Mercy

by David L Lindsey

  Palma walked down the curving sidewalk from Mancera’s front door oblivious of the wet privet hedge that was brushing against her dress, soaking her hem and peppering her stockinged legs. She didn’t even think to put up her umbrella against the heavy fog that was moving like a warm, moist breath across the city, beading in her hair and casting halos around the streetlamps. Her heart was hammering, banging away against her chest. The room full of women followed her out into the mist, milled about her as she crossed the courtyard, spoke softly and touched softly as she unlocked the car and quickly got inside and slammed the door. She started the car and turned the air conditioner on high and stuck her face in front of one of the vents. She unbuttoned the top four buttons of her dress, pulled it open, and directed another vent to her chest. Jesus God, she thought.

  As the air began to cool the perspiration, she tried to put the memory of the feel of Linda Mancera’s inner thigh into perspective. Something happened; she had to admit that, for Christ’s sake. She had been caught off guard by it, allowing herself to be caught up in Mancera’s charade even though, had she been given any warning, she would have maneuvered to avoid it. But Mancera had simply grabbed her and they were off, working the room, smiling, meeting, pretending…pretending…It would not have happened, she thought, if Mancera had simply taken her hand and continued to hold it, walking from group to group. But she hadn’t done that. Instead, she would release Palma’s hand and touch her back during one introduction, put her arm around her for another, take her hand again for yet another, each time bringing Palma in touch with another portion of her anatomy, the soft give of her breast here, the strong inner muscle of her thigh there, and each time the renewed contact with her warmed flesh vividly re-created a sense of what Mancera must be like. Or more accurately, it created a heightened curiosity, a desire to know…or maybe…simply…a desire.

  She had understood from the very first moment what Mancera was doing. It certainly wasn’t the first time a woman had played her, however subtly, and Palma had developed an acute distrust—even aversion—to the crane dance of modern sexual encounters. Partly it was a result of her longstanding experience with the unabashed insincerity of the singles scene, partly it was the makeup of her personality, and partly, she hated to admit, it was her age. The smooth-tongued magic that might have charmed her as a girl of twenty-two, often had the appearance of cheap tricks to the woman of thirty-three. Whatever the reasons, Palma had a low tolerance level for the presexual rituals of many modern urbans for whom sexual intercourse had become an entertainment as lightly taken and meaningless as going to a movie or ball game. This acquired wariness had not protected her, however, from being seduced by Brian, or from being surprised by her own emotions, as with Mancera only a few moments earlier. Wary though she might be, she was still a creature of her own chemistry, and as she had seen, her chemistry could not be trusted always to comply with her will. She was more than a little rattled at finding herself responding to Linda Mancera’s sophisticated sexuality.

  Palma took another towelette packet from her purse, opened it, and wiped her sweating forehead and across the tops of her breasts. The cold air from the dash made the fresh moisture feel like ice. She put the used towelette in the trash and, leaving her dress unbuttoned, put the car in gear, made a U-turn, and drove away from the women of Cour Jardin.

  SIXTH DAY

  37

  Saturday, June 3

  Palma was awakened at 7:30 on Saturday morning by a telephone call from Frisch’s office. There would be a task-force meeting at 9 o’clock. She got out of bed and went straight to the shower without looking at herself in the mirror. She turned on the water, adjusted the temperature to slightly cool, and lay down full-length on the low tile bench built against the back wall. The bench had been Brian’s idea when they remodeled the house, and she loved it. It sure as hell beat sitting on the shower floor, which is what she used to do when she would come in at odd hours of the early morning too exhausted to stand on her feet.

