Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (17 page)

Vincent Nichols had searched most of Sheryl Doyle’s house in West Orange and was now starting to look through the reading matter in her night table. He’d already gone through every magazine and book he’d found in her kitchen, her living room, her den, and her finished basement. It was only because he was thorough that he’d found this cache at all. The top of her cabinet-style night table held only a lamp, a clock, and the photograph of Sheryl Doyle that he’d first seen as he’d stood over her body, listening to the medical examiner’s report; her magazines and books were haphazardly piled together on two shelves behind the night table’s closed door.

For a moment he glanced up at the wall over the night table and saw another photograph of Sheryl Doyle, this one taken years ago, when she’d still been acting. That was one of the things Nichols had learned about her, that she’d been an actress. More recently she’d become a caterer, and not as successful a caterer as
she had been a young actress, before her career had waned. The condition of her house and her bank account testified to that. Her house had been paid for during her acting days, so it no longer had a mortgage, but her checking account revealed that she had lived month to month, and she didn’t have a savings account. Looking at her photographs, Nichols asked himself, as he had many times before about other homicide victims, if she would have lived her life differently if she had known when it would come to an end. Would she have sold her house, perhaps, and traveled? Would she have married instead of remaining single?

Single—or more accurately, the desire not to be single—that was part of the connection between Sheryl Doyle and the man who had raped and killed her. Antiochus, the intuitive astrologer. At least that was the theory, based on the victim in New Kent.

“‘Single? Wondering why you’re not attracting anyone and what you can do to change it? See the Intuitive Astrologer, Antiochus. Saturday, August fifteenth, Le Grand Hotel, New Kent, New Jersey. Ten a.m. to six p.m. Three hundred dollars for your chart and the answers to your life’s most important questions. Appointments on first-come, first-served basis.’”

Frank Giordano of the New Kent PD had sent Nichols the ad, and Nichols had read it to himself so many times that by now he had it memorized. As he’d gone through her house, every time he’d picked up one of Sheryl Doyle’s magazines, he’d expected it to be
You and Your Sign
, but it never was. He’d found hundreds of cooking magazines with recipes that she’d bookmarked for her catering business. He’d also found women’s magazines with recipes she’d bookmarked. The women’s magazines also had astrology columns, but there were no indications that she’d read any of them. Sheryl Doyle also had hundreds of books: cookbooks and novels, but not a single book about astrology.

Although the MO of her killer was the same as the MO of the killer in the New Kent case, after spending four hours searching, Nichols was feeling tired and increasingly pessimistic about finding the ad that would tie the two victims together. If Sheryl Doyle had ever had the August issue or any issue of
You and Your Sign
, she’d disposed of it. Or perhaps, unlike the victim in New Kent, she’d never had the magazine. Perhaps she hadn’t even been interested in astrology. Perhaps the man who had raped and strangled her and carved her sign, the scales—which Nichols had learned was Libra—into her upper thigh had chosen her another way.

Nichols pulled a stack of magazines and books out of the cabinet onto the scruffy white rug, where he could see them in the daylight. Five issues of
Food &Wine
, three issues of
Gourmet
. A hardback copy of
The Da Vinci Code
, another hardback,
The Thirteenth Tale
. He took a third book, a hardback with a worn blue cover, out of the pile so he could read the title:
One Hundred-Year Ephemeris, 1950 to 2050 at Midnight
. Under the title, the blue cover was dotted with stars. Suddenly, Nichols’s weariness turned into excitement. He didn’t know what an ephemeris was, but the fact that the cover of the book depicted the night sky and its title included dates and a time made him think it had something to do with astrology.

Opening it, he saw that he was right: On the back of the cover was a list of the symbols for the astrological signs, the planets, the phases of the moon, solar and lunar eclipses, and words—like conjunction, sextile, trine, opposition—that he’d never heard of before but that were obviously part of astrology. The opposite page was a chart, labeled
Longitude
, full of squares containing numbers and symbols for each day of January 1950. Thumbing through the first few pages, he saw the same kind of chart for
subsequent months. Clearly it was an astrology reference manual, and finding it in the night table next to Sheryl Doyle’s bed definitely established her interest in astrology and the likelihood that, even though she hadn’t had a copy of
You and Your Sign
in her possession at the time of her death, it was astrology that had led her to Antiochus or Antiochus to her.

Nichols bagged the book. He’d show it to Giordano in New Kent and see if it told them something new about their serial killer. But before he did that, because he was thorough, he’d go through every page to find out if Sheryl Doyle had written any notes in the book that might help their investigation. And he’d also check the ads in other issues of
You and Your Sign
. And while he was at it, he’d check the personals in the West Orange newspapers for an ad taken out by Antiochus. Maybe that’s what had led Sheryl Doyle to her fate.

Stevens, wearing his spare sports jacket and pants and carrying an umbrella, was in midtown Manhattan working on another case, the murder of a sixty-year-old dentist in Central Park. He’d gone to the office of one of the dentist’s long-term clients in a building on West 57th Street and 5th Avenue and pressed her to reveal to him what he’d already suspected: that the dentist had been selling illegal drugs to patients. Afraid she was facing jail time, the woman surrendered everything she knew once Stevens promised he’d make sure she wasn’t prosecuted for buying drugs.

