The Skeleton's Knee (9 page)

LOCATING FULLER’S GUN
was dependent not only on securing another search warrant but on getting hold of the right tool for the job. I thought I could coax the former from a judge; the latter, in this small state, would take some research.

I was standing by Harriet’s desk the following morning when she walked in, impatient to get things rolling. “Do me a favor, would you? Call the state police and ask if we can borrow their metal detector. I think the Rockingham barracks has one, but you might have to dig deeper.” I handed her a sheet of paper. “Also, please make sure Willy gets this—it’s some homework Gail did for him. And last,” I added with an apologetic smile, “I’d appreciate it if you could get either Sammie or Dennis to file for a search warrant for Fuller’s missing gun.” I handed her the rough draft of an affidavit I’d worked up before her arrival.

She took both sheets of paper. “Will one detector be enough?”

“You think you can get another?”

“We could rent one.”

I stared at her nonplussed for a moment, astonished at my own lapse, then broke into a grin. “Great. See what you can find. I’ll be at Billie Lucas’s house on Whipple in the meantime.”

She shook her head slightly as I walked away.

Whipple Street had once been a convenient alleyway in which to leave the garbage for removal, and before then had probably served as a tree-shaded side street for horse-drawn buggies. But in the time-honored tradition of old neighborhoods yielding to technology’s endless pushiness, it had been widened, denuded, and paved over. It was now a heavily traveled connector street between Green and High. It was, no doubt, convenient for traffic, but it had turned what once had been an ideal spot for stickball and hopscotch into a potential killing zone.

The house Billie Lucas had described was fairly nondescript—two-storied, clapboarded, in need of paint—but it showed signs of having once been the pride of a burgeoning middle class. The tasteful and frugal use of stained glass here and there and the occasional extravagance of some gingerbread molding at a corner or along a roof edge belied the building’s present plight.

The gate didn’t work, so I walked around the small picket fence, along the side of the house, and to the garage at the back. Here, the mood was more hopeful. There were cars parked all over, toys scattered about, a basketball hoop bolted to the wall, and a sense that the building had merely turned its back on its troubles.

The rear door obviously now served as the main entrance. I crossed the threshold and into a large room with a desk facing the door. A few chairs and magazine tables lined the walls, and the floor was again littered with toys. I was reminded of a pediatrician’s office.

A teenage girl was sitting at the desk. “May I help you?”

I could hear a baby crying somewhere down a hall and the sound of laughter from somewhere else. “Yes. I’m here to see Billie Lucas.”

“And your name?”

“Gunther.”

She was very poised, despite her torn blue jeans, her acne, and her youth. She rose and disappeared through a far door.

I looked around, aware of more sounds emanating from all corners of the building—typewriters, phones ringing, people talking. The place was obviously bustling. The walls of the reception area were covered with announcements and posters addressing everything from VermontGreen’s latest targets to La Leche League workshops.

The young girl reappeared and requested me to follow her. She led me up two flights of stairs; we passed a large room, filled with potter’s wheels and an electric kiln, in which a class was in full session. Gail’s admiration of Billie Lucas’s many interests came back to mind.

I was ushered into a large room with a cathedral ceiling, obviously a converted attic. The beams had been left exposed, and bookshelves along the walls picked up the natural wood tone, as did the old but burnished oak flooring. Color was supplied not by the muted and tasteful prints and furniture but by exotic flowers by the dozens, sprouting from pottery vases all around the room. The smell, however, was neither intoxicating nor suffocating, but surprisingly light and seductive, reminding me of Gail’s office. Except where Gail’s place was old, blemished, familiar, and embracing, this was clean, sunlit, beautiful, but curiously aseptic.

“Mr. Gunther,” my guide announced and withdrew, closing the door behind her.

The woman seated at the computer rose and came around the desk to greet me. She was tall and slim, dressed in worn jeans and a loose white cotton shirt. Her hair, long, blond, and thick, was piled loosely on top of her head, with strands breaking for freedom in an attractive revolt. She wore a pair of very shiny, round gold-rimmed glasses. The total effect was extraordinarily appealing.

