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

by Jon Mills

  But that was just the beginning. He would soon take things to a whole new level once he planted these bombs. It would be perfectly timed. A cacophony of deafening screams. Panic would reach new heights and he would forever be remembered as the deadliest serial killer in U.S. history.

  Then, and only then would he walk away, as did his father, leaving behind more questions than answers. An open case that would in time fade into the background until he was ready to pass on the baton to his son.

  He cast a glance over at a framed photo of his father.

  What was it like having them coming after you? He imagined the greatest minds of law enforcement stumped by a cipher. It brought a smile to his face as he continued to sharpen the blade.

  He turned up the TV that was playing lightly in the background. He flicked through a few of the stations. His work was already taking on a life of its own. There was a daytime talk show entitled The Return of the Zodiac. On another channel, a psychologist filled their heads with psychobabble about how he must have had a poor childhood and probably injured animals. He laughed at that one. His childhood was a typical one. His parents hadn’t divorced. They both held down respectable careers in the community, and at no point had he been bullied as a child.

  At least not by those outside his home.

  That was where those damn FBI profilers had got it all wrong. The Zodiac wasn’t someone who held a minor office job, allowing him to go virtually unnoticed by employees and neighbors. He was so much more than that. He’d often thought about what it would have been like if his father hadn’t stopped killing. He rose from his seat and went over to a small metal locker. He unlocked it and swung open the door to reveal the hood, dark brown pants and shiny black shoes that his father had worn. He pulled them out and brought them up to his nostrils so he could once again smell his father’s old cologne.

  A flash of memory came back to him from his childhood.

  Laughter, time with his father, and then the day he saw him dressed in the outfit.

  “Come here, boy!” his voice bellowed from behind the mask. Even now a bead of sweat dripped down his back as he recalled walking those final steps down to the unfinished basement and seeing a 9mm Luger, a .22 semi-automatic, a Colt M1911a1 and a 9mm Browning Hi Power resting on the workbench.

  His father removed the infamous black mask with the white circle and cross that made it look like a crosshair. He remembered him taking a hold of his hand and dragging him over to the workbench and shoving a 9mm into his hand.

  “Feel that. How does that feel?”

  “Heavy,” he blurted out.

  He crouched down beside him. “One day you will understand. I will explain everything to you, my son. Until then you are not to say a word, do you understand me? Not to your mother. Not to your teacher, and not to your friends otherwise they will take me away. You don’t want that, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Go now.”

  His legs couldn’t run fast enough. He stumbled on the way up the stairs, striking his knees against the steel staircase. Pain shot through his leg. He’d read the stories of a man that killed people. He’d seen the newspapers and heard his father speak of him as if he was some kind of crusader, ridding the streets of those that were harmful to society.

  He squeezed his eyes and again he was back in the present. He placed the pants back and hung up the black hood that fell down to his waist when he wore it. What had once scared him as a child and kept him from saying a word to anyone, now had become the very thing that struck fear into the hearts of others.

  He closed the door and locked it back up. Forty-eight years and they still had been unable to find him. Movies, books, documentaries, news, articles and much more solidified his legacy. A legacy that would become his own. He didn’t need another name, as from father to child, his father had bestowed upon him the most valuable gift that could be given — infamy

  He moved into a darkroom which his father had used to develop his own reels of murder photos. Though he no longer used it, he still liked to print off his digital versions and pin them up along a line of string so he could feel what it must have been like for his father. He gazed at the images of the previous night’s murder. The frozen look of shock on the face of the dead. He reached down and pulled out a bottle of pinot noir and stuck a sharp corkscrew into the top and twisted, yanking the cork free. He filled up a glass with a healthy dose of red juice and went back to admiring his handiwork.

  Another flash of memory and he was just a young child gazing up at the horrific scenes. His father beside him guiding him through each photo with all the ease of an art gallery tour guide.

  “And this one is my favorite.”

  He pointed to the one of a face streaming with blood.

  His father’s voice echoed in his mind. “Human life is like a lit candle, son. Easy to light, and even easier to snuff out.”

  His view of his father changed after the day he learned who he was. At first he was shocked, horrified and terrified that he would kill him. Every night he slept wondering when his father would come into his room and squeeze a round into his skull. When he dreamed, he saw his own face in a photo hung up in his father’s darkroom.

  Over time the horror subsided and his curiosity was piqued. What drove his father to commit such horrific acts? What did he feel? What was like it to wear the mask, to hold the gun and watch the life of another fade? Now he knew.

  * * *

  Captain Dickson gazed at the photos slammed on his desk by Hudson.

  “Go home. You’re safe there. He won’t get to you. So how do you explain this?”

  He leaned back in his seat causing the metal to groan. He sipped at his coffee and then tossed them back onto his desk.

  “How about you take that overdue vacation?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He leaned forward and set his cup down. “Staying here is not safe.”

