Trail of the Zodiac - Debt Collector 10 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

  She swallowed and for a second he saw a flicker of a smile before it disappeared. “It is, but it’s allowed me a lot of freedom. I generally only go into the office for meetings. Even those are often done over Skype. All they care about is getting those articles. I travel more and write so…” she trailed off as if realizing that none of it mattered now. The death of a loved one had a way of doing that. Everything that had once held a place of significance seemed somewhat shallow when there was no one around to share the experiences.

  She nursed her coffee, eyeing him.

  “You look good, Jack,” she said, changing the subject.

  He cast his eyes down and chuckled. She was always good at deflecting attention away from herself. Like him, opening up about the deeper issues wasn’t easy.

  “So do you.”

  The waitress returned to get their orders. He picked out the two-egg breakfast and handed the menu back. “Dana?”

  “I’ve already eaten but thank you.”

  The waitress headed back in leaving them to glance out across the bay. In the distance large shipping containers of every color were being loaded up onto a huge cargo ship. Waves danced as a strong wind broke up the surface.

  “You always did like the water.”

  “Yeah, I guess once you grow up around it, it gets in your blood,” she replied.

  He nodded ever so slightly, picking at the wooden table.

  “Do you mind me asking where you’ve been for the last few years?” she asked.

  “Here, there, everywhere. I think I’ve seen more of America in the last three years than most see in their lifetime. Oh, and I found out I have a mother and brother.”

  Her eyes widened. She blinked. “Really?”

  “My reaction was similar,” he said before taking another sip of coffee. “But, uh, lately I’ve put my roots down in Colorado. Bought myself a place, and…”

  “Seeing someone?” she interjected.

  He hesitated before replying. “No. You?”

  “I did for a while but it didn’t work out. Nice guy but…” she trailed off without finishing, then quickly turned it back to him. “Colorado? Really? Nice. I always wanted to go there.”

  “Oh you would love it.”

  Immediately his mind envisioned taking her to his place. He enjoyed his space but having her company, well, that would make all the difference in the world. He decided not to dwell on it. It wasn’t realistic, she’d made that clear a long time ago. Instead, he brought the conversation back around to Jason, and the task at hand.

  “You know this isn’t going to be easy or fast, Dana,” he said. “We are dealing with a lot of unknowns here.”

  “I realize.”

  “And with this guy’s fascination with the Zodiac, well, that’s going to mean a lot of heat. I just… want you to be aware that…”

  “That’s why I chose to meet here. I figured they would have someone following me, so I left in the early hours of the morning. I’ve been walking the pier for the last three hours.”

  She looked away, he could see the pain in her face and all he wanted to do was make it better. Jack reached across and placed his hand on hers. “It’s good to see you again, Dana.”

  A wave of emotion welled up in him. The way he felt for her, their history together. She didn’t withdraw her hand, which was good. He breathed in deeply. “Well, I should get started. Tell me everything you know about that last night you saw Jason, everything that the cops have told you and anything that you think might help.”

  Chapter 6

  Romero worked fast to gather those working on the case. He’d arranged a time that morning for her to address them in the briefing room. Hudson downed her second cup of coffee that morning and listened to what he’d managed to dig up on the Zodiac murders.

  “That’s everything.”

  “Everything?” she replied skeptically.

  “As much as I could compile within the short time frame.”

  They headed down the corridor, her heels clicking on the cream tile floor. Upon entering the windowless room, she took in the sight of sixteen officers, three FBI agents and some senior members of staff. Behind her was a huge screen displaying information on the recent murder, videos that had been uploaded as well as up-to-date information from the original Zodiac file.

  Romero guided her over to a younger agent who had “FBI” on the back of his jacket. “Hudson, this is Agent Turner from the FBI.” He turned around and extended his hand. He had a firm handshake.

  “Heard a lot of good things about you, detective. Sorry to hear this lunatic has been watching you but be assured we will be assisting the police where required.”

  “We appreciate that.”

  She turned her attention to the room of faces. Her eyelids wanted to close as she was mentally exhausted and had only managed to get four hours of sleep the night before. She glanced around at the briefing room and saw many familiar faces she had worked alongside over the years.

  “We’re still in the process of tracking down the original detectives who worked on the case. Of course they have retired now,” Romero said.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “If they couldn’t figure it out before, they won’t figure it out now. Our only hope is that a new set of eyes, new technology and up-to-date forensic work will crack this case.”

  The new task force would draw upon the very best in the department, both in the streets and in the labs. The FBI had sent them Turner, Manning and Luntz, three of their best agents that worked for CID, the Criminal Investigative Division whose primary job was to deal with criminal syndicates, cyber and violent crimes.

  “Romero, would you mind grabbing me another cup of coffee?”

  “Yeah, sure thing.”

  He turned and dashed out of the room. He’d never been much of a speaker. He could talk the ear off a donkey with her but throw him in front of a room full of cops and he closed up as tight as a clamshell.

