Mercy (61 page)

Palma stood out of Grant’s way while he made himself familiar with Reynolds’s bedroom in much the same way he had done at Mello’s and Samenov’s. He went through Reynolds’s clothing, studied the contents of his bathroom, looked through his chests where he found a drawer full of pornographic magazines and videotapes. Seeming preoccupied, he moved out of the bedroom and into the second one, which was furnished but unused, without even towels or soap in the bathroom. She followed Grant into the living room, where he made his way to the far wall and pulled the drapes closed before he turned on the lights and began wandering through the spacious room, which was furnished with an extensive collection of Oriental furniture and objets d’art. Grant left no jar unexamined, no decorative box unopened. He checked under the upholstered bottoms of the chairs and sofas and unzipped the covered foam cushions and probed the sides. There was a small wall of books, and Grant removed each volume and quickly, but thoroughly, fanned through their pages. He spent some time at the bar, looking at the type of liquor Reynolds kept and the kind he had in reserve.

In one corner of the room there was an alcove with a desk surrounded by shelves. Grant pulled open each drawer on the desk and went through it, then carefully went through the few envelopes and papers stacked to one side. Two items were side by side, and he looked at their positioning a moment before he picked up the calendar and set it in the center of the desk.

“Carmen, how much film did you bring?”

“Four rolls, thirty-six exposures each.”

“Great. Let’s see how many pages we need to photograph out of the calendar.”

They went through every page, beginning with the last weekend in December of the previous year. Luckily the calendar showed a week on each double-page spread, and Palma was able to get every week up to the present on one roll. There were no notations beyond the present week. Grant carefully replaced the calendar and pulled the address book over in front of them. It appeared to be dedicated to personal use, not cluttered with the names of business contacts as would be his Rolodex at his office. Most of these names were first names only, some with a last-name initial. The book was about the size of a breastpocket wallet, and Palma was able to get every double page on the next two rolls of film.

Grant had gone through Reynolds’s kitchen and was going through a golf bag in the coat closet in the entryway when Palma checked her watch. They had been in Reynolds’s condo an hour and forty minutes. She walked to the telephone and called Leeland. Reynolds had left Galveston and was headed back into the city. They were about three miles out from Hobby Airport. Palma told Grant they might have another thirty minutes, and he started making one more trip through the condo, this time acting as if he were going through a museum. He turned on all the lights and simply strolled through each of the rooms, pausing and looking at things that Palma couldn’t imagine he needed to see again since he had already examined them in detail. But he touched nothing, and sometimes he would turn a lamp off here and there and look around at the effect of the changed lighting on the room, or it seemed to Palma that that was what he was doing. Gradually he worked his way back to the front foyer. Behind them all the lights were out, the drapes over the large glass window overlooking the Post Oak district were once again open, and the lights of the city glittered across the darkness to the foyer.

Twenty-five minutes after Palma talked to Leeland they stepped out into the hallway, and Grant locked the door behind them.

48

P
alma and Grant returned to the police headquarters on Riesner and took the rolls of film to Jake Weller in the photo lab, requesting that he print whatever size photographs it took to read the writing on the calendar and the address book. They asked for two copies of each print, one to go to Leeland in the task force control room and one to go on Palma’s desk.

Then they went down to homicide, where the main hall was crowded with reporters from all three media branches, none of whom were being let into the squad room itself and all of whom recognized Palma and tried to get her to stop for a few words. Finally making their way into the squad room, they found another, but smaller, crowd of police officials jammed into Frisch’s office and spilling out of the opened door. Palma also recognized a couple of city councilmen and the mayor’s law-enforcement liaison.

With Grant right behind her, she headed into the narrow corridor that took her to the task force room, where a secretary was working at the computer, Nancy Castle was talking on the telephone, and Leeland was hunched over a pile of papers at a crowded desk. Except for Castle’s subdued conversation on the telephone and a clerk’s fingers clicking on the computer keyboard, the room was the quietest place on the third floor.

They learned from Leeland that both Haws and Barbish were now in surgery, Haws at Methodist Hospital where he’d asked to be taken and Barbish at Ben Taub. Haws was going to be fine, but Barbish was in serious condition. In addition to his exploded right knee, he had suffered a life-threatening brain concussion, which he apparently sustained when he fell and hit his head against the curb after Marley shot him. Tough luck. If Barbish died or had brain damage, they might never learn the truth about the hits on Louise Ackley and Lalo Montalvo.