  “And neither is taking a vacation with or without police protection. No. I’m going to continue working the case.”

  “That’s not your decision to make.”

  “This guy had me in his crosshairs, if he wanted to kill me he could have done it by now. There is a reason why he hasn’t, so let’s not give him one.”

  The captain leaned back again and sighed. “Anyone ever told you what a pain in the ass you are?”

  “All the time.”

  “And you listen?”

  “No.”

  Right then the door swung open and Charley stuck his head in. “Oh hey, Hudson. Sorry to interrupt but we’ve got a lead. Seems our attacker has been uploading the videos from San Francisco libraries.”

  Hope ignited in Hudson. “What?”

  Both of them turned his way as he walked in. “You requested that we run a reverse check on the IP of the videos uploaded. With the first two uploads it always went back to a different IP address, mainly because our attacker was using some kind of VPN service which masks the original IP of the computer he was using. Anyway, we finally got a hit on an IP from the San Francisco Library.”

  “Well let’s go,” Hudson said charging out of the office.

  “Hudson. Seriously, we were not done talking.”

  She ignored him and continued on. Had he been anyone else she might have been chewed out but Dickson was fairly lenient. They’d worked together since she’d got hired by the department and as long as she did her job he didn’t get on her case.

  Romero spotted them making a beeline for the elevator.

  “Hudson. What’s going on?”

  “Come on. We got a lead.”

  Charley struggled to keep up as she double-timed it down the corridor.

  “By the way we got back a match on the round from the girl pulled out of the bay. It matches up with the same gun that was used in the two vehicle attacks. It’s a Walther P-22.”

  “So it’s possible that we are dealing with the same guy.”

  Just under fifteen minutes later they were ma
king their way inside the mammoth public library at 100 Larkin Street. They entered the huge atrium with marble floors and approached the information desk.

  “Detectives Hudson and Romero, we’re here to speak to…”

  Before she had even finished, the young lady directed her to a woman speaking with a member of the public on the first floor.

  A few minutes later they were following the woman up the spiral staircase until they were on level three.

  “As I told the officer on the phone, the only way for anyone to use one of the computers is to either book in advance online or go to the front desk. No matter which way they choose, they still require an active library card and password to access the computer,” Ms. Linley said.

  “So you would have a record of who’s accessed it on what day and at what time?”

  “Yes, I can bring that up.”

  “Charley, when did the feds manage to pinpoint the location?”

  “After the last video was uploaded. See, here’s the thing, although our attacker has been using a cloud-based video distribution system to upload to multiple sites, that service logs every IP address. Now on the first two videos uploaded he was behind a VPN proxy server that is located outside the country. However, at some point in the process of uploading the last video there was a network problem and that VPN IP was dropped causing the original IP to take over.”

  “Exposing his exact location.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I knew this guy would screw up, eventually.”

  “Well, technically he didn’t screw up, the network did. He just wasn’t aware of what was occurring on the back end.”

  When they made it to the computer station, which was nothing more than two desks put together with a wooden dividing screen. Hudson waited for the librarian to show them what was required to log onto the computer.

  “You see, they have to input their library card and password.”

  “Okay, go get me that information,” Hudson said. Romero was staring around.

  “Looks like they have cameras. We might actually get lucky, Hudson.” He grinned. It took the librarian the better part of five minutes to go and collect the information. When she returned, she handed over a list of dates and times, and she’d circled the one based on the computer being used and the time of the upload. At the top was the name of the card holder.

  “Amelia Lopez?”

  “Well you didn’t think he was going to use his own card, did you?” Romero said in a mocking manner before laughing.

  “What did you say?” Charley asked turning towards her.

  Hudson repeated herself. “Amelia Lopez. You know her?”

  “You asked us to look into females that had gone missing from colleges and universities in the area in the time frame of how long the girl had been dead. Out of the twenty-five, Amelia Lopez was one of the names that came up. The rest had phoned in ill. She was studying at San Francisco State University.”

  Hudson leaned back against the desk. “So now it makes sense. He knew he needed to upload videos but didn’t want to take the risk of doing it from one of his home computers in the event that the VPN service failed, so he selected one of the branches of the public library. But, he needed a library card and password to gain access. So he must have stalked her. Seen her leave here and followed her out. Got her to give up her library card and password, which of course she would have done if he’d threatened her with a gun. He killed her and disposed of her body. After, he logs in under her name and uploads the video.”

  She turned to Ms. Linley. “You want to show us where security is?”

  “Sure, come this way.”

  And off they went again heading for what she hoped would be the break in the case. All they needed was a face and they would no longer be looking at finding a needle in a haystack, they could put out an accurate composite and use the public to narrow in on him.

  Most surveillance software used in the detection of theft allowed retailers to keep video from a few days up to a year, and with the large hard drives available it was now even easier.

