Mercy (55 page)

“How about some coffee?” she said to cover up her disappointment.

The waiter brought their coffee and set it down with a small pitcher of cream and then cleared away their plates. Grant offered the cream to Palma, and when she was through he added some to his own cup. He stirred his coffee casually, looking into his cup, and Palma watched as the side of his face began to burn with a soft gold light that grew brighter and harder until exactly half his face, the median line following the crooked course of his broken nose, was frozen in molten gold like the mask of Agamemnon. Outside the wet tiles of the courtyard were glazed in polished bronze.

“I think it has something to do with revenge,” she said. “It has to do with an abused child and a lifetime of choking on a passionate, deepening hatred.” She sipped her coffee. When she set down her cup she had to pull back the hair at her temples, running her fingers through the tangles created by the humidity.

“One of the women in Samenov’s group?” Grant asked.

“I imagine.”

“You don’t have a specific suspect.”

“Well, obviously Kittrie. God knows she has reasons. Saulnier. But I think Kittrie’s ‘faction’ must be full of women harboring resentments against men.”

“Against men,” he said, pausing. “Then I suppose you have an explanation as to why we have women victims?”

She nodded. “The answer to that, I think, lies in something you said.”

Grant registered a mild surprise. She smiled, but not too much.

“You said, ‘The killer is killing the woman he creates, not the woman he is killing.’ I think you have the right idea, but the wrong gender. I’m guessing it has something to do with the role-playing inherent in the S&M scenarios. Saulnier has said that a woman who wants a woman wants a woman. Maybe our killer, a member of Kittrie’s group—all victims of child abuse and proponents of S&M—has a favorite scenario that involves a fantasy in which her partner is a ‘man,’ the man who taught her about sex when she was only a child. This early abuse—her ‘sex education’ which has caused her lifelong emotional pain—is re-enacted in this S&M scenario in which the victim plays a man. The abusive man of the killer’s childhood. The scenario is played out, as you said before, up to the point where it begins to diverge from the original plan. Then it goes wrong, for the victim. Afterward, ‘he’ is cleaned up and remade into a woman. An effort, perhaps, to undo what had gone wrong.

“What she does,” Palma said, “is she nourishes her. She takes care of her. Cleans her, gets rid of any blood. Washes her with bath oils. Combs her hair, maybe the way she remembered, the way she liked. She sprays it. Applies makeup, very carefully, very expertly, not wanting to get it wrong. She lays her out. At first I thought it was a funereal posture, but I’m not sure anymore. I have a feeling it’s not that at all. The pillow, her hair on the pillow. The perfume.” Palma shook her head. “And then she lies down beside her. She talks to her, maybe touches her near her wounds, apologizes, explains herself to her. Goes over her grievances, tries to get her to understand why she had to do what she did. She really wants her to understand. She cries. If only she had…or hadn’t…If only she would…or wouldn’t…”

Palma stopped, looked at Grant. “I don’t know. Something like that,” she said. “It seems to me it would go along those lines.”

“But made up to resemble the same woman every time?” Grant asked. “Why the same woman? That’s got to be significant.”

“I’m sure it is,” Palma said. “But I haven’t come up with any answer. Maybe she’s the ideal woman. The killer’s mother.” She shrugged.

Grant started slowly shaking his head. “I don’t know. When something comes up that doesn’t fall within the loop of our behavior models, we usually don’t jump to the conclusion that we’ve discovered another species. Rather, we tend to think we’ve been reading something wrong, not looking at it the way we should.”

Palma nodded, but didn’t say anything. She sipped her coffee, glanced out to the courtyard. The sky was clearing enough now that the day was lightening even though the sun was low in the sky. The tiles in the courtyard were beginning to steam. Grant had put his finger on the curved handle of his spoon and was rocking it lightly, preoccupied, not looking at her but at the spoon and the tiny messy pattern it was making in a droplet of coffee. By this time she realized that she had grown fond of his eyes, even the beginnings of the crow’s-feet at the corners.

“What about Reynolds?” Grant asked, looking up. “How do you look at him now? Have you changed your mind?”

