First of all I went to lonelyplanet. com and dug out their list of offices and phone numbers. It was a pleasant surprise that their web site was hosted and run from Oakland, just across the San Francisco Bay from me. But it made sense. The Bay Area was the center of all the world's web traffic. I'd heard estimates that forty per cent of the data on the Internet was routed through the region.
I needed Lonely Planet's help, so I called their Oakland office and asked for their web editor. I told her secretary that I was investigating a story. I wish I could say that when she answered I felt some frisson of significance, a feeling in the pit of my stomach, but the truth is I just felt sexist surprise that their web editor was a woman.
"Talena Radovich," she said, brisk but friendly. "What can I do for you?"
"Hi. My name is Balthazar Wood," I said. I had come to realize over the years that a twenty-dollar name subconsciously impresses people in official situations. I knew it was going to be tough to convince them and every arrow in my quiver would help. "I'm working on what you might call a complicated investigation and I'm calling to ask for your help."
"And who do you work for?"
"I'm not really working for anyone," I admitted.
"Julia said you were a journalist…?"
"In a sense. A story of some kind will probably come out of this. But there's a lot more to it than that."
There was a pause and then she said, with a hint of suspicion, "Maybe you should tell me what you're talking about."
"Yeah," I said. "But I warn you, it's pretty complicated and probably pretty hard to believe. Do you have some time right now, or do you want to talk later?"
"I have some time right now."
"All right," I said. "Here goes. Here's the nutshell version. When I'm finished with it you're probably going to think I'm completely crazy, but please bear with me and let me fill in the blanks, okay?"
"Okay," she said. She sounded curious. That was good.
"All right. Two weeks ago I was in Nepal, on the Annapurna Circuit, and I found the body of a dead man. Not just dead, but murdered."
"Murder on the Annapurna Circuit," she said when I paused for breath. I thought she might have a slight accent but I couldn't be sure. "The Thorn Tree article."
"That's right, I wrote that," I said gratefully. It made it much easier that she had read and remembered what I had already written. "What I didn't write there was that two years ago, in Africa, a friend of mine was murdered in the same way. There's boxed text on The Bull in your Africa South book, I don't know if you've read that — "
"I wrote it," she said.
"It says that — you what?"
"I was one of the researchers for that edition, I wrote the section on The Bull."
"Oh," I said. "I thought you were the web editor."
"Most of us spend a few months every year on the road doing research and updates."
"Oh. Wow. Sounds like a pretty good job."
"Beats working. Where exactly are you going with this?" she asked.
"I'm going to the part where I sound like a crazy conspiracy freak," I said. "I've been doing a bunch of research and I've got a whole pile of evidence which is totally circumstantial but which makes me believe, basically, that The Bull is real, that he killed my friend Laura in Africa, and he killed this guy in Nepal, and he's still out there."
"Oh," she said. "Okay, yeah, that's pretty freaky all right. Why are you calling me?"
"Because I think one of the responses to what I wrote might have been actually written by the guy. And I happen to be something of an expert on Internet software, and I'd like you to let me look through your server logs so I can maybe track down where he is."
"Um… Mister… "
"Wood. Balthazar Wood."
"Mister Wood, shouldn't you be calling the FBI or something? What we do, you know, what we do is we publish travel guidebooks, and investigating serial killers, that isn't exactly our strong suit, you know? And… this is the weirdest phone call I've had in a long time."
"Sorry about that."
"So why aren't you calling the FBI and getting them to subpoena us?"
"The FBI only investigates crimes on American soil," I said.
"Oh, yeah. They said that on X-Files last night."
"Also I don't think any Americans have been victims yet."
"But, come on, there's got to be somebody official you can call. At least somebody other than me."
"If you've got any ideas I'd love to hear them," I said.
There was a long pause.
"Okay," she said eventually, "this is totally nuts. First of all, mister crazy conspiracy freak, I want to meet you face to face, and it's gonna be in a crowded public place because no offense but this whole subject as you might imagine kinda totally freaks me out, and you're going to bring me this huge pile of evidence you say that you've got. Then, in the unlikely event I don't think you're just some sort of maladjusted psycho ward case, then I'll go to the folks here and we'll talk things over. And I'm telling you now I'm pretty sure they'll say no. But if you're convincing enough I'll at least talk to them."
