Mercy

by David L Lindsey

  “I stayed out of the way, out of sight, really, when he came. He’d come a couple of times before. Four times in all, I guess, over the ten months I was seeing her. He was wanting money. She’d give him some; it was never enough. The second time I met him was the last time he’d come by. He was drunk and slapped her. I was in the next room and came barreling out of there when I heard that. He was surprised, swung at me, and I swung at him, knocked him down. I’d never hit anyone in my life. Broke my little finger,” he held up his right hand. “Just as he was getting up Dorothy shoved a wad of bills into his hand and shuffled him out the door.”

  “You haven’t seen or heard of him since then?”

  “No. And that last time was several months before Dorothy and I stopped…seeing each other.”

  Palma found Reynolds’s frankness about his affair, and what it had cost him, a refreshing change of pace from the denials she usually encountered. It was almost as if he had come through a tragic experience of failed integrity with more integrity than he had possessed going in. He seemed determined to confront his failings head-on and not to make excuses for his foolishness. For this reason, Palma felt slightly apologetic about the next question which was, however, unavoidable and which she asked with an uninhibited matter-of-factness.

  “Was sadomasochism routine between you and Dorothy, or an occasional thing?”

  “Well,” he said, looking at her wryly, “that was to the point.” He paused. “Neither.”

  “But you knew about her preference for it.”

  “Only near the end.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “She told me.”

  “Why?”

  Reynolds took another sip of his coffee and then set the cup and saucer on his desk. He wiped his right hand over the lower half of his face, hesitating around his chin, which he rubbed lightly with his forefinger. He did all of this without hurrying, using the time to think.

  “Basically,” he said, “because she had more sense, and a greater understanding of honesty than I did.” He paused again and looked down to his desk, where he put his hand on a bronze lozenge-shaped paperweight and shoved it a couple of inches, then took his hand away and laced the fingers of both hands together in his lap. “I met Dorothy at a business lunch one day. There were five or six of us. She was a very handsome woman, intelligent, articulate, attractive in a number of ways. We exchanged business cards, and I called her a few days later and asked her to lunch. It was that simple. I found her enormously attractive. I’d never cheated on my wife before, but I began then. Essentially, I began leading a double life. I neglected my business, and my family, and spent as much time as I could with Dorothy. It was easy, as I said, because of her condo on Olympia.” He looked at Palma. “Cheating is easy. Living with what it makes of you is the hard part.

  “I believe Dorothy cared for me—I know she did—but there was always a corner of her that she never wholly gave up to me. There was something she held back. I threw myself into the affair heedlessly. I think I really did go kind of crazy over her. I was ten years older than she was, but she was the one who kept us from getting out of control. I’d lost all sense of perspective.

  “Anyway, one day she decided to end it. She told me we had to stop. She didn’t have to give me any reasons. I’d been over them a million times in my own mind. There was every reason in the world to stop it and not a single reason to go on, except for my own self-indulgence. But I didn’t want to end it. That’s when she told me I didn’t really understand her, that her life was more complicated than I knew, and she couldn’t let it go on the way it was going. I kept arguing with her, and finally she told me about the sadomasochism and Vickie Kittrie.”

  Caught by surprise, Palma must have given him a blank look before she could cover it.

  “You didn’t know that Dorothy and Vickie were lovers?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and hoping she didn’t look as stupid as she felt. Suddenly the whole character of the investigation had changed, and Palma wasn’t sure if this new configuration was a big break or a setback.

  “I think I was an anomaly in Dorothy’s recent history. She’d given up on men years ago.” Reynolds thought a moment. “To tell you the truth, I’m not surprised Vickie didn’t let you in on their relationship. It was a fiercely guarded secret. Dorothy was convinced that her career would be ruined if it was generally known that she was bisexual. And she wanted to protect Vickie in that regard as well. Dorothy was a competitive businesswoman, and she knew what it was like to have to fight sexism. But she thought the fact that she was bisexual was something she wouldn’t be able to overcome. She didn’t think she’d have a prayer of advancement in the corporate world as a lesbian.” Reynolds nodded. “She was probably right.”

