Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (28 page)

But what was reverberating in her mind was why, when she had done this dangerous man’s chart five years before, had she not seen the potential for violence that lived in him?

In her consultation with him during the tour, it was possible that he’d put on a face that had fooled her. By the time she’d gotten to Washington, DC, she’d been traveling for two weeks, some days doing back-to-back interviews and then consultations, and she remembered being tired; when she’d met him, it was possible that she’d not seen through his mask. But when she’d gotten home to New York and done his chart based on his date, time, and place of birth, it should have been there in black-and-white—not the actual acts of violence, perhaps, not even that it was fated that he would do these monstrous things, but that he had the potential for hate to consume and destroy all his other feelings, the potential to want to hurt and kill.

How had she missed the possibility for him to be so violent? She’d started doing charts under her grandmother’s tutelage when she was a young woman and had done them professionally since she’d finished her graduate work in psychology, and, to her knowledge, she had never missed anything so important. Had her desire to be positive rather than negative made her willfully blind to his potential for violence? Had she been so intent on finding a constructive interpretation for what the placement of his planets revealed that she had ignored the negative potential and just concentrated on giving him a positive perspective that she’d hoped would help him lead a good life?

As she brought the file folders she’d gathered to her desk, she told herself that besides looking at the men who’d had appointments with her around the date she’d noticed her ephemeris was missing and seeing if she’d taken any notes about the physical appearances of those in the right age range, she’d also review their charts to see what they told her now that she’d be looking at them with the benefit of hindsight.

She shouldn’t need hindsight, of course. Astrology was a
science, and it was her job to practice it as a science. It disturbed her deeply to think that she might have avoided something so crucial because she’d been afraid to go into a place of potential evil. But if she’d made that mistake at the time, if she’d failed to live up to her job, this time, she vowed, she would not make the same mistake.

She heard a knock and looked up as Sarah opened the door.

“How are you doing?” Sarah asked quietly.

Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know. How about you?”

“All right,” Sarah said. “I came to see if I can help.”

Kelly showed her the thirteen files she’d pulled from the cabinet. “Thanks. We’re looking for a man who—”

“I know,” Sarah said. “Agent Winslow told me. Late twenties or early thirties when you saw him five years ago, dark eyes, dark hair. She told me the psychological profile, too.”

Kelly handed six of the files to Sarah. “Any men you find who match the description, bring me their files. I want to read their charts before I give their names to Agent Winslow.”

Sarah nodded. Files in hand, she went into her office.

Alone again, Kelly suddenly felt anxious and dizzy, so much so that she found it hard to read the document in front of her. The words and numbers that she’d written on the page in the file before her appeared blurred; she had to concentrate for them to come into focus. She knew that in one of the thirteen folders was the information that Agent Winslow needed to find the man who had stolen her ephemeris and become a rapist and a murderer—if he hadn’t already been one at the time that she’d seen him. The fact that he was going after her meant that her finding the information was a matter of life and death—her own life and death and the life and death of any other woman he might target in the future.

S
TEVENS OPENED THE DOOR
of his small, neat two-bedroom house in Jackson Heights and saw Diane sitting on the living room floor with Anthony, reading him a story. Usually, the sight of his wife and baby son enjoying each other filled him with such contentment that he was able to push aside thoughts about whatever case had been preoccupying him, but today the gloom he’d felt since leaving Kelly’s brownstone was still with him and so was his preoccupation with the case.

He kept playing back in his mind the details Winslow had recounted about the serial killer’s physical and psychological profile and wondering if it was possible that he’d actually seen the man as part of the work crew that had been in the brown-stone when he’d first arrived there to interview Kelly. He also thought about what Winslow had told him about this man’s skill in breaking into his victims’ houses with no trace of his having been there except for the corpse of the victim that he left behind, and he wondered if Winslow was right, that the man might not have been part of the work crew, that he’d managed to break into Kelly’s house and install the surveillance equipment without her knowing it as part of his methodical plan to terrorize her.

