Chapter 5
314 Words
FIVE
I know what you want, Floyd Ritter thinks as he sits behind the wheel and watches the tourists board the Murder Tours bus. You want to go on the tour. He notices that some of the tourists are clutching copies of Joanna Rorke’s new best seller, The Murder Tour. Pity what happened to her. Almost more exciting than the book itself, isn’t it? But that’s why you’re here. You want the real thing. Look at you, all lined up, waiting to get on the bus. Just like the tourists who wait to board the cable cars at Powell and Market. You just can’t wait to look out the window, can you?
But you don’t want to see Coit Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge or Fisherman’s Wharf. You want to see the murder sites. There are tours for everything – why not a tour of San Francisco’s most gruesome crime scenes? A tour that takes you to the places where the victims were shot or stabbed or strangled or thrown out of a window.
Look, that was where the Zodiac Killer began his killing spree. Oh, and there’s the office building where Gian Luigi Ferri killed eight people for no apparent reason. Here we are in Chinatown, the site of the Golden Dragon m******e that took the lives of five innocent bystanders. Ever heard of The Doodler? He liked to sketch his victims before he stabbed 14 of them to death. Don’t miss City Hall, where Dan White shot and killed Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.
There’s more, but you get the idea. You want me to show you the crime scenes that made all the headlines. Murder is thrilling. That’s why you’re here. But what if you were next? Does that ever cross your mind as you look out the window? No, of course not. But it could. So welcome aboard.
You’re on the murder tour.
- Writer
