Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season

by Norman Partridge

  The Zodiac’s murders were coming closer together now.

  So were his letters.

  It seemed the killer was gearing up for something big.

  On Wednesday, October 22nd, I got up early and started to get ready for school. The television was on downstairs, tuned to a call-in show featuring an affable host named Jim Dunbar. His guest was Melvin Belli, a San Francisco lawyer who had a reputation as a publicity hound.[3] Belli had been summoned to the show by a caller who’d phoned the Oakland police the night before. The caller identified himself as the Zodiac killer and promised to phone the show if Belli or fellow barrister F. Lee Bailey appeared.

  Belli and Dunbar talked. And then the phone started to ring. The brief conversations with the caller on the other end were urgent, intense—the stranger speaking of his fear of the gas chamber and the headaches that tortured him, Belli urging the man to turn himself in. The caller hung up repeatedly, and then called back just as fast.

  Remember, this was 1969, a long time before tabloid television. No one had ever seen anything like this. By the time the show was over, Belli had arranged to meet the caller that afternoon. Of course, the meeting never occurred, but that didn’t matter. The seeds had been sown. When people arrived at work or school that day, they found that everyone was talking about the Dunbar show and the caller who claimed to be the Zodiac killer.

  Later, the calls were traced to a psychiatric patient from Napa State Hospital, but no one knew that on October 22nd. The caller’s identity really didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was that anyone who heard the calls was rattled. The end result was the same—the fear meter had increased another notch.

  And Halloween was right around the corner.

  ****

  Each year on Halloween day at Pennycook Elementary School, students wore costumes to class. Even the teachers dressed up, and that was always fun for the kids. A sixth grade teacher showed up one year in full-on Batman regalia, looking more like the caped crusader than Adam West ever did. Even the dour old-maid types got into the act. I remember one rather large teacher who was a dead ringer for Ma Kettle (but without the sense of humor). This woman wore the same “costume” every year, consisting of nothing more than a child’s plastic Cinderella mask. Looking back on it now, that mask makes me think that my fourth grade teacher was just a little sweeter than I ever might have guessed.

  Each teacher hosted a little party for his or her class, and then the entire school paraded around the block, circling the playground while passing drivers honked their horns and waved. After that, students returned to their classrooms and waited for the final bell to ring, at which point they’d get down to the business of readying themselves for a long night of trick-or-treating.

  None of that happened in 1969, of course. Sure, my friends and I wore costumes to school that day, but our celebration was confined to the classroom. The principal believed that a parade around the schoolyard might be just the thing the Zodiac was waiting for, and he decided not to tempt the killer.[4]

  At home, as night fell, the mood wasn’t any different. The few kids who were allowed out were restricted to a couple of neighborhood blocks where they were sure to know everyone. Most of my friends spent the night in front of the television, eating the few pieces of candy they’d managed to score, watching whatever monster was handy on television…and, most of all, remembering how wonderful Halloween had been just a year before.

  We all knew who’d killed the day for us. We even knew what he looked like, because we’d finally gotten a glimpse under the Zodiac’s executioner hood. After murdering the cabby in San Francisco, the killer had been spotted by a group of teenagers. A police artist made a drawing based on their description, and it was plastered over every front page in California.

  Judging by the drawing, the Zodiac killer was not at all remarkable. He was a white man with short hair, thin lips, and a wrinkled brow. He wore horn-rimmed glasses over slitted, squinting eyes that bore a severe cast.

  To me, the Zodiac’s face seemed strangely unreal. Though not as obvious as a squared-off executioner’s hood, it reminded me of another mask. The killer’s severe eyes seemed to be staring at me through molded plastic slits, and I couldn’t imagine his thin lips ever forming a smile. Seeing that face in the newspaper or on the wall at the post office, I was convinced that there was something missing from it, something as essential as a mouth or a nose though not as evident, but I could never decide what that missing thing was.

