Fringe - the Zodiac Paradox by Christa Faust Read Free Book Online

strange energy dissipating until they were gone.
    He reached down and plucked his trophy off the floor of the cab, tucking the bloody fabric into his jacket pocket. He was about to push the dead cabbie back over to the driver’s side and exit the cab, and he actually had his right hand on the door when he suddenly realized the implication of having taken off his gloves.
    Fingerprints. He’d left fingerprints.
    It was too late just to get the gloves out of the back seat and put them back on. It’d be like closing the barn door after the horses were out, anyway. No, the only option was to wipe down the surfaces of the cab as best he could.
    He took out his handkerchief and wiped down the dashboard, the seat, and the interior of the door. Then he got out and wiped first the outside of the passenger door and then the driver’s door. He was fairly certain he hadn’t touched the driver’s door, but he couldn’t be too careful.
    He heard sirens in the distance. Growing closer.
    Time to go.
    He walked away, heading north on Cherry Street. When he made a right on Jackson, he spotted a police prowler driving slowly toward him.
    His heart stopped, then revved like a race car. His throat constricted, suddenly dry and parched. The sparks flared in his hands, and he shoved them deep into the pockets of his slouchy blue jacket, terrified that the pigs would see the glow.
    One of them turned toward him, looking right at him. Allan wrapped his fingers around his pistol. There was no way he was going to surrender without a fight.
    The cop turned away, and the prowler continued down Jackson without slowing.
    He felt a surge of elation so powerful it was almost sexual. He’d beaten them again. He imagined the young pig being forced to explain that he’d seen the legendary Zodiac Killer in the flesh, but hadn’t bothered to stop him. A small, private smile played over his lips as he turned on Maple and headed north, into the Presidio.

PART TWO

1
SEPTEMBER 20, 1974
    Walter stood alone beside a small, cheaply produced poster for the paper he and Bell had just presented— Use of Fluorescent Probes to Investigate Hepatic Microsomal ‘Drug’-Binding Sites.
    The paper had been very well received, although he couldn’t help but notice that more than half the audience was female. Striking odds when contrasted against the fact that the attendance for the annual conference of the American Biochemical Society tended to be more than 75 percent male.
    But Walter was an enthusiastic supporter of women’s lib and was pleased to see so many vigorous and inquisitive female minds seeking to embrace and decode the intricacies of the natural world. He stood by, ready, willing and able to discuss the finer details of sigmoidal reaction velocity with any one of these eager young scholars.
    Yet for some reason, they all ignored him and clustered around Bell.
    Maybe Bell was right about Walter’s jacket. He had only one jacket, which he had worn every day for ten years. It had originally belonged to his father, a tweed Norfolk that had a few moth holes and was a little frayed around the cuffs, but was still perfectly serviceable. It had deep pockets that could hold up to a dozen rolls of Necco wafers, as well as his notebook and several spare pens. He seemed to lose pens like a shark loses teeth.
    Yet Bell had repeatedly threatened to throw that jacket away or set it on fire while Walter was sleeping. He had even gone so far as to buy his friend a new jacket, a snazzy plaid double-knit sport coat like the ones that Bell favored, but the pockets on the outside were fake, sewn shut and just for show, and the one inner pocket could barely hold two rolls of Necco wafers and a single pen. So that jacket stayed in his closet back at MIT, and Walter had worn the Norfolk jacket again to U. C. Berkeley, just like last year.
    And none of the women wanted to talk to him, just like last year.
    Bell, on the other hand, was holding court in the center of a crowd of