She told him that the dentist had started out selling prescription painkillers but had branched out into selling cocaine, which she had bought from him, and heroin, which she swore she’d never tried. Recently, the dead man had perfected a crown that he’d placed in a client’s mouth to time-release his or her drug
of choice. The woman Stevens questioned hadn’t had the crown put in yet; she’d planned to do so, but the dentist had been killed before she’d had a chance. She didn’t know who his supplier had been, or if anyone in the dental office knew about the drug dealing, but at least she’d confirmed the suspicions that had been raised in Stevens’s mind by the presence of cocaine and heroin in the dentist’s body and the presence of too much money in his bank account.

Leaving the office building, he put up the umbrella and headed toward 8th Avenue, where he’d parked his car. As he walked, he took out his cell phone and called Chris Palmer’s number but once again reached only a recorded message. He was just about to cross the street to 6th Avenue when he remembered that the corporate headquarters for Gemma Pharmaceuticals was on 59th and 5th. He looked at his watch: It was three fifteen. Calling information for Gemma Pharmaceuticals, he started walking back toward 5th Avenue. There was another man he wanted to talk to about Kelly York, another tree he wanted to shake.

Fifteen minutes later, Stevens was on the thirtieth floor of the Gemma Pharmaceuticals building, standing in front of the receptionist, a young woman with well-cut hair, a tastefully made-up face, and perfectly polished nails. He introduced himself and told her whom he had come to see. Almost immediately, another immaculately groomed young woman appeared through the double doors behind the reception desk and led him through a long corridor to a closed door at the end of it. She knocked on the rosewood door and waited until a male voice said, “Come in,” before she opened the door to let him enter. She didn’t come in with him.

Two walls of the massive corner office were windows with views of Manhattan. Even when the sky was colorless and filled
with rain as it was now, it was a spectacular sight. Jack York, Kelly’s ex-husband, was standing at the windows that faced north and looked out over 5th Avenue as he finished a phone call. The first thing that surprised Stevens was that York was as tall as he was. Being six foot five, Stevens was used to most men being shorter than he, and even though he knew York had been a football player, he’d been a quarterback, and Stevens had expected him to be six feet tall, at most; twenty years ago, when he’d first seen York playing, it wasn’t unusual for quarterbacks to be six feet or even a shade under. While some football players had let their muscles turn to flab, York, in his stylish suit, looked fit, even leaner than he had in his football days, and since his full head of black hair had yet to turn gray, he looked only a little older than the last time Stevens had watched him in a game on television.

York hung up the phone and focused on Stevens. “I don’t understand why you’re here. What does my ex-wife getting threatening calls have to do with me?”

Stevens met York’s hard stare. “Don’t tell me how to investigate a case, Mr. York, and I won’t tell you how to run your company, all right?”

York let out an aggravated sigh. “I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know if you and your ex-wife had what you would consider a difficult divorce.”

This time York shook his head. Finally, he said, “Yes, Kelly and I had a difficult divorce. But we’ve worked out our differences and we have a perfectly friendly relationship.”

Stevens kept his gaze on York. “Then I would think you’d care if somebody was threatening her.”

York responded with a tone of exasperation. “Of course I do. She’s my children’s mother.”

“So you don’t care about her personally anymore.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said you have a friendly relationship, but you don’t seem to care about her the way you’d care about a friend. You care about her just as your children’s mother.”

York glanced out the window, as if gathering his thoughts. Then he turned to Stevens. “Look, I was a pro football player before I became CEO here—”

“I know,” Stevens told him. “I followed your career.”

“Then you probably already knew we had a difficult divorce.” He didn’t say this belligerently, just matter-of-fact. “You must’ve read about how I didn’t know how to keep it in my pants …” He looked at Stevens for a moment before he went on. “Kelly and I, we had the kids right away, and I figured she would put up with what I did on the road. But that wasn’t her way. She needed more, and I couldn’t give it to her.” His green eyes were sad now, as if suddenly his memories of that melancholy time had taken him over and become more real to him than his corner office with its impressive view. “Her parents died when she was nine. She was raised by her grandmother. She was a pretty lonely kid. She really loved me, and I broke her heart. But she made a life for herself and the children without me. Of course I care if someone’s threatening her.”

Stevens scrutinized the man in front of him. He seemed to be a completely different Jack York from the one who had challenged him about why he’d come to question him. This Jack York seemed to care deeply about Kelly, maybe even to still be in love with her. But what did that mean? Jack York was a consummate salesman; that was how he had made the transition from football player to CEO at Gemma Pharmaceuticals. Maybe when challenging the detective hadn’t worked, York had decided to sell
Stevens on what York wanted him to think of him: that York felt guilty about how he’d treated Kelly and that he still had deep compassion for her. Or maybe Jack York was still in love with her. And maybe if he was, the flip side of that love was anger that she’d divorced him and a desire to retaliate by threatening her. Or to make her so afraid and vulnerable that he could step back into her life and make her dependent on him again.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to scare her or hurt her?” Stevens asked.

“No. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody. It just means if there is, I don’t know about him. Our worlds have been separate for so long. Except for our children, I don’t even know the people she knows anymore.”