Mercy Read online

  Broussard shook his head and turned his chair to an antique Jacobean table sitting in front of the windows overlooking the sloping lawn that was now disappearing into the early darkness of evening. He flipped on a computer terminal and sat before its amber glow, tapping at the keyboard, waiting, tapping, the screen disappearing, reappearing, more tapping until he sat still a moment, and then said, “I first consulted with Dorothy Ann Samenov on February 14, 1984, and I last consulted with her on December 12, 1984.” He left the screen on and turned back to them.

  Palma studied her notebook for a while, letting Broussard watch her. Then she asked, “When did you first realize that all three victims had been your clients?”

  “This morning.”

  “Didn’t you recognize Sandra Moser’s name in the news when she was killed?”

  “Of course I did, but that was just one murder. I thought it was extraordinary that one of my clients had been killed. It’s never happened to me before. I’ve had suicides, but not homicides. So I marveled at it, followed the case, but that was all. It was one of those things that happen to people you know. I never knew about Dorothy Samenov until I saw the article in this morning’s paper. All three women’s names were mentioned. That’s when I knew.”

  Palma knew that Grant was aware that Samenov’s murder had been kept out of the media except for a small mention in the police blotter one morning.

  “I’m sure you’ve already anticipated me,” Palma said.

  Broussard started nodding, and she went ahead. “It would help us to know what you thought about these three women. In your opinion, did they have any propensity that would have made them particularly susceptible to this kind of victimization? Do you see a red thread here?”

  Broussard leaned his forearms on his desk and interlocked the fingers of his two hands and studied his thumbnails. His arms rested in a clean space in the center of the desk, an area large enough for a leather desk set, a spiral-bound appointment calendar, a telephone, a lamp, an ornate silver Victorian inkwell and pen tray which held four or five well-used ink pens. But on either side of Broussard, the desk was cluttered with dozens of variously sized figurines, some seemingly antique artifacts of clay, or bronze, or marble, or pitted iron, some of a variety of stones in deep colors of burgundy or black or cobalt or jade. All the figures were of women.

  Broussard looked up, preparing to respond, and saw Palma looking at his collection. He tilted his head.

  “Recognize any of them?”

  “Saint Catherine,” she said.

  “Oh, you were educated in a parochial school as a child?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Yes, well, the good and unfortunate Catherine. All of them women out of the mythos of many cultures and spanning many ages, ancient and modern.”

  Broussard looked at Grant and then back at Palma. He reached out and touched a marble figure. “This is multibreasted Artemis of Ephesus, Queen of Heaven, the Great Goddess, worshiped by Asia and all the world.” He touched the one Palma had recognized. “Your stoic Saint Catherine, gazing placidly into eternity through the spokes of a wheel of fiery veined stone.” His finger moved. “A bronze Leda curling her hips to embrace with her heavy thighs the massive feathered body of the swan-Zeus, conceiving in the shudder of her passion yet another woman whose legendary beauty would launch a thousand ships. Here, a pale marble Psyche embracing bisexual Eros; that black one, thin-waisted and heavy-busted Parvati bride of Shiva, Daughter of Heaven, she of the incomparably graceful hips; and squatting beside her there is a steatite Tlazolteotl, Mother Goddess of the Aztecs, whose grimacing face portrays the pain of childbirth and whose parted knees and gaping vagina reveal the emerging head and arms of an offspring race.”

  He stopped, bringing his arm back to rest with the other one on the desk in front of him. The collection was a melange of color and texture and material and form, female archetypes of the graceful and the vulgar, of the proud and the humble, of the beatific and the Satanic.

  “I get positively poetic about them,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve been collecting them since I was in college. A lifetime of women.

  “Two things,” he said abruptly, his dusky forehead wrinkling as he looked up at her. “I realize that I’m a common denominator here, and by virtue of my association with these women I’m in something of a compromised position. I’ll check my calendar, but I may not be able to give you alibis for all the nights…if any. Also…I rather suspect that by now Bernadine’s husband must have made you aware that my relationship with her…exceeds that of doctor-client. I know that puts my career in jeopardy should you wish to pursue it as a breach of professional ethics.”

