Horoscope: The Astrology Murders (33 page)

“Fuck you!” he screamed, and shot at the agent he thought he’d killed before. The man collapsed and dropped onto the lawn.

By now Broadbent and Rothman had their guns out. The sharp sounds made by the firing of the two guns overlapped. It was impossible to know whose bullet hit Jones or if both bullets did, but Jones fell down just before he reached the trees. Broadbent and Rothman kept their guns raised as they ran over to Jones’s still body, not knowing if he was alive or dead.

As they neared him, Jones didn’t move; his hand was clenching the handle of his gun, but his arm was outstretched on the grass, and his eyes stared without consciousness at the full moon. Broadbent, his gun still ready, knelt down next to Jones and saw the reflection of the moonlight in the puddle of blood that had collected on his chest. He knew there was no reason to check Jones’s pulse, but he put his fingers to Jones’s neck. Nothing.

Broadbent glanced up at Rothman and got to his feet. Together they walked toward where the New Jersey FBI agent had fallen to the earth. The man’s partner was already approaching them. He was shaking his head and walking slowly. He didn’t
have to say a word to let them know the state of his partner.

Minutes later, Broadbent and Rothman were in Arthur Jones’s cell-sized workroom. Broadbent stood at Jones’s work-table, looking at the leather cord that had been cut from the set of reins and the open drawer that held the ephemeris, the box of surgical gloves, the mirrored disk, the piece of old brass that had been honed to a point almost as sharp as a needle, and four discolored needles, the kind used for sewing. He could see how Arthur Jones could have used the mirrored disk to hypnotize potential victims, but he wondered what the old needles had been used for. Still thinking about it, he took out his phone and called Winslow.

“Jones’s dead,” Broadbent told her. “He got one of our men first. But he’s the one, all right.”

Winslow answered immediately, “I’ll be right there.”

When she hung up with Broadbent, Mary Ann Winslow turned to Kelly. “You were right. It was Jones.” She realized that she admired Kelly, but she showed her no sign of approval.

“They killed him?” Kelly asked.

“Yes. You’ve got nothing to worry about anymore.”

Kelly soberly absorbed the news. She’d been correct about Arthur Jones; he’d been the man who had raped and killed the four women, who had covertly entered her house, pulled up the runner on her staircase, and put in surveillance equipment so he could see the effects of the accident he’d caused and her fear when he’d called and threatened her. And now he was no more.

She felt as if she’d been facing a black void that would swallow her up and make her disappear, and now all at once the blackness was gone. But nevertheless, she felt she was still facing
the void, the void of incomprehension. She knew from Arthur Jones’s chart that he had been filled with hatred, that he’d been capable of conscienceless rape and murder, but that didn’t mean that she understood it. And the four women he had raped and murdered were still dead.

She looked at Mary Ann Winslow. “Those poor women …”

“At least we got him before he got you,” Winslow said.

Kelly nodded gratefully.

“Thank you,” Winslow said finally. With a strain in her voice, she added, “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have gotten him.”

Before Kelly could say anything, Winslow turned away from her and made a call on her cell phone. “Barr, it’s Winslow,” she said. “Forget about trying to trace the broadcast back to the SOB’s computer. And tell them to take the monitor off Kelly York’s phone. We got him, and he’s dead.”

E
MMA WAS IN THE
kitchen when Kelly told her the news. She was so jubilant, she threw her arms around Kelly, crutches and all. “Thank God!” Emma said.

Kelly looked into the soft gray eyes of the woman she’d known longer than anyone else in the world. Emma’s relief and happiness were so powerful that Kelly finally allowed herself to feel relieved and happy, too.

“Yes,” Kelly said. “Thank God.”

“We’ve got to tell Sarah,” Emma told her.

Kelly watched Emma hurry to the phone on the counter and make the call.

“Sarah, it’s me, Emma. They shot the bastard. He was one of Kelly’s clients from her book tour.”

As she talked to Emma on her cell phone, Sarah was walking toward her parents’ house in Bensonhurst. After the rehearsal, she’d taken the subway from Manhattan and had gotten off at 18th Avenue, four blocks away. She was carrying her violin case in her other hand as she held the phone to her ear. What she’d heard from Emma made her so joyous she started to cry.

“It’s what I prayed for!” she said.

“Me, too!” Emma told her.