He was so immersed in mentally weighing the known and the unknown about this killer who was targeting Kelly that he hadn’t even realized Diane had gotten up off the floor and come
over to him until she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Why are you home so early?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” he said, going back into his thoughts as he walked toward the kitchen.

Diane’s eyes followed her husband. She knew he was working on Kelly York’s case. She also knew she had to leave him alone with his thoughts so he could work through them.

“Do you want dinner?” she asked.

“I’ll make it,” he said, continuing to the kitchen. “It’ll help me think.”

O
F THE THREE FILES
Kelly had looked at so far, one of them belonged to a man who had been twenty-nine when he’d had an appointment with her in Philadelphia, three days before she’d arrived in Washington, DC, and realized that her ephemeris was missing. His name was David Wheaton, he was a Taurus, and he was unmarried when she’d seen him. That meant that not only was he the right age to fit the description of Antiochus as in his midthirties today, but he’d been single, like the FBI profiler said Antiochus was.

The personal notes she’d taken on David Wheaton were scant, only that he was a pathologist who had been doing lab work in Philadelphia, where he’d grown up and gone to school, and that he wanted a change that would expand his life. She hadn’t written anything about his eye or hair color, just that he had a friendly manner and seemed to be genuinely open. As she read the notes, she was disappointed to realize that nothing came back to her about what the man looked like.

She took out his chart and began to read it, looking for signs of the violence that would lead a man to become a rapist and killer. She noticed that his rising sign was Virgo, which meant that …

Her analysis stopped when Sarah came into her office with the file folders Kelly had given her.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sarah said, “but I’ve reviewed these and none of the men were in their late twenties or early thirties when they consulted with you.”

As she put the files on Kelly’s desk, the phone rang. Kelly looked across the desk at Sarah and saw in her eyes the same fear that she was feeling. Kelly hesitated a moment, letting the phone ring again. It was her office phone, and she’d heard it ring thousands of times before, but this time the ringing sounded louder and more shrill.

Sarah reached for the phone, but Kelly picked it up before Sarah could answer it.

“Kelly York,” she said. She felt her throat constricting again; she hoped that if it was Antiochus, he did not hear the anxiety in her voice. “May I help you?”

Sarah watched Kelly’s face, afraid that Kelly was talking with the man Agent Winslow was looking for. She reminded herself that the call was being traced, but even that didn’t reassure her. All at once she saw Kelly’s face relax into a smile.

“Of course,” Kelly said, handing the phone to Sarah. “It’s Connie.”

Sarah took the phone, greeted Connie, and listened. “I don’t think I can go,” she said after a while. Then she cupped the phone. “Connie wants to call a rehearsal in forty-five minutes.”

“Of course you can go,” Kelly told her.

Sarah continued to cup the phone. “But don’t you want me to help you—”

“There are only five files left from that part of the tour, and I can go over them myself,” Kelly said adamantly.

Sarah didn’t budge. “I think I should stay with you.”

“There’s no need,” Kelly told her. “Agent Winslow is here, and she’s going to have two men outside the house all night.
Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

Sarah still looked doubtful. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

“I’m sure,” Kelly said.

Sarah uncupped the phone and brought it back up to her ear. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and looked at Kelly. “Thank you. But if you change your mind—”

“I’m not going to change my mind. I can read through the files, and I’m well taken care of. And Emma’s here if I want company.”

“Okay. Just as long as you know—”

Kelly stood up. “I know, Sarah. And I love you for it.” She walked around her desk and gave Sarah a hug. “Now go and rehearse.”

Sarah lingered a moment longer; then, seeing that the fear had gone from Kelly’s face, she left Kelly’s office and closed the door behind her.

Kelly returned to her desk and went back to David Wheaton’s chart. Once more she began the task of looking for evidence in the location of his planets at the time of his birth that he might become the rapist and murderer who had killed four women and zeroed in on her. She was glad she’d made Sarah go to rehearse for her concert, that she’d been able to pretend to her that she wasn’t scared; inside, as she stared at David Wheaton’s chart, she was still shaking, and she had to work hard again to concentrate and make her eyes focus so she could read the words and symbols in front of her.

