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“What bar?” Simon repeated. “Rightnow, it’s your best alibi for the moment when another woman was murdered.”
Amber saw the fear on Kevin’s facethen as he realized just how much trouble he was in.
“Carty’s, all right? I was thereuntil probably one. They’ll vouch for me.”
It was a poor alibi, butconsidering that he already had one for the day of Katrina’s murder, Amber wasstarting to think that he wasn’t their guy.
“Are you into astrology, Kevin?”Amber asked.
“What? Why?”
“Katrina was. Are you?”
Kevin shrugged. “I figure… therehas to be a reason why things turn out the way they do, right? And Katrina wasso into it all that she kind of convinced me. Not like that sister of hers.”
“The one you tried to kiss,pretending you couldn’t tell the difference?” Simon said.
Kevin shrugged. “Hey, I wasn’ttrying to cheat on her! That was an accident. Katrina was… she was perfect, youknow? And yes, the whole astrology thing made her a little quirky, having toadjust her day depending on what the stars said and all that, but I got used toit. She even gave me…”
He tailed off, but Amber wasn’tabout to let something like that go.
“Gave you what, Kevin?”
Kevin hesitated, but then reachedinto his sweater to pull out a pendant in the shape of the Gemini symbol. Itwas on a leather thong, the design of the symbol worked in iridescent metal,the lines smooth and flowing.
“Can I take a picture of that?”Amber asked.
“Sure, I guess. Why?”
The answer to that question wassimple. Everywhere they looked, there seemed to be more astrology connected tothis case. Amber was starting to suspect that she needed to know far more thanshe currently did about it.
She snapped a quick picture on herphone, then turned to Simon.
“We might as well cut him loose.I’m pretty sure that it’s not him.”
Simon nodded. “All right. ButKevin, I will be putting in a call to the Keystone PD to swing by, andyou’d better be home when they do.”
Kevin nodded mutely. As soon asSimon let go of his arm, he bolted back in the direction of his home.
“What now?” Simon asked.
Amber thought for a moment. “Ithink we need to pause and work out some of what’s going on here. I also wantto take another run at the code the killer left. I’m sure the answer’s theresomewhere, if I can just work it out.”
CHAPTER NINE
It felt strange to Amber, workingon a killer’s cipher in the middle of a restaurant, while Simon sat oppositeher, eating a burger. Amber picked at her fries as she worked. She was hungry,but her attention was on the cipher in front of her.
“It looks like, I don’t know, somekind of shifting cipher key, but it’s hard to find exactly what it’s based on,”Amber said. She had a laptop open in front of her. If the restaurant staff hadguessed that two federal agents were working on a murder investigation in themiddle of their restaurant, they didn’t seem to care.
“Something astrological?” Simonguessed. “It seems to be what this killer’s obsessed with.”
Amber nodded. He had a point there.The astrology was the linking factor between the two crime scenes, the thingthat made them think that this was the same killer at all.
“The trouble is that there’s so muchthat’s astrological,” Amber said. She had pulled up a few pages onastrology on her laptop, and the wealth of information on the subject there wasmore than a little overwhelming. “There’s stuff about birth signs and planetaryconjunctions, when the signs are retrograde, how the signs fit into theclassical four elements, and that’s before you start looking at the historicallinks.”
“Historical links?” Simon said.
“Things like Isaac Newton being asmuch into astrology and magic as astronomy and natural science,” Amber replied.“I guess they didn’t make the distinction. I’d guess that isn’t relevant here,but it’s hard to see what is relevant.”
