Girl With a Past (4 page)

I swung my legs off the arm of the chair,
turned around, and leaned forward. “Dad, I’m like, totally serious.
I want to look at your file. I’m taking a criminal anthropology
class, it’s a good real world example.”

“Al, it’s time to put all that behind us.”
He stood, walked to the window and studied the sailboats and ships
out on the bay. “If it’s a real case file you want, I’ll give you
one from a closed case, a real one, because that file is not an
actual case file. I just collected that stuff. It was my personal
file.”

“What are you saying?” I joined him at the
window. “Why? After all these years?”

He rested his arm on my shoulders. “Al, do
you know why I was obsessed with that killer?”

“Yeah. Mom gave me the download. He killed a
good friend of yours when you were in college.”

“She was my best friend.” He looked away,
stared at a row of law books on the shelves lining his office.

I nodded, trying not to feel guilty about
the sadness on his face.

“I was in my last year of law school. I’d
just met your mother. My best friend was shot and killed while
coming home from a date,” he hesitated. “There was a guy around at
that time that was killing young lovers. There was some thought
that he, the Zodiac was her killer.”

Dad’s work dealt with killings all day long,
but it was obvious that decades hadn’t made this one easier for
him. He turned back to the view of the bay

“So?” I would wait as long as necessary. I’d
wanted to know what the deal was with this murder from the get-go.
I wasn’t going to let his discomfort stop me now. “Yo, Dad
tell.”

“There was no evidence linking the prime
Zodiac suspect to Lexi’s murder. In fact there was never enough
evidence to indict him for any of the cases.” Dad turned around and
returned to his desk chair.

“Did you think it was the Zodiac guy?” I sat
on the corner of his desk.

“I never thought it was the prime suspect,
this Arthur Allen, that shot Lexi.”

“Who’s Arthur Allen?” I asked.

“A deadbeat. A pedophile. He lived in
Vallejo. He was the closest the cops ever came to arresting someone
in the Zodiac case. Got warrants to search where he lived three
times.” Dad leaned the mesh chair back and locked his hands behind
his head.

“You don’t think he was the guy?”

“No.”

I raised an inquiring eyebrow at my dad.

“No, there was a mountain of circumstantial
evidence that linked him to the Zodiac, but the fingerprints at the
scenes and the handwriting didn’t match Allen’s.”

“Handwriting? From the notes sent to the
newspaper?”

“Yeah, the Zodiac wrote these wacko letters
to the
San Francisco Chronicle
.”

I knit my eyebrows. “How do they know that
the killer actually wrote the things?”

“The letters contained info that only the
killer and the cops could’ve known. You know, stuff never
previously released to the media.”

“So this Allen guy. What was the deal? If
there was no real evidence, why was he the prime suspect?”

Dad shrugged his shoulders. “He was the only
suspect at the time.”

“Why didn’t you think he was the Zodiac?

“The reasons for suspecting him could easily
have been coincidence. A lot of men wear size ten-and-a-half
shoes.” Dad sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “Turns out I
was right. A few years ago, the FBI excluded him based on DNA tests
of the saliva on the stamps of letters from the Zodiac.”

“Whatta you mean . . .
at the time
,
he was the only suspect?” I asked.

Dad exhaled a long sigh. “In recent years,
maybe a hundred people have claimed that their father, or their
stepfather, or their uncle was actually the Zodiac. It’s gotten so
the police don’t even want to talk to anybody on the subject.”

“So . . . you have theories that you’ve been
working on. That’s why you had the file, right?

“Lexi’s date went missing the same night.
His body was never found.” Dad put hands on either side of his head
and pushed back his hair. “He could’ve killed her.”

“Yeah?” I said. “So? What about him?”

“Years went by. He never turned up.”

“Why would he disappear? Did this Zodiac
killer hide other victims?”

“Not that we know.” Dad frowned. “There was
a Jane Doe who had been moved, she was found around the same time,
but police were uncertain about the linkage to other cases. There
were some aspects that didn’t connect, were different. In general,
his victims were shot or stabbed and left at the scene.”

