Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (24 page)

Returning the cell phone to his jacket pocket, he watched Sarah writing a list for him on a sheet of notepaper. She was a
bright, efficient woman, and pretty, but the way she shouldered responsibility told him that she had backbone, too; she wasn’t someone who could be pushed around or easily gotten off course. It was clear that she cared deeply about Kelly, and Kelly felt the same about her. Kelly trusted her, and so, Stevens found, did he.

“I got the carpet cleaners, the house cleaners, and the upholstery cleaners from companies my father used to recommend to clients,” she told him as she continued writing on the notepaper. “The electrician, the painters, and the carpenters were subcontractors who worked for my father. Here are their names and phone numbers.”

She handed him the list and went on talking as he read it. “I don’t see how it could be any of the men I know, Detective. Some of them worked on Kelly’s house before, some I think even when her grandmother was alive. There were a couple of new men on some of the crews, of course, but … Do you really think it’s one of them?”

When he looked up from the list, he saw that her hazel eyes were challenging him for a response. “Whoever it is,” he said, “we’re going to stop him before he hurts her any more than he already has.” He stood up. “Thanks for the list.”

Sarah stood, too. She was confused and upset by Stevens’s theory. She hadn’t questioned the firemen’s assessment that refuse carried by the wind had blocked up the chimney; nor had she questioned that Kelly’s fall down the stairs was accidental. Her stomach churned to think that both might have been deliberate, that the man who had been calling Kelly had already been to the house, that he might have even been inside it and installed hidden cameras and microphones to spy on Kelly. Most of all, it hurt Sarah to think that she might have made the phone call that brought him into the house. She didn’t want to believe it.

She looked at Stevens. “The man who’s calling Kelly is blaming her for making his wife or girlfriend leave him. None of the men I knew on the crews had wives or girlfriends who came to Kelly to have their charts done. I would know because they would’ve called me to set up the appointment.”

“Not necessarily. A woman could’ve called on her own and used her own name. A name you might not have recognized. Like you said, there were some new men on the crews. Men who’d never worked here before.”

Sarah’s face fell; he was right, of course.

Stevens was just about to head back into the house when he noticed a black sedan pulling up to the curb. It looked like an unmarked police car except for the license plate, which told him the car belonged to the FBI. In the front seat were a woman, who was driving, and a man, who sat in the passenger seat. The woman parked the car; thirty seconds later the two of them got out and started walking toward the brownstone. The woman, carrying an attaché case and wearing a black suit and an air of officiousness that made her good looks beside the point, walked two feet in front of the man, whom Stevens judged to be four or five years younger than she and a great deal friendlier.

Now the woman led the man up the steps. Her eyes scrutinized Sarah. “Kelly Elizabeth York?” she asked.

“No, I’m Sarah Stein, her assistant,” Sarah said. “Who are you?”

The woman stopped on the fourth step, took out her badge, and showed it to Sarah. “Mary Ann Winslow, FBI.” She gestured to the young man behind her. “Agent Broadbent.” Then she looked at Stevens. “And you are?”

Stevens didn’t bother with his badge. “Detective Michael Stevens. NYPD.”

Winslow’s face lost what little color it had. “Why are you here? Has something happened to Dr. York?”

“Yes, that’s why—”

“Is she dead?”

“No,” Stevens said evenly. “That’s what I’m here to prevent.”

He looked over Winslow’s and Broadbent’s shoulders and saw that another unmarked car was pulling up nearby. This time he recognized the car and the driver. He watched as the man parked in a red zone and exited the car with his computer bag.

Winslow noticed that Stevens’s attention was on the street. She turned around and saw the wiry, brown-haired man with the computer bag approaching the steps and making eye contact with Stevens.

She turned to Stevens again. “Who’s he?”

“Lieutenant Grossman. He’s here to look for surveillance equipment I think has been installed in Dr. York’s house by a man who’s been harassing her on the phone.”

Winslow turned to Broadbent. “So he’s stalking her on the phone.”

“You say ‘he’ like you know who ‘he’ is,” Stevens said. “Do you?”

Instead of answering Stevens’s question, Winslow addressed Grossman, who had stopped beside her, on the fourth step. “You can go, Lieutenant. We’re taking over.”

Stevens felt his blood become hot. He’d disliked the woman before she’d even opened her mouth; now he couldn’t stand her. “On what grounds?” he asked. “This is New York. It’s an NYPD case. It’s my case.”

Winslow’s blue-gray eyes stared at him. “The killer crossed state lines, Detective. It’s an FBI case. It’s
my
case.” She focused on the sheet of notepaper in his hand. “What’s that?”

Stevens didn’t answer right away; he didn’t want to answer at all, but he knew he had to. Finally, he said: “A list of men who had access to the house to—”

She cut him off again. “You can fill us in on it later.” She turned to Grossman. “I said you can go, Lieutenant Grossman.”

Grossman glanced up at Stevens to find out if he should stay or go. Stevens nodded reluctantly, and Grossman started down the steps and back to his car.

Winslow didn’t bother to show satisfaction that she’d won the territorial battle; the expression on her face said she’d known she would, that it had been a foregone conclusion. He was a cop, and she was FBI, and if there was a pissing contest, of course she’d win.

Once Grossman left, she addressed Stevens again. “We’re looking for a serial rapist and killer. He’s raped and murdered four women. We have reason to believe he has a connection to Dr. York. Now you tell me he’s been calling her on the phone and he may even have already been to her house. Obviously, we don’t have a lot of time.”