  Now she lay on the cool tiles, smoothed back her hair away from her face, and let the spray of water pelt her, trickle down her sides and between her outstretched legs. She felt worn out, despite the fact that she had had almost five hours’ sleep. Or rather, she had had five hours in bed. Sleep hadn’t much to do with it, because there hadn’t been much of it. She had tossed and thought of Grant and whether or not they were going to be able to work together; she had tossed and thought of Linda Mancera and what she had done and how Palma had felt about it; she had tossed and thought of Vickie Kittrie’s very long, short life, and of how that life had affected the women around her. She had thought of Helena Saulnier and her eyes-open compassion, the sort of kindness that was ennobling to those who could handle it. To love the unlovely required a brave and honest heart, something increasingly rare in the world, like visions of saints and laughing angels. Sometimes all of these people were mixed together or in varying combinations in a vague, dream-thought state of semiconsciousness, and then sometimes she simply woke up and lay there thinking about one or all of them, or of herself.

  Finally, remembering the time, Palma dragged herself up off the tile bench and started washing her hair. She finished bathing with cold water, hoping her eyes wouldn’t be as swollen as she knew they would be, and were, when she finally got out of the shower and looked at her dripping reflection in the mirror. Jesus. She looked ten years older. At least ten years. Well, fine. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. To hell with it.

  She quickly dried her hair, no time for a hundred strokes or any of that, and then she slipped into one of her better-looking Egyptian cotton shirtwaists, grabbed the Medical Society directory, and ran out of the house.

  She had breakfast at Meaux’s as she again read over the information about Dr. Alison Shore. A distinguished academic career had gained her her position at Baylor, and since she had been there she had won a number of national academic honors and awards, as well as being appointed the chair of one of the university’s faculty committees for curriculum planning. Dr. Shore was no lightweight, and Palma marveled that with all this and two teenage sons, she found the time for the kind of diversions she apparently enjoyed in Samenov’s circle.

  The other Dr. Shore was as much an overachiever as his wife, also serving on numerous boards of national medical organizations, traveling with some regularity to international medical congresses to give papers on his special interests in ophthalmic surgery or to study new methodologies being pioneered in other countries. His academic past was equally distinguished. It would be difficult to imagine a couple more professionally engaged and, in the modern sense of the term, fulfilling themselves.

  The homicide division showed none of the signs of the lagging pace that usually characterized the weekend shifts. The nine detectives now composing the task force were working around the clock and taking only enough time off to catch a few hours’ sleep occasionally and to grab a bite to eat. Frisch had had a late Friday afternoon meeting with the captain, the division commander and the assistant chief in charge of major investigations, which resulted in his being officially assigned the responsibility for task-force operations and relieved of other casework duties until the killings were resolved. The task force was opened up full-throttle, and by this time the new detective teams that had come on in the previous two days had done their homework on each of the cases and were striking out in all directions, wherever their leads took them. The information was coming in fast, and it was increasingly important to keep in touch with developments through Don Leeland’s case review coordination.

  The meeting in Frisch’s office was the first time the entire task force had met together. Cushing and his new partner Richard Boucher; Birley and Palma; Leeland and Nancy Castle; Gordy Haws and Lew Marley, who had taken over the Louise Ackley and Lalo Montalvo killings; Manny Childs and Joe Garro, who were taking on the Mello case. Frisch wanted each team to recap its recent developments, to go over which leads had played out and which were
still developing or unresolved, what suspects were sufficiently alibied, and what possibilities remained.

  They began with the oldest leads.

  Cushing and Richard Boucher had worked their way through about half the list of men’s names found in Samenov’s address book.

  “The hairdresser, masseur, electrician, Dalmatian breeder, used-car dealer. All alibied,” Cushing said. “All checked out. Car dealer was the only one who’d met any of the other victims besides Samenov. He’d sold a car to Dennis Ackley and had met Louise on several occasions when he’d gone over to Ackley’s house to pick up a payment and one time to pick up a set of keys. One night he had a few drinks with the two Ackleys and several other men and women who were over at Dennis’s house. He didn’t remember any of the names.”

  Cushing slouched in a chair and gave his information in a sour monotone. Palma guessed that he was more than a little disgruntled because Leeland had landed in the catbird seat.