  Broussard sat back in his chair and looked at each of them in turn with eyes unafraid of meeting theirs. He shook his head.

  “But it wasn’t.” Thinking, he shifted his eyes to the icons. “I won’t say I loved her. It was too complicated. I don’t know that I could call it that, but it was…enduring. Over five years, through three husbands. I collected a fee, yes. For a time I didn’t, a year and a half. But I continued seeing her three times a week, and she continued analysis. Then one day she started paying me again because she said I was earning it, regardless of our relationship.” He smiled sadly and looked up at Palma. “And she was right; I was. Anyway, Bernadine had a cavalier attitude toward both sex and money, which was well enough, I suppose. She had a huge reserve of both.”

  Broussard stopped for their reaction.

  “We’re interested in the homicides,” Grant said, implying that right now they weren’t concerned with the fine lines of Broussard’s professional ethics. Broussard slowly nodded, perhaps evaluating Grant’s response insofar as it affected his role and what he might say.

  “I can give you some other common denominators besides myself,” he said. “But I’d urge you to keep in mind that while women who seek psychiatric counsel may present broad symptomatic similarities, their histories can be dramatically varied. And there’s no accounting for the quirks of individuality. One, above all, should be cautious about extrapolating from generalities.”

  45

  “All three women had an assortment of anxiety-based disorders—panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders,” Broussard said, jerking his chin a little to make his neck more comfortable in the starched white collar of his shirt. Even on a Saturday consultation he had worn a tie, albeit a casual one of russet linen that caught the same highlights in his linen trousers. “They suffered from mood disorders—sadness, discouragement, pessimism, hopelessness. They were victims of childhood sexual abuse. They were bisexual.” He paused. “I, uh, on this latter point…I didn’t know about Bernadine’s bisexuality until quite recently. And it was latent. She was seduced on one occasion by a college roommate. According to her, and I have no reason to disbelieve her, it didn’t happen again until recently, when she met a woman in a service station. The woman approached her without introducing herself, later contacted her. They met and an affair began. A rather serious affair, I think.”

  “How recently?” Palma asked.

  “Maybe three or four weeks ago.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I can go back to my notes if you want.”

  “We might have you do that later,” Palma said. “How about the other two women?”

  “Samenov, bisexual since her university years. Moser’s first experience was after college, as a young career woman, and continued through sporadic affairs on into her marriage.”

  “Was there anything unusual about their sexuality, other than their being bisexual?”

  “Bernadine’s…enthusiasm…was noteworthy. I don’t think she was, in the clinical sense, nymphomaniacal, but she was addicted to sex. She thought it was the only way people showed love for each other. Nonerotic love was not a concept she understood.

  “Dorothy Samenov was probably the most sexually confused of the three women. She almost had developed a multiple personality. Mature, aggressive
, self-directed, and self-disciplined in her public-professional life. In her personal life—her sex life, for this discussion—she was weak, regressive, immature, prone to being manipulated. She was totally inept, could not make a mature decision. In her relationships with other people, she was a professional victim…of both sexes.”

  “What was her reason for consulting you?” Palma asked.

  “She was having night terrors, losing a tremendous amount of sleep because of it. Ultimately, it tied in to her repressed anxiety about her childhood sexual abuse, her inability to cope with it. We worked through it. I see a significant amount of that in women her age. Childhood sexual abuse is far more widespread than society wants to admit,” Broussard said, addressing Palma. “You’d be amazed at the percentage of women who live with it buried so deep in their unconscious that it distorts their lives.”

  “And Sandra Moser?”

  “Very much the same sort of thing, only she was married, living two lives. The stress got to be too much, manifested itself in anxiety-based disorders that were putting stress on her marriage. She came to me.”