  “Okay, everyone,” she said moving back and forth. “All of you have seen the recent videos sent by our perp. Our job is to figure out this guy’s next move before he makes it. We have less than ninety-six hours to catch this fool, that’s four days to you folks who are doing the math in your head.” She turned towards the screen. “Now what we know right now is coming from the previous attacks by the original Zodiac. We know this guy isn’t him and it’s unclear at this time what his end game is, other than to taunt the police and murder but we will figure that out soon enough. For now, what we are able to predict is that four more attacks will take place over the next four days to coincide with the five that the Zodiac did. One has already occurred, so four more left to go. The recent murder coincides with the attack at Lake Herman Road. It was a couple in their vehicle, a late-night murder that ended up with two teens dead. The next one was the Blue Rock Springs attack that occurred on July 4, 1969. Both victims were shot inside their vehicle, one of them survived.”

  And officer interrupted her line of thinking.

  “There was at least seven months between the first recorded murder and the second. Has anyone been able to establish why he’s not using the same timeline?”

  “No. Although he is modeling himself after the Zodiac, he’s not sticking to the timeline of murders. If we are to go by what he said in the last video, we can assume that tonight there will be another, then it will continue tomorrow and onward until we solve this cipher.”

  “Hudson, that’s impossible. Some of the greatest minds in the world have looked at the 340 Cipher, and in forty-eight years no one has been able to crack it. What makes him think that we can do it in less than four days?”

  “He doesn’t. He’s toying with us. Chances are we won’t be able to crack that original 340 Cipher but there is a chance we might be able to decipher the four he’s sent us. Does that answer your question?”

  He nodded, and she continued.

  “The third murder was the Lake Berryessa attack. Two students from Pacific Union College we
re stabbed on September 27, 1969. The male survived, the female didn’t. We then have the Presidio Heights attack where a cab driver was murdered. Finally there was the Modesto attack, which occurred on March 22, 1970, when a young woman was visiting her mother. She was pregnant at the time, and had her daughter with her. The woman survived her attacker.”

  “What about the school bus?” an officer in the back asked.

  “What?”

  “Before that last attack the real Zodiac contacted the media and said he would kill schoolchildren as they came out of a school bus.”

  “Listen, we have to anticipate that this guy will do anything. I want officers out there beating down the doors, asking anyone and everyone if they have noticed any suspicious behavior. We have some flyers that we want distributed in the streets and malls to make the public aware of the dangers of stopping in rest stops.”

  A snicker came from the back. She turned and among the crowd of men and women who were scribbling on pads of paper and some typing on notepads, she spotted him. Of course it was him. The guy didn’t have an off switch.

  “Do you have something to add, Officer Sanchez?”

  “Hudson, you are aware that San Francisco gets over twenty-four million visitors a year? We can’t stop people from using the rest stops. There is too much ground to cover. I think you need to alert the media, feed them a line and…”

  “Create panic?” Hudson finished. “I don’t want anyone to mention the word serial killer to the press, do you hear me?”

  “I don’t think we need to,” he shot back. “They’re already calling him that.”

  Hudson ran a hand over her face and turned towards the plasma screen. Right then on the screen came two images of the victims displaying the wounds on their bodies. It had been taken before an autopsy was done.

  “The bodies were checked, just to make sure he hadn’t done anything with them.”

  “Like inserting a road map?” Sanchez muttered.

  She eyed him. He was pushing it. He noticed and shrugged. “I’m just saying, some killers leave behind little tokens, things that they hang out there like a carrot on a string in order to give the police clues, or taunt them. Seems to me the Zodiac was all about taunting the police. I figured our guy might have done something different.”

  “He has, he uploaded the killings to the Internet. This is a new age that we are dealing with — a new form of psycho. They no longer need to get permission from the media to gain the attention of the masses. They can do that now with one click.”

  “So why bother sending these videos to the media?”

  “Because the Zodiac did,” Hudson replied.

  She turned back to the screen. “As the Zodiac’s second murder took place at Blue Rock Springs in Vallejo, we are going to have officers keeping an eye on that area over the coming days. There is no way to know if he will commit the murders in order. Even though he is basing his murders around the original Zodiac crimes, he appears to be doing it in his own way. We need to think outside the box on this.”

  Romero returned with her coffee. She thanked him and took a big swig before setting it down. “Now Romero will be handing out the locations of the original attacks. There are to be officers at these locations twenty-four seven. We have over two thousand officers in this department, sixteen of you are going to be monitoring these locations while we have other officers looking out for any suspicious vehicle activity. We believe our suspect won’t be traveling by foot, and there is a good chance camera surveillance will eventually catch him. We just don’t know when that will be or where, so we will have a team working with the FBI to analyze some of the surveillance footage from CCTV cameras in areas of the city where there are rest stops and parking lots.” She took a deep breath and felt herself go lightheaded. Another quick swig of her coffee and she continued, “Now…”

  Suddenly Hudson felt the room begin to spin. Her eyes started watering and all the faces doubled. She continued talking, but it just sounded like gibberish was coming out of her mouth. Romero stepped forward and said something to her but she didn’t hear him. She staggered, and he caught her just as she passed out.