  “Did you ever hear her speak of Dennis Ackley’s sister?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know that Ackley was blackmailing Dorothy?”

  It was Reynolds’s turn to be surprised. “Why? You mean using her bisexuality?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing now that’s a good possibility. Did you ever hear Dorothy or Kittrie speak of Marge Simon?”

  “No.”

  “How about Nancy Segal? Linda Mancera? Helena Saulnier?”

  Reynolds only shook his head.

  “Do you know if Vickie or Dorothy frequented any gay bars, clubs, or organizations?”

  “They didn’t. It was out of the question. They were completely removed from that scene.” He looked away from her, out to the pine trees, and Palma noticed he had a striking profile. He was a handsome man. Then he turned back to her.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “After this happened, after I got over the considerable shock of it and was able to adjust my perspectives about who Dorothy Samenov was, we continued seeing each other for some time, a month or two. In retrospect she must have been trying to let me down easy and to salvage our friendship. We really did enjoy each other. Even without the sex. It was during this period that I met Vickie. Their relationship, in front of me at least, was as steady and conservative as an old married couple’s. I would spend evenings with them from time to time, just the three of us sitting around at Dorothy’s place talking. We covered everything in the world, but one of the things that happened during those evenings was that I got an education about what it was like to be ‘different’ in this society. I listened to them for hours, and realized that I’d been walking around most of my life with my eyes shut. My life has been, is, the epitome of the status quo, and I hadn’t the slightest idea, or concern, of what it was like not to be a part of that system. Not until I fell in love with someone who didn’t fit in.”

  Up until this point Reynolds had spoken about his relationship with Samenov only as an “affair,” and Palma had found it a telling inadvertence when he had used the word “love.” Gil Reynolds had been deeply disturbed by his encounter with Dorothy Samenov, and his stoic determination to make amends with his own conscience didn’t negate the fact that what he had felt for a woman who was not his wife was something he would call “love” only as an unconscious slip of the tongue.

  Once again Palma felt a twinge of uneasiness at having to bring up something in that relationship that might cause Reynolds real pain.

  “Just another couple of questions,” she said. “What did Dorothy tell you about the sadomasochism?”

  Reynolds nodded, opened his mouth to speak, stopped, then said, “I guess I’ve already blown it for Vickie. It was something they didn’t want to reveal, the lesbian relationship, I mean.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Palma said. “If it hadn’t come from you it would have, and will, come from someone else. It’s almost impossible to keep something like that quiet when it’s an integral part of a homicide investigation. Things come out.”

  Reynolds nodded again, but it was clear he really didn’t buy Palma’s glib effort at easing his conscience. But he went on, “The sadomasochism…it was between them, Dorothy a
nd Vickie. They tried to explain it all to me but…it was so foreign…well, I think I pretended to understand it, tried not to be judgmental about it. They just said it was something they both understood. That they weren’t involved in the shame and humiliation part of it, just pain-pleasure things…“He stopped, not knowing where to take it from there. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to know too much about it.”

  “As far as you know,” Palma said, “were the two of them involved only with each other in this? There was no one else?”

  He nodded. “That’s what they said.” He looked at his hands.

  “Do you believe them?” she asked.

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “I’d like to know your feelings about it.”

  He didn’t answer immediately, his eyes moving restlessly over the top of his desk as if he might find the right words there among the workaday clutter.

  “I think,” he said finally, “There may have been men involved.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You asked for my ‘feelings.’” He looked at her with an expression that told her that was as far as he wanted to go with it. “I can’t give you anything stronger than that.”

