Mercy (75 page)

“The point is, you’ve said that fantasy is the compelling element of these recurring murders, and Broussard is a consummate practitioner of fantasy, as he imagines himself in the minds of his female clients—victims of child abuse—and as a cross-dresser, a woman.”

Palma laid down her pen and crossed her forearms on the table. “If Broussard is killing these women, he’s doing it from within the personality of the woman he becomes. Therefore, his behavior is a hybrid. You’re not sorting out this thing because your motivational models are predicated on male psychological behavior. What you’ve got here is a woman, at least a woman as a man perceives her. He’s probably reading most of his ‘female’ behavior incorrectly, but he’s got enough of it right to skew your analysis.

“One more thing,” Palma said. “Do you remember what he said about ‘men’ and ‘women’? ‘It’s a fantasy,’ he said, ‘to believe that men and women are different.’” She nodded. “You’ve been right all along. You’ve just been dealing with a killer with more than one gender.”

When Palma finally stopped, Grant’s smirk had disappeared, and he was staring at her with one hand bracing his chin and mouth, his elbow on the table. The forefinger of his hand was stroking his mustache. He was no longer amused; his hooded eyes were deadly serious.

She reached for her coffee. It was almost lukewarm, but it hardly fazed her. She was watching Grant.

“It’s a pretty wild scenario,” he said. He took down his hand, put his fingers on the paper napkin and pushed it around in a drop of water that had fallen off the bottom of the glass. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

She said, “It’s fancy, isn’t it?”

Grant nodded, but he was thinking about it, pursing his lips. “I’d feel a lot better about it if we could connect him to some form of violence.”

“For the sake of argument,” Palma said, “let’s say it isn’t fancy. Let’s say it accounts for the behavioral contradictions in the evidence, and we intend to move on it. What kind of proactive measures would you suggest?”

“Okay, fine. I’d guess he’s running at full tilt by now. His cooling-down periods are growing shorter and shorter, practically down to nothing now. He’s getting careless selecting his victims. If he holds true to pattern, the next one will be a client, a member of Samenov’s circle. A blond…all the stuff we’ve been through before…”

“The two women Martin and Hisdale saw drive into Broussard’s last night,” Palma said. “The one driving his car was him.”

“Possibly.”

“The other one was a woman named Lowe.”

“Right.”

“She’s still there, as far as we know.”

“Even if he’s flipping out, he wouldn’t kill her at his place,” Grant said. “He wouldn’t do that. He’s pressured, but he’s still methodical. He’ll make a mistake, but it won’t be something like that. It’ll be more like an indiscretion. He’ll still think of himself as coolly methodical, similar to the way an experienced heavy drinker thinks he’s perfectly under control when he’s drunk. He’ll drive the speed limit; he’ll stay on the right side of the street, but he’ll forget something simple, elementary, like turning on his headlights.

“But we need to move,” Grant conceded. “We’re not too far away from the Ben Taub Hospital, are we? We need to talk to Mirel Farr. If we get the right answers from her, I think we can do something.”

He didn’t tell her what the questions were.

59

M
irel Farr was pissed. She was sitting up in her hospital bed, which she had cranked up like a chair, and her auburn-rooted bleached hair was spewing stiffly in all directions, looking as if she had not made the slightest attempt to comb it the entire time she had been in the hospital. Her left eye was bruised and the swelling in her flat cheeks, which would usually make someone else look like a chipmunk, only made Mirel look normal. Her collarless hospital gown had a spatter of ocher stains down the front where her ungenerous breasts made little knobby appearances in the thin material.

Though Mirel’s jaws were wired shut, she was not in the least inhibited from talking. Her West Texas twang issued with relative clarity through the network of stainless-steel wires.

“I jus’ got through talking to my lawyer,” she said waspishly. She was holding a can of Diet Coke with a ribbed hospital straw sticking out the top. “We’re gonna sue the fuckin’ Houston Police Department. Sonofabitch cop slugged me. I jus’ said, ‘Clyde? Is that you?’” Her twang imitated a question of whining innocence. “‘At’s all I said. ‘Clyde? Is that you?’ and the son of a bitch cop slugged me! Motherfucker!” She demonstrated how Marley had punched her and sloshed some of the Coke on her lap and then quickly pinched the wet spot in her fingers and flapped it. “Suing for everything. Damages. Cost plus. Individual liberties. Emotional distress. Overhead. Work loss. I mean!”