  Anything that came in went through Leeland’s pudgy fingers, which meant that probably no one knew more details about the overall course of the investigation than Leeland and Nancy Castle. Both of them were tight-lipped by nature, not the sort of people Cushing could bullshit over a scotch and soda and expect to get a little gossip. Probably neither of them could be persuaded to have a scotch and soda with Cushing in the first place.

  “Well, I’ve got something nice,” Birley said in response to Frisch’s nod. He was wiping his hands on a paper towel, one bite of a jelly doughnut left on a napkin on the edge of the desk across from Frisch. His Styrofoam coffee cup was anchoring the edge of the napkin.

  “For a period of five months in 1985, Dr. Dominick Broussard, Bernadine Mello’s trusted psychiatrist and longtime lover, was also the consulting psychiatrist of Sandra Moser. According to her husband, Sandra was referred to Broussard by a friend—Moser didn’t remember who, wasn’t sure he ever knew. Apparently Sandra went to see Broussard regarding a series of ‘anxiety-based disorders.’ Andrew claims he can’t be more specific than that; he just doesn’t remember the details. As far as he knows, Sandra never saw him again after her five-month series of consultations.”

  “As far as he knows,” Palma said.

  “What about Samenov?” Frisch asked.

  “I’ve been all through her records. I don’t find any mention of Broussard.”

  “But you haven’t talked to Broussard yet?”

  “Nope.”

  Frisch made a note. “Okay, Gordy, what have you and Lew got on Louise Ackley and Montalvo?”

  “Maybe something interesting,” Haws said. Haws and Marley had been together a long time, twelve-year veterans in homicide. They worked like the left hand and the right hand, each knowing what the other was thinking and how the other was thinking, the sort of guys who would get the job done if you left them alone and didn’t ask too many questions about whether or not they followed the rule book. Both men were in their late forties. Haws, tallish and swaybacked, consumed two packets of Chiclets chewing gum every day, occasionally changing the color of the packets and the flavor of the tiny, hard-coated gum squares. Several years earlier he had decided not to worry about the middle-aged spread that was gradually changing his appearance and causing him to wear his belt well under a parturient waist and causing his suit pants to hang on his hips and sag in the seat.

  Marley would never have to worry about a spreading stomach. Always lean, he was steadily balding, his hair deserting him in a clean line around the crown of his head so that he had come to resemble a carefully tonsured monk. He favored seersucker suits and sport coats, and perhaps to compensate for his loss of hair, wore sideburns that were at least a couple of decades out of style. Together, they were the scourge of fashion and bad guys alike.

  “Canvassing the neighborhood, we came across this old geezer, a paraplegic named Jerry Sayles who lives three houses down and across the street from Ackley.” Haws paused and popped two fresh white squares of Chiclets into his mouth. “Claims he saw an ‘odd guy’ park his car almost across the street from him the afternoon Louise and Lalo got it. Said he was watching Geraldo Rivera on TV in his bedroom—something about a woman who had conceived a baby down around her appendix somewhere—and heard this guy’s car and looked out because he didn’t recognize the sound of it. Jerry knows the sound of all the neighborhood vehicles,” Haws grinned.

  “Anyway, Jerry saw this guy slam the door of his car, a junker ‘74 Buick. Guy starts walking away from his car, not into the house where he parked. Jerry watches him walk on down the street, wonders what the hell, and then sees him turn onto Louise’s sidewalk. Shrugs it off because he said ‘that woman’ had all kinds of visitors. So he goes on and watches Geraldo’s freak show. Just as the last commercial is coming on before the end of the show—Jerry knows how many commercials there are for Geraldo—he glances out and sees this character fast-walking back to his car. Jerry says nobody fast-walks in the neighborhood except the old elbow-swinging exercise women in the early mornings. Says the guy gets in the car, cranks her up, and drives off, the old Buick smoking up the street.”

  Haws stopped and Marley picked up the story as if they had rehearsed it.

