Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (27 page)

Winslow stopped her. “That’s a cover,” she said, “to keep you from figuring out who he is. Start concentrating on the men who came to see you on your book tour, around the time you discovered your ephemeris was missing. Look for a man who was in his late twenties or early thirties at the time. Do you write down descriptions of the people who come to you for appointments?”

“Usually not physical descriptions. But most of the time I write down my impressions. And—”

Winslow cut her off again. “Good. Look for a man in that age group who struck you as isolated, impressed with himself,
not only interested in astrology but perhaps someone who considered himself an expert in it. Perhaps someone who was a little too interested in you. A man you had a bad feeling about. As you review your records, see what you can remember, what comes back to you—”

Kelly nodded. “I’ll look at their charts, too, to see what they can tell me.”

“If that helps you remember, fine.”

Stevens had been pacing near the greenhouse, listening to Winslow and Kelly. Now he walked up to Winslow, taking the list that Sarah had written for him out of his pocket. “What about seeing if any of the men who worked here after the smoke damage match the profile? They had access to put in the surveillance equipment.”

Winslow took the list from Stevens before he offered it. “We’ll check out any man on here that fits the physical description. But, Detective, this killer has already proved he’s a master of breaking into houses. If he wanted to get in here, he’d get in without anybody knowing he’d been here till he’d done whatever he’d come to do. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

“But Dr. York’s been in the house the whole time. And she has a dog. Don’t you think—?”

Winslow interrupted him. “We don’t know when he installed the equipment. We only know when he made the first call to Dr. York and when what he said to her made it seem like he could see and hear her.” She focused on Kelly now. “He may have broken in and installed the mini-cams and microphones before you developed agoraphobia. I assume before that there were times you went out at night.”

Kelly nodded. “Of course.”

“And times you were away on vacation?”

“Yes.”

“And your dog, where does it sleep at night?”

“In my room to begin with,” Kelly said, “but usually during the night he goes down to my housekeeper’s apartment. There’s a door to it on the first floor.”

“After your housekeeper lets him in,” Winslow continued officiously, “does she leave her door shut or open?”

“Shut, until she wakes up in the morning. If he wants to go out before that, she lets him into the garden.”

Winslow looked at Stevens, her lips curled up slightly in a smile of superiority, as if she were about to reveal a winning hand in poker, “I told you, Detective, if this SOB wanted to break into the house, he’d get in without anybody knowing. He’s had plenty of opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do before Dr. York’s agoraphobia and after.” She looked at Kelly again. “Why don’t you review your files from your book tour and see if you can find a man who matches the description I gave you?”

As Kelly stood up and put the crutches in place under her arms, Winslow addressed Stevens. “You can go, Detective. I’ll call you if I need you.”

Kelly saw anger rising in Stevens’s face. He was about to protest when Winslow added, “Since Dr. York doesn’t leave the house, I’ll stay here. And I’ll keep two men outside around the clock.”

Stevens didn’t move; he looked at Winslow; then he looked at Kelly. “Goodbye, Dr. York,” he said, as if he had to force the words out.

“Goodbye, Detective Stevens,” she responded. This time she let him precede her from the garden toward the kitchen. She kept thinking about Agent Winslow’s observation that she didn’t really know when the surveillance equipment had been placed in
her house. That meant she didn’t really know how long she had been observed and listened to. Watching Stevens walk up the steps, open the glass door, and disappear inside, she felt forlorn and alone, even though she knew that the FBI was there to protect her.

Before heading for her office, she looked at Mary Ann Winslow again.

“What is it?” Winslow asked her.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why couldn’t Detective Stevens stay?”

“Because it’s my case and he’s getting in the way,” Winslow told her.

The FBI agent’s coldness only made Kelly feel worse.

“I intend to catch this killer,” Winslow assured her. “And you’re going to make it easier for me if you cooperate.”

Kelly felt she was being talked to as if she were a child. Still not feeling the reassurance she needed, she headed toward the door. She fully intended to cooperate with Mary Ann Winslow; she only hoped it would be enough.

As Stevens descended the front steps of Kelly’s brownstone, he felt an overwhelming sense of remorse. He’d been taken off cases before, but the other times it had been because of departmental politics, not because of the way he’d conducted himself; this time he’d been kicked off because he’d misplayed his hand. He’d known that he was flouting Winslow’s authority when he’d joined her and Kelly in the garden and when he’d gone with Kelly into her office instead of remaining alone with Winslow. That had been the kiss of death, hadn’t it? Going with Kelly to her office; if he’d stayed in the garden with Winslow, she would
have rebuked him for not asking her permission to be there when she’d talked with Kelly, but she might have let him continue to be part of the investigation.

