Fringe The Zodiac Paradox

by Christa Faust

  Bell headed over to the bar to get the drinks while Abby wet her fingers, put out what was left of the joint and dropped the roach into her tiny beaded purse.

  “Oh, look,” she said, pointing to a doorway at the back of the stage. “Here they come.”

  The band took the stage to enthusiastic cheers from the small but vocal crowd. Roscoe was dressed in a dragon-print Oriental jacket with no shirt underneath and white bell-bottom pants. He winked at Abby as he sat down at the keyboard and adjusted the mike to the level of his smirking lips. Behind him, Chick Spivy was wearing a dark green suede suit and snakeskin boots, slinging his famous hand-painted Les Paul over his shoulder and waving, a big stoned grin on his beaming face.

  Next up were Oregon Dave and Alex, dressed twinlike in jeans and matching shirts. Dave’s shirt was blue with red stars and Alex’s was red with blue stars. Last up was Iggy, resplendent in royal purple bell-bottoms and a ruffled white shirt, open to his navel to unleash his thick, brambly chest hair.

  He sat behind his drum kit and looked over at Roscoe, who in turn looked over at each of the other members, then nodded. Iggy clicked his sticks together and then they broke into a slower, dirtier, funked-up version of “She’s Doing Fine.”

  Walter cheered freely, so happy in that moment in such a pure and uncomplicated way. It was a miracle to him that something as simple as music had the power to take away all his worries and anxiety, and transport him back to a better place. He’d been a college freshman when he first heard Violet Sedan Chair’s seminal album Seven Suns, and it had opened his mind as surely as the acid he’d dropped for the first time that same year.

  Life had seemed so different back then, so full of magic and potential. He’d been convinced that things were really going to change for the better, that love and music really could defeat fear and war. But then, somehow, it had all turned dark and ugly. Acid, mushrooms, and marijuana had been replaced with speed, cocaine, and heroin. Hippies were replaced by Hell’s Angels. The gentle, open-minded spirituality and self-exploration of the late sixties had degenerated into the hard-partying glitter and hedonism of the seventies.

  Their musical idols were dying, and being steadily replaced by plastic corporate pop stars and super groups.

  Yet here Walter was, basking in the musical genius of one of his personal heroes, on a par with Tesla and Einstein. The incomparable Roscoe Joyce was in rare form on stage, coaxing new resonance and meaning from old hits and exploring uncharted territory in selections from a complex and profoundly spiritual rock opera that Walter had never heard before.

  He glanced over at Bell, unable to stop smiling, and noticed that his friend seemed a little bored by the concert, checking his watch and looking impatient as Iggy thundered off into yet another ten-minute drum solo. Didn’t Bell appreciate the layered complexity and meaning in this music? He’d seemed to like the band well enough when Walter had first played “Seven Suns” for him back in 1966. And he’d been intrigued by the rumor of the lost track “Greenmana” and its supposed hallucinogenic effect.

  Now, he just looked annoyed.

  Walter felt a sudden hot rush of embarrassment, and even guilt. Of course Bell was impatient. Walter should be, too. They weren’t in the club to enjoy music. They were there to convince Roscoe and the band to help them defeat a dangerous killer.

  * * *

  “Thank you!” Roscoe howled into the mike, fist in the air as he got up from his keyboard bench.

  “Thank God,” Bell muttered under his breath as the band put down their instruments and left the stage. But Walter knew they would never end the set without doing “Seven Suns.” That was their one commercial hit, the one song that they were best known for. Besides, if they were really done, they would have taken their instruments with them.

  Sure enough, less than a minute later the band came back up onto the stage, hands in the air. The small crowd made up for their lack of numbers with wild enthusiasm, cheering and chanting.

  “Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns! Se-ven Suns!”

  “You have got to be kidding,” Bell said, rolling his eyes.

