Mercy (62 page)

Grant said this with unmistakable satisfaction. Obviously, Broussard was tracking true to form.

“The interesting thing,” Grant added, “is that he gave it all to me. Straight out. He made no effort to blow smoke at me. It was as if he was saying, ‘Okay, here’s my life, here’s what it’s all about. But even knowing this won’t do you any good because I’m still more clever than you by half.’ He was challenging me. And that’s what I was waiting for.”

“Christ, when you think of it, he was extraordinarily cooperative,” Palma said. “Victimology, volunteering that he was Samenov’s doctor.”

“Exactly,” Grant said again. “We’ve got a lot of work to do on this guy.” Suddenly he turned back to Leeland. “Anything new from the lab?”

“Oh, yeah, there is.” Leeland reached around to his desk and shuffled through his files until he found a yellow-tagged report from the crime lab. “LeBrun brought it over shortly after five o’clock.” He flipped over the cover sheet and read a moment.

The telephones had been ringing steadily, keeping Castle and the clerk busy. When both of them were on the telephones as they were now, Leeland and Palma and Grant had to move a little closer together to cut down on the noise level.

“Okay,” Leeland said. “Remember we had five unidentified pubic hairs collected off of Dorothy Samenov’s bed. Of those five, three came from one source and the other two came from another single source. Well, the three pubic hairs matched Vickie’s.”

“I’ll be damned,” Palma said. “But we still have a chronology problem. A bath or shower most likely would have washed away any hair she picked up from sexual partners. If it was her habit to bathe in the mornings, then the period of time during which she could have had sexual relations would have spanned, say, from six in the morning until the time she was killed at approximately ten o’clock that night.”

“She might have bathed when she came home from work,” Grant said. “Then she would’ve picked up those hairs within about three hours or less, assuming it would have taken her, say, forty-five minutes to drive home from Cristof’s and bathe.”

“You might be able to account for her workday hours,” Leeland said. “She might have been with someone practically every minute of the day, which would confirm she was clean until she drove away from the club.”

“Which would put both sexual encounters within that three-hour period,” Grant said.

“Birley and Leeland speculated from the beginning that she might have had a menage a trois,” Palma said, looking at Leeland.

“But I didn’t have any idea that one of them would be Vickie Kittrie,” Leeland said. “Damn, we didn’t even know we were talking about women.”

“We still don’t,” Grant picked up the lab report from Lee-land’s desk and looked at it. “We still have two unknown pubic hairs. These women are
bi
sexual.”

Palma was disappointed. If Grant was seeing any validity at all in her theory—and she hoped that his elimination of Reynolds as a major suspect was an indication that he was—then he was not letting go of the traditional male killer theory very easily. But, realistically, she couldn’t expect him to.

“And these were all telogen hairs?”

“That’s right,” Leeland said. “No sheath cells, can’t be DNA-tested, can’t be sex-typed.”

“Still, it’s likely that Kittrie had been sexually involved with her within, at least, three hours of her death,” Grant said.

“Unless Samenov hadn’t bathed that evening and she had been with Vickie sometime earlier in the day,” Palma interjected. “Or unless she, for some reason, didn’t bathe that morning or even the night before and she was with someone twenty-four hours earlier in a menage a trois or separately, twenty-four to thirty-six hours apart.”

“Or,” Leeland said, “unless someone planted the hairs there, either Kittrie’s or the others, or both.”

“Reynolds,” Palma said. “He would’ve, and could’ve done that. He’s had access to Kittrie’s hair.”

But Grant wasn’t interested in Reynolds anymore. The evidence might well eliminate him as a suspect later on or, as was likely, implicate him in the Ackley-Montalvo deaths, but as far as Grant was concerned he was out of the picture on the serial killings. It had been a quick reversal, but Grant didn’t waste any time on rehashing previous miscalculations. Broussard now commanded his full attention.

“For all we know right now, Broussard could’ve had access to her hair too,” Grant said. “I think we’re going to find the good doctor’s sex life very interesting, and I’m not going to be too quick to exclude any of these women from having a part in it.”

“How realistic is it to believe that Broussard would’ve thought of something like this?” Leeland asked.

