No one on the block would have invited him into their house or car, smelling the way he did. The only place he could have gone was up the driveway on the left side of the shabby apartment building across the street from her place.
Curious, she waited for a car to pass, then headed over, open pack of cigarettes in her hand. But when she reached the mouth of the driveway in question, she paused.
It was broad daylight, and while her neighborhood certainly wasn’t the safest in the world, it was hardly a crime-infested war zone. There was no reason why she should hesitate about entering the alley.
But she did.
It just didn’t feel right.
Circles wasn’t visible from where Nina was standing, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in there. There were a large dumpster, some stray trash bags, and a stained, discarded twin mattress down at the far end. He easily could have been behind the debris. Probably just taking a piss. Or worse. And that was nothing she needed to see.
Nina looked down at the pack of cigarettes, then turned on her heel, tucking the smokes into her purse and heading back home.
* * *
“Aw, don’t go,” Allan whispered. “Come back and join us, Miss Nina Sharp.”
But she didn’t, and with conflicting emotion, he watched her walk away. On the one hand, he knew that the time wasn’t yet right for him to have her, and any deviation from the plan made him anxious, as if it might spiral wildly out of control. But there was another part of him that yearned for her without regard for all his cautious preparation.
He still knew next to nothing about the two hippies from Reiden Lake, but Nina Sharp, she had been easy to research. Starting with her registration for the cute little green Volkswagen Beetle, Allan had leapfrogged through her paper trail, eager to learn everything he could about her.
Nina Louise Sharp was twenty-eight, never married. Middle child of three daughters, born here in San Francisco to Sullivan and Marie Sharp. Abandoned by her philandering father and ignored by her overworked mother, Nina seemed to have thrown herself into achieving academic excellence. Her school records showed that she was a straight-A student and the valedictorian of her graduating class at Balboa High School.
From there she went on to be accepted at Stanford with full academic scholarship.
Allan had been surprised to find that Nina owned not only the ugly lavender house she lived in with those insufferable musicians, but also a second rental property that was bringing in a tidy little income. She had substantial resources, as well, from a variety of shrewd investments. Miss Nina Sharp was not only ambitious, she was extremely good with money and while she was far from wealthy now, he could see that she would be in the future.
Too bad she wouldn’t have a future.
Beneath Allan’s boot, the bum with the stupid ribbons in his beard writhed and choked, blood bubbling from the necklace of stab wounds around his filthy throat. He clutched weakly at Allan’s pant leg, and Allan kicked his shaking fingers away. Torturing the human vermin had seemed mildly amusing for a few moments, but now the bum’s agony just seemed pathetic and irritating.
He knelt down beside the useless bum and stared into his contorted, uncomprehending face. So much of the joy of killing was watching his victims come to the understanding that they would not survive. Torturing a mentally incompetent person like this man was never satisfying on that deeper level, because they had no idea what was happening to them.
Allan looked down at his hands. They were completely normal, not even the faintest hint of the sparks below the skin. The bum’s suffering had failed to invoke any reaction whatsoever.
With a weary sigh, he slid the blade of his knife into the creature’s right eye. He held it there for a moment, until the body stopped moving. When he was sure that the bum was dead, he pulled the knife out, wiped both sides of the blade on the man’s filthy purple shirt, and put it back in his jacket pocket.
Time to go see what Miss Nina Sharp and her two boyfriends were up to.
21
“Everything okay?” Bell asked when Nina walked back in to her room.
“Sure,” she replied, shrugging. “Just went for cigarettes.” She peered over his shoulder. “How’s it going?”
“Excellent,” Walter said, patting the newly assembled machine sitting on greasy newspaper in the center of her bedroom floor. “I could probably continue to play around with a variety of optional modifications, if time were not a factor, but I feel that the prototype is ready for its first trial run.”
“Here’s the thing,” Bell said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to open the gate again in this house. This neighborhood, it’s just too densely populated.”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” Walter said. “We should try to find a different location, a place that is both secure and relatively isolated.”
The two of them looked over at Nina.
“Right,” she said. “I’m thinking...”
“Think faster,” Bell said. “We mustn’t forget that the longer it takes us to figure out how to reliably open that gateway, and keep it open long enough to put the Zodiac back where he belongs, the more time he has to act on his murderous impulses.”
“Yes, of course,” Walter said. “But that doesn’t justify risking the lives of innocent bystanders.”
“I’ve already said as much, Walter,” Bell responded brusquely. “There’s no need to belabor the point.”
“I’ve got it,” Nina said. “Roscoe and his band have a rehearsal space over in India Basin. It’s big, secure, and was specifically chosen because there are no neighbors to complain about the noise. The few neighboring buildings that have active businesses all close down before 6 p.m. and that block isn’t zoned for residences. It’s perfect.”
“The place where Violet Sedan Chair rehearses,” Walter intoned. “I would love to see it.”
The three of them packed up their equipment, piled into the Beetle and headed down to India Basin.
* * *
The Violet Sedan Chair rehearsal space really was perfect. It was inside an unmarked and unremarkable brick building on Spear Avenue, across the street from an abandoned shipyard. There wasn’t a single vehicle parked on the street, no sign of a living soul. Unless one wanted to include the fat brown wharf rats Walter spotted trundling over the piles of scrap.
They entered the building through a smaller door cut into a huge metal rolling door the size of a drive-in movie screen. Nina flipped a huge switch that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Doctor Frankenstein’s laboratory. For such an impressive switch, the resulting illumination was somewhat disappointing. Just a few motley antique floor lamps with red and blue bulbs, a single black light that made their teeth and eyes glow, and a small lamp illuminating the keyboard of a majestic old grand piano.
There was a giant Persian rug that made the rough shape of a stage in the center of the concrete floor. The piano and a garish, fluorescent green and orange drum kit were situated on it, as if the door were the audience. Along the back edge of the rug stood a wall of amplifiers that made Walter’s ears hurt just looking at them.
There were also several battered couches and chairs situated as if to observe performances on the rug-stage. A streamlined, 1950s refrigerator was off to one side, and a portable heater plugged into a long, snaking extension cord on the other. When Walter peeked into the fridge, he discovered that it was empty except for a single lonely can of beer and a package of Ho Hos.
Directly above the rug-stage was a large, grimy skylight.
“Yes,” Walter said. “Yes, I think this will be ideal.”
“It’s a bit chilly,” Bell noted, waving his fingers through the pale steam formed by his breath. He set down the canvas messenger bag that he had used to carry the alpha wave generator.