Girl With a Past Read Online Free Page B

real case file you want, I’ll give you
one from a closed case, a real one, because that file is not an
actual case file. I just collected that stuff. It was my personal
file.”
    “What are you saying?” I joined him at the
window. “Why? After all these years?”
    He rested his arm on my shoulders. “Al, do
you know why I was obsessed with that killer?”
    “Yeah. Mom gave me the download. He killed a
good friend of yours when you were in college.”
    “She was my best friend.” He looked away,
stared at a row of law books on the shelves lining his office.
    I nodded, trying not to feel guilty about
the sadness on his face.
    “I was in my last year of law school. I’d
just met your mother. My best friend was shot and killed while
coming home from a date,” he hesitated. “There was a guy around at
that time that was killing young lovers. There was some thought
that he, the Zodiac was her killer.”
    Dad’s work dealt with killings all day long,
but it was obvious that decades hadn’t made this one easier for
him. He turned back to the view of the bay
    “So?” I would wait as long as necessary. I’d
wanted to know what the deal was with this murder from the get-go.
I wasn’t going to let his discomfort stop me now. “Yo, Dad
tell.”
    “There was no evidence linking the prime
Zodiac suspect to Lexi’s murder. In fact there was never enough
evidence to indict him for any of the cases.” Dad turned around and
returned to his desk chair.
    “Did you think it was the Zodiac guy?” I sat
on the corner of his desk.
    “I never thought it was the prime suspect,
this Arthur Allen, that shot Lexi.”
    “Who’s Arthur Allen?” I asked.
    “A deadbeat. A pedophile. He lived in
Vallejo. He was the closest the cops ever came to arresting someone
in the Zodiac case. Got warrants to search where he lived three
times.” Dad leaned the mesh chair back and locked his hands behind
his head.
    “You don’t think he was the guy?”
    “No.”
    I raised an inquiring eyebrow at my dad.
    “No, there was a mountain of circumstantial
evidence that linked him to the Zodiac, but the fingerprints at the
scenes and the handwriting didn’t match Allen’s.”
    “Handwriting? From the notes sent to the
newspaper?”
    “Yeah, the Zodiac wrote these wacko letters
to the San Francisco Chronicle .”
    I knit my eyebrows. “How do they know that
the killer actually wrote the things?”
    “The letters contained info that only the
killer and the cops could’ve known. You know, stuff never
previously released to the media.”
    “So this Allen guy. What was the deal? If
there was no real evidence, why was he the prime suspect?”
    Dad shrugged his shoulders. “He was the only
suspect at the time.”
    “Why didn’t you think he was the Zodiac?
    “The reasons for suspecting him could easily
have been coincidence. A lot of men wear size ten-and-a-half
shoes.” Dad sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “Turns out I
was right. A few years ago, the FBI excluded him based on DNA tests
of the saliva on the stamps of letters from the Zodiac.”
    “Whatta you mean . . . at the time ,
he was the only suspect?” I asked.
    Dad exhaled a long sigh. “In recent years,
maybe a hundred people have claimed that their father, or their
stepfather, or their uncle was actually the Zodiac. It’s gotten so
the police don’t even want to talk to anybody on the subject.”
    “So . . . you have theories that you’ve been
working on. That’s why you had the file, right?
    “Lexi’s date went missing the same night.
His body was never found.” Dad put hands on either side of his head
and pushed back his hair. “He could’ve killed her.”
    “Yeah?” I said. “So? What about him?”
    “Years went by. He never turned up.”
    “Why would he disappear? Did this Zodiac
killer hide other victims?”
    “Not that we know.” Dad frowned. “There was
a Jane Doe who had been moved, she was found around the same time,
but police were uncertain