"Thanks," I said. "Thank you. That's what I was hoping for."
"Where do you want to meet?"
I thought it over. "I don't really know Oakland… is San Francisco okay?"
"That's where I live," she said.
"Okay. Do you know where the Horseshoe Cafe is?"
"Lower Haight?"
"That's right. When is good for you? Sooner the better for me."
"Tonight at eight," she said. It wasn't a question. "I'm five foot ten and I have a nose ring and purple streaks in my hair."
"It's the Lower Haight," I pointed out. "You may have to narrow it down a little further than that."
She had a good laugh, low and throaty. "I'll be wearing black, does that help?"
"Enormously," I said. "I'll be the old guy with a serious beard and huge folder of old newspaper clippings and no sense of personal hygiene, sweating and twitching nervously in the corner with my back to the wall."
"The man of my dreams at last."
"Seriously, I'll be wearing… hum… you know what? I'll have a beat-up copy of Trekking In The Nepal Himalaya with me."
"Sounds good. See you at eight."
"All right. Bye."
I resented her on sight. She seemed like one of those people who was accustomed to everything good in life coming to her at the snap of her fingers. She was tall, athletically lean, and extremely pretty, shoulder-length black hair with royal-purple streaks, eyes blue as glacier ice, an aristocratic face, pale perfect skin punctuated by a silver nose ring. The other guys in the Horseshoe kept giving her sidelong looks and if we had met in any other circumstances I would have been a tongue-tied ogler. Plus she had my generation's ultimate dream job, Internet editor-slash-Lonely Planet writer, and I thought I could tell just by looking at her that she had the hippest apartment in town and a string of fellow Beautiful People friends and probably two or three generations of money in her family. She was nice enough. Don't get me wrong. Maybe I just resented her because she was so far out of my league.
She swaggered in and sat down across me. The table was an old Galaga video game half-obscured by the remains of my Trekking In The Nepal Himalaya and my folder full of printouts and pictures.
"What did you think of that one?" she asked, nodding to the book.
"Actually I thought it was the worst book you guys have ever done," I said. "No offense. But lots of people on the trail had a different book that was a thousand times better."
"Yeah," she agreed. "The Trailblazer Guides one, right? That is a lot better. We're seriously revamping this one for the next edition."
"I've forgotten your name," I admitted.
"Talena Radovich," she said, and we shook hands primly, as if meeting at a wedding.
"All right," I said. "Here's what I've got." I pushed the folder over to her. "The last page is a timeline I wrote out which connects all the events."
Sep 1995
"Taurus" suggests on Usenet that the perfect serial killer would go to the Third World and kill there.
22 May 1998
Daniel Gendrault found murdered in Cape Town. Eyes mutilated.
31 May 1998
Michelle McLaughlin found murdered in Kruger Park. Eyes mutilated.
8 Jun 1998 (approx.)
Oliver Jeremies killed in Mozambique.
13 Jun 1998
Oliver Jeremies' body washes up in Beira.
14 Jun 1998
Kristin Jones found dead in Malawi.
15 Jun 1998 (~midnight)
Laura Mason murdered in Limbe, Cameroon. Swiss Army knives are left in her eyes.
16 Jun 1998 (~1:30 AM)
Laura Mason found dead by myself, Nicole Seams, and Hallam Chevalier.
1998
Rumour of "The Bull" begins to spread.
Nov 1998
Rumour of "The Bull" published by LP.
18 Oct 2000 (morning)
Stanley Goebel murdered in Gunsang, Nepal. Swiss Army knives are left in his eyes.
18 Oct 2000 (noon)
Stanley Goebel found dead by myself and Gavin Chait.
20 Oct 2000
Stanley Goebel's name and passport number entered into trekking checkpoint in Muktinath.
26 Oct 2000
"Murder On The Annapurna Circuit" message posted to The Thorn Tree.
4 Nov 2000
Someone claiming to be The Bull posts to The Thorn Tree with the name BC088269 referring to knives in eyes. Neither i) the passport number nor ii) the information about the knives was known except to i) myself and Stanley Goebel's family ii) myself and Gavin Chait and the murderer.