  They were led into a cramped room where two security guards were monitoring the six floors of the library on multiple screens. Their radios crackled, and Ms. Linley gave them the date, time and area they wanted to see footage from. Hudson shifted her weight from one foot to the next. Her pulse was racing. This was it. She was moments away from seeing the face of the asshole who was not only plaguing the city but pissing her off.

  “There, stop!” she said. “Can you zoom in on that guy and take a snapshot of his face?”

  “Yeah, one second,” the bulky security guard said before pressing a few more buttons. The color video zoomed in and they got the best shot they could. Hudson leaned over the security guard with a steely gaze. She watched intently as the man turned and they got a shot.

  “Shit!” She ran a hand over her head. “Baseball cap, sunglasses and facial hair. Hell, he looks like eighty percent of San Francisco.”

  “He looks like the Unabomber,” Charley muttered.

  “Well at least we have a rough idea of height, body shape and maybe the feds can work their magic and create us a composite without the glasses and hair.”

  “Yeah, right, and I just figured out the 340 code,” Hudson said sarcastically, before tapping Charley and telling him to get a copy of that. She walked back and forth for a few seconds and then asked Ms. Linley if the card could be used at any of the branches.

  “Of course.”

  “But chances are Amelia used it at one location. How often would anyone travel around the city? They usually have one library they frequent as it’s closest to—”

  “Their home, work or place of study,” Charley put in.

  “Where are you going with this, Hudson?” Romero asked.

  “We might not have a good shot of him from the day he used the computer but perhaps we can spot him following her on the last day she used it. He had to have been following her otherwise how else would he know she had one?”

  He nodded and tapped the security guard and handed him the sheet of days and times that Amelia’s card had been used. “Pull up everything you have from these days.”

  Chapter 13

  That evening as Jack returned to his motel, a steady downpour turned the steep hills of San Francisco into mini waterfalls. Traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace as the cold ocean waters sucked in wind and fog reducing visibility in the city. Neon lights throbbed in a blur behind the heavy water assaulting his windshield. Jack shivered turning the heater on full blast to prevent the windows from fogging up. Even in the short distance from her home to the truck his clothes had been plastered to his skin.

  Rain trickled down his face.

  Once he swerved in front of the motel, Jack waited in the truck for a few minutes keeping his eyes peeled for Angelo’s men. There were several cars parked along the street, none of them had their lights on. Without getting out of the truck, it was hard to see anything except the silhouette of figures hurrying to escape the rain. Several headlights washed over his vehicle, illuminating his face. His mind churned over the events of the afternoon.

  After narrowing down the names of those who had claimed the Zodiac was their father, Jack filtered out the ones that never made the news and focused on four individuals that had captured the attention of the FBI and the San Francisco Police Department. Two of them had written books, one had made it onto regional news, and another had claimed he had been there when his father had killed.

  Although Dana had wanted to go with him, he’d warned her that it wasn’t safe.

  Besides the obvious, she’d pressed him for answers, and he eventually caved in and told her about his run-in with the San Francisco mob. The look on her face as he told her spoke volumes. She shook her head.

  “Why would you go to them?”

  “The police have their way of trying to find this individual, I have mine. Under the unusual circumstances, I thought it was best I spoke with those th
at have their ear to the ground. You’d be surprised by the mob’s connections. Their fingers are on the pulse of the city. There is very little that goes on that they’re not aware of. Murders on the streets aren’t good for business unless sanctioned by them. It brings police around and that’s never a good thing. I just didn’t expect Nico to screw me over. I knew the guy since I was a kid. I thought I could trust him. I thought I could speed up the process, I was wrong.”

  “Well I guess that answers your question about returning to New York.”

  To that he just chuckled. He hadn’t wanted to go back, and he certainly had no inclination to revisit his old stomping ground. However, Jack had asked around over the past few years to see if anyone was searching for him and from what he’d heard, all was quiet, there had been no mention of him since he had taken out the Carlone family. Obviously that wasn’t true.

  “That’s why I need you to stay here. At least until this is over.”

  “I want to help.”

  “I know you do but it’s too dangerous.”

  “And what am I meant to do in the meantime?”

  “Be my eyes and ears. You have an inroad with the department, and your job with the Chronicle. Find out what’s going on. With all that’s happened, the police aren’t going to release updates that could jeopardize the case. That’s the kind of tidbits that may come in handy. Use this position to your advantage. In the meantime I will look into these four.”

  He stood on the steps as rain came down in sheets, Dana grabbed his wrist just as he was about to leave. “Thank you, Jack.”

  He shrugged and shouldered on into the rain.

  Now as his truck idled outside the motel, he looked beyond the blurred widow one last time before shutting off the engine and pushing his way out. With all that had happened, it wasn’t safe to stay in motels. It would be the first place they’d start looking. Besides, he’d called Nico from the motel phone. He would have used a burner phone, but he didn’t expect he’d need one this time around.