Palma nodded. “You know what did it for me? When I first noticed those wrinkles on Bernadine Mello’s scarlet silk sheet, I instantly knew they were significant, momentously significant. When I finally got back to the office and had the opportunity to look at the crime scene photographs from the Doubletree Hotel and Samenov’s condo, I knew we’d been missing something that was important to the killer. Important because it was such a minuscule detail, but one that the killer remained consistent in observing. Then, as time went by and I began to realize what the wrinkles meant…that the killer was, by lying down with his victim, engaging in an act that was essentially one of compassion, of nurturing. That was the moment when I began to have my doubts about Reynolds.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe the man is capable of compassion, even in a sick and twisted way. He’s all hate. I have no doubt that Haws and Marley will eventually connect him to Louise Ackley and Lalo Montalvo’s death. But is he killing these women? I don’t believe so. There’s a subtle complexity here that I don’t believe Reynolds is capable of devising.”

“Because he isn’t that complex?” Grant asked.

“No, because he isn’t that subtle.” Palma stopped, her eyes drifting away from Grant to the courtyard as she thought back. “This morning, at Mancera’s, when Terry was telling me about Reynolds’s delight in humiliating Louise Ackley, she made the point that Louise had told her that Reynolds always left her ‘in the middle of it.’ She said he always left her ‘stranded,’ left her tied, covered in blood or feces or whatever it was they were doing. This heightened her humiliation, that he would consider her such a nothing that he could walk away from her like that, naked and bound and stinking.”

The entire courtyard was steaming in the heat of the falling afternoon sun which cast its turning light through the hazy humidity and bathed the low palms and banana trees and white hibiscus in a muted copper light that, for some reason, struck Palma as painfully sad. She looked back at Grant, who had not taken his eyes off her.

“Does that sound like the person who washes his victims?” Palma asked. “Who combs their hair, perfumes them, washes them in bath oils, and then lies down beside them for what must be a strange scene of quiet whispers between the living and the dead? Reynolds hasn’t got the touch of delicacy. He isn’t capable of the sensitivity required in those last moments with the body.”

Grant was looking at her, still as a basilisk.

Then he said, “Christ, you’ve really put yourself into this, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have.”

For the first time since she had met him, she thought she saw a twitch of hesitation in his expression, but she didn’t understand what the hesitation connoted. When he responded, he did so obliquely, but it was clear enough she had gotten through to him.

“But I’ve got to satisfy myself about Reynolds. We’ve got to go ahead and get the search warrant.”

“I’ve already filled out the paperwork,” Palma said. “Frisch is having it taken to Judge Arens now. We’ll have it when we get back.”

He looked at her. “Good,” he said.

“You didn’t call and make an appointment with Broussard, did you?” she asked.

Grant shook his head.

“Good,” she said.

44

A
smooth, undulating reef of slate gray clouds hung in the western sky just above the tree line as Palma and Grant followed the traffic outbound on the still wet and steaming pavement of Woodway. The rain was moving west, out of the city, and the falling sun was racing the gloomy weather toward the horizon. By the time the clouds were far enough away to clear the sky, the sun was already dropping into the pines and the long shadows came out to meet them on the glistening street. The rain had cleaned the city, which now appeared more three-dimensional than usual, as though viewed through a stereoscope.

Palma and Grant turned into the cinder drive of Dr. Dominick Broussard’s estate and immediately veered to the right on a narrow lane that brought them to the small office bungalow isolated by woods from Broussard’s home. The cinder drive made a circle in front of the office, where a small black Mercedes 560SL was parked at the door. Palma pulled up behind the car and cut the engine.

“That’s about seventy thou worth of paint and metal,” Grant said. “Is that his?”

“Not according to the records,” Palma said.

“He sees clients on weekends?”

“Not according to his appointment secretary.”

Grant looked at her. “I talked to her yesterday,” Palma explained. “In case I ever needed a psychiatrist. This woman seems to be something of a girl Friday, takes care of everything for him. I just chatted with her, got a general layout of the way Broussard works. She wouldn’t discuss fees with me, though. Said I would have to make an appointment with the doctor. I said that even though Dr. Broussard had been recommended to me, I was a little uncomfortable going into ‘all of this’ with a man. Did Broussard see many women? She said that actually all but two of his clients were women.”