“Hell,” Grant said, “whoever’s killing these women would have had the intelligence, and probably the inclination, to have thought of everything we can think of, and I’m quite sure much more. You bet he could have planted the hair.” He thought a moment, tossed the lab report onto Leeland’s desk, and reached out and pulled up a straight-backed metal chair. He propped one foot on a bottom back rung.

“On the other hand,” he said, gripping the back of the chair with both hands, his arms straight out, “I’m wary of getting too fancy here. It’s easy to fool yourself with speculation. I’ve screwed up more than once doing just this sort of thing. It’s too easy to do, especially when you know you’ve got a formidable adversary. But we’ve got to keep it clean.” He looked at Palma with the first genuine grin she had seen from him. “We ought to take your dad’s advice, Carmen. We need to decide what
didn’t
happen.”

Leeland nodded thoughtfully, his eyes staying on Grant, who was now loosening his tie as he studied the flowcharts of events that Leeland and Castle had diagramed on a chalkboard behind Leeland’s desk.

“You’re right,” Leeland said. “But I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen anything quite like this. The facts accumulate, but they don’t seem to add up to anything.”

“They will,” Grant said. “They always do. We ought to do a couple of things, and unfortunately, I guess we’ll have to wait until Monday now, but we need to check with the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association to see if either of them have ever had any grievances filed against Dominick Broussard. Also,” he said, “even though he lives in a ritzy neighborhood and those areas are usually pretty tight-lipped when it comes to giving out information about each other, we ought to have people out there knocking on doors. See if Broussard has domestic help. These people ride the same bus lines together, and talk about their employers is often a major pastime. They’re good sources. We’ve got to find out more about him.

“I thought it was interesting, too, that he felt compelled to tell us that he’s likely not to have alibis for the nights in question. Actually, he already knows he doesn’t. He realized that when he read the newspaper account of Mello’s death which summarized all three murders and gave the dates.

“My back’s breaking,” he said, taking his foot off the chair rung, turning the chair around and sitting in it. “Christ,” he groaned.

Palma sat down on the edge of Castle’s desk beside her purse, and Leeland sat in his own desk chair.

“And we have to do something with Vickie Kittrie,” Grant said, crossing his legs a little stiffly.

“What we do with her is we make her a suspect,” Palma said. “Once more,” her voice was tight with frustration, “we’re working awfully hard to avoid the obvious. We’ve just been through all kinds of contortions with the chronology of Samenov’s last day to try to explain how Kittrie’s and someone else’s pubic hair got mixed in with Samenov’s—except to conclude that she was with Samenov when she died. That’s ludicrous. Why the hell don’t we consider the obvious: that Kittrie was with Samenov when Samenov died and that Kittrie might have killed her? It’s really wrongheaded to keep avoiding this possibility.”

“But Jesus, Carmen,” Leeland said, “she gave you her pubic hair without so much as a mild complaint.”

“Oh, come on. What was she going to do, make me get the search warrant? Was that going to look suspicious, or what?”

“She called the police herself,” Leeland persisted. “You said in your own report that she was practically distraught over Samenov’s death. She fainted when she saw the body, for Christ’s sake.”

Palma looked at Leeland. “Yeah, I wrote that. And she was distraught. And even if she did faint, neither of those occurrences is even half a decent reason to eliminate her as a suspect. I know women who don’t need a reason to cry. It’s their first response to everything unexpected. Vicki has cried every time I’ve seen her. And do you think that rookie who was with her when she fainted would know a theatrical faint if he saw one? I talked to him too, and he was as shaken at finding the body as Kittrie seemed to be.”

“Look, I don’t see any reason to go through this kind of thing,” Grant said to Palma. “Just go after her. Start with her alibis and keep going. Let’s find out if she knows Broussard. How is she to interview?”

“Tough. She runs the gamut from cooperative to hysterical. She can be intractable, but not bitchy, not dykey. She’s completely feminine, so her resistance to cooperation comes on like little-girl stubborn.” Palma gave an apologetic twist of her mouth. “I’ll admit, after what I’ve learned about her in the last couple of days her bimbo act seems to have been pretty calculating. Which convinces me all the more that we’d be making a serious mistake to overlook her simply because she doesn’t fit the formula.”