  * * *

  When Hudson came to, Romero was seated across from her in a hospital. Light stabbed her eyes as she tried to make sense of where she was. She could hear the beeping of a machine beside her, and a short, dark-haired woman in nursing scrubs was talking to Romero.

  “Romero?” she asked softly.

  He turned, and the nurse said she would go find the doctor.

  “Well that briefing you gave was definitely brief.” He smiled. “How you doing?”

  She went to get up, and he told her to relax. Her mouth was dry.

  “Just stay put.”

  “How long have I been out? How did I get here?”

  “You’ve been asleep for six hours, and I brought you here.”

  She looked around confused by her surroundings. “I…”

  “It appears someone put a little something inside your coffee.”

  “The one you got me?”

  “It appears so. I got it from the machine and only turned my back on it for a few minutes while I chatted with one of the officers.”

  “Was anyone else in the canteen at the time?”

  “Two other officers but that was it.”

  “Have you checked video surveillance?”

  “We are looking into that.”

  She flung back the sheet. “I’ve got to get going. I don’t have time to lay around.”

  “Whoa, hold on. You need to sit back and relax. Everything is being taken care of by the task force. We need you to get better first.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well the doctor wants to stay put until he’s done a thorough examination of you.”

  Right then a doctor came in wearing white scrubs. He pushed up the glasses on his nose and smiled. “Ah, detective, it’s good to see you awake. You gave us quite a scare back there. From what we were able to determine someone spiked your drink with Rohypnol. I’m sure you know it’s a drug quite often used in rape cases. It acts like a depressant. The effects are slurred speech, inability to concentrate, poor coordination, dizzy feelings, lack of inhibition, nausea and amnesia.”

  “It was him,” she muttered. “He was in the department. How the hell did he make it down to the lower floor unless he works for the police department?”

  “We’re looking into that, Hudson,” Romero said, pushing her back and covering her with a sheet.

  “You should be able to go home in a couple of hours but we want to get some more fluids in, and monitor and keep an eye on you for a little while longer.”

  “Doctor.”

  He put a hand out as if to calm her. “I know you are in a rush but it’s for your own good.”

  She reluctantly nodded and looked out the window. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was bright and beaming a warm band of light in on her face. After the doctor had run a few more checks, he left the room with the nurse by his side. Hudson shifted position and Romero adjusted the pillow behind her back.

  “You know I can’t stay in here.”

  “I know. I told them you would say that. You are as stubborn as a mule.”

  She looked down and noticed they had changed her into a hospital gown. “Please tell me you were not involved in getting me into this?”

  He laughed and leaned back in his chair. “That’s between me, the doc and the good lord.”

  “Listen, can you get me my phone and give me a minute or two alone?”

  “Sure thing.” He got up and went over to her bag and rooted around in it before producing her iPhone. He handed it to her and said he would be right outside. She gave it a few seconds before she placed the call to the department and asked to speak to Clive, who was in charge of security and tech support.

  “San Francisco Police Department, Clive speaking.”

  “Clive, it’s Detective Hudson.”

  “Oh, hey Hudson.
I heard about the incident today. You doing okay?”

  “Yeah, they have me hooked up to all manner of tubes in here. Look, can you do me a favor?”

  “I know what you’re going to ask, we have already done it. There is only one time in that footage that the cup is no longer seen and that’s when one of the officers walked past Romero.”

  “Which officer?”

  “That’s the problem. The name on the badge doesn’t coincide with anyone that is working at the department.”

  She chewed it over. “How would he know that I’d asked Romero to get me a coffee unless he was in the room? No way,” she said shaking her head. “There’s no way he was in that room with us.”

  “Who, Hudson?”

  “Are you able to bring up footage of the briefing room?”

  “Sorry, there are no cameras in that room.”

  “That’s the only place he could have been.”

  Her mind started to spin.

  “Please tell me you have his face?”

  “Nope. Well, not exactly. We have his chin, he kept his head down at all times. The hat was covering what we could see.”

  She sighed. “Okay, thanks, Clive.”

  Hudson squeezed the phone tight. She was being played by this fool. The nerve of him. Walking into a police station as an officer and spiking a drink, now that took balls. Had he been in the room? Heard what they had planned? If he was able to make his way into a police station without anyone saying anything where else could he gain access to? She suddenly became frightened for her life. Could he reach her in the hospital? Hudson pulled back the covers and touched the icy cold floor with her bare feet. She staggered over to a chair where her clothes were folded and started getting dressed. I’ve got to get out of here, she thought.

  Chapter 7

  One thing was true for every crime family, no matter what city they operated in — they didn’t like attention from cops. After booking into a motel in the Sunset District, and agreeing to meet with Dana later that night, he planned on heading out to meet with a contact from the Marabelle crime family. They were a notorious crime syndicate that had dominated the city of San Francisco since the early 1930s. When they weren’t at war with other crime families or the cops, they had their fingers in all manner of seedy activities. A lot like Gafino, it was rare that anyone could just walk into their neighborhood and start shooting up the place without them finding out. He figured that if anyone might know who was behind the shootings, it would be those who had their nose to the street.