Mercy

by David L Lindsey

  “I can’t imagine this guy beating the shit out of her,” Garro added, looking at Palma, then Frisch. “I mean the guy fought tears the whole time we talked to him, didn’t he, Manny. The guy loved her, even though he sat right there and told us how she prowled around on him. He said she couldn’t help it. That was the way she was. Said he lavished everything on her, but none of it was enough. Stuff didn’t even mean that much to her. The woman was never satisfied by any one thing or any one man. He said it was sad.”

  “Then their divorce was friendly?” Palma asked. “Did he ever see her?”

  “Actually,” Childs nodded, “the guy’d been seeing her behind Mello’s back. He didn’t think much of Mello, said he was a pervert. Me an’ Joe perked up to that, but all he meant was that the guy screwed around almost as much as Bernadine. Kind of a sick pair, from the way he told it. They just never had any rules from the beginning. He said Bernadine was unhappy from the start. Mello kind of flaunted his affairs, didn’t even try to be discreet. But then the bottom line was Lesko claimed he hadn’t seen Bernadine for several months.

  “Waring’s alibi checks out, and so does Mello’s. Lesko says he was out working on his boat in its slip at the Houston Yacht Club, but we haven’t been out there to confirm it. That’s about where we quit to get some sleep.”

  Frisch made a few notes, and while he was still writing he said, “Carmen, what about you?”

  Palma looked at Birley. “You went through Samenov’s personal papers. Who was her gynecologist?”

  Birley looked at his notebook. “Dr. Alison Shore.”

  “Did Shore show up as anyone else’s doctor?”

  Birley nodded, looking at her, knowing she was leading to something. “Moser’s.”

  Palma explained to them how she had discovered Claire’s identity, and gave them some background she had gotten out of the Medical Society’s directory.

  “This explains why she was so cautious about her identity,” Palma said. “She’s got a lot to lose. But there’s another reason. Her husband is Dr. Morgan Shore, an opthalmic surgeon.”

  There was a two-beat pause before someone said, “Shit,” and then everyone had something to say or grunt or swear, and Palma heard Richard Boucher say, “Eye surgeon…he operates on eyes,” explaining opthalmic to Cushing, who was pulling his neck back and frowning.

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Palma said to Frisch, anticipating his questions. “I assume from what his wife says he doesn’t know about her bisexual relationships. He’s a medical heavyweight, like his wife. Very prominent. I just came across this early this morning and haven’t had time to check out alibis on any of the dates.”

  “At least that’s a little easier to do with a doctor,” Leeland said. “They’re so tightly scheduled that either their secretary or the medical exchange will know where they were almost hour by hour.”

  “Or where they’re supposed to be,” Birley said.

  “We’ll need to be careful,” Frisch said. “Handle this delicately, Carmen. If it gets away from us that we’re trying to ‘nail’ a prominent physician as a sex killer, we’d better have something more substantial to go on than that he operates on eyes. By the way, we’re not releasing to the press the business about Samenov’s and Mello’s eyelids. The media’s already having a feeding frenzy on this, and the division guys are getting nervous stomachs.” His eyes held on Palma until she nodded.

  “One more thing,” Palma said, and she told them of her visit to Mancera’s party—with some editing. It was interesting to watch these men’s faces when she told about the women at Mancera’s gathering. Like Palma and most police officers, their experience with female homosexuals had brought them in contact with a considerably different kind of woman than Palma was describing at Mancera’s. They were used to the dyke and baby-doll tandems who hung around Montrose, women who had committed themselves to the “freak” counterculture. But the idea that there was an “invisible” community of lesbians and bisexual women, and that female homosexuality might be more common than rare among Yuppie suburban wives and highly paid women professionals, was a concept they were not going to buy very easily.

  “You sure these babes weren’t indulging in a little wishful thinking?” Cushing grinned, rearing back in his chair. “I mean, you had a roomful of them there at Mancera’s and maybe they got a little carried away with the sisterhood an’ all that. ‘Yes, dammit, there’s thousands of us in every neighborhood’.”

  “I don’t know,” Palma said. “What makes you ask?”

  “Well, I’ve just never heard of something like this before.”

  “You’ve never heard of something like this? You think you’d be one of the first to know?” Palma felt her temper rise at Cushing’s typical center-of-the-universe self-regard. “I don’t understand how you arrive at that kind of deduction, Cush. This has to do with women, not men. In fact, it has to do with women who don’t want to have anything to do with men. What makes you think you’d have heard of these women? That’s pretty smug, even for you.”

  “If it was all that widespread, we’d of known about it by now.” Cushing dropped his grin.

  Palma looked at him, nodding. “Maybe you do know what you’re talking about Weren’t you among the first to bring to light the nationwide prevalence of bisexual men with families leading double lives?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you happen to know so much about the homosexual community, Cush?”

  “Getting to the point…” Frisch quickly broke in as Gordy Haws snorted and Cushing’s face flushed scarlet. He and Palma glared at each other, and everyone, including Palma, thought he was going to boil over.

  “Getting to the point, Carmen…” Frisch repeated.