“I’m so happy,” Sarah said, still crying. As she continued walking, she listened to Emma’s account of what had transpired.
When Emma finished telling her all the fine points, Sarah asked her to send Kelly her love and to tell her she’d see her in the morning. Then she put her phone in her coat pocket and dried her eyes. Her spirits lifted for the first time in days. Not even thinking of Kevin for the moment, she started whistling Brahms’s Hungarian Dance no. 5, a melody so rapturous that it always elated her to play it. Whistling it as she walked down the street, she felt she was serenading the whole neighborhood with her joy. In the light of the street lamp, she saw the truck with the Ace Painting sign on the door in the driveway of the Heaths’ house, five houses up the block from her parents’. Peter, still wearing his painting coveralls, came out of the garage and waved to her.

“Hi, Sarah,” he said. “If you’re looking for your father, I just saw him drive away.”

Sarah stopped walking as Peter reached into the back of the truck and took out a ladder.

“I guess I should’ve called him first,” she said, “but I thought I’d catch him at the house and we could go to see my mother together.”

Peter put the ladder down on the driveway and ran his hand through his messy blond hair. “Sorry you missed him.”

Sarah smiled. “That’s okay. Nothing could ruin my mood at the moment.”

Peter smiled, too. “Why not?”

“The FBI found the man who was threatening Kelly.”

“Someone was threatening her?”

Sarah saw the surprise in the face of the young man in front of her and realized that the threat had become so pervasive in Kelly’s, hers, and Emma’s lives that she’d assumed Peter knew about it, too, because he’d been painting Kelly’s house.

“I forgot you didn’t know,” she said to him. “We were told not to talk about it.”

“So that’s why the FBI came to talk to Ed and me today about the guys we hired to paint the brownstone with us. They thought it might be one of them.”

Sarah nodded. “But it wasn’t. It was someone else. And now it’s over. I can’t wait to tell my parents the good news.”

Peter picked up the ladder. “Say hi for me, all right?”

“I will.” Sarah was about to start back to the subway station when she turned to Peter again. “How’s your Dad?”

“He’s doing okay. Thanks for asking.”

“Say hello to him.”

“Sure thing.”

Peter lifted the ladder onto his shoulder and headed toward the garage. Sarah began whistling Brahms again as she started her walk back to the subway station. She’d forgotten what it felt like not to be scared; what it felt like was a miracle.

Emma opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents of the shelves. “What should I make for dinner to celebrate?” she asked Kelly.

“I don’t want you to make anything,” Kelly said, leaning on her crutches and putting cat food in Meow’s bowl while Meow and King were jumping up on her, waiting to be fed. “I want you to go out with Donald.”

“But—” Emma protested.

“I mean it, Emma,” Kelly said, overriding Emma’s objection before she could make it. “There’s no reason to stay home with me. I’m perfectly fine.”

Emma looked at her and considered. “Well, Donald did call
and—”

Kelly interrupted her again. “Then it’s settled.”

Emma closed the refrigerator and watched as Kelly propped the crutches against the counter and put her weight on her left foot so she could bend down to put the animals’ bowls of food on the floor. “I’ll be home by midnight,” she said to Kelly.

Kelly stood up and placed the crutches under her arms again. “You don’t have a curfew. You don’t have to be home by midnight.”

“You know what my mother said,” Emma said with a mischievous smile. “There’s nothing you can do after midnight that you can’t do before midnight if you want.”

Kelly laughed and so did Emma. It felt good to laugh together again.

Winslow stood with Broadbent over Arthur Jones’s body. She stared at the undistinguished face of the serial rapist and killer and wondered as she had in the past when she’d encountered evil in its human form why this man had lived as he’d lived and devoted himself to inflicting suffering on others and then taking their lives. She knew that psychologically there were reasons for it. There always were. Although in Jones’s case she might never learn what they were. Kelly York had seen it in his chart. If you believed in astrology as Kelly did, the arrangement of the planets at the time of Jones’s birth reflected the existence of conditions that had made him who he was, psychologically, emotionally, intellectually; they had shown his potential to succumb to darkness or to seek healing, and he had succumbed to darkness.

But even if the planets reflected the conditions that had created Jones’s potential for darkness or light, there was another
why
that Winslow could not answer: Why had Jones been born
on that particular date at that particular time? If she believed in God, Winslow might have said that God had chosen that time for Jones. But she knew from her Sunday school classes that God also had given man free will, and that meant that Jones had chosen between light and darkness for himself, and that still left her with the question. Why?

She saw that men from the local coroner’s office were bringing stretchers to take away Jones and the felled FBI agent. For a moment, she mourned the loss of a colleague; then, her wall of reserve up again, she turned to Broadbent. “Did you call Detective Stevens to tell him about Jones?”

Broadbent shook his head.

Winslow took out her cell phone. “Might as well call him and let him know we’ve done our job.”