Mercy

by David L Lindsey

  “I think we have to,” Palma said. “Considering the group’s composition.”

  “There’s her S&M stuff,” Cushing said.

  “There’s not a Sandra in the book.” Leeland was already flipping through the pages again.

  “How did Ackley meet her?” Birley asked.

  “It’s this way,” Cushing speculated, his legs straight out, hips leaned back against the filing cabinet. “Samenov was lying to Reynolds about her ex being a bastard. Ackley and Samenov are together on this S&M deal. There’s the photographs of Samenov—who took the photographs? She procures these women, lesbians, for their trios. They were doing Moser together and she dies, maybe accidentally. They make it look like a psycho job just to screw up the investigation. Later Ackley does Samenov because she’s the only witness. Ackley’s been around. He knows to clean up after these things. And he stages it to look like the first one.”

  “If Samenov was lying to Reynolds about Ackley being a bastard,” Palma countered, “then Louise Ackley is lying about it too, and so are Linda Mancera and Vickie Kittrie. I think Ackley’s criminal record backs them up.”

  “Okay, fine. So the guy was a certified bastard, all the more reason why he and his ex-wife were turning S&M tricks together,” Cushing persisted.

  “You’re missing the point, Cush,” Palma snapped. “It’s not likely any of them would have wanted to work with him.”

  “Bullshit,” Cushing came back at her. “You don’t know that. People will do anything…”

  “I think we’d better decipher that damn address book,” Birley broke in. “And talk to every person listed in there.”

  “I’m betting the women’s names won’t get us that much,” Palma said. “The main value of that address book is that it does list the names of more men. Admittedly the odds are on Ackley, but what if it’s not Ackley? There are eight or ten men’s names in there who ought to be checked out. Did they have a connection to Sandra Moser? Did the TV repairman repair her TV too? Did she regularly buy video movies from the same store as Samenov? Did she use the same plumber?”

  “She’s right,” Birley said. “We need to go through the service records for each one of those names. And we’d better keep our eyes open for any woman’s name that might come up in the records or client lists of any of these men.”

  Palma’s telephone rang and she answered it. It was for Cushing, who took it, said yeah and great, and hung up.

  “Soronno’s got some lab results for us,” he said, going for the door. “Be right back.”

  While Cushing was gone, Birley opened another Tupperware lunch packed by Sally. He ate it without much pleasure, offering some brownies to Leeland, who said he had already eaten. Palma’s stomach was rumbling, but she pushed her hunger to the back of her mind as she looked through her notes from the Reynolds interview.

  It did not take Cushing long to get back, carrying the report and a fresh Coke. Cushing had a thing about Cokes, and the thing was that he poured a little bit out of each can and spiked it with rum. He thought no one knew it, but Palma and Birley had been keeping tabs on him for a long time, and Palma was sure it was no secret to Leeland.

  “Okay,” he said, rolling the typing chair from the squad room ahead of him. “We’ve got some things here that tie in.”

  He swiveled the typing chair around and straddled it and leaned forward with the back of it against his chest, his legs splayed out toward Palma. The ultimate macho posture, lots of sex appeal. Palma thought it was pitiful that Cushing always had to be on for her, always had to swagger and strut. Having his penis pinched must have done something to his psyche. Maybe Cushing really did have his brains between his legs.

  “Fingerprints: they didn’t find any other than Samenov’s in the bathroom and bedroom, though they got some unknowns from other parts of the house, mostly from the kitchen and study. Same with palm prints.

  “Footprints: we got some, but they’re a woman’s, on either side of the bidet.

  “Nothing on the clothes folded in the chair.

  “Samenov’s blood groups: ABO—O; PGM—2; EAP—BA; Hp—1. Common as dirt. Even more common than Moser’s. All the blood found on the sheet taken from the bed and all the traces found on bath towels matched these descriptors.

  “Head hair, unknown: bed sheet submitted to the lab yielded five strands of long blond hair. Four of these hairs matched Samenov’s head hair; one definitely did not. Three head hairs were found in the carpet on the right side of the bed, next to the closet, all matched Samenov’s. Two head hairs found at foot of bed: one Samenov’s, one not. Two head hairs found on left side of bed, next to bath, neither matched Samenov’s. Of the four unknown head hairs three match, one is dissimilar.

