Mercy (25 page)

Mary’s nervous fingers betrayed her agitation and caused Broussard to look at her face. The little pucker between her eyebrows had become a stern frown, but it was more the frown of one straining to hear some faint sound rather than that of a person emotionally upset. Broussard watched her. He had heard a good number of these stories over the years, and wondered how she had handled it as a child, and how she would interpret it as a woman. He said nothing, but he was irritated at the recognition of his own arousal. But he tried not to be self-condemning. After all, it was a biologically normal reaction. The fact that she was speaking as a child didn’t bother him, or perhaps it did, and that was the source of his own discomfort.

But there was more at play here than a violation of cultural conventions. The same inexplicable attraction he had felt for Bernadine five years earlier was echoed in the resonance of the emotions that stirred in him at hearing Mary Lowe’s story. Not only did he recognize these familiar stirrings, but he discerned, too, an intrusive anxiety. The same feeling of being on the foggy margins of a moral frontier that had emerged as he interviewed Bernadine in those early months after they first met were surfacing once again as he listened to the tortured memories of Mary’s childhood, those early memories the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had characterized as “the troubled colors of bygone days…”

Mary did not continue immediately. In fact, she did not speak again for seventeen minutes, according to Broussard’s mantel clock. As always, he remained silent, watching, noticing that Mary’s legs moved a little also, almost as nervously as her fingers, but ever so slightly, like someone who had lain in one position too long. But as he watched, she gained control of herself. By a remarkable force of will she calmed every part of her twitching body, settling herself, gaining control so that she could go on.

“As soon as I broke away,” she said, “I turned and looked at Mother, who was sitting at the other end of the pool with her legs in the water reading a magazine. She hadn’t seen anything. I looked at my father, and he sort of frowned and shook his head for me not to say anything. I guess he could tell what I had in mind. It was disorienting—what he’d done. And now this, his not wanting me to say anything about it. It was—disorienting.” Mary couldn’t seem to find another word to better describe her feelings. “He wanted to keep it from her, what he’d done. Even in my child’s mind I saw the enormity of what he was suggesting, that it was a kind of point of no return. If I went along with him on this, that put me in the position of a coconspirator with him. If I agreed, we shared a secret.

“I was still in the water, looking at Mother, her legs moving slowly back and forth in the blue water, her head down looking at the magazine. Behind me I heard my father start calling my name, kind of laughing, maybe a little nervously. Right there in that moment between them I tried to figure it out for myself. Why did I feel so strange about what he’d done? What had he done? I don’t know. What’s so different about my chest that he shouldn’t touch me there, or about his thing that he shouldn’t do what he did? What had he done? He kissed me on the lips and patted me on the bottom. What made this so different? I mean, how do fathers act? He had been so wonderful to me. I knew he would never harm me. I knew he loved me. And I also knew if I said anything about it, it would be awkward for all of us. It would ruin things.”

In just a few short moments Mary Lowe had worked herself into another state of agitation, but now she couldn’t remain lying down. She sat up abruptly and hung her legs over the side of the chaise. She wiped at her face.

“Could I please have a cold washcloth?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course.” He laid down his notebook and went into his bath and ran a washcloth under the cold water, wrung it out, and brought it back to her. Her face was red, and she seemed as if she had been breathing heavily. She took the washcloth and thanked him and put it on her face, unheeding of her makeup. She held it there a moment, hiding her face, and then she lifted it. He stood in front of her watching her, realizing that her agitation excited him. She ignored his closeness and wiped the cloth down into the front of her dress, across her breasts, in between them. Broussard regarded her with an undisguised admiration.

Suddenly she stopped and looked up at him. She glanced down to his crotch, but his sport coat was covering the bulge. It didn’t matter. She knew. They both understood.

She thrust the cloth out to him without thanking him. He smiled at her and took it back to the bathroom and left it draped over the sink and returned.

Mary Lowe had gotten her purse and sat it on her lap while she freshened her makeup. Broussard returned to his armchair and watched her. After a moment he said, “Do you believe that episode just happened out of the blue?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” She was looking at herself in her compact.