  “We got a description,” Marley said, wiping his hand over his shiny pate. Palma noticed the hat Marley had begun wearing was doing its job, giving him a white dome and a two-toned forehead. “We came back and went over the names that have come up in all these interviews. Got pictures from the files and went back last night. Sayles picks out Clyde Barbish, Dennis Ackley’s old buddy that the Dallas police want for raping that girl up in Dallas. Sayles didn’t even hesitate on the guy. He’s got no doubts. We asked him if he’d ever seen any of the other men there. Finger taps Gil Reynolds.”

  “When was the last time he saw Reynolds there?” Palma interrupted.

  “He said it’d been weeks, maybe,” Marley said. “But he said he’d seen him there maybe half a dozen times.”

  “Since when?” Palma was impatient with Marley’s imprecision. “In the last year, two years? Six times in the last month?”

  Marley looked at her. “We asked him that, Carmen,” he said evenly, his tone indicating maybe she ought to ease off a little. “He said maybe five or six months. Said he didn’t know for sure. Said he didn’t keep a time sheet on everybody that came and went down there. Said it was none of his damn business.” Marley smiled.

  “Dammit,” Frisch grimaced. “Okay, let’s put out a general broadcast on Barbish, Lew. Request the maximum time and have them check with me before they take it off.” He thought a moment. “And start rousting his old buddies. I doubt if the son of a bitch was dumb enough to stay in town, but we’d better run the traps anyway.” He looked at Haws. “What’d firearms say?”

  “Guy used a real hog,” Haws nodded. “Colt Combat Commander .45 auto pistol with Sierra Power Jacket hollow-point ammo. Probably used a silencer. These babies did some kind of damage. The guy didn’t just stumble onto this stuff. He knew what he was getting. He was dead loaded.”

  Frisch nodded, his nod turning into an exasperated shake. “Manny, Joe. What’ve you got on Mello?”

  Manny Childs and Joe Garro were both relatively new in Houston homicide, two years each, but both of them had come from homicide divisions in agencies at different ends of the country, Childs from Buffalo and Garro from Los Angeles.

  “We’ve interviewed two of Mrs. Mello’s three former husbands,” Garro said. “The two living in Houston. One guy, her first husband, lives in Hawaii. Second husband, last name Waring, hadn’t seen her in five years. He was really rocked back about the homicide, but after talking a while he said he couldn’t say it was all that bizarre a thing to have happened to her. He said she was a pretty crazy lady.”

  Garro lighted a cigarette while he scanned his notes and picked up a cup of coffee, which he sipped while two streams of smoke curled out of his nostrils. Garro smoked like it was the 1940s, and no one had ever heard of lung cancer.

  “He didn
’t know anything about any bisexual relationships she might have had, but he said he knew she was ‘addicted’ to straight sex. He said she was always randy, and it got her into a lot of trouble because she was just a cat about it, always on the make, always twitching her tail at somebody. He said he cheated on her while they were married, but not until he learned that she’d been stepping out on him. Even so, he said, she was worth it, up to a point. After a while, he decided it wasn’t any way to live, so he divorced her. Apparently she took him to the cleaners in the settlement.”

  Garro tapped his cigarette with his index finger and popped an ash into the black plastic ashtray he had brought with him into Frisch’s office. He put the cigarette back into his mouth and rolled it around on his lips with his tongue while he turned through some pages he had stapled together. Then he took it in his fingers again and continued.

  “Husband number three, Ted Lesko. Mello married him eighteen months after divorcing number two. Oh, yeah, Waring owned a bunch of fast-food franchises. Well off. Lesko is in real estate out by NASA. Developed a bunch of that stuff out there years ago. Big money. They were married two and a half years. This Lesko was really upset about her death. He’d read it in the paper. He said he still loved her, no bones about it, just like that. I still love her.’ The divorce was Bernadine’s idea, and he gave her a generous settlement, too. But he said she didn’t ask for it. He insisted.