She read very quickly, which I suppose becomes an editor.
"Is this everything?" she asked when she was finished. Her tone wasn't dismissive, she just wanted to know if there was anything else.
"Not quite," I said. "I have some pictures. One is a shot of the entry in the Muktinath ledger. The others are of Stanley Goebel's body. They're pretty disturbing and you might not want to look at them."
She held her hand out. I gave her the pictures. She flinched at the second one but studied it, and the other two like it, carefully. Then she handed them back.
"Okay. Jesus fucking hell. Let's go next door. I need a drink." She did have an accent, but I couldn't place it. Eastern European maybe?
I gathered my possessions and we went to the Mad Dog In The Fog, a quasi-British quasi-alternative pub next door. It was a weekday night, so the music wasn't deafening and there was even a free table. I ordered a double Scotch on the rocks. So did she.
"I didn't know about Jeremies," she said. She sounded guilty. "There was no way I could have known. I went to Beira myself and nobody said anything about him being days dead when they found him. The police in Mozambique are no help, believe you me. I even called his family but they weren't talking. And I had a fucking deadline to meet. I had to fight a small war with the chief editor to get the warning in the book at all."
"I'm not blaming you for anything," I said, surprised. "Nobody is."
" I might." She shook her head. "Maybe. I got a lot of questions though. Like, you say nobody knew about the knives and the passport number. What about the police there?"
"True," I said cautiously. "They knew. But they had no motive to — "
"No. But let's… cast a wide net here. I don't want to go off half-cocked." She sipped her Scotch. "I hate this Johnny Walker shit."
"Then why did you order it?" I asked, almost relieved to have a change of subject.
"Because I can't afford anything good. Okay. And you got the time of the rumour screwed up. The rumour was all over South Africa when I got there, everyone was talking about it, and that was two days before McLaughlin was found. The eye mutilation thing and everything."
"Waitaminit," I said. "Before?"
"Before."
"Who starts talking about serial killers when only one person has been killed?"
"The serial killer," she said. "Who else? Unless he hired a PR agency."
"That's nuts."
"So is he," she pointed out.
"Could be a she."
"Right, that happens a lot," she said sarcastically. "But for the sake of argument, let's just call him a he. Anyways. There's still one totally huge Mack-Truck-sized hole in your otherwise pretty theory, you know."
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
"June 8 in Mozambique, June 14 in Malawi. Possible. But June 14 in Malawi and June 15 in fucking Cameroon? Come on."
"Yeah," I said. "I was thinking maybe he did it deliberately to confuse things, he raced to the airport in Malawi, flew to Harare, flew to Cameroon, and the next day went right out and — " But she was shaking her head as if I was suggesting Wings were better than the Beatles.
"Okay," I admitted. "That part doesn't make sense to me either." It wouldn't make sense to anyone who had ever traveled in Africa. "Unless maybe the June 14 date is wrong. If you move it back to June 13 or June 12 it starts becoming kind of possible."
"Then he's only got four or five days to get from Mozambique to Malawi and find some fresh meat… but, okay, maybe just maybe. I got a vague idea that that June 14 date is pretty solid but I'm not sure off the top of my head. I've still got my notes, I'll look it up. I take it you're sure about the June 15 date?"
"Very," I said shortly. "Okay. What about the knives? Did that happen in the south?"
"I don't know. It was all locals who found the bodies there, and I never talked to them directly. The police probably wouldn't have told me who they were either. All they said was that the eyes were mutilated. They wouldn't say how. I knew a policeman in Cape Town, if he still works there then I'll ask him."
"Great." I swigged from my Scotch. "Huh. Jeez."
"What?" she asked, and I met those blue eyes directly for the first time and had to look away in a hurry.
"It's just nice to be able to talk to someone else about this," I said. "And, you know, even if I'm wrong, to be taken seriously. I'd started to wonder if I was just losing the plot and going paranoid."
"You've definitely got something serious here. Can I take this?" She put her hand out on the folder. "And the pictures? I'm going to try and talk my editor into giving you access. You still might be wrong, but we're going to take you seriously."
"Thank you," I said. "Thank you very much."