Horoscope: The Astrology Murders

by Georgia Frontiere

  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.”

  Winslow stood up. “The only thing you’ve told me of value is that these three men are now in their thirties, they were single, and they had appointments with you just before you realized your old ephemeris was missing.” Holding the files, she walked toward the rear entrance of Emma’s apartment. “Forget their charts,” she told Kelly. “Leave the investigation to me. One of these men is Antiochus.”

  Despite the coolness in the afternoon breeze, Kelly’s face was burning again. She didn’t like Mary Ann Winslow, and she didn’t like the fact that the FBI agent didn’t respect her. But ego had no place here. What was important was finding the man who had raped and killed four women and had made Kelly’s own life hell.

  “What date were you born?” Kelly asked.

  Winslow stopped walking and turned to face her. “February twenty-eighth.”

  Kelly stood there looking at the hard, attractive woman in front of her with blue eyes lighter than her own and filled with condescension. She was so taken aback that she didn’t know what to say.

  “What’s wrong?” Winslow asked her.

  “Nothing. It’s just that you and I were born on the same day.”

  Winslow gave Kelly a triumphant little smile. “Then that proves it, doesn’t it? We’re nothing alike. I’m not afraid to leave my house. And I don’t waste my time with superstition.”

  “Both of us being born on the same day means that we’re both Pisces, but that doesn’t mean we’re the same. We were born in different years, at different times, in different places, so each of our charts is unique. But we do have some things in common. We’re both creative problem solvers. We’re both emotional, although obviously you think you can hide your feelings. And you’re pretty good at it. Your intense emotions are all part of being a Pisces. But you can’t hide how much you care, and in your own way, you care about helping people. Like me, one of the things you care about deeply is your work.”

  “You’re right,” Winslow said, doing nothing to hide her annoyance. “I do care deeply about my work. So let me start checking these men right away.”

  Kelly watched Mary Ann Winslow descend the steps to Emma’s apartment and disappear inside; she had never met a woman as stubborn and prone to conflict with other people as Mary Ann Winslow. She would not be surprised if she had Leo rising and a moon in Scorpio. She hoped that the FBI agent’s rigidity and need to be right would not stand in the way of her finding Antiochus before he raped and killed again.

  Walking into Emma’s apartment, Winslow found herself resenting Kelly’s attempt to analyze her character. How dare Kelly be so presumptuous, so personal, and so intrusive? And how off base to say that Winslow was emotional and hid her feelings. Everyone who knew her knew how she was, Winslow said to herself. Indeed, she’d often been criticized for being too frank.

  Rather than continuing to think about it, she sat down at the table, called headquarters on East 57th Street, and asked for Gail Rothman, a junior agent. Once she got Gail on the phone, she read her the names and contact information of the three men Kelly had identified from her files as fitting the description. Winslow had wanted to have Broadbent do the computer search on the men, but he was still in transit from Brooklyn, so she’d had to rely instead on Gail, whom she knew to be responsible and a fast worker.

  Gail immediately began accessing all available information on the men and was now viewing David Wheaton’s driver’s license, which contained his age and physical description as well as a photograph of David Wheaton staring stiffly into the camera.

  “David Wheaton,” she said, “thirty-four years old. Five foot eight, brown hair, brown eyes. He doesn’t live in Philadelphia anymore. He lives in Seattle.” She called up Wheaton’s most recent tax return to see what it had to tell her. “As of last April fifteenth, he was
still single, and he was unemployed.”

  “Have the Seattle bureau see where Mr. Wheaton’s been for the last week,” Winslow told her.

  “Got it,” Rothman said. She tried getting Fred Nugent’s driver’s license, but nothing came up. The same happened with this year’s income tax return. What finally came up instead was his death certificate. “Fred Nugent died three years ago,” she told Winslow. She typed Scott Green’s name into the government system and instantly saw his driver’s license on the screen. “Scott Green, thirty-six, still lives in Baltimore. Five foot ten, black hair, brown eyes.” It took her only three seconds to pull up his IRS return. “He’s single. I guess you want me to call the Baltimore bureau.”

