Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (23 page)

She looked around the study again, and still she was the only one in the room. She was so scared she was trembling. How did he know? she kept asking herself. How could he possibly know what she had said to Michelle?

S
TEVENS WAS IN HIS
car, talking to the officer who had monitored the call to Kelly.

“Did you get a location?” he asked.

“He made the call near the old World’s Fair grounds in Queens. The signal changed transmission towers while he was talking, so he was on the move. He might’ve been on the Long Island Expressway or the Grand Central Parkway or getting onto the BQE. Before you ask, it was another disposable phone.”

“Shit,” Stevens said. He hung up as he pulled onto the West Side Highway. Speeding up the entrance ramp, he punched in Kelly’s number. It took her a while to answer; he wasn’t surprised; she was probably frightened out of her mind. When she finally picked up, he didn’t wait for her to speak. He just said: “It’s Detective Stevens. I heard the whole thing. I’m on my way.”

K
ELLY WAS LEANING
on the crutches that Sarah had bought for her as she opened the front door for Stevens. She was so shaken that she barely let him step inside before she assailed him with everything she was thinking and feeling.

“You heard what he said! He found ‘the key’ to me. He used the word
key
—the same word I used when I was in my son’s room, talking with my friend Michelle! It’s like he can see and hear everything I do and say! But how could that be possible? I feel like I’m going crazy!”

Almost crying, not just from fear but from anger and incomprehension, she looked at Stevens, her intense, dark blue eyes demanding an answer.

Stevens saw the state she was in; he’d seen it hundreds of times before, in people who found themselves confronting circumstances the violence of which was outside their experience and that they didn’t understand and had never thought they would encounter. If he wasn’t careful, he knew that she could become hysterical. He forced himself to remain centered and focused. When she’d appeared at the door, he’d been surprised to see her on crutches with her ankle in a bandage. He decided to concentrate on that.

“What happened to your ankle?” he asked.

Kelly grimaced. “It was a stupid accident. I tripped on the
carpet and fell down the stairs.”

She wasn’t raising her voice anymore, Stevens observed; she was calming down. But she was still looking at him, waiting for his answer to her question. After what she’d just told him, he knew he didn’t want to try to answer her in the entry hall. For a moment, he didn’t say anything; he just gave her a look that said she should pay close attention. Then he whispered, “Do you have a portable radio that plays on batteries?”

Kelly nodded, her eyes staying on his.

He whispered again. “Where?”

She whispered, too. “My daughter Julie’s room.”

I
N THE SCREEN ON
his iPhone he could see Kelly and the police detective walking down the front hallway toward the rear of the brownstone. He’d heard every word Kelly had blurted to the detective. She’d been so scared, she’d almost been screaming at him. He loved seeing her so raw, so unnerved, so close to the edge. She deserved it. And he loved seeing her on her crutches with her ankle wrapped up. He hoped that every moment it pulsated with pain. He loved knowing that he’d hurt her and confused her and made her so afraid that she was almost out of control. He loved knowing that his plan was going so well.

After her outburst at the front door, the cop’s voice and hers had grown too quiet and muffled for him to hear. He figured that the cop had tried to comfort her, and now he was probably bringing her to the elevator to take her back upstairs, or they were going into the kitchen. Wherever they were going, for the time being they’d left the range of his miniature cameras and microphones.

He wondered if he shouldn’t have commented to Kelly about finding the
key
to her. He wondered if the cop would suspect that he’d bugged her house. If he did, the cop would find the bugs and use them to try to find him. The thought just made him laugh. Let him try!

On the other hand, Kelly hadn’t realized that she was
actually
being watched and listened to, and it might not occur to the cop, either. After all, anybody could realize that the initials in Kelly Elizabeth York’s name spelled
KEY
, and anybody could tease her with it. Maybe the cop would regard it as just a coincidence. Maybe they would both see it in her stars. She was an astrologer, wasn’t she?

He took the iPhone off his lap and put it on the mounting between his seat and the empty passenger seat. He remembered sitting in that seat a long time ago. It was after the trouble started. And the trouble had come because of Kelly York. Kelly Elizabeth York. That was why she didn’t just deserve what he’d done to her up until now; she deserved to die.

U
SING HER CRUTCHES
, K
ELLY
slowly and awkwardly descended the steps into the garden behind the brownstone; then she made her way into the greenhouse as Detective Stevens had instructed before he’d gotten into the elevator. She didn’t know why he’d asked her to wait there or why he wanted the radio from Julie’s room; she knew only that he’d made the requests after she’d told him about her ankle and about the man who was threatening her on the phone repeating to her the exact words she had said to Michelle.

The greenhouse was small, just two rows of shelves holding pots with roses and herbs on either side of the narrow gravel path between them. She leaned on her crutches, looking at the plants, and waited for the detective, thinking about her promise to Michelle to find the key to releasing her from her fear of leaving her house and going into the outside world again. Why did she feel that she couldn’t go beyond the rooms that she lived in and the garden behind them? Why had it happened so suddenly? She knew there was a reason for it, and that if she looked hard enough, she would find a clue, and the clue could lead her to escape from the fear that was making her feel so helpless. A key really was the right image. Something in her past had caused this fear; the key was remembering what it was.

She heard Stevens before she turned around and saw him
approaching, carrying Julie’s radio. He entered the greenhouse, and, without saying a word, placed the radio on a shelf between two pots, clicked the “On” button, and moved the dial until he found a rock station. He raised the volume, and then he faced her, his brown eyes focused on her intensely, telling her to listen closely. When he finally spoke, he whispered as he had in the entry hall, but now she had to hear him over the din of the loud music.