  Palma made a few notes, though she wasn’t likely to forget any of what Broussard was telling her. She would have liked to have been inside Grant’s mind. He was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, also taking notes, but Palma guessed the note-taking was more an effort to put himself in the role of a benign partner rather than a silent observer, which might have worked on Broussard’s nerves. Evidently, Grant had determined that a nonthreatening introduction was the best course initially.

  “Did any of the women ever mention to you that they’d been involved in S&M?”

  Broussard’s reaction was a frown and a subdued, “No.”

  “Would it surprise you if they had been?”

  “If they all were, yes. I don’t believe Bernadine would have been. Samenov, not so much a surprise. She could have been masochistic easily enough. Moser—no, I suppose not. I can see that both of them could have gone that way. Remember, I saw them in 1984 and 1985. A lot could have happened to them from then to now. Instability is a great catalyst.”

  “You don’t feel you helped them that much?” Palma asked. “You believe they were still unstable?”

  Broussard almost smiled, as if he knew that Palma thought she had caught him out, and he was going to enlighten her as to her misunderstanding.

  “Instability is a relative term,” he said, tilting his head thoughtfully to one side, then straightening it as he spoke. “As I mentioned before, not many people are willing today to go to the effort of truly exploring their personalities. This is the generation of the quick fix. Dorothy Samenov wanted to be rid of the demons in her dreams. When the night terrors stopped, she broke off the therapy—‘cured.’ Sandra Moser wanted to be rid of her depression, her arousal disorder, that is, her frigidity with her husband. When these symptoms abated, she terminated her therapy—‘cured.’ Both of them still had tremendous problems to wrestle with, but the particular symptoms that had manifested themselves as a result of those problems disappeared, so they thought their problems had disappeared too. They were just squeezing the balloon.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You compress a bulge in one place, and it simply pops up somewhere else. Whatever ‘bulges’—or symptoms—emerged after they stopped seeing me were probably more ‘normal’ symptoms. Excessive alcohol consumption, reliance on antidepressant drugs, overeating, promiscuity, peptic ulcers. These forms of ‘instability’ are so prevalent in our society that we tend to accept them as ‘normal.’ No need to try to ‘cure’ these, certainly no need to see a psychiatrist.”

  Broussard shrugged and flicked his eyebrows.

  “How many clients do you see, Dr. Broussard?” Grant’s question was asked in a calm, quiet voice as he looked up from his note-taking.

  Broussard regarded him for a moment. “I’d rather not say, if it’s not absolutely necessary.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I just don’t believe it’s germaine…if I understand the purpose of your questions.”

  Grant nodded. “Then can you tell us approximately what percentage of your clients have problems similar to the ones we’ve been discussing for these three victims?”

  “Most of them. About eighty percent, I’d say.”

  “Anxiety-based disorders, mood disorders, sexual dysfunctions…all that?” Grant asked.

  “Yes. And alcohol and/or drug abuse of varying degrees.”

  Grant nodded again, but this time he kept his eyes on Broussard, not looking down to his notepad.

  “Well, can you tell me what percentage are victims of childhood sexual abuse?”

  Broussard hesitated, perhaps unsure as to how this might infringe on doctor-client privilege. “Again, most of them.” He thought a moment. “Actually, among the women, I can’t immediately think of one who hasn’t been sexually abused as a child.”

  Palma didn’t interject, letting Grant finish his line of questioning.

  “Do you think most psychiatrists have this high a percentage of clients who have been abused as children?”

  “If they’re seeing as many women as I am, I think it is probable. As I said, I think the public would be shocked to know just how many female children have been through something like this. The experience has varying degrees of long-term effect, but it is always detrimental. Some women get help, some don’t.”

  “Do you think this factor—childhood sexual abuse—could be the red thread in all these cases?” Grant asked.

  Broussard seemed surprised to be asked the question.

  Again he thought a moment before answering. “I suppose it could be. You mean, more important than some of the other common denominators?”

  “Yes. The most important.”

  Broussard slightly rolled his eyes with a half shrug. “Why do you ask me?”