  “Right,” Winslow said. “And tell Seattle and Baltimore to get back to me directly.”

  Winslow clicked off the call and sat back in her chair. With one suspect dead, that left only two men who could be Antiochus.

  Fifty-Six

  TWO FBI AGENTS, BOTH male, stood at the door of the large wooden house in the Queen Anne Hill area of Seattle that David Wheaton listed on his driver’s license and income tax return. It was one thirty p.m. Seattle time, and they hadn’t expected that Wheaton would necessarily be home, but they saw a car in the driveway, which might well mean that he was. They already had their badges out just in case.

  The door was opened by a woman in her thirties who had a round face, long brown hair, and inquisitive light brown eyes.

  “We’re here to see David Wheaton,” the older agent said.

  The woman’s eyes changed from inquisitive to alarmed. “He’s at work,” she told him. “Can I help you?”

  “Are you Mrs. Wheaton?” the younger agent asked.

  “There is no Mrs. Wheaton. I’m Joan Morris. Mr. Wheaton is renting part of my house.”

  The older agent took over the role of questioner again. “Where is Mr. Wheaton employed?”

  “He works in the lab at the Seattle Medical Center. Why?”

  The agents ignored her question. The older one asked, “Is Mr. Wheaton at work today?”

  “As far as I know. Why do you want to see him?” Joan Morris persisted.

  The agents ignored her question again. “Thanks, Ms. Morris,” the younger one said as they turned away and started down the broad wooden steps of the house.

  Joan Morris walked onto the porch, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched the FBI agents head to their car. David Wheaton had been renting the top floor of her house for only seven months; he seemed like a nice man, but she realized that she didn’t really know him. She hadn’t needed to rent half her house to someone else; she’d done it because she felt she could use the company. Now she wondered if she’d made a mistake.

  The FBI agents, one male, one female, who arrived at Scott Green’s row house in Baltimore weren’t as lucky as the Seattle agents. There was no car in the driveway or the garage, and no one was home to help them locate where Green might be. The three envelopes sticking out of the mailbox next to the front door were addressed to Green, however, and since they were bills and all were postmarked yesterday or the day before, the agents concluded that Green still lived there.

  “Not much mail,” the female agent remarked. “If Green’s gone up to New York like they think he has, looks like he left yesterday or today.”

  “Could be, or could be he’s been up in New Jersey and New York all week doing his dirty deeds, and he’s got a post office box somewhere else where he’s getting other mail,” her partner proposed.

  “Could be,” the female agent said, “or could be he has someone picking up the mail for him while he’s out of town.”

  “Or could be he just doesn’t get a lot of mail.”

  This was a game the two agents played; they called it the Hypothetical Game. It made them see different possibilities that would explain the facts that they had in front of them, and it passed the time. Having run through the hypotheticals about the three pieces of mail, they put an APB out on Green’s car. Running through the hypotheticals, they figured the car would be found on a street or in a parking lot in or just outside of New York or in the parking lot of Baltimore-Washington International Airport or of Baltimore’s Penn North railroad station.

  The FBI agents in Seattle found the Seattle Medical Center downtown on East Pike Street. The three floors of the building were filled with doctors’ offices, and the medical laboratory in which Joan Morris had told them David Wheaton worked was in the basement. The middle-aged woman who sat at the reception desk had the name Pat Lister on her identification badge. In response to the agents’ questions, Ms. Lister confirmed Wheaton was working that day—she had seen him fifteen minutes before they arrived—and that he’d been working overtime for the past three weeks because they were short-handed. Just to be sure they were getting accurate information about the man they were looking for, one of the agents pulled up Wheaton’s driver’s license on his smartphone and showed it to her; she confirmed that yes, that was David Wheaton.

  As they were talking, through the open doorway behind the receptionist’s desk, the agents glimpsed Wheaton for themselves. Leaving the Seattle Medical Center, one of them called Winslow in New York and told her that Wheaton was not the man that she was looking for.

