Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (29 page)

“What do you want?” she asked. She was wearing tight jeans, a pink tank top, and a heart-shaped pendant on a chain. She looked too young for her voice to be as gravelly and ravaged as it was, but the cigarettes had already done their damage.

“I’m Eric Broadbent,” he said, showing her his badge. “I’m with the FBI. I want to ask your painters some questions.”

She finished another drag on her cigarette before she asked, “They do something wrong?”

This time he’d moved out of the way so he wouldn’t get smothered by the smoke. “No. I just have some questions for them.”

She moved out of the doorway. “Be my guest.”

Broadbent walked into the house and found himself in a small foyer that opened onto a large living room, where he saw two painters. The living room was covered with drop cloths, and the painters were on ladders, painting the ceiling with rollers. One of them was in his sixties or seventies, with gray, almost white hair and hunched shoulders. The other was a gangly blond man in his early twenties. Broadbent had gotten the information Sarah had provided to Winslow about the painters. From the descriptions he’d been given of the men who ran Ace Painting, he recognized the older man as Ed Murrin and the younger man as Peter Heath.

He approached the older man and took out his badge. “FBI. Your wife told me you’d be here. I understand you painted Dr. York’s brownstone.”

Ed Murrin had stopped painting and was looking down at Broadbent, upset. “Why? Is there a problem with what we did?”

“No,” Broadbent said, “but I want to ask you about the rest of your paint crew. Any of them in their midthirties, average height and build, brown eyes? Maybe brown or black hair.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Murrin said. “Ernie Guerrero, for one. Ernie’s
about, what—?” He turned to his younger partner.

Peter Heath thought a moment. “Thirty-five, thirty-six. I’ll give you his number. You can ask him.”

Broadbent frowned. “Does Mr. Guerrero have an accent?”

“Yeah,” Heath told him. “Spanish. He’s from the Dominican Republic.”

“I’m looking for someone without an accent,” Broadbent said, addressing both men.

Murrin laughed. “Then you’ve come to the wrong guys. Besides Guerrero, we got men from Puerto Rico, Albania, and Turkistan. They’re not so great at English. We practically need a full-time translator to get the job done.”

Broadbent was so disappointed by what he’d heard that he almost forgot his customary manners, but as he headed out of the living room, he remembered to turn around and say, “Thanks.”

“What’s this about?” Heath asked him.

Broadbent continued toward the front door. “Sorry. Can’t discuss it.”

“Good luck, whatever it is,” Murrin called after him.

Broadbent was too discouraged to respond. The lady of the house was still standing in the entry, smoking. She’d heard everything that was said, and Broadbent could tell that she’d been intrigued by it. Before she could ask him anything, he thanked her and left the house. Once he was outside, he took out his cell phone and called Winslow.

“It’s Broadbent,” he told her. “None of the painters can be Antiochus. The guys who are the right age and physical description all have accents. The hotel clerk said Antiochus speaks without an accent.”

“Okay,” Winslow said. “But like I told Stevens, the son of a bitch we’re looking for didn’t need to block up the chimney to
give himself an opportunity to get in. If Antiochus wants to get into a house, he gets in. Period. Good work. You’ve eliminated a futile lead.”

It was rare that Winslow paid him a compliment, but it did little to lift Broadbent’s spirits. “What next?” he asked with a sigh.

“Barr’s still trying to trace his Web site, and Dr. York’s going through her records from her book tour for men who fit our profile.”

Broadbent didn’t say anything.

“One of them is Antiochus,” Winslow told him. “The same sick mind that set up the cameras and the microphones to watch her before he comes here for the kill. Kelly York is the prize, the one he’s been working up to. He doesn’t believe anybody’s smart enough to see the link between the ephemeris getting stolen and him. You’ll see. We’re going to get him.”

This time Broadbent spoke. “What do you want me to do now?”

“Go back to the office,” Winslow said. “I’ll call you as soon as something develops.”

Broadbent waited until he clicked off the phone call before he sighed again. He was still disappointed that his trip to Brooklyn had yielded nothing, and now that it was late afternoon, he knew he’d be facing even heavier traffic on his return to Manhattan.

P
LAYING
J
ANÁČEK’S
S
TRING
Q
UARTET
no. 1 in her tiny apartment with the other members of her quartet—another violin, a viola, and a cello—filled Sarah with exquisite sadness. Janáček, she knew, had found his inspiration for the piece in Tolstoy’s novella, “The Kreutzer Sonata”; the music he wrote expressed the anguished life of the book’s tragic heroine, a woman pianist whose jealous husband shoots her because he’s convinced she’s been having an affair with the violinist with whom she has been playing Beethoven’s passionate
Kreutzer
sonata.

Sarah knew from her research that the married Janáček also had had another inspiration: his own unfulfilled love for a woman almost forty years younger than he. Janáček’s music expressed such longing, such frenzy and mournful beauty that she wouldn’t have had to know any of this to feel its elegiac power. As she played it, she thought about herself, and she mourned the end of her relationship with Kevin. She thought about Kelly being in danger; she prayed that Kelly would be safe, and her sadness and her prayers infused every note she played on the violin and made them more fervent and sorrowful. She hoped that the music, like a prayer, would rise to heaven, and God would hear it and make everything all right.

