Mercy (31 page)

“In what way?”

Claire inhaled deeply of her cigarette and held it. She looked at Palma. “They’re amoral,” she said slowly, and the two words oozed out of her mouth on a long snake of smoke.

If she had meant the response to be an eerie one, she succeeded. Palma now saw Reynolds’s spurious humility as poisonously cynical; in retrospect it seemed especially depraved.

“Do you know if Bristol or Reynolds ever switched the roles so that they were the punishers?”

“Yeah. Reynolds. That’s his natural bent. I think he only let Kittrie whip him so he could get her naked. She wouldn’t touch him otherwise.”

“Do you know any of the women he punished?”

Claire waited a moment before responding, and for an instant Palma thought she might refuse to answer. Then she said, “I don’t know. You’ll have to get that from someone else. Even my rumors are third-rate on that question.” But this time Palma didn’t believe her. Even in the marbled shadows of the kiosk Palma could sense the change in Claire’s demeanor. The question had more substance than the woman wanted to take responsibility for.

“You can see where this is going,” Palma said. “I’ve got to know more about him. If you could just give me a name, someone who’d know, someone who could lead me to someone else.”

In the shadow Claire flicked the ash off her cigarette and for a moment the tip was a single bright eye that suddenly glared at Palma, then clouded over again, and waited.

“You talked to Linda Mancera.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Talk to her again.”

Somebody coughed deeply across the courtyard, and they both turned to see another white-coated student in jeans and jogging shoes heading toward the lighted back door where the girl had come out earlier. He cleared his phlegmy throat and spat to the side of the doorway before yanking open the glass panel and disappearing inside.

“What do you know about Helena Saulnier?” Palma changed directions.

“Helena’s very straightforward, not too complicated psychologically. She’s a manhater. A week after the last of her two children moved away from home for college, Helena walked out on her astonished husband after twenty-six years of marriage. She’s got a powerful dislike for anything with a penis.”

“Then how does she tolerate Nathan Isenberg?”

Claire stopped in the middle of pulling on her cigarette and snapped her head around at Palma. She looked at her with round eyes for a moment and then burst out laughing, her voice carrying in the damp air, a muted echo ricocheting off the sheer walls of the surrounding buildings. “Jesus H. Christ! What a world we live in!” She dropped her cigarette on the cement floor of the kiosk and ground it out with the pointed toe of her shoe. “I’m sorry,” she said, still laughing. She looked at Palma. “Nathan hasn’t got a penis. Nathan is actually Natalie Isenberg.”

Palma watched Claire laugh again, Claire who wasn’t Claire, laughing about Nathan who was Natalie. Weird lost its meaning with people like this.

“So what about Sandra Moser?” Palma asked. She had almost forgotten.

Claire, who had leaned forward out of the shadows to laugh, leaned back again into the corner. This time her leg did start swinging, and she folded her arms under her breasts.

“I read the papers,” she said. “It must’ve been grim.” She paused, not for Palma to affirm her assumption, but to collect her thoughts. “I’ve been with her a number of times. She was very sweet, a beautiful body, really wonderful body. She liked to use her mouth a lot; she was very good with it.” Her tone was almost reminiscent. “But Vickie discovered her…and liked her. Dorothy wasn’t too possessive with Vickie. Really, after a while I think she just tolerated whatever it was Vickie was into. Men, women, S&M. Whatever. She knew she couldn’t control her, couldn’t demand any kind of reasonable fidelity of her.

“When Vickie came to Houston and found her way into the group, her freewheeling sexuality created something of a sensation. I mean, we were a relatively sedate bunch. Predominantly feminine, predominantly bisexual, avoided the role-playing scenes at the clubs, nobody really kinky among us. Up to then our affairs were deliciously illicit, which was excitement enough for most of us. Nobody was looking for danger, as far as I knew. But Vickie changed all that. She brought a style to the group that many of us hadn’t seen before. Suddenly there were secrets everywhere, and a feeling of something perverse and malign crept into some of the relationships.

“Sandra was always a little frisky, and Kittrie recognized her willingness to take a dare. She got her into S&M. Vickie trained her to top, and Sandra liked it. Then Vickie mixed her up with guys like Reynolds and Bristol, and I heard some pretty hair-raising things went on. Sandra’s death just seems to me to be an extension of all that. I don’t know the details, naturally, but it sounds to me like somebody lost control.”

