CHAPTER 5
TROLLING
Hey, Nikki here again.
Yeah, back on the computer. So what? You have to find your clues somewhere. This might be a good time to tell you what happened to my dad….
Well, after I phoned 911, and the police came, and they called dad at work (he was a dentist, private practice) things just sort of deteriorated. Dad would go for days, just sitting there, not doing anything. Mom was the love of his life. We never had to worry about money, thank God, he always invested well, so he didn't have to work much, but still…
I can remember coming home from high school one day, and he was just sitting there on the couch crying and staring. When I saw what it was he was crying about….it was Mom's wedding dress, just sitting there, empty, on the easy chair.
The day after that, I came home. Dad was lying across the kitchen table. He had an empty bottle of one of his medications from work sitting next to him. I was about 16, and I'd lost both my parents.
Afterwards I'd sit watching all these anime, Japanese cartoons. There was a lot of violence. I didn't mind. It was all I ever thought about for awhile. That, and how I could use it on that woman, Beatrice.
They did have martial arts classes at school, but though I passed through with flying colors, I had a feeling it wasn't quite good enough. So I went to a series of dojos, all over southern California. As the time passed, I got better…and better…and better.
There was another problem, though. How to find Beatrice. The police had not been of much help. Even after 10 or 15 years, it as considered no closer to being solved. I thought that was bullshit. They had to know something! I decided to do what anyone else in that situation might do…become a computer hacker.
I'll admit that getting into the FBI's computer wasn't easy; it took forever to get the right entry code. But when I got in, I did find some interesting things.
First I now had what I thought was a name – Beatrice Kiddo. There was a report out from back in 1996 that she was part of a group called the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad, or D-VAS for short. That was apparently run by a man named Bill Gunn, AKA William J. Gunzelmann Junior. He was a Vietnam vet who'd apparently went AWOL – probably because he'd had a scam going back in Da Nang involving black market deals – got some martial arts training in Japan and China, and made a big deal in the murder for hire business. Apparently the reason no one put this sicko away was because he'd done some work for the CIA as well….hmm. Nice to diversify.
The trail went cold around 1998. There was a report that someone matching Kiddo's description had been left for dead at a wedding just outside of El Paso, in fact she was the only survivor, but there was some flap between local law enforcement and the FBI, by the time the FBI was to get around to trying to ID her – 5 years later!- she'd awakened from a coma and fled. No one knows if this really was Bernice Kiddo or not to this day. But we do know this: the other known members of D-VAS were found dead. O-Ren Ishii was killed by an unknown Caucasian female at a private party in the Ginza. Buford J. "Budd" Gunzelmann, Bill's brother, was found dead near his home. Bill himself, who had a private hacienda in Mexico, was found dead there. A maid at the residence reported to police that a woman matching Kiddo's description had been there earlier in the day…and that Bill's daughter, BB was missing.
Nothing promising so far, I thought. But when I went to a newly opened dojo out in Newport Beach last year (2017) I had a pleasant surprise….one of the D-VAS had survived. Her name: Louise "Elle" Driver, who called herself "California Mountain Snake."