Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (25 page)

For several minutes, Stevens filled Winslow in on the calls, the clogged chimney, and Kelly’s fall down the stairs, while Barr worked on the keyboard. Then Barr glanced up at the screen and announced, “Okay, I’ve got something.”

Winslow leaned over and looked at the screen with Barr.

Making himself even more uncomfortable, Stevens came forward in the backseat to look over Barr’s shoulder. All he saw on the screen were white lines crossing the black space.

He pointed to the white lines. “What are those?”

“They’re broadcasting patterns,” Barr explained, fixated on the screen. “There are four mini-cams. One on the first floor, near the front door, toward the right if you face the house from the street, like from where we’re parked—”

“That’s the first-floor hall,” Stevens said.

“Another one’s on the first floor about twenty feet behind it.”

“The kitchen.”

“Another on the second floor, on the right, in the middle—”

“Second-floor hall. Probably looks into the son’s room.”

“The last one’s on the third floor,” Barr continued, “near the back of the house. I guess that’s a hall, too.”

“That’s the floor with her bedroom and study,” Stevens commented.

Winslow ignored him. She was still looking at the screen with Barr. “None in the garden, then, or in the housekeeper’s apartment?” she asked.

“No. Just those four.”

“Where are they broadcasting to?” Winslow asked.

“I need to open another program,” Barr said. His fingers moved quickly on the keyboard, and Stevens saw the white lines disappear.

Winslow turned to him. “Sit back, Detective Stevens. You’re making me nervous.”

Stevens moved back in the seat, joining Broadbent, who, throughout all of this, had remained a mute observer. He’d wondered why Broadbent hadn’t leaned forward with him to look at the screen; he realized now that Broadbent had wanted to avoid having Winslow reprimand him.

Barr was scrutinizing the information on the screen again. “The mini-cams are broadcasting to a wireless modem,” he said. “It belongs to …” He punched a series of keys, then looked at the screen and concluded his sentence: “Kelly York.” He sighed with disgust. “The fucker’s using her modem to send whatever the equipment’s picking up into the ether.”

“Translate,” Winslow demanded.

“The Internet cloud,” Barr explained. “The Wide Area Network. From there it can go anywhere.”

Winslow was clearly annoyed. “Isn’t there something you can do to find out where he’s picking it up? I want to know who this man is, not just how clever he’s being.”

“I can use my packet sniffer,” Barr said, “and see if I can track the packets to where he’s receiving them.” His fingers tapped on the keyboard again. “Of course, that depends on him leaving his equipment on. If he stops picking it up on his equipment, I won’t be able to trace it.”

Winslow was already grabbing her attaché case and getting out of the car. “Oh, he’ll leave it on,” she said. “He’s too curious not to. And we’re not going to give him a reason to turn it off, because we’re not going to let him know we’re aware that he’s watching her.”

Stevens’s eyes followed Winslow as she walked toward the brownstone and up the steps. When she got to the front door, he leaned forward in the seat again so he could see the computer screen. This time Broadbent leaned forward, too.

Mary Ann Winslow rang the bell and waited. She noted that the door was new, and she wondered if it had been replaced after the incident with the fireplace. It was an inconsequential question and lasted in her mind no more than an instant before she thought about what had just transpired in the car. She was optimistic about Barr using his computer to find the serial rapist and killer who was targeting Kelly York. They hadn’t found surveillance equipment in the homes of the four women he had already raped and murdered, but in a way it made sense that he’d installed it in Kelly’s home. Kelly wasn’t like his other targets; she
held a special fascination for him. That’s what had led Winslow here.

Her mind returned to the three men she had just left in the car. She knew that Stevens didn’t like her and Broadbent and Barr were intimidated by her, and she didn’t care. Indeed, she preferred it that way; she liked to keep cops at a distance and off balance, and she liked agents who worked under her to do what she wanted them to do when she wanted them to do it and at other times to stay out of her way. She didn’t view being popular as a requisite of her job; in fact, despite her looks, she’d never cared about being popular, not in high school, not in college, and not at Quantico, where she’d done her FBI training. What she had cared about, at each place, was being at the top of her class, which she had been, and now what she wanted was to be on top of the investigation and leave the others working on it in her dust.

She hadn’t met Kelly York yet, but she’d seen her photograph in
Luminary World
magazine next to her astrology column. Winslow had no interest in astrology and had never even heard of the column before Kelly’s name had come up in the investigation. She dutifully read it just to see the kinds of things that Kelly wrote about, but it was the photograph that interested her most. It showed Kelly to be a slender blond woman with a warm smile, an attractive woman like the four women the killer had raped and murdered. The photograph also showed Kelly to be a woman who projected ease and confidence; Winslow was annoyed to find out that Kelly was agoraphobic. To Winslow that meant that she was fragile, and to Winslow fragile meant weak.

Despite her distaste for weakness, as Winslow had thought about it, she’d realized there was an advantage to Kelly’s being afraid to leave her house: allowing Kelly to stay in the brownstone
instead of moving her to a neutral spot that the killer didn’t know about would keep the killer watching the broadcast from the mini-cams he’d set up, which increased the odds of Barr’s being able to trace him that way. And it didn’t really make it any harder to protect Kelly in the brownstone. Winslow could station agents outside of it until they caught the man they were looking for.