  ****

  Paul Lee Stine, the San Francisco cab driver, was the Zodiac’s last documented victim. The killer continued to send letters to Bay Area newspapers off and on through the mid-seventies, but he stopped naming his victims, saying that:

  I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. when I comitt my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, & a few fake accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them.

  Perhaps he was too clever. Perhaps he did go on killing. No one can say for sure. As for the man himself: in one of his last his last authenticated letters (written in 1974), the Zodiac claimed to have murdered thirty-seven victims.

  One thing’s for certain—the killer was never apprehended. What really happened to him is anyone’s guess. Some say that as the Zodiac grew older, his need to kill lessened. Some say illness incapacitated him. Some say he simply died, or was incarcerated for crimes other than murder, or was committed to a mental institution. Others insist he’s still out there, waiting, perhaps, to strike again.

  More than forty years after the murders on Lake Herman Road, Vallejo is a different place. The shipyard closed a long time ago, and the city never really recovered from the blow. The town is still home to retired people who remember the old days, and more than a few young people looking for an affordable place to live in the tight Bay Area housing market have joined them in setting down roots.

  There are young families in town, too. Just like in the old days, most of the parents are blue collar workers. They raise their kids, send them to the same high schools that David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen once attended. On October 31st, a lot of those kids go trick-or-treating, but the turnout isn’t what it once was. Most households get by with one or two bags of candy. My mom, who still lives in the same house where I grew up, is lucky if twenty kids climb the hill and ring her doorbell. Even if she had cases of Cracker Jack stacked in the hallway, it wouldn’t make a difference. The kids just don’t come out the way they used to.

  Some things in town haven’t changed, though. Lake Herman Road is one of them. It was a lonely stretch of notmuch when the Faraday/Jensen murders were committed, and it was no different by the time I hit high school in the mid-seventies, when my friends and I would pack ourselves into a car on summer nights and drive out to the spot where two teenagers died in 1969, telling stories about the Zodiac, sharing the rumors we’d heard over the years, driving down that dark lonely stretch of blacktop…going slower…and slower…until we hit that one curve in the road and the tires crunched over gravel, and the guy behind the wheel stopped the car cold and killed the headlights, and we sat there in the dark until someone finally freaked out and begged the driver to hit the gas and get the hell out of there.

  That’s Lake Herman Road. It’s a lonely place. Always has been, and it’s no different now.

  But Halloween is different these days. In Vallejo, it’s no longer about trick-or-treaters. There’s a new tradition now. On Halloween night, more than a few Vallejo teenagers drive down a quiet country road, following the same route that David Faraday’s ’61 Rambler took all those years ago. They pass the old Borges ranch house, dip down through the stunted oaks that line the road by the still lake, and they park at a spot where rolling hills cut off the lights from town…where it’s so dark that you can actually see how black the night is, and how many stars there are
in the sky.

  It’s a spot where a boy just their age took a bullet behind his ear on a cold December night…where a girl couldn’t run fast enough to escape her own death…where a man turned his back on the both of them and drove away in the darkness.

  [1] Years later, in Zodiac, the definitive exploration of the case, author Robert Graysmith revealed Mageau’s own bizarre explanation for the extra clothes. Mageau said that he was self-conscious about being skinny and wore all those layers to “look huskier.”

  [2] A few years later, this threat provided the climax for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, a film that featured a San Francisco cop tracking a serial killer obviously inspired by the Zodiac. Eastwood’s nemesis, not-so-subtly, was called “Scorpio.”

  [3] Belli actually appeared as a villain on an episode of the original Star Trek.

  [4] Ironically, the chief Zodiac suspect fingered by Robert Graysmith (and many others) was at the time employed as a janitor at another Vallejo elementary school, a school I’d attended just a few years before.