“Per my criminal anthro class, it’s a bit
weird that the same killer would use both a gun and a knife.
Shooting is much less personal than stabbing. Doesn’t seem like it
was one guy.”

Dad shrugged, pursed his lip. “Well, there
ya go. Maybe the guy was schizo.”

“Or maybe there was more than one Zodiac?” I
studied Dad’s face to see what he really thought, but he looked
down at the law book and his notes. I asked anyway. “And your
friend, Lexi? She was shot?”

“Yes.” He glanced up at me, and then studied
his hands in his lap.

Dad’s pain tugged at my heart, but I had to
know. “Why have you lost interest?”

He shrugged without looking up. “The prime
suspect died a long time ago.”

“But you didn’t think he was the guy
anyway.”

“Al, I don’t want to talk about this right
now, I can’t, I’ve got a case . . . I can’t get distracted.” Dad
leaned over his law book. Knowing him, I figured he didn’t want me
to see tears in his eyes.

Conveniently for the man who didn’t want to
talk about the subject, his cell phone rang, and he grabbed it.
“Hi! Yeah, I forgot to check with Lauren, I’ll have to get back to
you. Al’s here. Sweetheart, say hi to your Uncle.”

I called out, “Hi Uncle!” without asking
which one. Dad had a group of college friends that my brother and I
had always called Uncle. “Dad?”

“Hold on a sec,” he said into the phone.
“What?” he asked me.

“Where’s the file?”

“In the safe in my study at the house.”

“Can I get it?”

“Yeah, okay. Go ahead. Otherwise you’ll stay
here bugging me the rest of the day, huh?”

He put the phone back to his ear.

2

I loved driving the hills of San Francisco
in my vintage rag top bug, but somehow it had freaked Dad out when
I bought it. His reaction to my excitement when I found the right
yellow fabric with red and black ladybugs to replace the torn head
lining was just plain weird. Or so I thought at the time.

The distance from Dad’s office to our house
was only a few miles, but nearly a half hour drive in afternoon
traffic.

Mom should have been home by then. She
usually timed her trips to the design center to avoid rush hour
traffic. She’d be surprised to see me on a Monday afternoon. I came
home on Sundays to get a home cooked meal but seldom during the
week.

I drove between the massive square pillars
marking the entrance to Seacliff, lowered the car windows and
enjoyed the briny aroma of the breezes off the ocean.

China Beach, the one beach in San Francisco
safe for swimming, was below the cliff side of the house. “Safe,”
that is, if one was a fan of water temperatures that barely hit
sixty degrees on the warmest summer day.

After my brother and I had left home for
college, my parents down-sized from six thousand square feet on
Pacific Heights to a four bedroom six bath Italian Renaissance
villa in the only San Francisco neighborhood adjacent to the ocean
and reduced household staff to day help.

Like most of the houses along the avenue, my
parent’s was built in the 1920’s. Well-mannered lollipop trees
lined the quiet street, maintaining a height blocking no house’s
view, and symbolizing the perfect order that marks the graceful
neighborhood.

I punched in the code that opened the heavy
wood planked garage door. Mom’s car wasn’t in the garage.

I bound up the stairs to the kitchen door,
punched another code, and hurried through the kitchen and hall to
Dad’s antique pine paneled study. I opened the pencil drawer of his
desk, pulled out a tiny box, and turned it over. On the bottom of
the box was a code from which I eliminated the date of my birth,
5-25-1987, so that 5927561896847 became 97-68-64, the combination
to Dad’s safe.

A hinged colorful oil painted by some old
friend of Dad’s swung open with the touch of my finger. I used the
combo, and extracted the familiar, dingy file folder. Without
bothering to close the safe or the painting, I sat down in the worn
leather chair that had been Dad’s my entire life and opened the
file.

It was in reverse chronological order with
the earliest items in the back. I flipped to the bottom of the pile
of papers. A newspaper clipping folded around a lock of hair caught
my eye. I unfolded the dark, fragile paper and stared at a black
and white photo of a young woman my age. Long blonde hair fell past
her shoulders in what was meant to be her college graduation
portrait.