K
ELLY, LEANING ON HER
crutches, opened the front door and found herself facing a strikingly pretty, auburn-haired woman with hard gray-blue eyes that didn’t quite go with the broad grin and effusive greeting she gave Kelly on seeing her.

“It’s been so long, Kelly!” Winslow bubbled. “It’s wonderful to see you!”

Kelly smiled as she opened the door wider to let her inside. “It’s great to see you, too, Mary Ann.”

Winslow walked into the house, and Kelly kissed her on the cheek before closing the front door.

Winslow’s eyes went to Kelly’s crutches; she knew there was a mini-cam somewhere on the ceiling overhead and wanted to be sure to put on a good show.

“Why are you on crutches?” she asked Kelly sympathetically.

Kelly shook her head self-deprecatingly. She didn’t like acting a role, but she knew how important it was, and she hoped she was convincing. “You know how clumsy I am,” she said. “I fell. But it’s only a sprain. How was your drive from Boston?

“Long,” Winslow said. “I’d love a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee’s a great idea,” Kelly responded. Balancing herself on her crutches, she led the way down the hallway toward the kitchen.

The hall was narrow, and Winslow walked behind her. When
they were both in the kitchen, as Winslow put her attaché case on a chair, she said, “I brought my photographs so you could see my latest work.”

“Wonderful,” Kelly said. “I hoped you’d bring them.” She made her way to the coffeepot. “I forgot, black or with cream?”

“Black,” Winslow told her. “You know I don’t like to dilute my caffeine.”

Kelly got a cup and saucer from the cabinet and poured Winslow a cup of coffee.

Winslow watched Kelly, assessing the way she was handling herself. She didn’t seem quite the delicate leaf in the wind that Winslow had expected when she’d heard that Kelly was agoraphobic. But that still didn’t mean she was going to like her.

Kelly lowered herself onto one of the benches in the garden and then leaned the crutches against it as Winslow, attaché case in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, sat on the bench opposite her. Now that Kelly wasn’t playacting anymore, her anxiety took over. She still didn’t know why the FBI was involving itself in investigating the man who was threatening her when Detective Stevens was already on the case. Whatever the reason, Winslow’s being there made Kelly feel less rather than more safe.

Alone with Kelly, out of the range of the surveillance equipment, Winslow dropped her pretense of friendship and, after a quick sip of coffee, got down to business.

“We’ve determined that four mini-cams with mikes were installed in your house,” she said with the same matter-of-fact voice she used when she filed a report into her digital recorder. “One in the hall on each floor and one in the kitchen. There are none here in the garden or in your housekeeper’s apartment
downstairs.”

Kelly took in the information. She had the feeling that it was a preamble for what the FBI agent was really leading up to. She sensed that when the second shoe dropped, it was going to drop heavily, and she steeled herself in an effort to prepare for it. Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of someone coming up into the garden from Emma’s apartment. She jumped back with a start before she saw that it was Stevens. She was glad he was there.

Stevens remained standing, towering over the two seated women. He knew he’d taken a chance joining Winslow and Kelly unasked, but he’d realized he had nothing to contribute to Barr’s effort to track the killer’s Internet trail, and he wanted to be present when Winslow acquainted Kelly with the horrendous acts of the man that they were looking for. He gave Winslow a slight nod of his head, but he addressed Kelly.

“With four cameras and microphones, he has your house just about covered,” he said. “That’s how he knew you were injured and could use the same words you used talking to your friend in your son’s room. He could see you and hear you.”

Winslow didn’t give Stevens a chance to continue or Kelly a chance to respond. “This man is methodical,” she said to Kelly. “And not just about the surveillance equipment.”

Kelly sat up straight and met the FBI agent’s eyes with an unflinching gaze that she hoped would hide her fear. She knew people like Mary Ann Winslow; they liked power, and they despised those who were not as powerful as they were. She sensed that Mary Ann Winslow had no patience for fear, or even for vulnerability. It was bad enough being afraid; Kelly didn’t want to be looked down on or pitied.

“How do you know he’s methodical?” she asked Winslow.
“How does the FBI know anything about him? And why does the FBI care?”

“Because he’s not just threatening you on the phone and spying on you, Dr. York,” Winslow said. “He’s a sexual predator and a murderer, and he’s already killed four victims that we know of.”

Kelly kept her eyes meeting Winslow’s, but she had to hold on to the bench to steady herself.

Stevens saw Kelly’s distress, and also her bravery. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Kelly glanced up at him. “Yes, I am. Just shocked.”

“That’s understandable,” Stevens said. “What this man has done is shocking.”

Winslow was getting increasingly irritated by Stevens, but she didn’t want to deal with him in front of Kelly. She’d had confrontations before in front of people whose cases she was working on, and she’d discovered that besides increasing the tension, it also decreased people’s confidence in her. Under circumstances such as these, she’d found that the best course in dealing with an irritant like Stevens was to act as if he wasn’t there and then to resolve the matter later.

“The police discovered that he put ads in a magazine called
You and Your Sign
,” Winslow told Kelly, “in August and September. And also in local papers, in New Jersey and New York suburbs.”

Kelly felt her throat constricting. “
You and Your Sign
… I know the magazine.”

“The ads were aimed at singles,” Winslow explained. “They said he’s an astrologer who can help them find the love of their lives. On the date specified in the ad, he checked into the hotel where he said he’d be available for consultations. He calls himself Antiochus. Antiochus is—”