“Have you ever wondered if you may have, in some way, provoked this kind of action by your stepfather?”

Her eyes shot up from her hand-held mirror, her expression defiant. He felt as if she had slapped him.

“Sometimes children, little girls, can be provocative without even realizing it,” Broussard persisted. “Maybe you wanted this episode to happen. Why do you think you bought the two-piece suit? Certainly you’ll have to admit this kind of suit is much more revealing, much more…”

Lowe lowered her mirror, snapped it shut, and put it into her purse. She looked at him. “I was a child,” she said.

Broussard smiled. “Of course you were, but do you believe children are completely innocent…of such things? Sometimes even as adults we don’t know why we do some of the things we do. We’re compelled by some unconscious impulse, perhaps never really understanding what we’ve done until it’s over, and we can look back and see that there was more to it than met the eye. Have you never wondered if, perhaps unconsciously, you wanted this isolated incident to happen?”

Mary Lowe stood up from the chaise and looked at Broussard, her pale feet visible in his peripheral vision as they peeped out from under the hem of her dress like two shy creatures whose slight visibility only hinted at the hidden charm that remained concealed higher up under the longer folds of the skirt.

“It was not,” she said, “an isolated incident.”

22

V
ickie Kittrie had not returned to work by Wednesday morning, and her boss at Computron said that she had requested a week’s sick leave. Nor was she at home. Palma found her on Olympia, staying with Helena Saulnier.

The three of them sat in Saulnier’s living room again, the late morning light throwing a long brassy streak across the dark terra-cotta tile of the living room that opened out onto a patio crowded with palms and plantains. Whether by chance or by an unconscious need to follow precedents, Palma and Kittrie sat in the same places they had occupied three days earlier, facing each other across the glazed gold tiles of the coffee table while Saulnier, not excusing herself this time, sat in a second tapestry armchair between them. Both women were dressed casually, Kittrie in white tailored shorts and a white safari shirt, and Saulnier in a sarong, as before, and the top of a black bikini. And both women seemed particularly concerned with Palma’s third visit in as many days. Kittrie was her usual apprehensive self, but this time Saulnier, too, portrayed genuine concern. Palma thought it was a good opportunity to get straight to the point with them. She had been too cautious too long.

“I’m going to level with you,” Palma said, looking at both of them but settling her eyes on Kittrie. “I know that you and Dorothy Samenov were lovers.” She pressed on despite Kittrie’s round-eyed surprise and the bright pink flush that spread over her freckles. “I know how Dorothy felt about keeping her bisexuality secret, and I know that her ex-husband had been blackmailing her to keep it quiet. He’s dead, incidentally.” Kittrie’s mouth dropped open. “He was robbing a liquor store and was shot. I’ll have to admit that he was our main—and only—suspect. Now we’re no closer to resolving this thing than we were when we walked into Dorothy’s bedroom two days ago.

“Additionally, I need to tell you that a month before Dorothy was killed another woman was murdered in almost the exact manner.” This time both Saulnier and Kittrie reacted with alarm. “I asked you about her the first time we talked,” Palma said to Kittrie. “Her name was Sandra Moser.”

“I remember,” Kittrie nodded. “But I’ve never heard of her.”

“She was found in the Doubletree Hotel on Post Oak. It was in the papers.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Saulnier said. “I just didn’t put the names together.” Her expression was sober. “She was killed…the same way?”

Palma nodded and opened the manila folder she had brought with her. She pulled out the picture of Moser, and the uncropped copies of the three black and white pictures of the unidentified woman with the mannequin.

“Do you know either of these women?”

Vickie was not as bright as she might have been, and when she got a good look at the pictures she snapped her eyes at Saulnier, who pretended not to notice. Saulnier looked at Palma and shook her head and gave a small shrug. Vickie’s face was as blank as an imbecile’s.

Palma was furious, but covered it. It struck her as absurd that the three of them were sitting there playing charades.