Grant hung his head in thought a moment. “We need to talk to Mirel Farr as soon as the doctors will let us. She ought to be able to give us considerable insight on Kittrie. I think we can make it clear to her that she’s in enough hot water that it would be to her benefit to cooperate with us a lot more than she was willing to cooperate with Marley and Haws.” He looked at Leeland. “Would you call us as soon as that interview’s possible?” Leeland nodded, making a note.

“But most important,” Grant said, “is that it’s essential to get a round-the-clock surveillance on Broussard. What are our chances of getting that? What’s the mood of the administration? Are they going to want to put up the money to cover this?”

Leeland grimaced and flicked his head toward Frisch’s office across the squad room.

“That’s what’s going on in there right now,” he said. “My feeling is they’ll go for it. Frisch anticipated we might need several surveillance teams, so he’s already pitching for it. You’re not thinking we should pull them off Reynolds?”

Grant shook his head. “No, he’s still your best candidate for the Ackley-Montalvo hit, using Barbish. When he finds out tomorrow that Barbish has been picked up, he’s likely to do something rash, or if not rash, then he’s likely to tip us to something. I’d have your surveillance people get into Reynolds’s car trunk tonight, too. Before he hears about Barbish’s arrest. What about Barbish’s gun?”

“It’s the same type weapon used in the hit,” Leeland said. “But they’ll have to wait until in the morning to run the tests.”

Grant nodded, thinking. “Okay,” he said, standing. “Can you let us know about the Broussard surveillance?”

Leeland nodded, already making another note.

All three telephones in the task force room rang at the same time and Leeland, Castle, and the clerk-typist answered them simultaneously.

49

S
trange bedrooms are intrinsically erotic. I’ve known that since I was a child, long before I knew the meaning of “erotic.” I have never been here before, and I have come early so that I can enjoy the subtle but potent pleasure of entering someone else’s home alone. I do not turn on the lights. This is an older home, and the woman who lives here has decided to save on her electric bill by turning off her air conditioner and throwing open the windows, taking advantage of the lower night temperatures and the recent cooling rains.

I have quickly walked through it, moving carefully in the blotchy pools of light filtering through the windows in every room, imagining the woman who lives here and the way she moves from room to room as I have just done. At first I deliberately avoided the bedroom itself, teasing myself the way a stripper teases a roomful of men who want to be teased, knowing the way of the game. Not yet. Every room but the bedroom. I passed by, feeling the pull of it, but not going in. Not yet. I glimpsed its opened door from another room and felt the first quiverings between my legs, then moved to yet another room and looked back at it, anticipating the sweet aches that were still to come on the other side of that inviting doorway.

But now I stand here, looking into the bedroom. From the windows on the other side of the room where sheer curtains have been pushed aside and the black silhouettes of palm fronds peep around the edges of the dirty glass, a madder blue light comes into the room and glazes all the hard surfaces as though they were porcelain and penetrates the curtains and the sheets on the unmade bed as though they had been stained in dye.

The closet door is open, and I walk over to it and catch the subtle weight of aged perfumes. It is a particular kind of odor, this fragrance of perfumes on dresses hanging in closets. It is the olfactory equivalent of pastels, the breath of an essence, rather than the essence itself. I step to the closet and run my hand along the blue dresses, the whole length of them in front of the opened door. And then I smell my hand. It is a kind of intercourse that I smell there, her fragrance on my flesh. An intercourse without her knowing, as if I were a deity and could disguise myself as a cloud or a mist of gold and in that form could partake of her sex, wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted. She could not deny me.

I find two empty hangers in the closet and begin removing my clothes. When I am completely naked I hang my clothes on the hangers and place them among her blue dresses. Later, when I take them out to put them on again, they will smell ever so faintly of the pastel fragrances of her dresses.

There is a chest of drawers near the closet, and I go there and open the drawers until I find the lingerie. Piece by piece I take it out and hold it up to the blue light. All of it is blue, lighter and darker shades of blue. Each piece I take between my lips and, rubbing my lips together, feel the smooth fabric gliding against itself, nylon and silk. When I have put every piece between my lips I pull out all the drawers and drape the lingerie over the drawers. I hang the bras horizontally. There are not enough drawers so I hang them from the doorknobs, from the pictures and lamps, from the mirror, from the back and seat of a chair, everywhere I can find the space until it is all displayed, all having passed between my lips.