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

enraptured females. Bell, with his sharp sport coat and rust-colored turtleneck and charming smile. The scientist in Walter liked to believe that he could replicate the results by duplicating the methods, but in his heart he knew there was something about Bell that couldn’t be duplicated.
    Off to the left, he noticed an older, slightly mannish woman and her chubby friend deep in conversation. They were the only two females who seemed unaffected by Bell’s charisma, and Walter found himself eavesdropping on them.
    “Can you believe he’s back?” the older one was saying, pointing to an article in a folded newspaper. “I swear I was just starting to feel safe at night.”
    “But how can they be sure the new letters are from the same guy?”
    “They used handwriting analysis. It’s him, alright. I wonder if the killings are going to start back up again.”
    “Jesus,” the older woman said. “I took a cab to work for two years after I saw that letter where he threatened to shoot senior citizens on a city bus.”
    Walter’s blood suddenly felt like liquid nitrogen in his veins.
    “Excuse me,” he said, stepping closer to the two women. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear. What were you saying about a letter threatening to shoot people on a city bus?”
    “It’s the Zodiac Killer, man,” the chubby woman said. “Don’t you read the papers?”
    “I’m...” Walter’s throat was so dry he could barely form words. “I’m from the east coast. I guess I don’t really keep up on national news.”
    “Well,” the chubby woman said, warming to the topic. “This psycho killer was running around murdering people about four or five years back. He sent letters to the paper and used this... what did they call it? Like a code.”
    “A cipher,” the mannish woman said.
    Nausea bloomed and twisted in Walter’s gut.
    “But the bus...?”
    “He said he was gonna shoot senior citizens on a city bus, wrote it in one of his letters,” the mannish woman replied. “What was that, ’69?”
    “October, ’69,” the chubby woman said, shivering slightly and wrapping her thick arms around her body. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”
    “But he never followed through,” the mannish woman said. “Not yet anyway. Here, look.”
    She handed him the paper.
    He looked down at the article, but the headline and the text below never registered. All he saw was a crude police sketch of the suspect. A sketch he recognized instantly.
    It was the man at Reiden Lake.
    A wave of dizziness swept over him, and he braced himself against the wall.
    “Hey, are you okay?” the chubby woman asked, although her voice sounded as if it was at the far end of a long tunnel.
    Walter nodded absently, then stumbled away from the two women, clutching the newspaper in sweating hands, a terrible memory seared into his reeling mind.
    A Ridgid Tool calendar on a warehouse wall.
    A girl in a bikini.
    The date, September 21, 1974.
    Today is September 20th.
    Walter bulldozed his way through the crowd of female admirers around Bell and gripped his friend’s arm.
    “Hey, watch it,” a tall brunette with glasses said.
    “Jerk,” spat another, shorter brunette.
    “Belly,” Walter hissed. “We need to talk.”
    * * *
    “You’re like a cold shower, Walt,” Bell said. “You know that?”
    Bell extracted his arm from his friend’s desperate grip and dug in his heels, refusing to go any further.
    “So what is it?” Bell demanded. “What the hell is so important that...”
    “The man we saw at Reiden Lake,” Walter said breathlessly, “the one who came through the gate. It wasn’t a hallucination. He’s real.”
    “Are you having some kind of flashback?” Bell gripped Walter’s chin. “Let me see your pupils.”
    Walter shrugged him off and thrust the crumpled newspaper into Bell’s hand.
    “Look at this!”
    Bell rolled his eyes and looked down at the paper with a skeptically arched brow.
    When he saw the police