  “Fingernail scrapings yielded only traces of hand soap matching the hand soap in Samenov’s bathroom.

  “Mouth swab: cotton fibers matching the towels in Samenov’s bathroom, not from any of the other bathrooms where the towels were a different color.

  “Swabs and smears for mouth, vagina, and anus: no seminal acid phosphatase. Same as with Moser.

  “Loose pubic hair: the combings yielded nine pubic hairs of which five did not match Samenov’s. All the unknown hairs were telogen hairs, third-growth state, dormant, so there weren’t any sheath cells that could be blood-grouped. Also, of the five unknown hairs three came from one source and appeared to have been vaginal hair; the other two appeared to have come from another source and seemed to have been from higher up on the pubic bone.

  “Since the only unidentified hair collected from Moser’s scene was two eyebrow hairs, they couldn’t make any match.

  “Bite marks: good impressions from Samenov, but because the Moser bite marks were superficial and poorly defined, they’re not sure they can make a match. And because Samenov had been washed, like Moser, there was no saliva on the swabs.

  “Cosmetics: the makeup on Samenov’s face did not match the same source as the makeup in Samenov’s room, but it did match the same source as the makeup on Sandra Moser’s face. It looks like the asshole’s bringing along his own stuff.

  “That’s it,” he said, tossing the report onto Birley’s desk and taking a swig of Coke.

  “Samenov had had sexual relations with two people, then,” Birley said, picking up the paper. “At some time after her last bath. There could be an eight- or ten-hour differential on that possible time span, depending on whether she usually bathed before going to bed at night or whether she usually bathed after getting up in the morning.”

  “And the encounters within that time frame could have been at widely spaced intervals,” Leeland said, “or at the same time—a menage a trois.”

  “All of the hairs blond?” Birley asked, flipping through the pages.

  “All of them. Well, to be accurate, blondish. They’re different shades.”

  “Like the Moser eyebrow hairs.”

  “I guess they couldn’t tell what brand of cosmetics any of it was,” Palma said.

  “I asked. No way.”

  “Damn. Slim pickins,” Birley said. “But, the guy brings his own ligatures, his own makeup, cleans up after himself like a practical nurse.”

  “The thing is,” Leeland said, “he does a good job with the makeup. He seems to take pains with it. Could be a morgue worker…beautician…transvestite…”

  “Theatrics,” Palma offered. “An actor, a makeup artist.”

  “The guy could just be good at it,” Cushing countered. “Likes to do it. Doesn’t have to mean his profession’s connected with it.”

  “That’s true,” Birley put in, tossing his empty Styrofoam cup into the trash. “Hell, he could also train fleas and sleep with squirrels. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with his profession at all. Guys like this…who the hell knows what makes this boy tick?”

  “And Dennis Ackley,” Leeland said. “Do we know, or have reason to believe, that he’d be particularly inclined to know anything about makeup?”

  “Hell, no.” Cush
ing snorted. “Guy’s a common turd.”

  “Okay, then, what do we know about him?” Palma was getting impatient. “He’s blond.”

  “Don’t jump the gun,” Birley interrupted. “We don’t know the guy had anything sexual to do with her. I mean as far as getting his pubic hairs mixed in with hers. There’s no evidence of penile penetration—anywhere.”

  “He didn’t have to penetrate her, John,” Palma said.

  “Okay, fine,” Birley held up a hand. “But don’t forget she’s bisexual. Plenty of rubbing going on there, I’d imagine. Those hairs could have been a woman’s.”

  “Sex-type it,” Palma countered.

  “Can’t,” Cushing checked her. “Remember, they’re telogen, third-stage. No sheath cells. Besides, even if there were sheath cells it would have to be a DNA test and that’d take weeks. And it ain’t cheap.”

  Palma looked at Birley, and the frustration must have shown on her face.

  “We don’t know shit about him,” Birley said almost apologetically. “For sure, anyway.”

  “Okay, fine,” Palma said. “But let’s move on something.