Stevens was surprised to find how unsurprised he was to discover that the man who’d been calling Kelly was a rapist and a murderer. From the moment he’d interviewed Kelly, he’d felt that the man had not just been making idle threats, that he meant to harm her, and that he could. He looked at Sarah and saw that she was frightened. He put his hand briefly on her shoulder in an effort to comfort her, but there was nothing he could do to assuage his own discomfort except vow that he would do whatever he could to help the FBI and protect Kelly.

Winslow turned to Sarah. “Get Dr. York and I’ll take her to my office. There’s no point talking in the house if it’s bugged, and I don’t want to have the bugs removed right away.”

Sarah swallowed; it took her a while to find her voice. She was horrified by what she had heard and at a loss how to explain to these two FBI agents what she had never explained before to anyone, not even her parents. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, “but Dr. York doesn’t leave the house. She can’t leave the house. She just … can’t.”

Winslow’s jaw tightened. “She has agoraphobia?”

Sarah nodded.

Stevens saw Winslow’s face fill with annoyance and disapproval. “Behind the brownstone, there’s a walled garden with a greenhouse,” he said. “I’ve talked with her out there, but we don’t know if he’s got that bugged, too. I turned a radio on in there just in case, to throw noise over us talking.”

Winslow thought for a few moments before she spoke. “I’m not taking any chances. I’ll wait for my specialist to get here. He can find out where the bugs are before I go into the house, and we can see if we can trace this son-of-a-bitch by finding out where the cameras are broadcasting to. That’ll give us his location, which is a hell of a lot better than going in, finding the bugs, searching out where he bought them, and hoping he paid with a credit card that has his name on it instead of cash. In the meantime, we’ll keep acting like we don’t know they’re there. I don’t want to give him any more advance warning than we have to about what we know and what we don’t know.”

She paused before continuing. “In answer to the question you asked before, Detective Stevens, we don’t know who he is yet. But we know a lot about him.”

Stevens looked at her, expecting her to tell him more. But she didn’t. Instead, she opened her attaché case, took out a notepad and pen, handed them to Sarah, and said: “I’d like you to write Dr. York a note.”

Sarah took the pad and pen and prepared to take Winslow’s dictation.

But Winslow wasn’t ready yet. “Before we get to the note, I want to make something clear to you, Ms. Stein. I don’t want you telling Dr. York anything that I’ve told you. You’re just going to give her the note and leave the rest to me. Do you understand that?”

Sarah nodded glumly.

Although it was sunny, there was a cool breeze, and Kelly was glad she’d put on a sweater before going into the garden again. Sitting on one of the stone benches, waiting for Stevens, she felt a shiver, and she buttoned her sweater. She wondered why Stevens was taking so long to get from Sarah the names of the men who’d repaired and cleaned up the brownstone. She was relieved to know that the caller wasn’t Chris Palmer or Kevin or Julie’s old boyfriend, Billy, but if Stevens was right, the man hadn’t just threatened her on the phone; he’d actually been inside her house and had set up spying equipment and caused her accident. She looked at the crutches propped up beside her against the stone bench and trembled again, knowing how close the man may have been to her without her even realizing it.

She wondered if, when she saw the names of the men who’d worked on the house, she would find that the wife of one of them had consulted her about leaving their marriage. If it was a wife, she’d find the woman’s name in her client list, but if it was a girlfriend and not a wife, the only way to find her would be to continue searching through her files for women who had come to see her about a relationship and then for Stevens to follow up with the women until he located the one who had gone with one
of the workmen. It could take days; it could take weeks; it might never happen.

She looked up and saw Sarah coming through the door from the kitchen, holding the large appointment book she usually kept on the desk in her office. Sarah’s face looked tense and troubled, as if something had happened that had disturbed her so deeply that she couldn’t even try to cover her fear. Or perhaps she was trying; perhaps this was just the best she could do. Her expression was solemn as she extended the book toward her and said, “I’m starting to reschedule appointments and I’d like you to look at next week’s schedule. See if you’d like me to book a client on Wednesday at six p.m., or if you think that’s too much.”

Kelly took the book. There was something odd about the way Sarah made the request, and opening the appointment book, she saw that Sarah hadn’t wanted her to look at her schedule at all; Sarah had inserted a note between the pages she had marked. The note was in Sarah’s handwriting, but the notepaper was printed with a heading Kelly had never seen before, and it stunned her. It was from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Kelly’s eyes blurred the words on the page, but gradually they came into focus and she was able to read what Sarah had written:

Kelly stared at the note for a long time. She understood the literal meaning of the words; she understood what she was being told to do, but the fact of an FBI agent’s being there to see her
about the man Stevens was already trying to find made no sense to her. Why would the FBI be interested? She glanced up at Sarah’s frightened eyes and found that she’d forgotten the question Sarah had asked her as a cover for showing her the note. Soon she remembered that Sarah had asked if she would like her to schedule an additional appointment for late next Wednesday. Now she could see that Sarah had asked the question to give her the opportunity to respond affirmatively to the instructions.

“Yes, I can do that,” Kelly said.

“I’m glad,” Sarah said.

Kelly saw that her eyes looked no less frightened.

S
TEVENS SAT IN THE
backseat of Winslow’s car with Broadbent while Winslow and another FBI agent, Keith Barr, the computer expert Winslow had called in, sat in the front. Stevens hated backseats; his six-foot-five frame made it hard for him to squeeze into the limited space, and he especially hated what squeezing in did to his long legs, but he was relieved that Winslow was including him in the investigation. Barr sat in front of him in the passenger seat, his laptop on his thighs, using a program that would show whether there was any surveillance equipment in the brownstone and, if there was, where it was located.