“Agent Iverson,” Walter asked, dreading the answer. “In the letters he’s sent you, has he mentioned anything more about a city bus?”
“It’s a recurring theme,” Iverson replied. “Repeated over and over again in almost every letter. He claims the women he’s killed are all tramps—easy prey that nobody cares about, anyway—but that shooting senior citizens would be the ultimate thrill. Not so much for the sheer pleasure of killing, although that’s clearly a factor. He claims that killing innocent grannies would provoke the maximum amount of outrage.
“He sees public outrage as a kind of ovation for his symphonies. Makes him feel powerful. Look at this.” He handed Walter another handwritten letter. “In his most recent message to me, he expressed a lot of anger because details of his activities had been kept out of the media.
“The fact that he was able to get a few cards and letters through our net, and made it into the newspapers, has made him cocky. He claimed responsibility for several murders we know he had nothing to do with, just to mess with us. But that score at the bottom of his last public letter, ‘Me = 37, SFPD = 0,’ that’s the only hint the media ever got of what he’s really been up to, over the past five years.”
“Listen,” Walter said, unsure if it was the right thing to do, but unable to stop himself. “I think we might know where the Zodiac Killer will be tomorrow...”
A pair of headlights pierced the gloom, refracting off the condensation on the rear windshield. A car pulled up behind them, and two ill-defined, fuzzy silhouettes got out and started walking toward Iverson’s car.
The agent rolled down his window and peered back at the approaching men.
“Latimer!” he said, cranking the ignition and flooring the gas pedal.
Walter, who wasn’t prepared for such sudden acceleration, bounced off the seatback, dropping the letter he was holding as he braced himself against the dashboard and the door with his palms.
Bell swore in the back seat as an avalanche of files slid into his lap, burying his feet.
It took Walter a second to realize that Iverson was headed straight for a chain-link fence, with no sign of slowing.
“Are you nuts?” Bell cried, voice constricted with fear.
Instead of answering, Iverson just crashed through the fence, dragging a large section of chain-link that had hooked onto the wipers as the Cutlass slalomed down a dirt embankment and cut across honking traffic. At that point, Walter covered his face with his hands, convinced he was about to die in a flaming wreck.
Bell’s swearing in the back seat became louder and more creative, but Iverson was disturbingly silent. The pounding of Walter’s heart seemed like the loudest sound in the car.
Then, just as suddenly as he’d taken off, Iverson screeched to a halt.
“Out!” he cried, reaching across Walter’s body to open the passenger side door. “Go, run. I’ll distract them.”
He scooped up the file of letters off the floor and pressed it into Walter’s hands.
“Find him!” he said, his haunted gaze locked on Walter. “You have to find him and stop him.”
Walter took the file and scrambled out of the car. Looking back, he saw that another vehicle had pulled in behind them. Its lights were on, but it was just sitting there.
They were in a narrow alley, and there was an open loading dock on their right. The moment Walter and Bell got out of the Cutlass, Iverson threw it into reverse and drove backward until he slammed into the pursuing car, wedging it in tightly between two dumpsters and blocking it from proceeding down the alley.
“Come on,” Bell said, climbing onto the high loading dock and giving Walter a hand up.
Walter looked back down the alley at the furious agents who were waving their arms and trying to climb out the windows of their trapped car. Then he stuffed Iverson’s file down the front of his trousers and ran with Bell into the building attached to the loading dock.
* * *
It was a warehouse of some kind—stocking smoked and pickled fish, by the smell of it. But Walter barely had time to register his surroundings or the quavering protests of the ancient night watchman before the two of them burst out through the front door and onto a neighboring street.
“Belly,” Walter said. “Maybe we should...” Before he could finish, Bell gripped his arm and dragged him across the street, into one end of a narrow greasy spoon café.
The place had its own oniony atmosphere so thick that it felt like walking into a lard sauna. It was nearly empty except for a thin, cadaverous fry cook doubling as a waiter and a single morose, genderless patron bundled up in multiple threadbare sweaters and an oversized tam-o’-shanter.
The fry cook’s jaded, wordless greeting turned to baffled disbelief as Bell charged straight through the restaurant’s narrow boxcar length, dragging Walter in tow like a reluctantly leashed cocker spaniel.
“Sorry...” Walter called back over his shoulder at the frowning fry cook, not even sure what exactly he was apologizing for.
They burst out of the back door of the restaurant, which led to yet another alley, this one redolent of old frying oil and slick rotting garbage. Walter was so turned around at that point that he had no idea where he was in relation to the FBI building, or the parking lot where they’d talked with Iverson, or even the other alley where they’d seen him last.
He had a vague notion that their current alley might be parallel to the previous one but he would not have sworn to it in a court of law. For all he knew it was perpendicular.
What he did know was that he was glad Bell was there to take the lead.
“Where the hell are we going, Belly?” he asked between gasps and huffs. “I’m afraid I can’t possibly...”
“There!”
Bell pointed to a pickup truck parked near the mouth of the alley with its engine running. No driver in sight. When they reached it, he opened the driver’s side door, then shoved Walter in and across the bench seat before getting in behind the wheel.
“We can’t just...” Walter began, but he swallowed his protest as Bell punched the gas and peeled out of the alley.
“Listen,” Bell said, blowing through a red light and making a squealing left turn. The plastic hula girl on the dashboard wobbled fetchingly, seeming to wink at Walter. “We need a safe harbor. Somewhere we can hunker down and formulate a plan. And we’re going to need a native guide. Someone who knows this city and can help us find the location of the bus shooting before it happens.”
“And then what?”
Bell didn’t reply, but they both knew the answer already.
They had to find a way to stop the killer. Linda’s grandma and the rest of the passengers were counting on them.
6
Walter was so deeply exhausted by the impossible events of the past six hours that he found himself dozing off to the hypnotic sound of their borrowed truck’s tires humming as they crossed over a long bridge and into San Francisco.
He was awakened an unknown time later by Bell’s gentle hand on his shoulder.
“We’re here,” he said.
“Where’s ‘here’?” Walter asked, suddenly alarmed when he realized the steep downward slant of the street on which the truck was precariously balanced.
“Nina’s place,” Bell replied with a little private smile. “Let’s go.”
Walter went to open the door and gravity pulled it out of his hand so that it bounced on its hinges, and then settled wide open. He cautiously put one foot on the impossibly steep ground, but was reluctant to let go of the frame of the truck.
“Are you sure it’s safe to park on a hill like this?” Walter asked.
Bell chuckled.