  “The point is,” Palma went on, pulling her eyes off Cushing, “we have a significantly large group of ‘invisible’ bisexual women, and within this group is a subgroup that has a penchant for S&M. Mancera seems to believe that this subgroup is our victim pool.”

  “That make sense to you?” Birley asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m not convinced they’re the only targets.”

  “Because of Mello?” Garro said.

  “Right.”

  “You don’t think we’re going to find that she’s connected to them at all?”

  “No, I don’t. And as far as I’m concerned that exception makes me doubt the whole theory. Also, Mancera’s theory has the feel about it of whistling in the dark. These women don’t want to admit they can be victims. They can live with this a lot easier if they can convince themselves it has nothing to do with them.”

  “Hey, it’d make it a lot easier for us, too,” Garro said, mashing out a cigarette. “Okay,” he said, taking out his lighter and idly flipping the lid, snap…snap…snap. “Maybe all the victims aren’t into rough trade, but three out of four is a pretty good record. I’d still be inclined to look into that angle pretty good.”

  “Sure, I think so, too,” Palma said. “I’ll be talking with Mancera’s friend tomorrow morning. Apparently she was close enough to Louise Ackley that she knew what went on between her and Reynolds. If she can give us details about Reynolds’s techniques, we might get a break.”

  “You really ought to look at Reynolds’s military record, too,” Birley said to her. “That sniper business might have involved some interesting psychological record-keeping.”

  Palma made a note. Birley was a smart bloodhound.

  With that the major points had been covered and everyone waited for Frisch to proceed. For a few moments no one said anything. There was a cough, some shuffling of feet, and movement of coffee cups. Frisch sat behind his desk, looking at the dirty desk blotter in front of him. One hand was resting on his blue ceramic coffee cup as if he was about to pick it up, the other was simply lying on the blotter. Frisch was the only man Palma knew who didn’t feel it necessary to posture. He seemed to have the philosophy that if a body limb didn’t have any need to function at any particular moment, then it could ju
st rest in place.

  Palma looked at the detectives around the room, all of them used to Frisch’s moments of taciturn immobility. All of them waiting, looking at their papers, or pretending to, drinking their coffee or making notes in their notebooks, quietly filling the down time, letting Frisch work it through.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “We have several possibilities. We’ve got to start narrowing it down, concentrate on some of these guys because we’re too spread out.” He scooted up in his chair. “To help us do that we’ve got a couple of agents down here from Quantico. They’re crime analysts from the behavioral science unit. I think you already know what they do, so we’re going to get them in here to tell us what they see in this guy’s work. They haven’t been in here during all this because until they present their initial analysis they like to gather all their information directly from the crime scene and police reports. After they give us their perspective on what’s going here, we’ll get involved in a lot more give-and-take with them.”

  Frisch stood up and grabbed a pile of stapled pages that had been sitting on the corner of the desk.

  “Here’s Sander Grant’s preliminary analysis,” he said, handing out the pages to each detective. “I’m going to give you some time to read through it, and then we’ll get them in here. Whatever you want to ask, ask it.”

  38

  Grant sat on the edge of the desk with his arms folded, one leg hanging over the side of the desk, the other foot planted firmly on the floor. He was at the opposite end of the room from Frisch and the detectives, all of whom were turned in his direction. Freshly shaved, the graying hair at his temples brushed back, his mustache cleanly clipped, a fresh double-breasted suit, the coat unbuttoned and hanging open for comfort, he didn’t seem to be any worse for wear after having been up most of the night.

  After Frisch introduced him, Grant gave what Palma assumed was his standard speech about the usefulness of crime scene analysis and behavioral psychology to produce probable profile characteristics of violent offenders, stressing that this technique was not expected to take the place of sound, methodical police work, but was intended to be a supplementary tool in the overall investigative process. He acknowledged that this technique was as much an art form as a science, and then added that as far as he was concerned, if he ever came across a man who could assist him in apprehending murderers by drawing pictures of butterflies, he would use him without blinking an eye, as long as the man’s results proved reliable. He didn’t care if the method was scientific, artistic, or spiritual, as long as it worked.

  “I’ve worked with a lot of law-enforcement agencies, and I’m well aware that this technique is not universally admired,” he said. He looked around the room at each detective. “I know there are skeptics. That’s fine. I’m not claiming we’ve got the answers to all your investigative problems. Like DNA ‘fingerprinting,’ this technique is only an additional tool for you to use, and it’s only as good as the investigators who back it up. And the technique’s not infallible. I’m human, and the killer’s human, and that’s already twice as much humanity as is needed to screw up a sure thing. So you can either accept it or reject it as you see fit, but you better be damn sure it doesn’t have anything to offer you before you turn your back on it.”

  He wiped his hand over his mustache and mouth. “The point is,” he said, pausing, looking at them, “we’re trying to find a man who’s killed three women.” Pause. “Odds are, even with our using every resource available to us, he’s going to kill another one or two before we catch him. We have an obligation to bring to bear every investigative technique available to us. If you decide to turn your back on this one, you’d better be damn sure you can live with yourself if it turns out you were wrong.”

