The Skeleton's Knee by Archer Mayor Page B

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