H
IS WORK SPACE HAD
just enough light for him to admire once again the precision of the two keys to her house that he’d made the week before. He’d had to file the zigzagged teeth on both keys several times to get them just right. He didn’t enjoy filing; in fact, it was the one part of his job he didn’t like. But it gave him pleasure to think about how he’d “borrowed” the keys to her house and made impressions of both of them in the soft wax without her knowing it.

Of course, that wasn’t unusual. No woman he’d chosen ever knew what he was doing until he wanted them to. It was amazing how easy it was, providing you knew, as he did, how to create a situation that would get you into their lives without their realizing why you were there. Until it was too late, of course; then it didn’t matter; then they were yours anyway.

He glanced at the leather cord next to him on the workbench. Seeing it, he started to grow hard in anticipation of what he was going to do with it. His next conquest was a proud, beautiful woman, a woman he particularly looked forward to bringing down. He’d been thinking about it and thinking about it, and now he was ready to do it.

K
ELLY OPENED THE LAST
folder of the seven she’d been examining and found that it belonged to Arthur Jones, whom she’d seen in Baltimore, the day before she’d gone to Washington, DC, the last city on her book tour. Arthur Jones, an Aries, had been forty, married to Nona, a Scorpio, age thirty-nine, with one child, Niel, also an Aries, age three.

She closed the folder; Arthur Jones was outside the age group on which Agent Winslow had told her to concentrate.

Besides Wheaton, she’d found two other men who were in the right age range: Fred Nugent, a Virgo, who’d been thirty-three when he’d seen her in Philadelphia, and Scott Green, a Gemini, who’d been thirty-one when he’d seen her in Washington, DC, the morning she’d noticed that her ephemeris was missing. Like Wheaton, both men had been single and therefore fit the FBI profile. Also as with Wheaton, Kelly had taken few notes of her impressions of them. She’d written that Nugent had seemed lethargic and somewhat lost, and Green had seemed a classic type A personality. Not much to go on in either set of notes, but she also had their charts.

She pulled Fred Nugent’s chart from the folder and began to look at the placement of the planets at the time of his birth. It showed that Saturn was in the first house, conjuncting his ascendant. Everything she saw pointed to the extreme lack of energy
she’d observed during their consultation. She wondered if anyone who had been born with the challenge of finding enough vitality to live could possibly be taking the lives of others. She looked up from his chart and shook her head; it just wasn’t possible.

Scott Green’s chart showed Leo rising, which was in keeping with what she’d noted as his type A drive to achieve. But there was a softer side to him, too: his Venus in Pisces would give him a natural empathy and caring for women. He wouldn’t want to hurt them.

B
ROADBENT HAD NEVER DRIVEN
to Brooklyn before. Fortunately, the FBI garage was only a few blocks from the FDR Drive, which he took down to the Brooklyn Bridge. From there he proceeded onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into Brooklyn, where the GPS led him to the house he was looking for at 1732 Cadbury Avenue. If it hadn’t been for the traffic, the trip would have taken half an hour instead of an hour. He wasn’t generally an impatient man, but waiting in heavy traffic always frayed his nerves. He consoled himself with the thought that Winslow had sent him on his own for what could turn out to be the key part of the investigation; if his mission bore fruit, he would be the first investigator to discover Antiochus’s real identity.

As he drove up to the two-story light blue-shingled house, he saw two pickup trucks parked in the driveway. One truck was five or six years old, the other was older than that; both were beige in color except for a sign painted in black script on the driver’s door that said Ace Painting with the phone number underneath and, below that, the words
homes & offices
.

Broadbent walked up to the white door of the light blue house and rang the bell. Before long, a woman he judged to be in her mid to late thirties opened the door and blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in his face.