“Twice?”

Claire shrugged. “I don’t know; that’s out of my league.” She was quiet a moment and Palma could hear the wet night dripping off the side of the kiosk.

“Who do you think was capable of doing that?” Palma ventured.

Claire stared out to the darkness across the mall, beyond the pale gloam of the mercury vapor lamps. She shook her head, her eyes not focusing on anything in particular.

“Who could have killed the two of them? I don’t know. I don’t know anyone who could have killed them in the way I imagine they must’ve died. But none of us know people like that, do we? We only know people to the extent they want us to know them.” She shrugged. “They interview the neighbors. ‘He was the nicest guy. Quiet, kept to himself. Never caused any trouble. I can’t believe this is the same man.’ Well, hell. It isn’t the same man they know.”

She was right, of course. And it was precisely that sort of invisibility that made a man who did the sort of things that were done to Dorothy Samenov so mythologically horrifying.

“Look,” Claire said, her eyes coming back to Palma. “I have two boys in high school. My husband is an ophthalmic surgeon with a private practice. I…I’m a gynecologist…for Christ’s sake. Can’t you see what those photographs would do to my career, not to mention my family?” Her voice had a slight quaver. “Look.” She leaned forward, her hands open, palms up, resting on her knees, side by side. “I know what you said…not being able to do anything about them. But I’ve cooperated here…even when you gave me no incentive regarding the pictures. If…If there’s anything you can do about them, will you help me out? I’m not going to make excuses for them…I know how stupid it was…I made a mistake. But…they were meant to be private. It wasn’t like…I don’t want my life to go down the drain because of those four photographs.”

Roughly half her face was palely lighted through the net of stringy shadows; the other half was lost in a vague dusk. But Palma could see enough to discern the anxiety that she had managed to hide up to now. She sympathized with Claire. It surprised her, but she did.

“I’ll do what I can,” Palma said. “I can’t promise you other detectives won’t see them, but I can make sure they don’t get out of the division. When this is all over…I’ll get them back to you.”

Claire eased her head back into the denser shadows and was very still, saying nothing. Then, “If I can help you…any more…” she said. “I know how this must look, my seeming to be more concerned about those pictures than for Sandra and Dorothy.” Her voice was strained. “But…they’re gone, aren’t they? And I’m not. My husband isn’t. My family isn’t.”

Palma nodded and stood. “You know how to get in touch with me,” she said. “If there’s anything else, if you just want to talk…I live alone.”

Claire nodded, but she didn’t get up, didn’t let Palma see her face again. Palma stepped out into the mist, which was heavy now, wetting her face as she walked briskly across the courtyard. She looked back once, after she’d gotten into the shadow of the library and before she started around the corner to the car. She saw a waft of smoke lift out of the kiosk and drift up through the dancing mist.

FOURTH DAY

27

Thursday, June 1

P
alma called Linda Mancera at her home number early Thursday morning before Mancera went to work. When Palma told her it was important that she see her immediately, Mancera readily assented. But, like Andrew Moser, this time she did not want Palma to come to her office. Instead she asked Palma to come to her home in the north Tanglewood section of west Houston, not far off Woodway.

Mancera’s home was a modern two-story condo, one of two buildings inside a spacious walled compound with wrought-iron gates, security card access, and the pretentious name of Cour Jardin. Palma rolled down the car window and picked up a telephone inside a clear plastic cabinet beside the card slot. But the gate was already opening, so she returned the telephone to its cradle and drove between the parting wings of the gateway.

The compound was small, but the grounds were professionally maintained. Already this morning the brick drive had been washed down and the beds of liriope and cape plumbago and sprengeri fern that grew around the courtyard were still wet from a predawn watering of the sprinkler system. The two condos sat at oblique angles to each other facing the drive, and Palma parked in front of the one on the left as she had been instructed. She got out of the car and immediately smelled the heavy odor of woods and damp humus, and followed the crescent-shaped sidewalk bordered by waist-high hedges to the front door. Above her, the glass walls of the second floor sloped forward slightly under a deep eave, its view overlooking the courtyard and wooded drive beyond the gates.