And why had he gone with Kelly to her office? If he was honest with himself, it wasn’t because he thought she needed his assistance in looking at her client list for Sheryl Doyle’s name; it was because he didn’t feel like giving Winslow the opportunity to tell him off. He could kick himself for acting so stupidly. He’d recognized Winslow for the power grabber that she was, but he’d thought he had enough value to the investigation that she’d put up with his transgressions. Obviously, he’d thought wrong.

It wasn’t just his ego that was hurt; what hurt him was that he’d wanted to find the man who was targeting Kelly, and now he wouldn’t even be able to help. He’d already called his captain to tell him that the FBI had stepped in; now he had to call him to say that he was no longer involved in the investigation.

Walking by the FBI car, he saw Broadbent’s and Barr’s heads bent down in concentration over Barr’s laptop. They didn’t notice him as he headed toward his car. It was just as well.

Broadbent glanced up briefly as Stevens crossed in front of the car, but seeing the hangdog expression on Stevens’s face, he quickly looked down again at the computer screen. He could tell from the way Stevens was staring blankly ahead as he walked that Winslow had sent the detective packing. Broadbent was sorry that she had forced Stevens to go; he sensed that Stevens was a good man and a good detective. But in a way it made it easier. There would be no ambiguities; the FBI could take all the credit for finding the serial rapist and killer that was calling himself Antiochus.

Broadbent saw a new image coming up on the computer screen. A straight line with letters and numbers underneath.

“What’s that?” he asked Barr.

Barr kept his eyes on the screen as he responded: “It’s a link to a Web site. The packets are going to a Web site.”

Broadbent watched as Barr clicked on the link to the Web site.

A second later, Barr shouted, “Fuck!”

Broadbent didn’t need to ask Barr why he had cursed. On the screen were two thin, white rectangular boxes, one on top of the other. They were white because they were blank, waiting for whoever was at the computer to fill in the letters and numbers that would give him access to the Web site. Broadbent had seen blank boxes like these countless times before. The first box was labeled “User Name” and the second “Password.”

Barr leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and gazed down again at the white boxes on the computer. “I’m not really surprised,” he said to Broadbent. “Just disappointed. But that’s silly of me. This whole thing was put together with a level of sophistication that shows this man knows his way around computers. He’s not going to make any of this easy for us.”

Now it was Broadbent’s turn to lean back in his seat and close his eyes. In his mind he silently repeated Barr’s curses.

S
INCE THERE WAS
no surveillance equipment in Emma’s apartment, Winslow decided to move down there to question Sarah and Emma about the workmen on the list she’d taken from Stevens. The apartment—a large L-shaped room containing a living room, a tiny kitchen, a dining area, and a bedroom nook—was more comfortable than Winslow had thought it would be. She sat on an easy chair, facing Sarah and Emma on the sofa. It soon became evident to Winslow that Sarah had been in charge of the work crew and that Emma knew nothing about the men at all. She just sat there, next to Sarah, tense, unhappy, and afraid while Sarah reviewed the names on the list.

“Ed Murrin’s in his sixties, maybe even seventies, too old to match the physical description you gave us,” Sarah said. “And Peter’s twenty-four or twenty-five, so he’s too young. I don’t know the rest of the painters, but a few of them had dark hair and looked like they were in their midthirties. You’ll have to ask Ed and Peter for the names. It’s their painting company. The carpenters are in their fifties, and the electrician, Ivan, is older and weighs more than two hundred pounds.”

She gave the list back to Winslow, who had already taken her cell phone from her purse and was now calling a number on automatic dial. “I’ve got something for you to check out, Broadbent,” she said. “You’re going to have to go back to the bureau and get
another car.”

Sarah was as tense as the E string on her violin. She couldn’t hear what FBI Agent Broadbent said on the other end, but it wasn’t much because Winslow continued almost immediately to tell him to come to the street entrance to Emma’s apartment.

Kelly was standing with her crutches at the file cabinet, looking for the folders of the clients she’d seen in the last few days of her book tour, which had ended in Washington, DC. She remembered being pleased that so many people had signed up for consultations with her during the tour; now she wondered if even at that time one of them had already wanted to kill her and the other women that Agent Winslow had told her he had made his victims.

There was something different about how he was treating her, though, wasn’t there? The other women had responded to an ad he’d placed; except for their interest in astrology, they seemed to have been selected at random. From what Agent Winslow had said, he hadn’t called any of them and threatened them; he hadn’t caused damage to their homes or caused them to have accidents before raping and murdering them; he hadn’t spied on them.

Yet he had done all of this to her.

And something else was different, too. He had stolen her ephemeris and the term
intuitive astrologer
. It was horrible to think that he had used these words, her words, in the ads that had drawn his victims to him. And it was almost unfathomable to her that now he wanted to do to her what he’d done to them.