  Don,” Palma addressed Leeland, not wanting to give Cushing the satisfaction, “do you and Cush want to start checking out the men listed in Samenov’s address book, trying to tie them in to Moser?” Leeland nodded. Palma didn’t even look at Cushing. “John,” she turned to Birley, “what about this? We’re checking on these service men. Why don’t we go back and get the names of people at the other end of the scale too—doctors, dentists, ophthalmologists, whatever—that Moser and Samenov might have shared?”

  Birley nodded. “Good. I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll go back to Kittrie and get samples of comparison hair since we’ve got to have exemplars for the unknown hairs found in Samenov’s combings. If those hairs are Kittrie’s, it’s likely she had sex with Samenov after the ‘happy hour,’ much closer to the time Samenov was killed. She could very well know something she’s not telling.”

  The telephone rang again, and this time it was for Leeland. He stepped over and took it at Birley’s desk while the rest of them went on discussing their assignments. After a moment Leeland interrupted them to ask for the case file, took it from Birley and turned around, laid it on the desk and started flipping through it as he cradled the receiver between his neck and chin. He named several dates, listened, named a couple more, listened, and started taking notes furiously. “I’ll be damned,” he said, listening and writing rapidly. He said, “Are you sure?” Listened. “I’ll be damned,” he repeated, and underlined something. Then jotted a few more notes. “No, we’re much obliged. Yeah, well, if you could send us some kind of confirmation on that for our file we’d appreciate it. You bet. Yeah, if you get up this way I’ll buy you a chicken-fried steak. Okay, ‘bye.”

  Leeland turned around, shaking his head and looking at his notes. He stuck his pencil behind his ear and wiped at his mustache.

  “That was Texas Ranger John Deaton calling from McAllen down in the Valley. He said he’d been out of touch for several days, working a double murder near Los Ebanos on the border, but had come in last night. This morning he was in the office checking the new TCIC listings that had come on line while he was gone. He caught Dallas’s flag on Ackley, and then Dallas put him on to us. He said that a week ago last Tuesday,”

  Leeland turned and looked at the calendar on the desk, “that’d be on the twenty-third, nine days ago, three days after Snider’s rape up in Dallas, Dennis Ackley and Clyde Barbish held up a liquor store in Mercedes, about twelve miles from the nearest border station. The deal went bad, there was a shoot-out, Barbish was hit but fled the scene and hasn’t been heard from since. Ackley killed one of the two liquor store clerks, and almost simultaneously the second clerk blew Ackley’s face off with a shotgun. That was two days before Dorothy Samenov was strangled.”

  21

  “If my father had told me to drink poison, I would have done it,” she said. “He meant that much to me. I would have done it in a minute.”

  Mary Lowe had been talking about her stepfather, how much he had come to mean to her and her mother after having rescued them from their nomadic wanderings through the Southern states, through “Dixie,” where her mother moved from job to job and Mary had tried to adapt to an endless series of makeshift homes in cheap boardinghouses and third-rate apartments. Broussard noted the slip of the tongue as she substituted “father” for “stepfather.” For some reason this made him uneasy, and the foreboding he had experienced during her last session returned.

  “We became very close. I was in the third grade. I had missed a year while Mother and I were moving around, so at ten I was a year older than all the others.”

  As lean and elegant as a Paris model, Mary was fond of fashionable clothes. Her streamlined body turned everything she put on into haute couture, creating a sleek elegance that caused head-turning responses whenever she entered a room. She was indeed exceptional, and Broussard could easily believe that what she possessed beneath her clothes was equally inspiring. He had spent a lot of time imagining the precise nature of that inspiration. The precise nature of it. But aside from this illicit, if imagined, appraisal of her anatomy, there was his more straightforward appreciation of her fashion sense. He simply liked what she wore, and he had never seen her wear even the smallest accessory that did not seem appropriate.

  This afternoon her thick buttery hair was pulled back and tied in the back with a white lace scarf. She wore a surplice wrap dress of rayon challis in a black and white stippling pattern of misty delicacy with a white, lace-trimmed collar that dipped into her bustline. Her stockings were the sheerest white, her shoes, lying at the foot of the chaise, were bone. She lay with one arm at her side and the other draped across her thin waist.