  “You can’t get rid of us that easy,” Roscoe said, grinning into the mike. “This song is a little ditty I wrote a few years back. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

  Alone on the keyboard, he broke into the first bar of “Seven Suns” and the crowd went crazy, hollering and cheering. The rest of the band joined in and the crowd started to quiet down, swaying together as if hypnotized. Abby and her pregnant friend Sandy sang along, loud and off-key, as the song ebbed and flowed like a tide over the ecstatic crowd.

  Bell and Nina were the only ones who were unswayed.

  Walter found himself wondering if the Zodiac might have been so brazen as to follow them into the venue. He couldn’t see the bespectacled killer as he scanned the faces of the crowd, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there.

  He wondered if the killer was enjoying the music, too, or if he was even capable of enjoying anything other than killing.

  * * *

  On the album, Walter was pretty sure that the song was about four minutes long, but more than fifteen minutes had passed and the band showed no signs of wrapping it up any time soon. He actually found himself getting impatient, and if that was the case, Bell must have been crawling out of his skin.

  * * *

  It was nearly a full hour and six encores later when the band finally gathered up their instruments and left the stage for good. With Walter and Bell in tow, Nina immediately pushed her way through the crowd and through a beaded curtain to a doorway that led backstage.

  “Backstage” was probably a fancier name than the area deserved. The band was hanging out behind the stage, so Walter had to give it that, but his idea of what it might be like to be “backstage” with his favorite band wasn’t anything like this.

  It was more like a vestibule with a crooked mirror bolted to one wall and crates of booze and beer kegs lining the other. A forlorn yellow plaid loveseat that was missing all but one of its threadbare cushions had been shoved into a corner, and a trio of spindly wooden folding chairs had been placed beneath the mirror.

  The guys were all laughing and joking and putting away their instruments. Several joints were being passed both directions around the room. Two of the girls from the large group had found their way backstage and were giggling and flirting with Alex and Chick.

  Abby was there, too, arms locked possessively around Roscoe’s skinny waist.

  “Little Bobby loves ‘Seven Suns’,” she was telling him. “He always kicks when you play it.”

  “Hey,” Roscoe said when he spotted Walter and Bell. “It’s the professors!” He grinned and passed a joint to Walter. “Did you dig that last song? It’s called ‘Gateway,’ and it came to me during that amazing trip we had with you guys. Just came to me, to all of us like it was already written. We barely even had to rehearse, we just knew it, man. We felt it—you dig?”

  “That’s fascinating,” Walter said, taking a hit off the joint. “Do you have any plans to record it? I’d love to study the structure in depth.”

  “Walter,” Bell said, taking the joint out of his hand and raising his eyebrows.

  “Ah, yes,” Walter said with a slight frown. “Well...”

  He had thought that Nina was going to talk the band into helping, since she was already friends with them. He’d had no idea that he would be called upon to do the convincing.

  “Say, professor,” Roscoe interrupted. “You got any more of that righteous special blend of yours? I feel like ‘Gateway’ is just the tip of the iceberg, man. I can sense a whole concept album in there, just waiting for me to plug in, you know? I feel like this is exactly what the band needs to take us to a higher level.”

  Walter looked over at Nina and Bell, shaking his head in disbelief. This was almost too easy.

  “I tell you what,” Walter said. “We’re planning another telepathy experiment tomorrow.”

  “
We were wondering if we could use that old cabin that belongs to Chick’s parents,” Nina said. “You know, the one up in Fairfax?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Chick said. “My folks never go up there this late in the year, it’ll just be sitting there empty.”

  “Perfect,” Nina replied. “We’ll head up there first thing—what do you say?”

  “That sounds groovy,” Abby said. “Can me and little Bobby come along?”

  “Not for this one, Abby,” Nina said. “This particular blend has certain ingredients that may not be safe for unborn children.”

  “Oh,” she said in small voice. “Well, I could just help out then...”

  “While we appreciate your offer,” Bell said, using his deep, soothing voice to maximum effect, “in this particular experiment, we’ve had problems with preexisting relationships affecting the telepathic connections that are formed under the influence of the blend.”

