Zodiac Killer: Newly Discovered Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free

junk.”
     
    The Zodiac opened the hood and pretended to fiddle with the engine but seemed to have no luck. After a few moments, he stood up and shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll have to call a mechanic,” he said. “Here, come look. This wire is frayed, see?”
     
    She leaned over and peered in, but it was too dark to see much in the interior of the hood. “I guess I’ll have to go find a pay phone,” she said. “This isn’t how I planned on spending my night.” She thought to herself that the man looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place where she had seen him before.
     
    “Are you sure you don’t need a ride?” the Zodiac Killer asked again. “You could always send a tow truck to get the car later. You really shouldn’t be waiting in a dark parking lot by yourself.”
     
    As she turned to answer him, he viciously slashed out with the knife he had kept tucked in his sleeve. He stabbed her three times in the chest, once in the back as she fell away from him, and then seven times across the throat.
     
    Using a knife again gave him a sick, exhilarating thrill—how he had missed this! Time seemed to slow as he watched the life seep out of her, and every minute stayed crystal clear in his memory.
     
    It wasn’t until later that he noticed his watch was missing; it must have fallen off as he attacked Cheri Jo. You must be more careful , he told himself in anger. You’ve lost your edge after so long living as a normal man, a man who doesn’t give in to his darker urges. He had had that watch for years, and his wrist felt strange without it; he found himself frequently rubbing the skin it used to cover.
     
    Nobody noticed Cheri Jo’s car sitting in the parking lot all night. A groundskeeper discovered her body the next morning in an alley, and the police found the watch near the car. They would later trace it back to a military post in England and determine the owner had a seven-inch wrist.
     
    They also found skin under the girl’s fingernails—she must have scratched the killer as she fell to the ground. The skin cells belonged to a Caucasian male, but the police couldn’t gather any information beyond that.
     
    Yet the Zodiac Killer didn’t get much satisfaction out of the murder of Cheri Jo—one solitary woman was no longer enough of a challenge. Perhaps he would kill two people at the same time again, which he had found to be singularly thrilling. In fact, he was toying with the idea of making that his new signature.
     

 
    Chapter 6
    The Wait
     
    June 1969
     
    Holmes had explained the letter to Watson, and Watson sat silently while he read it over and over. He was having trouble believing it.
     
    “What made the fellow wait until 1968 to start murdering again? How did he fight his urge to kill for the years in between?” Watson asked. “And if this truly is Jack the Ripper—which is a horrifying thought—how did he master his murderous instinct for so long?”
     
    “Well, who’s to say he hasn’t committed many murders over the years? Perhaps the bodies have not been found, or perhaps he even traveled the country to find his victims—if that is true, then the cases would be open in other towns, and the San Francisco authorities would have no idea. Or maybe he was really trying to go honest for a while. I do not know, my friend,” Holmes said, shaking his head.
     
    “Do you think Lydia and Mark are safe after receiving that newspaper?”
     
    “I’ve given that a lot of thought today,” Holmes said. “At first, I was very worried. But the paper came back from the lab, and it was just red paint, not blood. And to tell you the truth, I do not think he will go for someone close to me. I don’t get the impression he wants to torture me, though that is more of a gut feeling than one based on fact. He just wants to get my attention, but if I feel uneasy at all, I will move them in with us for a while.”
     
    “Well, we have plenty of room. Whatever you think is best is