  BLACK LEATHER KITES

  The riderless Toro mower rounded second base and headed for third, and from his perch atop the pitcher’s mound Dennis Wichita eyed the mechanical beast the same way a man stranded on a desert island eyes a hungry shark. At least that’s the way the scene looked to Deputy Chavez, who admired Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons.

  “All this one needs,” Bernardo Chavez said, “is a palm tree and a duck.”

  A dust devil swirled across the baseline and chalk powdered the deputy’s Nocona boots. The Toro motored toward home plate, coughing like an aged DH. Then the rampaging mower suddenly changed course, and the trio of flashlights duct-taped to its chassis illuminated Dennis Wichita.

  “C’mon, Nardo!” Wichita’s expression melted from simple concern to full-bore hysteria. “Jesus H. Christ, c’mon!”

  The deputy’s fingers danced over the grip of his .357. The Toro had red fenders and a blue body, a custom paint-job that left little doubt in Nardo’s mind as to the identity of the mower’s owner. But reason reared its ugly head, and his gun remained in its holster. Nardo didn’t want to piss off Letty, though a dead mower would serve Bill right for putting a relative through this kind of grief on the third watch.

  Nardo Chavez charged the Toro. He was a stocky man, 209 pounds the last time he’d bothered to tangle with a scale, and he mounted the mower gracelessly, cutting the power just as the machine skirted the mound.

  The deputy leaned against the steering wheel and worked up his Jack Webb voice. “Let’s hear it, Wich.”

  The junkman popped a Lifesaver between his thin lips and endeavored to stay downwind of the deputy. “Damnedest thing, Nardo. I was heading home from the junkyard when I seen the lights. I thought some bikers were tearing up the field…figured it for a Halloween prank, y’know. Anyway, I helped coach one of the teams last season—Ascot Funeral Home Panthers, we finished in third place—and I sure don’t want my boys fielding balls out of a bunch of tire tracks next year, so I pulled over and started hollering. Just about then a truck pulled out from behind the equipment shed. Damned thing headed right for me and creased my fender, and about the time I scraped my chin up off the seat cushions I seen—and I swear to God this next part is true, ’cause it’s a full moon tonight and I could see just as plain as day—anyway, what I seen in the back of that truck was a bunch of boys all dressed up in hoods and such. And you know how windy it is tonight and all, and when I seen what happened next I figured it had to be a prank for sure ’cause the bastards let loose with a half-dozen kites right off the truck-bed while they tore down Highway 63!”

  The deputy laughed. “I think it’s time for you to toe the baseline. Or you can try lobbing a few quick ones over home plate…see if you can strike me out. Take your pick.”

  “Shit, Nardo….”

  A dry breeze drove a wave of dust across the field. Nardo squinted, fighting the urge to rub his eyes. “Okay, let’s try this again, with some ground rules this time. Lights I can buy. I can buy a truck sideswiping you. Hell, tonight I can even buy guys in hoods and you being sober. But box kites? C’mon, Wich.”

  “Not box kites.” The junkman’s hands went as wide as an imaginative fisherman’s. “They were big enough, all right. And they were made of something heavy and shiny, like leather. Black leather. But they looked like…. Aw shit, the damn things looked like bats.”

  “Bats. Uh-huh. How about the truck then? It look like the Batmobile?”

  “Shit no. Dodge.”

  “You sure?”

  “Dodge Dakota. I know a goddamn Dodge Dakota when I see one, Nardo. Same truck that I’m driving. A damn good one. For an Eye-talian, that Iacocca—”

  “Spare me.” The deputy shined his flashlight across the field, pausing when the beam illuminated a blue-and-red baseball cap that had been ripped to bits by the rampaging Toro just short of second base. “Blue-and-red truck?” he asked.

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  The deputy flashed his light on the blue-and-red mower, then on the shredded blue-and-red cap. “I’m a trained observer,” he said.