“He may have found a way to set up surveillance equipment in your house,” he said in a hushed voice. “Keep your voice down in case he set it up out here, too.”

Kelly felt anxiety taking her over again, but she made herself whisper as he’d counseled. “But how—?”

“If he’s set up the equipment,” he said, “I’ll find out how.”

She took this in. The steadiness of his eyes and the confidence in his voice made her feel that he was telling the truth, that he would find out how. “Do you know who he is yet?” she asked.

“No. But I know who it’s not. The calls are being made locally. Your daughter’s ex-boyfriend Billy Whitmore is in college in Indiana, and he hasn’t left since September. Kevin Stockman’s in Boston, visiting his fiancée’s family. And I was questioning Chris Palmer when you got the call the night before last, so it’s not him.”

“To tell the truth,” she said, “I’m glad it’s not any of them.”

“And it’s not any of the husbands of the women whose names you gave me from your files. Three of the men are still married to or in a relationship with the women, and the fourth died six months ago.” He glanced at her bandaged ankle and asked: “Tell me how you fell down the stairs.”

H
E WAS STILL DRIVING
, which meant he had to split his attention between the traffic and the iPhone on the mounting between the seats. Every now and then he looked at the screen of the iPhone, but for the past fifteen minutes he hadn’t seen Kelly or the detective. In fact, he hadn’t seen anybody: not on the first floor, the second floor, or the third floor. Before that, he’d seen Kelly, on her crutches, walking through the kitchen into the garden; a few minutes later he’d seen the detective, a portable radio in his large hand, making the same trip. He knew that’s where they were now.

He changed lanes as he neared his exit; then he looked again at the iPhone screen. This time he saw the detective entering the kitchen from the garden, crossing through the kitchen, and walking into the first-floor hallway. A honking horn pulled him away from the screen, and he turned the steering wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding drifting to the left again in front of the honking car. The other motorist, a well-dressed man in a maroon Jaguar, gave him the finger. Much as he wanted to reciprocate and do worse—say, ram his car into the Jag—he cursed under his breath and held back on any outward display of his temper. The last thing he needed was an altercation that brought in the police, not when everything was going so beautifully.

The next time he looked at the screen, the detective was
walking toward the staircase that led from the second floor to the third. He disappeared from the camera’s view, but his footsteps were audible on the stairs.

He took his eyes off the screen again so he wouldn’t miss his exit. He didn’t get to look at the iPhone again until the detective was coming out of Kelly’s third-floor study. This time, the detective was holding a book. He couldn’t tell what it was, but the detective was walking toward the staircase, and he assumed he was bringing the book to Kelly, since she had so much trouble getting around herself.

Yes, his plan was working.

And despite what he’d said to Kelly, they hadn’t realized yet that he’d planted the mini-cameras and microphones. Not that it would’ve mattered if they did. Or even if they found them. He’d made sure they couldn’t trace the equipment back to him; he’d made sure they couldn’t trace anything back to him. He’d even filed off the ID numbers. That was the thing about being smart. And being someone they wouldn’t suspect of being smart. That was the thing about being someone they wouldn’t suspect at all.

S
TEVENS CAME DOWN THE
stairs from the third floor at the same ambling pace as he’d ascended them. He tried to seem distracted, as if he had nothing particular on his mind, but actually he was observing the condition of the runner on the staircase, particularly on the steps where Kelly had fallen. On his way up to Kelly’s study, he’d noted the hanging lighting fixtures in the first-, second-, and third-floor halls as possible places for surveillance equipment, but he couldn’t inspect them because at the moment he didn’t want to tip off the caller that he was aware that the man could be watching him. That’s why he affected the distracted expression, why he hadn’t gotten down on his hands and knees to examine the steps where Kelly had tripped but only glanced down at them in passing.

Getting the book from Kelly’s third-floor study was just an excuse for the journey up and down the stairs, in case the caller was watching him at any point along the way. Any book would have done; Stevens had grabbed this one from her desk. It was a biography of Carl Jung. He handed it to her as he walked into the greenhouse where the rock station was still playing loudly. As he gave her the book, he spoke to her in a hushed voice.

“Does anybody besides you regularly use the stairs to the third floor?”

Kelly shook her head. “Emma usually takes the elevator.”

“The runner’s loose on two steps. It’s not tacked down anymore. It’s coming off the steps. It could’ve just come loose, but I don’t think so. I think he made it happen. I think he did it because he wanted you to fall down the stairs.”

She stared at him. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How could he have gotten into my house?”

“You had a dozen men here cleaning up the smoke damage. He probably clogged up the chimney to create the damage and give him the opportunity to get inside.”

Kelly took in what Stevens said. It made sense, dreadful sense, but she could still see an objection to it. “But how could he know he’d be one of the men I would hire?” she asked. “I could’ve hired anybody.”

Stevens’s next question was the one he was about to ask her anyway. “How did you choose the men who did the work?”

“I left it up to Sarah. Her father used to be a contractor. I asked her to call people that used to work for him.”

Stevens sat with Sarah on the front steps of the brownstone. It was one spot where he was sure that the caller hadn’t set up surveillance cameras or bugs. While Sarah went through the bills on her lap from the various people she’d called in to put the house back in order, he was on his cell phone with Bob Grossman, the 20th Precinct’s resident expert on technology. He’d just given him Kelly’s address and told him to come there ASAP, and now he was finishing the conversation. “I want you to find the equipment and see if we can use it to trace him.” He ended the call before Grossman had a chance to respond.