Palma had to ring the doorbell twice before it was answered by a stunning black woman a little taller than Palma, her hair pulled back smoothly from her face and hanging in a single long braid over the front of one of her bare shoulders. She wore a long-sleeved ivory cotton-knit blouse and matching skirt that hung almost to her sandaled feet. Her lips were painted a glistening scarlet, and ivory loops with gold bands dangled from each ear.

“Hello, I’m Bessa,” she said with a faint smile. “Please come in. Linda is making coffee and had her hands in water.” She had an accent, perhaps Jamaican, and had pronounced her name Bay-sa.

They walked through a white living room with white furnishings to a dining room that looked out onto yet another courtyard and adjoined the kitchen where Linda Mancera was coming around the counter drying her hands on a towel.

“Good morning,” she said. “We’ll have coffee in just a minute. Can I get you some orange juice or something in the meantime?”

Palma thanked her, but declined. Mancera was dressed more casually than Bessa in a fitted pearl silk robe. She wore no makeup, and her hair was combed, but not fixed for work. She was completely at ease, as she had been in her office, but was obviously curious as to why Palma had needed to see her so urgently.

They visited a moment, standing around the kitchen while Mancera cut grapefruit and made toast for Bessa, who had disappeared and returned with a purse and a soft leather briefcase.

“Bessa works for another advertising agency,” Mancera said, smiling. “Between us we’re authorities on the professional gossip in this business.” She put the grapefruit and toast on the table while Bessa stood at the sink and took a handful of vitamins with a glass of water and then sat down and started eating while Mancera poured coffee for herself and Palma. They visited a few minutes more until Bessa had hurriedly eaten her grapefruit and one of the two pieces of toast. Then she grabbed her purse, told Palma goodbye, kissed Mancera, and left through a side courtyard to the garage.

They settled in the living room, and Palma gave Mancera a quick overview of where the investigation had taken her. Mancera’s equanimity was slightly shaken, and she nodded as Palma told her that she had learned of the lesbian connection. She seemed to have already guessed that. But as Palma continued, and began talking about the S&M aspects of the women’s relationships, Mancera grew uncomfortable, several times shifting her long legs, finally folding them both beside her in the huge, low-backed armchair she had chosen, her back to a palmetto-filled courtyard.

“Last night,” Palma said, “I learned of Gil Reynolds’s association with Kittrie, and that he also had had sadistic relationships with women as well. You told me last time you’d never heard of Gil Reynolds, but in light of everything I’ve learned since then, I have to believe you lied to me. About that for sure, and maybe about other things as well. But I understand that,” Palma added. “Right now I’m only interested in what you do, in fact, know about Reynolds.”

Mancera took her time. She sat her coffee cup on an Oriental table beside her chair, leaned her left forearm on the arm of the chair, and with her other hand massaged her foot covered by the silk robe.

“I seriously doubt if you understand,” she said finally. “But, anyway, you’ve gotten into it, haven’t you?” She shook her head. “This group of women…is not easy to understand. If Reynolds hadn’t told you, I wonder if any of us would have ever given in.” She looked at Palma. “I’m glad it wasn’t one of us.”

She picked up her cup and sipped the coffee. “Whoever you talked to last night must’ve given you a good picture of Reynolds,” she said. “It was wrong of me not to have come right out with his name from the beginning. But I knew he would lead you into the group.”

Suddenly Palma’s frustration spilled over. “Goddammit. I find that an incredible attitude,” she blurted. “When I talked to you the first time, you knew—even if I didn’t—that both victims were bisexual and that that possibly had something to do with their being victims in the first place. Didn’t it scare any of you? I don’t understand what the hell you thought you were going to accomplish by keeping your mouths shut. This guy’s going to keep coming. It should have scared the hell out of you.”

“It did.” Mancera said evenly. “But we’re used to being frightened. Not like that, no, but afraid. If you really think about it…sometimes there’s not a great deal of difference between losing your life and having it ruined. Those of us in the group live every day in fear of the latter possibility. We’re not too eager to jump up and throw off the covers and expose ourselves to the outside just to see who’s threatening us from the inside. Up to a point, we’re willing to take our chances.”