Grant nodded, still looking at her.

“How did you know he’d be here rather than at his home over there?” he asked, taking a pen from his pocket and jotting down the license number on the Mercedes.

“I didn’t. I just wanted to see where he met his clients.”

Grant turned and looked through the car window at the front of the office again. Like Broussard’s home, it was bricked with a vaguely Georgian architectural style. Ivy was thick on the walls, and the stone walk that led to the front door was littered with leaves knocked off the trees by the two days of rain. Water was dripping here and there off the eaves of the slate roof. “Well, let’s see if he’s busy.”

They got out of the car and Palma slipped her radio into her shoulder bag and locked the car. There was no doorbell beside the brass plaque mounted on the brick among the ivy and engraved with Broussard’s name, so Grant pressed down the ornate bronze latch on the door and pushed it open. There were no lights on in the waiting room except for a black light in a large glass case of orchids covering most of the far wall, its cold, eerie glow supplemented by the dying gray light of the afternoon filtering in through the two large casement windows overlooking the circle drive. Grant looked into the door that led to Broussard’s secretary’s office, which was arranged more like the office of a concierge than a receptionist. Obviously, Broussard wanted his clients to feel as if they were coming to see him in a domestic setting, rather than a clinical one.

Grant looked at Palma, made a shrugging expression with his face, and stepped into the office doorway while Palma went to the doorway that led out into a corridor. She looked to her right and saw a door slightly ajar and revealing a well-appointed powder room. Then she looked to her left and saw a closed door with a dim light coming from under it, and beyond that a French door looking out to an alcove where a large Labrador was sleeping in the blue light.

Just then the door eased open slowly, and Palma quickly hissed at Grant, knocked loudly on the door frame in the hallway, and stepped back, pulling out her shield.

“Hello, anybody here? Hello.” She glanced again at Grant and stepped back into the doorway and looked to her left again. “Hello?” She caught the silhouette of a barrel-chested man against the blue light of the French door, a handgun raised shoulder high. She fell back. “Shit. Police!” she shouted. “Drop the gun! Police!” She stuck her shield out into the corridor, and Grant was instantly beside her with his gun out, frowning at her, trying to read what was happening.

“Police!” he added his voice, and glanced around at the front door.

“How…How do I know you’re the police?” Broussard’s voice was unsure.

“Look at the shield!” Palma shouted, and shook her hand dangling the badge. A corridor light came on. “Sergeant Carmen Palma, Houston Police Department!”

“Yeah,” Broussard shouted. “Okay. I see it.”

“Put down the gun,” Palma repeated. “Make sure the safety’s on.”

“Okay, fine,” Broussard said. “Here, now, it’s on the floor.”

Grant stepped out into the corridor, now holding his FBI shield in front of him, followed by Palma. Broussard was standing beside the opened door to his office looking uncomfortable, the handgun on the floor in front of him.

“Jesus Christ,” he said as they approached him in the hall. “What the hell are you doing?”

“We just came by to talk to you,” Palma said. “The door was unlocked. This is an office, isn’t it?”

“Of course. But hell, people make appointments.”

“You always come at unexpected callers with a gun?” Grant asked.

“I’ve got a security light in my office,” Broussard blustered. “Comes on when the front door opens. Nobody was scheduled. When the light came on, and I didn’t hear anybody, nobody said anything, I thought I was being burgled. I’m not normally here on Saturdays. I thought maybe I was being robbed.”

“Sorry, thought I was loud enough,” Palma said, not putting too fine a point on it.

Broussard looked at her skeptically and then at Grant.

“I’m Special Agent Sander Grant, FBI,” he said. “If you’ve got time, we’d like to talk with you.” He was removing the clip from Broussard’s automatic. “You have a license for this?”

“Of course. Damn. Don’t you people believe in calling first?” He was still shaken and was trying to control his temper.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” Palma said. “We just didn’t get around to it.”

“Jesus,” Broussard said.

Grant handed Broussard his gun, but kept the clip. “Do you have a client in your office?” he asked.