  “You’re a psychiatrist, a student of the human mind, of human nature. I thought you might have some insight into the way this man might be thinking.”

  Broussard still seemed puzzled by Grant’s approach. “But I don’t know anything about…the cases, the actual killings. Surely you have some behavioral evidence that tells you something.”

  “We do, yes,” Grant said.

  “Well, then, if I knew some details…I can’t just speculate, pull ideas out of thin air.”

  “Sure, I understand,” Grant said, “but unfortunately we can’t reveal any of that information at this point. I was just hoping you might…play with it a little. How might child abuse, sexual child abuse, play a role in such a situation? I don’t know…might the killer have been a victim of child abuse, and is this some kind of delayed revenge? But if men are the perpetrators in the vast majority of child-abuse cases, why is he killing women? Might he be a child abuser himself? If so, why isn’t he killing children? Why adult women?”

  “You seem already to be making the assumption that child abuse is the red thread in these cases,” Broussard said. He nodded, looking at Grant and then at Palma. “So. First of all, I couldn’t agree with your first assumption, that the ‘vast majority’ of child abusers are men.” He shook his head. “You know, in 1896 Freud first committed himself to his now famous, or perhaps infamous, ‘seduction theory.’ In a paper he wrote in that year, he said that in analysis he had uncovered many instances of childhood sexual abuse in his female clients and that the ‘villains’ in these ‘grave’ and ‘loathsome’ acts were ‘above all nursemaids, governesses, and other servants’ as well as teachers and brothers.” He paused for emphasis. “Not fathers. Not even, mostly, men.

  “Later, of course, Freud rejected the seduction theory as the etiology of all neuroses. He continued to insist that some neuroses still grew out of this very common experience, but curiously, in later discussions the ‘father’ became the principal villain in Freud’s references. It’s not clear how this transition of perpetrators came about, but never again after that initial observation by Freud himself were women generall
y included among the ‘villains.’”

  Broussard smiled. “That is, until recently. The women’s movement has enabled more people to observe life from radically different perspectives. Some psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors have begun to look at the real facts in these cases and are beginning to see beyond the often unconscious male perspective that is almost automatic among many professionals, even women.

  “Example. A fourteen-year-old girl is seduced by a man. Child abuse. A fourteen-year-old boy is seduced by a woman. Lucky boy! He’s the envy of everyone. Why, this is the very symbol of the male rite of passage. It’s been romanticized in novels and the cinema many times over. Do you see the difference? Can you explain to me why one is a crime, and the other is a marvelous experience that the boy can take with him into adulthood as a fond memory? It’s the old double standard at work again. Also, our male-oriented society refuses to believe that such a woman could have a malicious intent in such a seduction. Women are nurturers, are they not?” He smiled. “Caretakers, not tormentors. If they were to do something like that, surely it would be in a tender manner. It would be a gift of her own sexuality that she had given to the boy, not something she had taken for her own selfish pleasure. Do we believe that a man can do the same? No. His greedy loins know nothing but lust.”

  He looked back and forth between Palma and Grant.

  “Do you both see it the same way?” Pause. “Differently, perhaps?”

  He waited long enough for his point to soak in, grinning at them as though each of them had been caught out in just the kind of double standard he was describing.

  “Anyway,” he said curtly, and then continued more thoughtfully, “there are indications that professionals are beginning to see through our old prejudices. One recent major survey of adult men who had been sexually abused as children revealed that only twenty-five percent had been abused by men. All of the others had been seduced by women, seven percent by their natural mothers, fifteen percent by aunts, fifteen percent by their mothers’ friends and neighbors, and the rest by sisters, stepmothers, cousins, and teachers. In more than three quarters of these cases, the women performed oral sex on their victims. Sixty-two percent of the incidents involved intercourse. Thirty-six percent of the boys were abused by two women at the same time, and twenty-three percent said they were physically harmed in ways that ranged from slapping and spanking to ritualistic or sadistic behavior. In more than half the cases the abuse lasted for more than a year.”