K
EITH
B
ARR WASN’T THE
kind of man to give up, but he’d spent hours in the front seat of Winslow’s car, working with his laptop and he was still stuck, unable to trace the broadcast from Kelly’s house to the computer on which the killer was receiving it. He’d tried hundreds of user names and passwords, everything from Antiochus, followed by assorted numbers, to each of the astrological signs to various arrangements of the words and letters in
astrologer
and in the name
Kelly Elizabeth York
, to key words from the ad in
You and Your Sign
, and he’d gotten nowhere. He’d tried getting around the necessity for a user name and password, but that hadn’t led him anywhere, either.

As he’d told Broadbent, the man who’d set up the mini-cams and microphones and transmitted the broadcast to Kelly York’s computer was sophisticated; he knew his way around the technology.

Suddenly, Barr thought of another combination of user name and password that Antiochus might be employing. The cursor was in the “User Name” box, so all he had to do was type the possible user name:
Kelly Elizabeth York
. When he’d typed the last letter, he moved the cursor to the “Password” box and typed the word
dead
. Then he clicked to enter them to see if they worked.

The same message he’d read hundreds of times before appeared on the screen:
Invalid username or password
.

There was no one in the car with whom he could share his
frustration, but he cursed anyway. It didn’t make him feel any better or any closer to tracing the broadcast back to the man they were looking for.

As Kelly approached the door that led down to Emma’s apartment, she felt apprehensive, and realized that since she’d become agoraphobic she’d never gone down there. She hadn’t avoided it. She just hadn’t needed to go to Emma’s apartment, but now she did, because Mary Ann Winslow was there.

Kelly didn’t understand why she should suddenly feel so nervous about going downstairs. Although she’d become terrified when faced with the prospect of leaving her house for the outside world, she’d never felt nervous about going into the garden, so why was her stomach upset as she walked toward the door to Emma’s apartment? Was it because the garden’s high walls made her feel protected? But Emma’s apartment was just as much part of the brownstone as the garden, if not more so; and its walls and ceiling should have made her feel at least equally protected. So why was she feeling like this?

She walked slowly with her crutches down the hall toward the door, trying to build up her courage. In her right hand she was carrying the three men’s files. When she reached the door, she switched the files to her left hand and opened the door with her right hand. Looking down the narrow staircase to the apartment below, she started breathing harder and sweating.

Emma appeared at the bottom of the staircase and looked up at her. For an instant, the older woman’s face showed the strain under which they were all living; then Kelly saw Emma put on a smile, playing the charade that Mary Ann Winslow had asked them to play in case the camera and microphone in the first-floor
hall was picking up their conversation.

“Do you need something, Kelly?” Emma asked.

“I was just looking for Mary Ann,” Kelly said.

“She’s down here, visiting with me,” Emma responded pleasantly.

Winslow joined Emma at the bottom of the staircase and called up to Kelly. “I was just waiting until you finished your work,” she said, keeping up the pretense that she and Kelly were friends. “If you’re through for the day, why don’t you come down here with us?”

In the doorway at the top of the stairs, Kelly felt dizzy; she leaned on the crutches to support herself so she wouldn’t fall; she knew there was no way she could go down the steps. She tried to make her voice sound casual and cheerful. “Why don’t we go back into the garden? It’s so pretty this time of day.”

Kelly saw Mary Ann Winslow’s friendly expression turn to one of annoyance; then the FBI agent cleaned up her act. “Sure. I’ll be right up.”

“I’m too tired,” Emma improvised. “If you two don’t mind, I’ll stay here and watch my television programs.”

“You and your television programs!” Winslow said. She indicated to Emma with an approving nod that Emma had done the right thing in choosing not to join them; then she started climbing the steps toward Kelly.

By this time, Kelly could no longer bear standing at the top of the staircase. She moved away from the doorway into the hall so she would no longer have to look down the stairs.

Kelly preceded Winslow down the steps from the kitchen into the garden, but Winslow quickly caught up to her. Out of
the range of the surveillance equipment, Winslow again dropped her imitation of friendship. She eyed the folders and said with an edge to her voice, “It took you long enough, but I see you’ve got something for me.”

Kelly handed the folders to Winslow. “I found three men who would be the right age now. All of them were also single at the time. David Wheaton, Fred Nugent, and Scott Green. But my notes don’t indicate that any of them showed particular interest in astrology except for how I could use it to help them make choices about their futures. Two of them discussed possible job changes. That’s why a lot of people see me.”

Winslow was already sitting on one of the benches and opening the first file. “What about build, eye color, hair color?”

Kelly remained standing, leaning on her crutches. “I didn’t write anything down about what they looked like. But I reviewed their charts, and none of their charts show the potential for violence.”

Winslow gave a tight laugh and looked up at Kelly. “You don’t really take astrology seriously, do you?”

Kelly felt her face grow hot with anger. “Of course I do. Do you think I’m a fraud?”

“No. I just assumed you saw it as …” Winslow shrugged and thought a moment before she continued. “As some sort of game you engage in with other people. A superstition. Like you said, people come to you so you can predict their future. You don’t really think you can predict their future, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Kelly said, “and I never tell anybody that I can. But I do think I can help them see their unique strengths and the pitfalls they can fall into because of where their planets are.” She focused her dark blue eyes on Winslow and spoke with intensity. “You said you wanted my impressions. I don’t remember
these men from my consultations with them, but who they are is in their charts. Their charts give us more than impressions of them. They tell us what they are like, what they are capable of. Their charts tell me that none of these men has the potential to be a rapist and a killer.”