  “Yes, yes,” Walter agreed, thrilled with what Bell had contrived. “We can’t risk one of the subjects bonding with a mind outside the circle. For experimental purposes, we need to make sure that no external influences are allowed to skew the results.”

  “It’s okay, starshine,” Roscoe said, pushing a lock of Abby’s hair behind her ear. “You stay here in the city and keep the home fires burning. And when I get back, I’ll sing you a new song.”

  “Okay,” Abby said. “Can we get pancakes now?”

  “Pancakes,” Walter said. “Splendid idea.”

  * * *

  Alex and Chick took off with their two new lady friends to hit a different bar down the street, but Roscoe, Abby, Iggy and Dave, along with the other pregnant girl Sandy, all walked a few blocks to an all-night diner called Plucky’s Waffle Inn. The place was jam-packed with disco queens and hippies alike, and the ancient and unflappable woman who was the only waitress in the place seemed equally amused by all of them.

  Not that it really mattered to Walter, but over the course of their late-night, early-morning breakfast, he found himself trying to figure out which, if any, of the band members might be the father of Sandy’s child. She seemed equally flirty and friendly with everyone, including him. He wasn’t so uptight as to be scandalized by an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but he had to admit he was curious.

  Not curious enough to come right out and ask her, though.

  Besides, it was far more enjoyable to discuss music and mind-expanding drugs. Roscoe was ferociously smart, and full of new ideas in how the two can be combined to intensify the effects.

  “Music is primal,” he was saying. “It plugs directly into that central core of human consciousness. It goes beyond language, beyond any division between the self and the other.”

  “There’s been some really exciting work done on the effect of music on catatonic patients, as well as those suffering from severe forms of dementia,” Walter said. “Are you familiar with the L-DOPA trials performed on patients with encephalitis, by a young neurologist named Doctor Oliver Sacks? He published a book about it, came out just last year. Absolutely fascinating stuff.”

  “I’ll have to check it out,” Roscoe replied. “Who’s got the boysenberry syrup?”

  “I do,” Walter said, holding up the little jug and giving his pancakes an extra drizzle before passing it over.

  He would have been happy to stay all night in that diner, discussing a wide variety of intellectually stimulating theories and enjoying good, home-style food, but he couldn’t forget what they were planning to attempt tomorrow—today, actually. How everyone would be at risk, and how much was riding on their success.

  Roscoe and the other band members continued to joke and horse around on the walk back to Nina’s place, but Walter found himself quietly introspective, lagging a little bit behind the others. Until he remembered that the Zodiac Killer was probably still following them.

  He quickened his pace to catch up with Nina and Bell.

  28

  The next morning—more like afternoon, actually— Nina shook Walter awake again, this time with the typewritten note for the killer in her hand.

  “It’s time,” she said. “You have to plant the note before we leave for the cabin, or none of this is going to work.”

  “Right now?” Walter said, rubbing sleep from his dry eyes.

  “Yes,” Nina said. “Right now. Remember, there is no prearranged drop spot, so it doesn’t matter where you leave the note. Just make it look like you’re trying to be secretive. Make sure you go slow, and be obvious enough to be easily followed.”

  He sat up and noticed that Abby, bless her, had made tea for everyone. He helped himself to a steaming cup as he slipped his feet into his shoes.

  “All right,” he said, shuffling toward the front door. “Right now. I just hope this works.”

  * * *

  Allan watched from across the street as the curly haired hippie in the baggy tweed jacket left Miss Nina Sharp’s house alone, and headed west. He hesitated, just for a moment, then followed. Of the three, this was the one who interested him the most. The one to whom he’d felt the closest that night at Reiden Lake. The one he planned to kill last.

  The hippie was clearly up to something. He was anxious, constantly scanning the street and jumping every time a car passed, but Allan wasn’t worried that he would be spotted. He lingered nearly a block behind, blending into the crowd. They passed a busy hamburger stand, a beauty parlor, and a head shop, around a series of seemingly random corners, and then doubling back.