“What about Mirel Farr?” Palma asked.

“Well, actually, she’s at Ben Taub, too,” Leeland said. “Getting her jaw wired up. Uh, she broke it somehow during all this. I’m not sure of the details. Lieutenant Corbeil’s still over there with a couple of our guys and a team from vice. Farr’s records could be a lot of help.” He looked at Grant. “Anything at Reynolds’s?”

“I don’t think so, at least nothing immediately conclusive.”

That was news to Palma. On the drive back from the St. Regis, Grant had politely but firmly fended off Palma’s questions. She had let it go for the moment, but she wasn’t any good at being put off. Grant was going to have to cough it up.

“But Carmen photographed Reynolds’s calendar and address book,” Grant said. “They’re in the photo lab now, and they’re supposed to bring a copy up to you when the prints are ready. Did you get Reynolds’s military record?”

“Right here,” Leeland said, reaching for a manila folder which he yanked from under a stack of others. He opened it in front of him and bit his bushy mustache with his lower teeth. “Was a marine sniper in Nam from February 1968 to July 1971. Three tours. Requested a fourth, but was turned down and shipped home. Discharged in September 1971. He had…” Leeland paused for effect, “…ninety-one confirmed kills.”

“And an honorable discharge?” Grant asked.

Leeland nodded.

“Any psychological analysis in his medical section?”

Leeland shook his head.

“The Corps protects its own.”

“Have you heard from Birley?” Palma asked.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact…” Leeland leaned over and lifted a page on a notepad, “He’s out in Briar Grove right now talking to a woman who spent a lot of time with Denise Kaplan Reynolds during the year before she disappeared. Here’s a picture of Denise,” he said, pulling a snapshot from a folder and handing it to Palma. “She’s blond, but beyond that I can’t see that she looks anything like the victims.”

Palma looked at Denise. The photograph was made five months before she disappeared by one of the women she had been seeing in Samenov’s group. It was a four-by-six color shot. Denise was standing on an empty beach, the shoreline disappearing behind her into the coastal haze. She must have been tossing food to the seagulls, because two of them hovered low in the sky behind her. She was developing a first-class sunburn, and the brisk Gulf air was making her short blond hair stand up on one side of her head. She was not a particularly attractive woman, but she had a kind face and large eyes that sagged slightly at their outside corners, giving her a vaguely doleful appearance.

Palma handed the photograph to Grant, who held it in both hands and looked at it. She watched the minuscule jerky movements of his eyes as he took in the receding shoreline and the floating birds and the sunburned face of the woman who smiled hesitantly, as if by permission, at the photographer. Palma saw Grant’s eyes settle on Denise’s face and stay there. He looked at her for a long time.

Grant’s own face was indecipherable, an attribute that was beginning to get on Palma’s nerves. It was not that the man was stone-faced. His face was not expressionless. The real peculiarity about him was that he never showed her anything that she knew damn well he hadn’t thought out beforehand and had decided he wanted her to see. When they had met at the airport he showed a convivial smile, a good-humored, pleasant demeanor. When she had confronted him in Frisch’s office that morning, he showed a thoughtful seriousness in keeping with his role. When they had lunch together he knew to loosen up a bit, ease back on the formality in order to soothe her ruffled feathers. And it wasn’t that he lacked spontaneity. His manner never seemed forced or bogus. But the irritating thing to Palma was that it was when his mind was turning on its most interesting course that his face became the most enigmatic—the most deceptive. She didn’t care about the convivial Grant, or the thoughtfully serious Grant, or the eased-back Grant. She wanted to know the Sander Grant who looked at the photograph of the plain and mysteriously disappeared Denise Kaplan Reynolds and was so moved by what he saw that he believed it was necessary to disguise his feelings.

“Birley’s talked to two women, besides the one he’s with now, who’ve had sexual relationships with Kaplan,” Leeland said, interrupting the silence. “And all of them claimed they didn’t know whether Kaplan had ever had affairs with any of the victims. Birley said he thought a couple of them were lying, that they were afraid to talk because of the killings.”

Nancy Castle, who had been making and answering telephone calls while they were standing there, hung up the telephone, looked at her watch, made a quick note, and waved the paper at Leeland.