  “He became my best friend,” she continued; her right hand touched the skirt of her dress. “We swam together in our pool, played games; you know, who could swim the farthest underwater, who could pick up the most pennies from the deep end of the pool before having to come up, who could turn the most somersaults underwater. Mother would read by the pool or doze in the cabana. He and I watched a lot of television together, eating popcorn or pizza while we sprawled on the floor or lounged on the sofa. He would get me to snuggle up next to him or lie down with my head in his lap. Lots of times I would go to sleep there. Mother would sit in her own big chair and paint her nails or read magazines, or sometimes she just wasn’t there at all. And we cooked together, too. He liked to cook, and he taught me how to help him in the kitchen. I learned everything I know about cooking from him, not from Mother. I don’t particularly remember her in the kitchen at all. It didn’t interest her.”

  The hand that was draped over Mary’s waist flattened out and Broussard saw her pressing slightly on her upper abdomen as if she had experienced a slight pain or was trying to ease a tightness. He looked at her face, at the soulful russet shadowing around her eyes, at the subtly asymmetrical mouth with its hint of a pucker at one side. But there was a slight tension between her eyebrows, the faint beginnings of a frown.

  “He was my father,” she said. Again Broussard made a note, though in this instance it was unclear how she had used the word. She could have meant: “He was my ‘father’,” or she could have meant: “He was like a father to me” or “He became my father.”

  “He loved me,” she said. “He told me so and that made me feel wonderful. I really wanted to be loved and to have that love demonstrated to me. He did everything with me, and we developed a very special emotional bond. It happened very quickly for me because I had this void there, and he stepped right in and filled it. I became his ‘special girl.’ At the same time, now that my ‘emotional needs’ were taken care of, Mother seemed to relinquish entirely any attachment to me at all. But she didn’t seem to be particularly interested in him, either. My symbiotic relationship with my father seemed to free her to…simply pay more attention to herself, to indulge her narcissism. She grew inc
reasingly distant, more wrapped up in herself, preening like a solitary white bird. She was very beautiful. And she was also uncommonly self-centered.”

  Mary paused and her hand at her side began picking at her dress. It wasn’t doing anything, not smoothing the dress or rearranging the way it lay, just plucking at it between her thumb and forefinger. The fingers on her stomach moved slightly, but restlessly.

  “I wanted my father to know that I loved him, too. I didn’t want him ever to leave me or to drift away from me as my mother had done. I remember being very, very worried that he would do that.

  “One afternoon I went shopping with a friend from school and her mother. I bought my first two-piece swimsuit. It was aquamarine, and when I bought it in the store I remember imagining how wonderful it would look in the blue water of our pool. I couldn’t wait to get in the pool to see if I would match the water. I imagined that I would be very beautiful swimming in the pool as if I were actually one with the color of the water. I loved the colors, just the pleasure of the colors.

  “In the summer we would swim at night, and I especially liked that because the lights under the water seemed very exotic to me. I wore my new swimsuit that night to play water basketball with my father. We were horsing around, and I remember I finally got my hands on the ball and was getting away from him. He chased me, laughing, and grabbed me from behind…and he held me…somehow differently. I don’t really remember how I sensed it at first. I’d never felt it before, never even given it a thought, but I knew instantly what it was and that it had gotten hard, and he was holding it against the back of my suit bottom, sort of cupping me in his lap. Then he started grinding against me, holding me so tight I couldn’t get away. I felt him working that long bulge between my buttocks, and suddenly his hands slipped under the top of my swimsuit, and he began fondling my nipples, massaging them, squeezing them between his fingers.”

  Mary stopped and swallowed, her eyes fixed on a distant memory. “I was so startled…I didn’t really do anything. I just thought, What’s this? What’s he doing? and then suddenly he kind of shivered and held me tight for another couple of seconds. My mind was a mess of confusion. This was totally alien to me; I didn’t understand it at all and I didn’t like it. I think I started trying to get away, and then he kind of laughed again and shoved me away, pretending to be playing again, and swam toward the side of the pool.”