Something in her eyes felt familiar. The
headline identified the girl in the photo as Alexandra Johnson.
Alexandra? Was I named for her?

I heard a noise from the front of the house.
Must be Mom, but it didn’t sound like the garage door opening. I
heard the tinkling of breaking glass in the front of the
house––.

Shit! What was that? The shrill security
alarm rang.

I peeked around the edge of the doorway
opening into the hall. A dark figure with a gloved hand reached
through the broken pane, stretched to grasp the door handle lock,
and undid the dead bolt.

I heard a voice, maybe two voices. How many
were there? It wouldn’t be smart to stick around to find out. On
autopilot, I gathered the papers and the lock of hair off the top
of the desk, stuffed them back into the file, picked it up and
ran.

My car was parked in the front . . . where
the break-in was occurring. That wasn’t an escape option.

I bolted to the French doors that opened
onto the terrace. Wisps of gray fog filled the air.

I ran across the terrace, down the steps to
the garden below, and to the trail that led down the cliffs to the
beach.

I scrambled down the path of the railroad
tie steps, shoving aside overgrown shrubs. A manzanita branch
scraped my face and neck.

A sharp, loud noise from the street above
scared me into a faster pace.

If only I knew some of the neighbors, I’d
know where to go for help.

But I didn’t even know how to access all the
walled-in houses.

The going was faster once I reached the
beach but the sand hampered my run.

A glance up the side of the cliff and a
glimpse of a dark figure in the mist quickened the pounding of my
heart.

The tide was in. Waves broke on the jutting
rocks, blocking access to the adjacent sections of the beach.

There was nowhere to go.

I shoved through tall brush and ducked into
the shadows under the overhang of a stone terrace. A brisk, cold
wind whipped through my hair and blew sprays of moisture off the
water.

I dug my cell out of my pocket. Marginal
service. I pushed the speed dial for Dad’s cell. When it went
immediately to voice mail, I tried Mom next.

I didn’t want Mom to come home and happen on
the burglars.

Another voicemail. “Mom, don’t go to the
house. Call the police, stay away. Burglars broke into the house.
Stay away.” I sent her a text:
“burglars in house.”

I dialed 9-1-1. “I need to report a break-in
in progress. And I think I heard a gunshot.” I gave the address.
“No, I left. I’m hiding below the neighbor’s deck. Please tell them
to hurry.”

I huddled in the cold, damp sand listening
for sirens but all I could hear were waves crashing on the rocks
pounding in the same rhythm as the pain in my head.

My hands shook as I tried to call Mom again,
but now I had no service. I checked the time. It had been less than
five minutes since I’d called for help.

I clung to the file folder, wondering why
I’d brought it with me in my panic. I used the light from my phone
to look at the newspaper clipping again.

My heart jumped when I saw the grainy photo
of the male college student who went missing the same night that
Lexi was killed. I knew him. But how could that be? Yet his face .
. . it was as though I knew exactly how his face felt, the rough
texture of his beard on my skin.

Whoa, Al, get real. What
are
you
thinking?

I shoved the paper back into the file and
stood up. I hadn’t heard any sirens but I needed to go back up.
Waves splashed into my damp and cold hiding place. The rising tide
would soon reach me.

Uncertain as to what I would find at the
top, I took my time climbing up the path. Had the bad guys
left?

3

I peeked around the full growth of bushes
and saw lights flashing. Relieved, I ran to the patrol car.

Two guns held in beefy hands greeted my
return to my parent’s house. One hand grabbed me, shoved me against
the front fender of the car.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” I shouted.

“What’re you doin’?” Asked the uniformed
officer who owned the hand.

I attempted to shake off his hand. “I’m the
one who called you.”

He ignored my protests as he patted me down.
I assumed he was checking for a weapon. He put his hand on the
file.

“Hey!” I screamed, “That’s my property.
Dude, what the hell do you think you are doing?”

“Do you have some identification?”

“It’s in the house.” I pulled away from his
grasp. This time he let go. “I’ll show you.” I turned to go inside
when I spotted Mom’s car pull into the gates. “There’s my mother.
She lives here.”