“That was Garro,” she said. “He and Childs have taken over from Cushing and Boucher, and they’ve followed Reynolds and his date back to his condo. Garro and Childs have gone into the surveillance van, and one of the electronics men is putting a bug and a listening device in Reynolds’s car. They’ll sit on him there.”

“Cushing and Boucher are going home?” Leeland asked.

“Said they’d check in again in six hours.”

“Okay, we’ve talked with Broussard,” Palma told Leeland, and she went over the highlights of the interview, passing on the facts as they had learned them.

“You mean the guy’s had all three victims as clients?” Leeland’s solemn eyes widened.

Palma nodded.

“Damn. So how do you read this guy?”

Palma turned to Grant. She wasn’t about to answer that. She wanted to hear what Grant had to say. He looked at her; he knew what she was doing.

“Okay, let’s talk about Reynolds’s condo first,” Grant said, his eyes pulling away from her and going to Leeland. “You remember I said photographing his place, looking through it, would tell me something about him? Well, it did, but it wasn’t what I’d expected. I’ve known a few men who were snipers in Nam. All of them were long on native intelligence, and tended to be patient, exacting, obsessive. So I wasn’t surprised at the sniper shell souvenirs, except for the number of them. After that girl, Terry, told Carmen of Reynolds’s rifle scope fantasy involving Louise Ackley, the souvenirs were almost expected.

“What I didn’t expect was that Reynolds would go down a notch on my suspect list.”

Leeland looked at Palma, but she kept her eyes on Grant.

“I’ve said several times that sexually motivated killers were souvenir keepers,” Grant began explaining, “but the sniper shells don’t count. Not in this particular context, anyway. If we were investigating sniper killings, okay. But they mean nothing in these cases. I don’t doubt that Reynolds has problems, but I don’t think they’re our problems. Not on the serial killings, anyway.”

“Then you didn’t find anything?” Leeland couldn’t believe it. Lack of sleep had puffed his eyes and emphasized his weighty jowls, giving him the countenance of a mildly surprised walrus.

“That place was empty as far as any reference to these cases is concerned. Nothing. But Reynolds is one cold individual—no picture albums, no mementos or references to his family, no letters to anyone or from anyone…nothing of any personal nature at all. The place could have been a motel room occupied by someone different every night. I imagine,” he said to Palma, “the rifle Terry told you about is kept in his office or the trunk of his car.”

“Couldn’t he be keeping his souvenirs there too?” Leeland asked.

“I just can’t feature it,” Grant said, folding his arms across his chest and standing swaybacked to relieve the tired muscles in his lower back. “He’d have kept them at home, well hidden maybe, but they’d be in that condo. We were there a little over two hours. I’ve had a lot of practice looking for those sorts of things. If they’d been there, I think I would have found them.”

“Broussard, on the other hand…” Palma said, as if cuing him.

Grant nodded. “Exactly. This guy we’ve got to look into. Aside from the obvious facts we’ve already mentioned, there were a couple of things that really impressed me. The facts he gave us about child abuse…female offenders.” He looked at Palma. “That must’ve done your heart good. But the point is,” he addressed Leeland again, “he wasn’t expecting us, and even if he had been I doubt if he could have anticipated our line of questioning. Yet he rattled off those percentages of various abuses as if he’d just looked them up. Two possibilities: either he was mightly impressed by those facts and figures when he read them somewhere and took special note to remember them, or he has a specific interest in that subject and has a ready recall of the statistics. I’m guessing the latter.”

“He did say almost all of his clients were women,” Palma reminded him. “It seems logical to me that he’d be up on those kinds of studies.”

“Right.” Grant nodded warily as if knowing she was going to say that. “But the next point isn’t so easy to explain. When I kept after him to speculate about what kind of thinking process our murderer might follow, he was reluctant to do it. Didn’t want to at all. But when he finally did, his observations were expressed in the first person, not the third person. It’s true I’d asked him to try to put himself in the killer’s place. Still, the choice of pronouns was significant. Additionally, his assessment was perfect, accurate in every aspect. I don’t think this can be explained by way of his being a psychologist. Criminal psychology is a specialty. Unless a psychoanalyst had a particular interest in criminal psychology, he’d have to do considerable reading before he could rattle off the information Broussard gave us this evening. But he had a ready grasp of it, and of this precise criminal typology—the sexual killer.”