“I’m sure your lawyer will take care of it,” Palma said. She and Grant had only introduced themselves before Mirel launched into her legal rights speech.

“I mean!” she snapped, and her dull eyes flashed as best they could. She was pissed.

“All we want to do is ask you some questions about one of your customers,” Palma said. Grant was standing behind her near the door, and Mirel kept glancing at him.

“I don’t have to answer any questions about my ‘clients.’”

“Lieutenant Frisch tells me you’ve already discussed your situation with him. He tells me you’ve come to an agreement with him and the DA’s office about your role in this investigation. He tells me you have agreed to answer questions.”

Mirel narrowed her eyes. “Well, my lawyer will have some things to say about that.”

“It’s my understanding that he’s already said some things about that, and he believes you had better cooperate if you want to avoid indictment as an accessory.”

Mirel glowered at her straw. She sucked on it, grabbed a tissue from a square flowered box on the chrome tray swung over her bed and dabbed at her mouth with a wince. “What client?”

“Dominick Broussard.”

Mirel frowned. “Shit. I don’t know anybody by a name like that.”

“He probably uses a false name. He knew Samenov and Moser and Louise Ackley. And Vickie Kittrie.”

Mirel snapped her head around. “Vickie?” She looked at Grant over by the door, and then back at Palma. “Vickie get killed?”

“Late last night. They found her body this morning.”

“God almighty damn,” she said slowly. “Vickie.” There was awe in her voice. She looked out her dusty window at the wall of another wing of the hospital. She had a good view of the compressors of the air-conditioning system, and the lime-fouled roosting site of thirty or forty pigeons who seemed to have taken a great liking to one of the ugliest spots in the entire 525-acre medical center. Mirel’s expression took on a faraway look of seriousness that was distinctly different from her former anger. “That’s a lot of ‘em. Girls I knew.” She looked back up at Palma. “God
damn
. This’s weirder’n shit. This guy’s Billy Berserko.” She paused. “What? You think this Grussard’s doing it?”

“Broussard. He’s one suspect,” Palma said. “There are others.”

“He’s into S&M?”

“We think so. That’s what we wanted to hear from you.”

“Well, can you tell me something about him, for God’s sake? I mean. What’s he look like?”

“He’s about forty-six, forty-eight. Six feet. Dark complexion like a Hispanic, though he’s clearly not Hispanic. He’s a cross-dresser. He’s got black hair but…”

“Wears blond wigs, expensive dresses, and does a damn good job with his makeup.” Mirel smirked. “‘At’s Maggie Boll. Margaret. He insists on Margaret, but I call him Maggie to his back. This joker’s the best cross-dresser I’ve ever seen. I mean. Thing is, he’s not really built for crossing—he’s a little thick for it—but the guy’s got such style you can’t believe it’s a man. Makes kind of a sultry babe.”

“Why does he come to you?”

“To watch. Likes to see women whip up on each other. Most crossers like to see men. Well, actually, most cross-dressers I get are gay. So.” Mirel shrugged. She sipped from the accordian straw and then blotted the pink tissue to her swollen mouth. At first Palma found it difficult to understand her through her clenched teeth, but now she was getting used to the twang. “But his deal is women. Sits behind the two-way mirror, always in the act, watching. Sometimes I watch him.” She cut her eyes at Grant. “I got another peeking place so I can peek on the peekers. Some of these crossers whack off while they’re watching, but not Maggie. He just sits there, always in the act, watching. Just like it’s a movie. I mean he doesn’t show any emotion, nothing. Might as well be a documentary about skydiving. He don’t show
nothing
.”

“That’s it?”

Mirel nodded with exaggeration, her strawy spray of hair wagging stiffly.

“How often does he come in?”

“Every six or eight weeks. Something like that.”

“How long does he stay?”

“Most of an hour.”

“Has he been around more frequently lately?” Grant asked.

Mirel looked at him. “Not really.”

Grant moved up closer to the bed. “When he watches the girls, does he do anything in particular? I know you said he just sits there, doesn’t do anything, but what exactly does he do? Does he hold his hands in his lap? Does he cross his legs? Chew gum? Rub his arm?”

Mirel Farr regarded Grant with sullen eyes and thought about this. She clicked her fingernails against the aluminum Coke can and thought and thought. It seemed an odd thing for her to apply this much attention to Grant’s question. The other responses had been snappy, almost flippant. But now she deliberated with some gravity. Then she began to nod tentatively, then with more conviction.