  But Allan was a seasoned hunter, and couldn’t be shaken that easily.

  Then the hippie suddenly dashed across the street and down a narrow alley. Allan followed at a safe distance, leisurely and unruffled as if he had all the time in the world to get to his destination. He strolled slowly past the mouth of the alley, peering casually down its length.

  The hippie had his back turned to Allan, and seemed to be counting barred windows as he walked very slowly down the alleyway. When he arrived under the seventh window, he stopped, crouched down and slipped something under a concrete block. Then he stood and continued on until he was out the other end.

  Allan waited a few beats before entering the alley himself, then made his way over to the seventh window. He lifted the concrete block and spotted a folded note and a wrinkled map.

  He unfolded the note. Read it. Smiled.

  Things just got a whole lot more interesting.

  29

  Walter was still so tired that he wound up falling asleep in the back seat of the rented tan Buick LeSabre, before they even made it out of San Francisco. When he woke they were on a narrow winding road, passing through deep, green woods. It felt almost like time travel, as if he’d fallen asleep in 1974 and awakened in pre-colonial times, before the intrusion of European industry into the primeval forests of America.

  The day was sunny, the windows were down, and the sharp, piney scent of the clean crisp air was uplifting and refreshing. He found he could almost forget about all the pain and death and madness.

  Almost.

  Nina turned off the main road and onto a bumpy, unpaved dirt track that bounced Walter around like popcorn in the back seat. He clung to the back of Bell’s seat, peering anxiously over his shoulder. The brightly painted bus carrying the members of the band was no longer following them.

  “Are you sure this is the right road?” he asked.

  “We can’t very well park right in front of the cabin,” Nina said. “The killer would see the car and know someone was inside. Even though he wouldn’t recognize the rental, the cabin still has to look empty. So we’ll ditch the car down below, and walk up.”

  “What about Roscoe and the band?”

  “They’re headed straight up to the lodge up on the top of the ridge,” Nina said. “Once we have the killer bound and sedated, we’ll contact them via the walkie-talkies and have them join us for the gate-opening trip.”

  Nina pulled the big beast of a car into a weedy turnout in front of the burnt-out husk of some
kind of structure. She killed the engine, and the three of them just sat there quietly for a minute, listening to oblivious birds and the soothing shush of wind in pine branches. It seemed so strange to Walter that the world around them just kept on keeping on, everything ordinary and normal, as if they weren’t about to commit this unthinkable offense against the very fabric of reality.

  He rolled up the window and got out of the car, slinging the duffle bag full of supplies over one shoulder.

  The walk up to the cabin was steep and roundabout, zigzagging back and forth along the safest, most stable ground. Nina took the determined lead, with Bell right behind her and Walter bringing up the rear. The bag on his shoulder was growing impossibly heavy by the time they reached the low, sloping back yard.

  It was less like the old-fashioned log cabin Walter had pictured in his mind, and more like a small, rustic house. It was long and narrow, with a mossy stone chimney, weathered, grayish siding and a tall, A-frame roof.

  They followed Nina around to the front door, which she opened with a large, old-fashioned key.

  Inside, it was dim and dusty, furnished with minimal, utilitarian furniture that included a pair of tough plaid chairs set next to an oversized fireplace, and a hand-hewn wooden table. There was a really hideous lamp made from antlers, but Nina stopped Walter from flipping the switch to turn it on.

  “Leave it,” she said, taking a small flashlight from her purse and thumbing it to life.

  The curtains were closed, so the light was dim. The weak yellow illumination from the flashlight made the interior of the cabin seem more gloomy, rather than less. Dust spun and danced in the beam as Nina crouched down in front of the fireplace and pried up the third flagstone from the left.

  When it finally came loose in her hand, she blew away the dust and replaced the stone loosely and slightly crooked.

  “So,” Bell said. “He comes in through the door...”

  “Right,” Nina said. “He comes in through the door and goes right for the fireplace. We should wait there.” She pointed to a dark doorway. “In the bedroom. When we hear him come in...”