  After her argument with Mary Ann Winslow, Kelly walked slowly on her crutches toward her office. She was in a bad mood; on one level it seemed ridiculous to her that arguing with the FBI agent should put her into such a funk when the woman was there to protect her and find the killer, but on another level it was a relief to feel the normal feeling of anger at having to deal with someone as disagreeable as Mary Ann Winslow instead of the fear that had been overwhelming her.

  She let herself into Sarah’s office and was about to close the door when King howled a greeting and ran in to join her. She wondered if he had to go out for a walk and remembered how much she used to like taking him for walks on Central Park West or on one of the paths that wound through Central Park. Now if he needed to go out, she could only let him into the garden and then clean up after him, or ask Emma or Sarah to walk him.

  If the serial rapist and killer was caught before he made good on his threat to get even with her for whatever he blamed her for, was her life always going to be like this? Limited by the walls of the brownstone and the garden, trapped inside as if she were hiding to save her life?

  “Do you want to go out, boy?” she asked King. “Do you want to go into the garden?”

  The dog looked up at her and rubbed up against her, apparently just wanting to be with her and not needing to go out. Blocking the view of the mini-cam in the hall, she closed the door to Sarah’s office and then went into her own office with King right behind her. He seemed to be looking at her crutches, trying to figure out why she suddenly had these long wooden appendages to her body.

  “Don’t worry, boy,” she said. “They’re just temporary.”

  She put her ephemeris on the desk and was about to go to her chair when she noticed that the files she’d eliminated because the men didn’t match Agent Winslow’s criteria were sitting in a pile and needed to be returned to the cabinet. Leaning on the crutches, she reached down and, with her right hand, tried to pick up all ten files at once. For a moment she thought she was successful, but one of the files fell out of her grasp and landed on the floor, spilling its contents.

  She propped the crutches against the desk and, keeping her weight off her right foot as much as possible, bent down to pick up the manila folder and the papers it had contained. She picked up the initial information sheet and saw that the file was Arthur Jones’s. She remembered reviewing it and seeing that five years ago, when she had seen him on the last leg of her book tour, Arthur Jones had been forty and married with one son.

  She put the page back into the folder and her eyes fell on the chart she had drawn for him. It had fallen upside down, so that, from the angle at which she now viewed it, the astrological houses that should be at the bottom of the chart were a
t the top and those that should have been at the top were at the bottom. Instead of reaching for the chart, she just stared at this new configuration. Before, when she was reading through the files, she was so anxious that her eyes had blurred; now she was seeing perfectly clearly. She extended her hand, picked up the chart, and turned it right side up. Then she rose to her feet.

  “Let’s see what this has to tell us,” she said to King.

  The FBI agents in Baltimore were alerted by the local cops who’d gotten the APB that Scott Green’s car was parked in a lot at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His parking ticket had been stamped at 10:17 a.m. yesterday morning. They decided to check the airline rosters to learn the destination to which Green had flown. While they waited for the airlines to give them the information, they played the Hypothetical Game and came up with different possibilities for why Green might have taken a plane to the New Jersey–New York area when the drive was just over three and a half hours.

  Could be the man was in a rush. If he was the serial rapist and murderer, could be he’d targeted a woman he wanted to get to right away. Or could be he wasn’t going to the New Jersey–New York area at all; could be he had a sense the FBI was closing in on him and he’d flown to a country that didn’t have extradition.

  Kelly brought Arthur Jones’s chart into the garden and waited for Agent Winslow. It was close to five o’clock and, knowing that the garden would be cooler than it had been an hour before, she had put on a heavier sweater. Standing by the steps that led to the rear door of Emma’s apartment, she could hear Winslow ending a call by telling whoever was on the other end of the phone to check New York hotels, cabs, car rentals, and limousine companies.

  When Winslow came up the steps from Emma’s apartment into the garden, she was perturbed. She gave Kelly a look that told her whatever she had to say was a waste of time.