Mercy (54 page)

With his eyes still fixed on her, he raised his left arm, jerked it a little to reveal his watch and cut his eyes to the dial, then back to her, lowering his arm.

“I just don’t agree with you,” he said matter-of-factly. It was as if they had been the only two people in the room. He had been slouching as best he could in the metal typing chair, legs crossed, hands rammed in his pockets, and now he sat up and swung around to Frisch.

“I want to interview Dr. Broussard myself,” he said. “If it’s all right with you and Detective Palma, I’d like her to go along on that.” He turned and raised his eyebrows at her questioningly.

“Fine with me,” she said. That was smooth, very smooth, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. “But wait a minute. I don’t want to be co-opted here.” She was zeroed in on Grant. “I’d like a little more consideration to my proposal than that you just disagree with me.”

“Look,” Grant said, squaring around to her again, his tone very carefully walking the thin wire of condescension. “If we were talking pure theory here, argument for the sake of argument, I’d say you’ve got as valid a perspective as the next person. But we’re talking facts. Odds. And the facts are the odds are lousy to none that this killer is a woman. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just not in the cards.”

“You don’t think any of what I said has validity?”

“Of course it does, if you’re talking theory, if you’re going to ignore the historical facts in these kinds of cases.”

“The known historical facts,” Palma insisted.

“Okay, fine. The known facts,” Grant conceded. “But like I said, when you go beyond the known facts then you’re speculating, you’re into theory.”

Palma looked at him.

“You’re not living up to your opening speech,” she said coolly. She could almost feel Frisch’s blood pressure accelerating, and hers, too. She was sticking her neck way out on this one, but her indignation gave her the backbone. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was being humored by Grant, that he would have given any one of the men a better hearing.

“You told us this morning that this methodology you use is as much art as science. You said you didn’t care if the method was scientific or artistic or spiritual as long as it works. Well, I think my perspective is just as valid as ‘drawing pictures of butterflies.’ You were making a pitch to us not to reject your methodology out of hand, even laid a guilt trip on us, saying if we rejected this methodology we’d better be damn sure we could live with the consequences. To know if a method is going to work you’ve got to use it. Give it a shot. Fine. As far as I’m concerned, you need to practice what you preach,” she snapped.

Grant stared at her coolly over the crooked bridge of his nose.

“I’m not directing this investigation,” he said calmly.

That was the ultimate male weapon, the one irrational tool they all fell back on when nothing else was working out: equanimity. It was a gesture of superiority that infuriated her even more.

“I came down here to do what you requested me to do,” he said. “I have an expertise you thought you needed. Are you changing your mind now?”

“Don’t twist this around,” Palma was quick to come back. She wasn’t going to be the first one to lower the rapier. “Look, all I’m wanting you to do is to consider female suspects as well as male suspects. We seem to have a case in which the circumstances indicate that that’s not an unreasonable request.”

Grant’s expression was impenetrable. She didn’t know if he was going to explode or burst out laughing. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her aggressiveness nor did he appear to be afraid of losing face in the confrontation with her. Normally she could tell when she was putting a man on the spot, when she had gone so far that he considered himself at risk of having his ego damaged. But Grant was untouchable. Nothing she had said changed his expression or his manner, and she was pretty sure his remarkable self-possession was not an act. She was confident she could spot an act. Grant was simply more sure of himself than she had imagined.

Then he started nodding slowly. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve made a good point. I’d like to talk it out with you. But until we can figure out how to use what you’ve come up with, why don’t we go ahead and play out what we’ve got?”

He paused for her response. It could have been a gesture of sarcasm, but Grant didn’t play to it. He simply waited. He seemed even genuinely polite. If it was a ploy, Palma couldn’t figure out to what purpose. He was right. What did she expect them to do, shut everything down and reorganize?

“Fine,” she said.

Grant turned to Frisch once again. “Okay with you?”

Frisch nodded. “Good.” He looked around the office at the other detectives, who hadn’t made a peep during the entertainment Palma had provided. “Anything else?”