She held her hand out. “Lieutenant Gunther, I’m Billie Lucas. I was just putting the finishing touches on our project.” She tilted her head toward the glowing computer. Her hand was cool, smooth, and firm.

“I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice. Looks like you run quite an operation here.”

She smiled and returned to the computer, punching a few keys to start the printer. She indicated one of two armchairs placed by a large, sunny window. “Have a seat. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

I moved to the window and sat, comforted by both the overstuffed chair and Lucas’s quiet, professional manner. “Coffee’d be fine—milk and sugar if you’ve got it.”

I appreciated her approach, and the lack of paraphernalia I’d assumed an astrologer would be surrounded with. The discomfort I’d felt anticipating this conversation—imagining myself having to smile and nod politely at some off-the-wall, wild-eyed stargazer—began to dissipate.

Lucas poured two cups and crossed over to me with one of them. “Here you go. It sounds like the printer’s finished, too.” She retired to collect the paperwork and her own cup before settling cross-legged opposite me, both the printout and the copy of the chart I’d left for her the previous evening spread out on her lap.

She adjusted her glasses and looked at me seriously. “Well, I’ve done what I can—it was a little more complicated because the time and date of birth were missing. I’m also not sure how much you were expecting.”

I spread my hands, not wishing to appear antagonistic. “To be honest, not much; but that chart is about all I’ve got right now.”

She smiled slightly. “That’s all right; I don’t expect many policemen are astrology fans.” Her expression switched to a more clinical mien. “So you know nothing at all about this person? Not even their sex?”

I decided to sit on my one speculation that the chart might have been Fuller’s. “Not a thing.”

She nodded, as if coming to some private conclusion. “All right, then we’ll start with the basics. There are two types of information you can derive from a chart; one is very concrete, and very brief—the type I assume you’re after—and the second appears just as solid to those of us who believe in astrology, but it has an elusive quality to it, since it’s directly affected by the actions of the person involved, which makes not knowing that person a disadvantage.”

“Okay,” I said noncommittally, having anticipated the disclaimer.

“The concrete information is that this person was born at 10:55
P.M.
, eastern standard time, on April 7, 1946, which makes him forty-seven years old.”

I nodded. That was already more than I’d expected, and if accurate, a valuable clue.

She continued cautiously. “But that’s it. All the rest of what I have to say depends on how this person has learned to manage him or herself. And I must admit right off, if this was my chart, I’d be in therapy.”

She turned the chart toward me and indicated the traffic jam of colored lines running from the two o’clock position on the wheel to the five o’clock. “See how loaded up and lopsided this looks? That’s not a bad way of visualizing the owner of this chart. Each one of the twelve wedges on the innermost circle of the wheel is called a ‘house.’ Each house represents an area of one’s life. For example, the fifth house is creative expression; the eighth deals with sex and money; and so on. The house system allows us to connect the signs to the way we live. Now sometimes, the relationships between the houses and the planets in them are very harmonious, and the end result is a person who is happy, normal, and at peace with himself and the world. But a chart like this one is just the opposite. Many of the planets are what we call ‘squared’ with one another, or in conflict. It’s just shy of crippling, in fact.”

“How so?”

“Root causes are often the easiest to pin down. For example, I suspect child abuse here, on the receiving end. I see a very repressed early life, with the Moon, Saturn, and Mars all in the eighth house, which also means sex was a factor.”

“A father abusing a daughter?” I asked hopefully. But she wouldn’t go that far. “Perhaps—that’s the standard. But there are oddities, things I haven’t been able to quite decipher.” I sighed inwardly, disappointed, and backtracked a bit. “How about something you can be sure of?”

She pointed to one of the wedges. “The most prominent is in the fifth house; whoever this is craves solitude and being left alone, even at the cost of personal relationships. And there are a lot of secrets in this chart—secrets, sex, death, and taboos.”

Fuller came back to mind, as did the growing conviction that this whole conversation was going nowhere fast. I tried again, stimulated more by a loyalty to Gail than by any hopes of success. “But can you tie that in with anything I can use?”