“Yeah. Come to think of it, I guess he does,” she said. “What he does is he holds himself. I mean, not his dick, but like a woman holds herself. You know, kind of wraps her arms around herself. He does that, and then he kind of leans forward like he’s got the cramps, leans forward just a little.” Mirel leaned forward a little, too.

“That’s it?”

“Well, yeah. And it seems to me like maybe he sort of presses his hand into his stomach the way you do when you’ve got a stomachache, or a cramp. Menstrual cramps. Maybe Maggie thinks she’s having her time.” She tried to grin at the idea, but it was a stiff effort, and she gave it up. “Not much fan to peek at, though. Some of those other guys, the peepers, damn, you wouldn’t believe the kind of kinko shit they go through when they’re peepin’ but don’t know
they’re
being peeped.”

“Could you see Broussard’s face when he was doing this?” Grant asked.

“Sort of.”

“What was his expression like?”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know. I mean, he had makeup on.”

“Who did he watch?” Palma asked. “Anyone in particular?”

“Yeah. Shit, yeah! Goddamn!” Her eyes widened. “That was the special thing. Certain women. Yeah, you bet.” She was getting excited. “He gave me a list. Some of the girls that’s been killed. Dorothy was on there. Jesus. And Sandy Moser. Vickie. And then he saw Louise Ackley with Dorothy once, and he put her on the list, too.”

“These women knew he was watching them?” Grant asked.

Mirel cocked her head self-consciously. She didn’t answer right away and spent some time touching the tiny faded blue flowers on her gown. “He gave me a pretty good boost to let him do that. Top dollar. They never would’ve done it if they’d known. When they called to schedule a time, I’d let him know. If he showed up, I got top dollar. He wouldn’t always show up.”

“Were there very many women on his list?”

She shook her head. “At first only Dorothy and Louise. Then he saw them with other women. If he liked them, he’d ask me who they were, and he’d add them to his list, too.

“How many?”

“Six, seven.”

“We’ll need the names,” Palma said reaching for her notebook in her purse. “There’s Dorothy, Louise Ackley…”

“Yeah, and there was Vickie Kittrie and Sandra Moser. Uh, that’s four. Nancy Seiver. Cheryl Loch. Mary Lowe.”

Palma’s hand jagged like a polygraph needle, but she kept her head down. Christ! They were catching up with him, getting closer and closer to the kills.

“I don’t know,” Mirel shrugged. “There wasn’t that many of them. I was probably the only place in town for this kind of thing, so there wasn’t that many of them. This is not exactly a widespread recreational kind of entertainment. I was lucky to hit onto this group of nuts. Never seen anything like them. I used to be in LA for a while, and San Francisco, too. But this little group of gals here beats ‘em all.”

“Mary Lowe,” Palma said. “What do you know about her?”

Mirel cocked her head and parted her dry lips from her clenched teeth. She was uncomfortable and looked like she wanted to brush her teeth.

“Mary is a class act. Of all these gals, even Dorothy, Mary’s the one with something that makes you wonder why she’s in this league. High society. Almost all of these women are upper-class, you know. West side. The Villages. River Oaks. Junior League. Charity organizers. Wear whatever color’s in for the season. I coulda made a fortune blackmailing ‘em. Mary’s built like a model, maybe her tits are a little big, but what tits! Married. Two kids. Big modern house in Hunters Creek. I went and looked at the house. I do that sometimes. I like to see how far down they’re coming when they come to my place.” She paused. “Mary, she does all the right things at all the right places. Very savvy gal.”

“Did Broussard ever demonstrate any special interest in her?”

“No, but she’s a turn-on for all the others, I can tell you. I mean. She’d turn a woman’s head as fast as a man’s, has these dykey types drooling. But when she does her thing she does it with femmes. Never dykes.”

“Did she prefer to control or be controlled?” Palma asked.

“I seen her do both, but mostly she bottoms. She does it like it’s a modern-dance performance or something. I mean, she’s graceful whatever she does.” Mirel nodded, almost trying to smile again. “She’s a class act. People wouldn’t believe it, you know. Seeing her at my place, doing what she does. I mean. Shit. People wouldn’t believe it.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, and the only sound was that of Mirel Farr’s straw vacuuming the last few drops of Diet Coke as she reached the bottom of the can. Palma looked at Grant, who was watching Mirel with that expression in his eyes that told her he wasn’t seeing what he was looking at. Then he caught Palma looking at him.