With a gesture of finality, Grant ran his fingers along the closed flap of his envelope.

“Okay,” Frisch said. “Then let’s divvy up the chores.”

As she wadded up the paper from her sandwich and started stuffing it in her sack, Palma had to struggle to keep from panting. Frisch’s voice was way back in her head, outlining the assignments. When she glanced again at Grant he was looking at her, and something moved around the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes that might have grown into a smile if he had let it.

She spent the early afternoon at the computer bringing her supplements up to date and conferring with Leeland to see if anything she had turned up in her interviews might connect with any of the information that had come in on the tip line. The frustration of having to take time off to do the paperwork was making her irritable, as though the investigation was in limbo until she could get back onto the streets.

But the investigation was far from being at a standstill. Though Childs and Garro had gone home for a few hours’ sleep, Cushing and Boucher were already out on the first shift of the Reynolds stakeout. Haws and Marley had gone to Mello’s residence to get pictures that Reynolds might have had access to and to take them to the dominatrix Mirel Farr to see if Mello had ever been through there, or if she knew anything about Mello’s being involved in rough trade, or if by chance she knew whether or not Reynolds knew her. They would also have questions for her about the whereabouts of Clyde Barbish. Birley had drawn the missing Denise Reynolds Kaplan, going through her missing person file and interviewing women in Samenov’s group who knew her.

It was three-twenty in the afternoon, and her stomach was growling when Grant finally appeared at the door of the task force room where Palma had been talking to Leeland. He was by himself, his tie undone, his coat draped over one arm as he rolled down his shirt sleeves.

“You at a stopping point?” he asked. “I’d like to try to catch Broussard.”

“Sure,” she said. “Let me get my things.”

Grant followed her to her office, where she took her SIG out of the filing cabinet, put it in her purse, and slung the purse over her shoulder.

“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to get something to eat. We can make a quick stop at any number of places.”

“No, that sounds good to me,” he said, pulling on his suit coat. He seemed a little sober. “All I’ve had since breakfast is too much coffee, an RC, and a package of cheese crackers out of the vending machine in the cafeteria.”

“What about Hauser? Is he going to want something?”

Grant shook his head with a crooked grin. “Hauser’s on his way back to Quantico. Something came up. This was kind of a freebie for him anyway, to give him a chance to get away from teaching cadets for a while. He wasn’t too happy about going back this soon.”

“You had any Mexican food since you’ve been here?”

“Nope.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

Cafe Tropical’s pink stucco exterior was washed out to a pastel rose in the gray afternoon mist as Palma and Grant made their way through the lush foliage of the courtyard with its palms and banana trees glistening in the mist. The cooking odors of fried rice and corn tostados met them before they even reached the front door, and by the time they were shown to their table near the windows that looked out into the rainy courtyard, Palma could almost taste the cold beer. She recommended a few dishes on the menu and suggested a couple of bottles of Pacifico, which the waiter brought immediately in two tall amber bottles with canary yellow labels.

“This a regular spot for you?” Grant asked, swallowing his first mouthful of Pacifico.

“Actually, no.” Palma pulled back her hair, gathering it with both hands behind her head to get it out of her way. “I tend to eat at places a little more ‘downstream,’ as Birley says. I grew up in one of the barrios on the east side. Not a lot of pink stucco and fancy tiled patios down there.” She smiled. “But it’s good to keep the fantasy going for out-of-towners.”

Grant’s eyes returned her smile and he nodded, understanding. “You still have family here?”

“My mother still lives in the barrio. And aunts and uncles and cousins, lots of cousins.”

“That’s good,” Grant said.

“What about you?”

Grant shook his head, taking another sip from his Pacifico. “My folks are dead, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters. Marne…has sisters in California. Two. Mostly, it’s just me and the twins. And now, of course, the girls are beginning to have interests that tend to turn their attention elsewhere. I see it coming—marrying, moving away—and I know it’s the natural course of things. But I don’t like it much.”

