He checked his watch, then checked it again.
The passing minutes felt like a slow torture. Each minute gone left them less time to find and stop the killer.
Finally, after what he estimated to be nearly three hours, someone came in to talk to Walter.
Where the previous men had been grim, gray and serious, this guy was tan, hearty, and way too friendly, with twinkly blue eyes and a big, rubbery smile like a used car salesman.
“How you doing, Walt?” he said. “You don’t mind if I call you Walt, do you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “My name is Special Agent Dick Latimer.” He gripped Walter’s hand and pumped it exactly three times, then took a seat in the empty chair. “I understand you have some information that you think will help us with the Zodiac murders. Is that right?”
“Um...” Walter pressed his lips together. “I... well...”
“Why don’t you just start by telling me what you told Mrs. Berman on the tip line.” Latimer leaned forward, predatory smile still at full volume.
Walter was torn, unsure. He still wanted desperately for someone in a position of authority to step in and take care of this terrible situation, but there was something about this guy Latimer that he just didn’t trust. He wished that Bell was with him. Belly would know what to say. He always knew what to say.
And what not to say.
“I don’t recall exactly,” Walter said. He had hoped to sound confident, but his voice felt constricted in this throat.
Latimer’s thousand-watt smile dimmed for a heartbeat, and his blue eyes went cold.
“Come on now, Walt,” he said. “This is no time for games. You told Mrs. Berman that you had urgent information for us. Something to do with...” He leaned in even closer, so close Walter would have scooted his chair defensively back if it hadn’t already been pressed against the wall. “Radioactivity?”
“I did, didn’t I...” Walter paused, looking down. Then he looked up again. “Would you happen to have any grape Nehi?”
“I’m afraid not,” Latimer replied. “But there’s a soda machine down the hall. I’d be happy to get you a 7 Up or something, as soon as you explain exactly what you meant by the suggestion that the suspect has been giving off an unknown type of radiation.”
“I’m afraid it has to be grape Nehi,” Walter answered. “Only grape Nehi contains the precise balance between citric and phosphoric acid to adequately protect us from the cosmic radiation from the future.”
Latimer narrowed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“Don’t you watch The Outer Limits?” Walter asked. “It’s just like ‘Demon With a Glass Hand,’ only this guy has a radioactive hand. He’s a soldier from the future, like Robert Culp. I’m from the future, too. That’s how I know.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of Necco wafers, offering one to the increasingly annoyed Latimer. “Candy?”
“Look, Walt, why don’t you just take it easy and try to stay focused.”
“I was hoping to get boysenberry pancakes at the Howard Johnson’s, but they only had blueberry,” he said earnestly. “Do you suppose that’s some kind of regional thing? When I was a kid, my mother used to make the best boysenberry pancakes. The trick is to coat the berries in powdered sugar before you add them to the batter. Of course, you can substitute lingonberries, but I’d increase the amount of sugar to compensate for the radiation.
“Have you ever been to Vienna?”
Latimer stood up, metal chair scraping loudly against the linoleum floor.
“Enough,” he said.
“Enough?” Walter asked, on a roll now. “That’s a pretty subjective concept, enough. It’s really relative to how much you already have, and how much more you imagine you might want. It’s not a good solid concept like, for example, a number. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have three of something. Like three rolls of Necco wafers. You might think three is enough, while someone else could reasonably argue that three is too many. I, on the other hand, may believe that three is not anywhere near enough. And although we are each right in our own minds, none of us is right in the minds of the other two. Therefore, we are all both right and wrong at the same time.
“Are you familiar with quantum physics?”
“Jesus,” Latimer said, reaching out to press a button Walter hadn’t noticed on the underside of the table. The two stone-faced agents reappeared in the doorway. “Get this crackpot out of here, will you?” Latimer instructed.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Dick,” Walter said over his shoulder as the two agents hustled him out the door. “I hope you’ll visit me in the future. I think you would really enjoy the year 1999.”
His last glimpse of Latimer as the door closed behind him was of the big man wiping his hand over his face like an exasperated teacher. Walter really hoped he’d done the right thing.
5
The unmarked car dumped Walter and Bell on a nondescript street corner, just a few blocks from some kind of highway. It was getting dark, and few of the streetlights seemed to be operational. There was a damp chilliness in the air. The buildings all around them were a mix of industrial and office buildings, currently vacant or closed.
“You can’t just leave us here...” Walter began.
But they did, pulling away the second the door was closed.
“Where the hell are we?” Bell asked.
Walter pointed out a disreputable looking gas station, barely visible on the other side of the street about five blocks down.
“Maybe we can get a map at that gas station.”
“Is it even open?” Bell responded.
“Look, there’s a phone booth.”
Bell patted his pockets for change.
“I think I know someone who can come pick us up.”
“Someone with two X chromosomes, I presume.”
Bell didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
He pushed in the folding door on the phone booth, kicking aside a slew of crushed beer cans and urine-soaked newspaper in order to enter.
“Hold that door open, Walt,” he said, lifting the grimy receiver as if it might bite him. “I don’t want to asphyxiate from the ammonia fumes in this toilet.”
Walter put his foot against the folding door while Bell held the receiver to his ear, joggling the cradle.
“Nothing,” he said.
An olive green ’69 Oldsmobile Cutlass pulled up alongside the phone booth. In the driver’s seat was a man with unfashionable glasses and thinning light brown hair. His slim build and ill-fitting suit made him seem younger than Walter, like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes, but there was something in his haggard face that aged him twenty years. Behind the magnifying lenses of those glasses, his watery blue eyes were sleepless and haunted.
“Get in,” he said, reaching across the seat to open the passenger door.
“What?” Bell dropped the useless receiver and stepped out of the phone booth, hand protectively across Walter’s chest. “Who the hell are you?”
“Special Agent Jack Iverson. You want to know what’s really going on with the Zodiac Killer, you’d better come with me.”
Bell looked over at his friend, brow arched. Walter could see he was skeptical, but Walter was dying for some answers. And there was something about this man’s tortured gaze that drew him in. Where Latimer had seemed smarmy and insincere, this guy seemed to be raw and wide open.
He cast one more look back at Bell, then got into the passenger seat of the Cutlass.