  20

  All the way downtown on Memorial Drive, Palma thought about the way Gil Reynolds expressed himself, how there was almost a feeling of wistfulness about him that seemed edged with the hard acceptance of the realities of his situation. She tried to imagine how much of a shock it must have been to him when he learned that Dorothy Samenov was bisexual, or how much honesty it had taken to admit that there were not only women in Samenov’s life, but other men as well. All in all, it appeared that Gil Reynolds had gotten far more than he had bargained for when he decided to place himself in the hands, and between the thighs, of Dorothy Samenov.

  It was noon by the time Palma walked into the homicide squad room, maneuvered around the little knots of detectives and civilians and got back to her cubicle. She found them all there. Birley, looking a little tousled, was standing at his desk putting labeled packages of Samenov’s personal papers into a ragged cardboard box, his shirttail worked out and sagging over the back of his pants. He was talking to Cushing. Leeland, leaning on the door frame, spoke to her and smiled from under his mustache while Cushing, lounging in her chair, ignored her arrival except to grudgingly move his legs a little so she could get to her desk. None of them looked as if they had had enough sleep.

  “Hi, kid,” Birley said, interrupting his dialogue with Cushing as she tossed her purse next to her computer and put down the Pepsi she had gotten from the vending machine outside. With exaggerated weariness, Cushing lifted himself out of her chair and gave it a surly shove toward her with his foot.

  She saw the manila package from Quantico on her desk. “Anybody have any luck here?” she asked, ignoring Cushing’s insolence as he moved around and propped an arm on top of the filing cabinet.

  “Some,” Birley said, stopping what he was doing and turning to her. Palma sat in her chair, kicked off her shoes, and popped the top on the Pepsi, tossing the tab into the trash can. “I went through the rest of her financial stuff, which didn’t provide any useful information except for the payments to Louise Ackley. Her letters—there weren’t many—were all from her folks back in South Carolina. I couldn’t see anything there to help us. There were no letters from ‘significant others’ like I was hoping. It was pretty much of a dry run.

  “But the address book is interesting,” he added, going back into the cardboard box. “Aside from the businesses we’d noted earlier, there are a few men’s names and numbers. I called them this morning.” He found the book and flipped through it. “There’s a hairdresser, a masseur, an electrical repairman, a guy who raises Dalmatians, a used-car dealer, a plumber, a TV repairman, a clerk at a video store, and a clerk at a bookstore. And then there’re several dozen women’s names, but only their first names, and the telephone numbers are apparently in code because none of them are working numbers. Some of them aren’t even metro exchanges. We need to get this to somebody who can find a pattern here. I can’t get to first base with it.”

  “Care if I try?” Leeland asked.

  Birley tossed him the book. “I don’t know. I think the names are coded too. Except there is a Marge in there, and a Nancy and a Linda.” He shrugged.

  “Was there a Sandra?” Palma asked.

  “I don’t remember one. You mean Moser?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you come up with a connection?”

  Palma sipped the Pepsi, which was cold and sharp. “No, just hoping.” She looked at Leeland. “What did you get?”

  Leeland had cut himself shaving around his mustache that morning and had sustained a considerable wound just under his left nostril, which he had managed to coax into a powerful scab. He monitored it occasionally, lightly touching it with the back of his right index finger.

  “I talked to the Board of Pardons and Parole in Austin and they’re sending Ackley’s prison records.” Leeland closed Samenov’s address book and looked at her with his large, doleful eyes. “They’re looking for him because he just dropped out of sight, quit checking in with his parole officer. Then, of course, this other stuff came up in Dallas. He tended to hang around with some pretty unsavory characters in the Ramsey unit at Huntsville, all of them still in the pen except one. Guy named Dwayne Seely, also in for aggravated assault, got out within a month of Ackley and also came to Houston. He and Ackley have continued to buddy around together. There’s a warrant out for him now on a parole violation. Nobody’s heard from him in a couple of months.” Leeland touched the side of his nose. “And I’ve put Ackley on the computer and coming out in the next bulletin. That’s it.”

  Palma looked at Cushing.