  Grant picked up the Styrofoam cup sitting on the desk beside him and sipped the coffee, looking around at the detectives, his eyes gliding right past Palma’s without hesitation. She was surprised at what he said, and at his tone of voice. This didn’t sound like a bureaucrat to her, and she guessed his remarks had struck the others the same way. But for the most part Grant was talking to old hands, and no one was going to be made uneasy by this kind of talk. Comfortably self-possessed and in no hurry to break the silence, Grant took another sip of coffee and continued looking around the room of detectives. It was an interesting moment, with the machismo so thick you could smell it as the detectives refused to show any sign of acknowledging they had been lectured, and Grant refusing to be put on the spot as the unwelcome smart-ass from Quantico. Finally he put down his cup.

  “Okay, you’ve got my criminal profile and crime assessment there,” he said, nodding at the stapled pages everyone was holding. “Let’s get to the questions.”

  Palma had read the pages quickly, much of it being what she and Grant had discussed over the telephone during the past several days and last night. Grant must have written most of the profile and assessment on the plane coming down, working in last-minute observations based on what he saw confirmed or contradicted by the Mello case. The paper was lengthy, fifteen pages.

  “A general question.” Gordy Haws was reared back in his chair, his stomach protruding. “Lew and I have the Ackley-Montalvo hits. Since these aren’t addressed here in your assessment, I was wondering how you see them in relation to the three women.”

  Grant was nodding before Haws finished his question.

  “First of all, it’s obvious that Ackley and Montalvo weren’t killed for the same reasons that the women were killed,” he said. “But we can’t ignore the probability of a relationship because of who Louise Ackley was and the timing of her death. But I’d lay bets it wasn’t done by the same man. I’m not saying the deaths aren’t related, just that the same man didn’t commit all five killings. The Ackley-Montalvo hits seem to me to have all the earmarks of a business transaction. They were a housekeeping matter. No emotion involved. The guy behind the gun wasn’t thinking with his dick. He walked in, popped them, and walked out. He was doing business.”

  He shifted his position on the desk. “Now whether that business had anything to do with Moser, Samenov, and Mello is something this investigative technique isn’t going to tell us. On the other hand what you find out investigating those deaths could very well play back to us. We’ve been told Louise Ackley bottomed for Gil Reynolds…you can read the possibilities there. But that could have been false information. It could have been half false. Or, her death could have been a chance element, another story altogether, one of those loose ends that are inevitable in every case.”

  Palma noted Grant’s crude reference. It was almost as if he had read Haws’s own personality and knew that he would have used the phrase himself. It was a reference Gordy Haws would recognize and understand immediately. He also would have understood the term “psychosexually motivated aggression,” but he wouldn’t have thought much of Grant for having used it. By acquiring Haws’s own manner of expression—but not mimicking him—Grant picked up points, became a non-threatening cooperative, a fellow hunter, instead of a big boy from Quantico.

  Manny Childs waggled his pages, frowning at the floor. “Uh, I can see where you get some of your conclusions,” he was nodding. “But you’re gonna have to explain why you think the guy’s a married man with children.”

  Again Grant was nodding before the question was complete.

  “Okay. After working through hundreds and hundreds of these kinds of cases we’ve learned that most organized murderers—and we think this guy falls in that category—live with a partner and are sexually competent,” Grant said.

  Still sitting on the edge of the desk, he raised one fist.

  “Let’s hold on to those two probabilities for a second, keep them over here.” Then he raised the other fist. “Now over here we have the time elements involved in all three murders. All three deaths occurred on Thursday evenings. The forensic data indicate that in each case the time of death was ‘probably’ around ten o’clock at night. If I remember correctly, Moser was la
st seen at seven-forty, Samenov at six-twenty, and Mello at six-thirty. In each case the victim was last seen within two or three hours prior to their deaths. This is a very precise—and very consistent—time frame, both as regards the day of the week and the hours.

  “If you accept the statistical probability that the man lives with a partner,” he said, holding out the first fist, “then you have to ask yourself whether these precise time frames would more likely accommodate the living situations of a married man with children, or a man living with a girlfriend or another male…not a homosexual.”

  He held out the second fist. “A man without a family could probably be absent at those hours any number of nights a week; life’s a little looser for him. You’d have a hard time convincing me that those are the only hours he’d have available each week. A man with a family, on the other hand, has obligations that an unmarried man without children couldn’t even imagine: dinner at a certain hour to accommodate the rhythm of the family’s routine, household chores that inevitably crop up and can’t wait until the weekend, helping the kids with lessons, all those things that have to be done with and for the kids before bedtime—around ten o’clock.

  “But—one night a week he has an excuse to be gone: racquetball at the club, bowling with the guys, poker with the boys, Rotary Club meetings, whatever. He has to do it on that one night, and he can’t be out too late. He’s not out drinking with the guys; he’s a respectable family man. He’s got to be home at a respectable hour. Odds are a single man has other opportunities, is more flexible, and that flexibility alone would almost certainly mean that out of three murders one would have deviated from the pattern. Otherwise we’d have to believe that this is all a coincidence and the odds, once again, are stacked against that conclusion. And at this point in the investigation, gentlemen, we’re playing the odds.” And he brought his fists together and interlocked his fingers in a tight grip.