“I’ll give you my opinion,” she said, “and it’s the assumption on which we’re conducting this investigation. There are a group of you,” she included Saulnier with her eyes, “who want to keep your bisexuality, or even your strictly lesbian, preferences secret, for professional or other reasons. You socialize among yourselves in private, but maintain a considerable restrained distance professionally. Maybe you even compartmentalize your lives, some of you knowing the same women without realizing it. In any event, some of you also know, without realizing it, the man who has killed Dorothy and Sandra Moser. He’s going to kill others. That’s a guarantee, because none of you are cooperating with us and we don’t have any leads. So he’s out there, a husband, a bum, a lover, a friend, a hairdresser, a plumber, an executive…whatever he is, and he’s going to do it again. As long as you maintain this stupid conspiratorial silence, you’re sentencing another woman to death.”

Palma stopped and looked at them. Kittrie fidgeted in her cute, cuffed shorts like a reprimanded schoolgirl, her youthful breasts requiring no help to create a seductive cleavage, her permed ginger hair full and bouncy around her face which, even when expressing confused fright as it was now, was a seductive attraction to either sex. Saulnier understood.

“Was the other woman bisexual?” she asked.

“We don’t know.” Palma was tired of the game. She nodded at the pictures. “She’s the blond. We were hoping you could help us find out.”

“I don’t know her,” Saulnier said. Then she leaned forward and put a finger on one of the pictures of the unidentified woman with the mannequin. “But I know her.” She looked at Palma steadily. “You’re sure about this, about the bisexual aspect?”

“I’m not sure about anything,” Palma said. “That’s what we think we’ve got.”

Saulnier nodded and leaned back in her chair, thinking.

The sarong had fallen open, exposing her long tanned inner thigh. She didn’t bother to fix the sarong. Her olive face was framed by her straight bangs and the vertical sides of her dark, gray-streaked bob. Only her eyes and something about her mouth hinted at the years she had over Kittrie and even over Palma herself. She was clearly feeling the import of Palma’s words, and she was weighing them in the balance against something else at which Palma could only guess.

“It’s not exactly a ‘society,’” she said finally, looking at Palma, “but it’s damned close to it.”

Vickie Kittrie reached for her Virginia Slims on the coffee table. Saulnier pulled herself up in the tapestry armchair and let the sarong fall away from her leg completely now, exposing it nearly to the hip. The very edge of the dark triangle between her legs was visible above the sloping curve of her naked thigh. The gesture seemed to be a declaration of admission. Palma had caught her out, she no longer had a reason for deception. Palma wondered what could be going through her mind. Was she really so comfortable with her nakedness that she did not care that Palma was almost close enough to touch her? Or was the intent of this display to draw Palma into a new eroticism? Or was her intent more selfish; did the titillation flow in the other direction so that Saulnier herself was experiencing a very particular gratification from watching Palma’s reaction as she found herself in the uncomfortable position of alternately averting her eyes from Saulnier’s exhibitionism, and unavoidably taking in the full, naked length of her handsome body?

“Dorothy actually started this…group herself, five or six years ago,” Saulnier began, glancing briefly at Vickie before continuing. “She had been a sexually abused child who had run away from home when she was fifteen to get away from it. She lived in a hospice while she finished high school. She was smart, had spunk, and got a scholarship to go to college. That’s where she met Louise Ackley and discovered her sexual affinity for other women.”

Saulnier paused as if she wanted to explain something, then decided against it and went on. Palma thought about the drunken man she had heard swearing in Ackley’s bedroom.

“Dorothy recognized early on that this was one aspect of her life she was going to have to hide. That was when she started the prototype of the network. While she was in graduate school she met Louise’s brother and, for some inexplicable reason, married him. You know how that turned out. But Dorothy and Louise continued their relationship.”

She paused again, and the tapered fingers of one hand pulled abstractly at one side of her bob. Saulnier’s fingernails were perfectly manicured though kept rather short with softly narrowed ends. Palma had never seen them with nail polish.

“Naturally I lied about how well I knew her,” Saulnier said. ”We were extremely close, across the street from each other like this. We were lovers for a while, too, but we were too much alike. Anyway, Louise had been her lover for years, behind Dennis’s back. He was such a prick, so wrapped up in himself, he didn’t even realize what was going on. And then one day he found them together. He used it against them from then on.