  “Okay.” Cushing took the paper clip he had been chewing on out of his mouth and turned around to face her. “I talked to the officer in Dallas who’s looking for Ackley. Ackley was seen with an ex-con named Clyde Barbish on the day of the night that Clyde decided to commit mayhem and molestation on Debbie Snider, a student at SMU. Debbie was attacked and raped by two men, but could only make one of them from the files. The second man was always behind her, she said, and when he came around front to do her, he covered her face with her dress. Ackley was in the file along with Barbish, but she didn’t make him.”

  “The Dallas police think Barbish and Ackley are together?”

  “That’s what they’re guessing. I also had a long conversation with a good man in their central crime analysis,” Cushing continued. “Guy’d been there forever, one of those photographic memory types. I went over the whole thing, and we talked about a dozen or more cases. None of them really seemed to mesh, but a few were interesting. One of them, a woman with a single nipple removed, the right one, not the left one like Moser’s, was also a blond, but her body was not made up, and she was posed in a sexually suggestive position, not laid out like Moser and Samenov. She was also found in an abandoned house in a sleazy part of town. Not our man’s kind of terrain.”

  “It’s interesting, though,” Leeland put in, “that SMU’s in the swankiest part of Dallas.”

  “Snider’s rape occurred on the eighth,” Birley said. “And Moser was killed on the thirteenth. That’s just five days between.”

  “It only takes a few hours to make the drive,” Palma said. “What about Walker Bristol?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cushing said, sliding his eyes at Leeland. “Donny talked to him mostly.”

  Leeland’s calm eyes lingered a second on Cushing, then he picked it up. “Bristol’s a VP at Security National. Fortyish. Married, no children. Claims he dated Samenov two years ago before he married. He’s only seen her casually since then. Didn’t have any idea about her S&M business, didn’t know anything about her during these last three years. Didn’t know Dennis Ackley.”

  Shifting his feet, Leeland once again touched his finger to the side of his nose. “I think he’s lying. The man was r
eally careful about what he said, tied into a knot about it, but trying to come across cool. We ought to do some background and make another run at him. As for Dirk somebody, there’s a woman in the registrar’s office at the University of Houston trying to track it down for us.”

  “So what about you?” Birley said. “Did you get to see your people?”

  “Yeah, I did,” Palma said, pulling a tissue out of the box on her desk and wiping up the wet spot from the Pepsi. “There are some surprises.”

  She went straight through each of the interviews, Kittrie again at her place with Isenberg and Saulnier, Linda Mancera, Louise Ackley, and finally Gil Reynolds with his astonishing revelation.

  “Dykes!” Gushing feigned an exaggerated incredulity. “These babes are dykes? Hey, I don’t know about Mancera,” he laughed, his eyes widened at Palma as he shook his head, “but this Marge Simon is a real baby doll. What a waste!” He cackled again, and looked at Leeland. “I love it.”

  “We don’t know about Simon and Mancera,” Palma corrected him. “The information goes only for Samenov and Kittrie.”

  “Shit,” Cushing said, still grinning. “I don’t have to be hit over the head with it. I’ll bet they’re all cream puffs.”

  “Well, that explains why Samenov used first names only for the women in the address book,” Birley said.

  “Seems kind of an elaborate system.” Leeland looked at Palma. “Did Reynolds really think they were that secretive about it?”

  “He seemed to.” Palma drank the last of her Pepsi. She didn’t know why it offended her that Cushing, still shaking his head and grinning, was enjoying the lesbian angle so much. “I don’t think we can assume that Marge Simon, Nancy Segal, and Linda Mancera are lesbians, but even if they are, I don’t know where that gets us. We don’t have any connection between them and Dennis Ackley. So far they’ve all spoken of him as if he were contaminated. Unless they can be considered potential targets.”

  “So what are we supposed to think about Sandra Moser then?” Birley said. “That the little lady was a closet bisexual?”