This time his smile was not so successful, and he covered it with a shrug, then looked out the window to the courtyard, glancing around at the shiny wet banana trees and the white blossoms of the Mexican orange flowers that were still blooming along the borders of the walks.

Palma again wanted to ask him about the Chinese woman.

She looked at him and studied his profile in the gray spring light, tried to imagine him involved in the kind of mysterious affair with this exotic woman of whom Garrett had spoken. Grant didn’t seem to her like the kind of man who would have had that affair. Whatever had happened, she didn’t think it had gone well for him. He did not have the look of a man at peace with himself, and Palma guessed that an affair that was as tumultuous as his was reputed to have been would have left him a little shaken. Just why he was shaken was the story Palma wanted to hear.

The waiter brought their orders with two new frosty bottles of Pacifico. As they began eating, it started raining again and the courtyard was suddenly obscured in a heavy downpour, the sound of it drumming loudly on the broad, sagging banana leaves. Grant watched it a few minutes while he ate. Suddenly he looked at Palma.

“Listen,” he said. “Let’s talk about your theory.”

Palma looked at him. “What do you want to know?” She was surprised he had managed to wait this long before bringing it up.

“When did this idea first come to you?”

Palma was suddenly skeptical. The question was not what she had expected; it was elementary at worst, circumlocutious at best. What was he trying to do, put her at ease? Was this the investigative equivalent of “Tell me about yourself”?

“You were expecting something more piercing?” he asked. He must have read it all over her face.

“No,” she lied.

Grant studied her for a moment, and she didn’t have the presence of mind to get on with the answer. She picked up her bottle of beer and drank the last of it.

“You think I have an ‘attitude’ about women?” he asked.

She put down the beer bottle and shoved it aside so she didn’t have to look over it or around it to see him.

“I know I was a little pushy back there,” she said. “But I honestly feel like you’ve got blinders on regarding this. I hope it didn’t come across as a ‘woman’s issue’ argument.” She paused. “It was—is—an honest disagreement.”

“Fine,” he said. “I accept that. The only thing is, I don’t think you believe that I accept it. My question just now was an honest one as well. I just wanted to know when it was you came up with the idea that the killer could possibly be a woman?”

Touche, she thought. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her backpedal. Rather than say anything at all, she went right into it.

“I’d like to say it hit me in a flash of inspiration,” she said, peeling a corner of the Pacifico label off the bottle and rolling it into a little pellet, watching her fingers. “But it didn’t. It was simply an accumulation of facts and feelings that didn’t seem to add up to anything else.” She looked up. “To me, anyway.” She tossed the pellet against the saltshaker. “There was the discovery of child abuse among the women in the S&M group. There were those…wrenching letters we found in Louise Ackley’s house. Genuine chronicles of horror. Mancera’s pitiful story about Vickie Kittrie’s life. Terry’s stories about Louise Ackley’s hunger for humiliation at the hands of Gil Reynolds. Bessa’s disavowal of violence and manhating, her invective against child abuse, and her ‘advisement’ that women could be just as violent as men.”

She looked out the window and was surprised to see the rain had stopped, and across the street, above the trees of a small park, the clouds were separating. The low afternoon sun was coming through in rays of brilliant orange light as if they had been doused with gasoline and set on fire, igniting the rain on the dripping trees.

“And to tell you the truth,” she said, turning back to Grant, “there was something my mother said a few days ago. She told me an extraordinary story about two women I’d known all my life, only I didn’t really know them, which shouldn’t have been any surprise to me, but it was. Anyway, after we had talked about them and we had been sitting quietly for a few minutes, she made the observation that ‘women are human first, and women second.’”

She looked at Grant, half expecting to see the light of revelation in his eyes, but he simply sat there with the same sober dispassion that she now had come to associate with him, and which she was increasingly convinced had as little to do with the real Sander Grant as the booming voice had to do with the real Wizard of Oz. But the light of revelation did not flicker, and Grant continued to wait.