She looked up at the tone in my voice and fixed me with a cool eye. “Lieutenant, you want this to be a mug shot. It’s not. It’s a map to somebody’s character, and as such, it can be a useful tool. Once you find whoever you’re after, you could get him to open up by making him realize you know more about him that he thinks you do. But it won’t help you locate some guy out of the blue.”

I realized I’d let my antipathy work against me. I stepped back mentally and tried to match my needs more realistically with what she could supply. “You’ve been at this a long time. Maybe our best approach would be for you to compare this chart with similar ones you’ve done in the past—ones where you know the people involved. If there are common traits among them, that might help us flesh out whoever’s behind the anonymous chart.”

She looked doubtful, so I pressed on. “Patterns are bound to be repeated. As you do chart after chart, things come around more than once; they become familiar. You end up knowing what you’ve got even before you go through the whole routine. That’s true for us when we do an investigation.”

She was thoughtful for a few moments, looking out the window, and then she let out a small sigh. “There is a risk of the tail wagging the dog—we could end up putting labels on this chart that shouldn’t be applied, even to identifying the person’s sex.”

I was about to argue the point, until I suddenly wondered if she wasn’t already way ahead of me. “You’ve thought of one, haven’t you? A chart that fits.”

She laughed and pretended to tear her hair in mock exasperation, further loosening the elegant pile on top of her head. “Yes, I do, but I’m extremely reluctant to mention it. It is just a single other chart. “

I shook my head. “Look, I know you’re trying to be conscientious, but I promise not to take what you tell me as gospel. Let’s just try this out, okay?”

“All right. The chart I thought of immediately—even last night—was of a homosexual client I once had.”

“A male.”

“Right. He had a terribly abusive mother and no father—at least none that he knew of. His chart revealed a lot of anger directed at his mother, just like this one.” She tapped the chart in her lap. “And both his chart and this one have the male sex sign over in this spot, with Pluto indicating a definite interest, maybe even a compulsion, for partners of the same sex, and Mars pointing toward that sex being male.”

She paused and looked up at me, her expression animated. Despite her earlier hesitation, she’d obviously become intrigued. “That’s about it for real similarities, but if, for argument’s sake, you do make this chart that of a gay male, other things begin to fall into place. Here’s the harshness to his representation of the female, for which you could read the mother figure. Also, you have Neptune highlighting a lot of imagery and flair in the way he expresses himself, like a painter or designer might have. And he has a lot of friends, but no solid partner, and there’s an implication of no children, which could fit a member of a male gay community. Some of that’s a little clichéd, but there it is.”

“Could the painter be a fancy gardener instead?”

She nodded unequivocally. “Oh, sure—there’s a strong connection to the earth here—very strong.”

“How about the mother—can you give me anything on her?”

At that, Billie Lucas closed her eyes for a moment, and I realized I’d overplayed the game. When she reopened them, she also stood up, placing her paperwork on the floor. Her voice had a new firmness to it. “No, we should stop this. It’s not proper, and it’s definitely not astrology. I give you high marks for persuasiveness, though.”

She took my hand and pulled me to my feet, leaving no doubt that she was throwing me out, albeit pleasantly. “I should have known what I was getting into when you called me last night. Gail had me do your chart some time ago.”

“She mentioned that,” I said over my shoulder as she gently propelled me toward the door. “She didn’t go into details, though.”

“You’re perfectly suited to your profession.”

I stopped on the threshold and faced her, risking the remnants of her good humor. “I’ve got to ask you one last question: You mentioned a house dealing with money. How does this guy look there?”

She paused and looked reflective. “That’s fair enough. There are two houses dealing with money. The second concerns personal finances, the eighth shared income. With Capricorn in the second house, he or she has a hard time getting hold of money. This chart’s big emphasis is in the eighth, though.”

“What does shared income mean? Do you mean that literally, as in a tax form?”

“It can be, but it means any money not your own in which you have a share, like a business or a marriage.”