happy to put on extra security at his estate.”

“Sweetheart, do you think we’re in
danger?”

“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”

“What about you? And Steven? Are you two
safe?” Mom’s quavering voice gave away her fear for her husband and
son.

“I have no idea, but I can’t walk away from
this case––you know my office has been prepping it for months.”