Free Zodiac Unmasked by Robert Graysmith Page B

another witness than Cheney, were: “I
    think of man as game.” The adventure story might have been the flash point, no less a catalyst than the re-forming process Starr performed daily as
    an assistant chemist.
    The informal cross-examination ended.
    Less than an hour had passed since those elevator doors had opened, but it seemed longer. As an interview it had been mild. Though Starr had
    been isolated, a true interrogation would have been more focused, the setting bleaker, the intimidation more intense. Pointedly, the trio escorted
    Starr back to his lab, then left. Inwardly, the chemist boiled at being taken out, humiliated, and “questioned like a thief.” Toschi admitted that he
    found Starr “a dangerous animal,” and though armed, had some fear of him in close quarters. Starr’s ears were crimson; his face flushed. He could
    barely control his anger and he had never been a patient man. Men al around him, in their lab coats, paper booties over engineering boots, were
    staring and whispering. He sat at his work station. “You don’t know what it’s like,” mumbled Starr to a coworker, his eyes fixed on his desk.
    “Everything is fine—going good. Then somebody cal s you to the office. And they suggest terrible things about you. You just can’t know—terrible
    things. And al the time I’m racking my brain to figure out who sent them. They make you sweat, then take you through the hal s—in front of everyone
    —like a child! I can’t forgive that.” The next time Starr met Toschi and Armstrong, he would claim not to remember them.
    Ignoring the buzz of his coworkers, Starr began scanning test results. He might be in a predicament—he was Zodiac’s weight, height, age. He
    had the same color and length of hair. He crossed his legs and removed the paper booties over his shoes. Absently, he surveyed the unusual-
    looking chucker-type Wing Walker boots he was wearing. Like Zodiac, Starr wore a size 10½ Regular. Two women he knew had seen him in those
    shoes and could testify to that. But in the end, perhaps he was only a man who liked people to think he was Zodiac.
    Outside, the investigators climbed back into their car. Their unanimous consensus was that the investigation of Starr should continue and in
    greater depth. “Absolutely,” said Toschi with feeling. “But what I real y want to know is who the hel questioned him just after the murders?”
    Mulanax had absolutely no idea. “God, that was over two years ago,” he said. He made a mental note to fine-comb the Val ejo files regarding any
    questioning of Starr as a Zodiac suspect and any previous reports about a bloody knife or knives on a car seat.

    3
    arthur leigh allen

    Wednesday, August 4, 1971
    Someone had desperately wanted us to know such a thing as a Zodiac watch existed. I studied the neatly penciled letter in my hand. At the San
    Francisco Chronicle, where I worked as an editorial cartoonist, everyone wondered about Zodiac. His terrifying letters had irrevocably linked him to
    the newspaper. Gradual y, a determination grew within me to disentangle the kil er’s clues and unmask his true identity. Failing that, I intended to
    present every scrap of evidence available to ensure that someone might recognize Zodiac and resolve the missing pieces of the puzzle.
    At the window I contemplated the long shadows stretching across wide Mission Street. On Fifth Street, strangers mil ed about the Pickwick Hotel
    (Hammett’s “Pickwick Stage terminal” where the Maltese Falcon had been stashed). Transients huddled in front of the Chronicle Hotel, and wel -
    dressed men with briefcases stood on the marble steps of the indestructible Old Mint. Zodiac could be any of them. He was a watcher. The first
    letter in which he christened himself “Zodiac” carried a different watermark than three earlier letters (Monarch-cut bond, imprinted with an “Eaton”
    watermark). The new watermark was “FIFTH AVENUE,” an imprint of Frank Winfield