  ****

  Nardo sent Wichita to check the concession stand and the equipment shed for signs of a break-in. Then he thumbed the extender mic fastened to his left epaulet and hailed dispatch by way of the handpack radio attached to his belt. “71SAM1 here,” he said, and Sylvia Martin acknowledged. “Put me out of service, Sylvia—investigating suspicious circumstances at the little league field. Let’s go code 4 with this one. We’ll let 71NORA1 enjoy his nap, wherever he might be.” Sylvia laughed and Nardo signed off, happy to get a jab in at Ron Allen, the deputy who was working the northern end of the county.

  Wichita hadn’t returned. Nardo found a pay phone behind the bleachers and was embarrassed when he had to look up Letty’s number in the phone book. Of course, he flipped to “Chavez” before he remembered that she’d be under “Bleu” these days. Her voice was groggy with sleep. “Billy, it’s one o’clock.”

  “Not Billy, niña…it’s only your big bad big brother.”

  “Nardo! What’s up? Don’t tell me something happened to—”

  Not wanting to answer the obvious question, Nardo cut her off with a half-truth. “Looks like my least-favorite brother-in-law left some of his precious equipment here at the little league field. I thought I’d save him a trip, if you can tell me where I might find him.”

  “It’s hard to say. With this heat wave and the full moon, he decided to work late, when it’s coolest. He left here about nine tonight, but he could be almost anywhere because he’s got to change the timers on all the watering systems he services. You know—daylight savings time ends tonight.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve got to pull an extra hour of mandatory.”

  “Sorry I can’t help you.” Letty’s voice brightened. “You can always drop Billy’s stuff here at the house. I can make some coffee. Bill left a slice of peach pie in the fridge, and there’s some Häagen-Dazs in the freezer…vanilla, I think. It’s been a long time, hermano.”

  Nardo almost swore. His baby sister baked peach pie for the bastard! Bill Bleu sure as hell didn’t deserve that. And they ate designer ice cream, too. Hell, they were probably doing well enough to afford that imported beer with the tin-foil jackets. The landscaping business must be pretty damn solid.

  “Well?” Letty said. “How about it?”

  “Naw. I think I’ll just hunt up your husband. Who knows, he could be stumbling around with amnesia or something.” Nardo sighed. “And I’ll pass on what I’m sure would be a damn fine cup of non-instant coffee, and the pie, and the ice cream, and the truffles and finger sandwiches and whatever other goodies the maids and butlers didn’t get into today.”

  “Watching your weight, El Bandito?” she teased. “Making a comeback?”

  “Your husband wishes,” Nardo said, and he hung up laughing.

  El Bandito. It had been a long time since anyone had called him t
hat. Nardo walked to second base and scooped up the tattered cap. Before he could straighten up, another blast of hot wind sprayed dust in his eyes. He swore, squinting, not rubbing because he remembered all too well the doctor’s warning about rubbing an eye that had suffered a detached retina.

  The injury had come in his biggest fight, a bout with Carl “The Truth” Williams, who at the time possessed the best jab in the heavyweight division outside of Larry Holmes. Best thumb, too. Anyway, the detached ret had ended the career of Bernardo “El Bandito” Chavez, an in-your-face boxer with a good left hook who had KO’d a string of fringe contenders.

  While the doctors had been able to repair his eye, they had also recommended that he retire. Nardo had taken their advice, and since then no one had succeeded in finding him another career that satisfied his lust for designer ice cream and foil-sheathed beer. Lately, he settled for the in-store brand when it came to ice cream, and his beer of choice was canned and the special of the week.

  At least he’d earned enough from his loss to Williams to buy a new house in his hometown and a used Firebird. And time. Time to think things through for the first time in his life. And when the money ran out he was done thinking; he took the law enforcement exams at the county office and now here he was. A deputy. An upstanding member of the community. But drawing county pay meant that luxuries came few and far between—his Noconas were on their third set of heels and three of the four speakers in his Firebird were long dead—and the things some people called him these days made him long for the days when they’d called him “El Bandito.”