Mercy Page 6

  “Neither of you are VanMeter?” she asked, approaching them and glancing at their name tags.

  “No, ma’am,” one of them said, the stocky one. “He’s outside…he’s got a red mustache.”

  Outside, the late-morning heat was excruciating after the icy condo, and the sweat popped to the surface of Palma’s skin as if she had stepped into a sauna. VanMeter was easy to find, standing with his shift sergeant on the thick turf of manicured lawn in the solid shade of a magnolia. A gas lamp burned needlessly in the Texas sun nearby. Neither man was talking, though it was obvious they had been once. As Palma approached she noticed half a dozen cigarette butts against the street curb.

  “VanMeter?” she asked, stepping up to the young man and extending her hand. “Detective Palma.” He was incredibly young, and the blue eyes and fair skin didn’t age him any. His handshake was tensely brittle. She shook hands with the sergeant too, and remembered that they had been on a scene together a couple of months earlier. She turned to VanMeter, who was lighting a cigarette.

  “You were the officer who found her?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Palma waited for him to explain.

  “Just tell her the way it went down,” the sergeant said to VanMeter. He glanced at Palma, and she realized the kid was fresh out of the academy.

  “Basically I just responded to a welfare check,” VanMeter said. His mustache was neatly trimmed, and it suited him. He blew a stream of smoke to the side, away from her, and it hung in the still heat a moment and then vanished. Kittrie had told him her story as Cushing had related it earlier to Palma, and VanMeter had asked Kittrie if she knew of anyone who had a spare key to the condo. Kittrie didn’t, but she said Samenov kept a spare set of keys hidden in her car, but the car was locked and she couldn’t get into it to look for them. VanMeter had then used a door opener from his patrol unit to get into Samenov’s Saab where, after a brief search, he found the spare key and used it to enter the condo.

  “You went in first?” Palma asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I went in and asked her to wait in the living room while I looked around. I went straight to the bedroom, I don’t know why…the door was open, and I found her.” VanMeter’s Adam’s apple worked uncontrollably, and he swallowed, then took another long drag from his cigarette.

  “Did Kittrie see her?”

  “Yeah, well, I must’ve said something, you know, surprised to find the dead woman, and she heard me and came running in. I had taken a couple of steps into the bedroom, and when I turned around she was standing in the doorway right behind me.”

  “That’s when she saw her?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you remember her reaction?”

  He nodded. “She fainted, dead out. Like she’d been dropped with a hammer. I had to carry her…I got her out of the house. Laid her down right over there in the shade. A couple who live across the street,” he tossed his head toward a condo directly across from them, “must’ve been looking out the window. They came right over and the lady had a damp washrag or something and we got her to come around. When she got her to her feet they took her over there.”

  “Is that where she is now?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I didn’t get her name.”

  Palma thanked VanMeter, noticing the mist of perspiration that had accumulated on his forehead. She wanted to reassure him, but she knew better than that. Instead, she started across the street to the Mediterranean-style condo with its dun bricks and its front courtyard filled with frondy sago palms among banks of orangey snapdragons.

  When she rang the doorbell the door opened immediately, and a middle-aged man with a head of longish frizzy hair that was thinning toward the front stood looking at her. He was wearing a baggy Hawaiian shirt outside a pair of faded blue jeans. His nose was rather broad, but in a handsome way, and he had extraordinarily long eyelashes.

  “I’m Detective Palma.” She held up her shield. “I understand Vickie Kittrie is here.”

  “Of course, sure, come on in.” He shook hands with her. “I’m Nathan Isenberg.” He backed away to let her in. “She’s up here.” He closed the door behind her and preceded her up the steps of the sunken entryway, talking, motioning with his hands. “Kid’s had a hard time. Jesus. Can you imagine?” He stopped, turned to her, and put a concerned hand on Palma’s arm. “Pretty bad over there?” His face was twisted in a pained contortion, anticipating her answer.

  “Pretty bad,” she said.

  “Oh, God!” he hissed, keeping it just between the two of them. “Poor kid.” He bit his lower lip and shook his head, his wirey hair drifting above him, and then turned and led her on up the steps into a living room separated from the entry by a huge terraced planter of philodendron and monstera. A woman wearing a sarong and the top to a bikini swimsuit had been sitting by Kittrie on the sofa and stood when Palma came in.

  The man introduced her as Helena and then introduced Kittrie, who remained seated, red-eyed and clutching a handful of wadded pink tissues. There was an awkward moment, and then the woman, running a pretty hand through her hair, a black bob shot through with gray, asked if she could get anything for Palma, who declined. The man and woman excused themselves, and as they walked out of the living room Palma noticed there was no outline of the bikini bottom under the thin material of the sarong.

  Vickie Kittrie was dressed very smartly in a businesswoman’s sharkskin blazer of silvery gray rayon and linen and pleated trousers with black heels. A collarless fuchsia blouse of crepe de chine was tucked into the trousers. She was sitting on a sofa behind a coffee table of glazed gold ceramic tiles, kneading the wad of tissues and looking up at Palma with swollen eyes and tear-matted lashes.

  “You feel up to talking with me for a few minutes?”

  Kittrie nodded readily. “Of course,” she said, and quickly wiped at her nose.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” Palma said, sitting in a tapestry upholstered chair opposite the coffee table. Kittrie nodded. She had ginger hair with red highlights and a pale Irish complexion. She had cried so much and wiped her face so often with damp tissues that her makeup was disappearing, and a light spattering of freckles was now visible trailing across the top of her nose, disclosing an air of youthfulness that seemed incompatible with the mature clothes she had chosen to wear. She started tugging anxiously at the wad of tissues, her hazel eyes riveted to Palma’s. “Do you have family or friends who can come get you, maybe stay with you?”

  “I have friends…at the office. I’ve already called them.” Palma was a little surprised at her tone, which had a sharp edge to it.

  “Ms. Samenov was a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “A long time.” Her voice cracked, but she got control of it. “Four years, maybe three…or four. We worked at Computron together.”

  “Was she married?”

  “Divorced.”

  “How long?”

  “Uh…maybe…I don’t know…five, six years.”

  “Does her ex-husband live in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  It took her a second. “Dennis…Ackley.”

  “Did she see him very often?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “It wasn’t that kind of a divorce. It wasn’t friendly.”

  “Do you know where he works, or where he lives?”

  “He works…I think…at a paint store.”

  “Do you know the name?”

  She shook her head. “I only remember her saying that’s what he was doing now.”

  “Do you happen to know if he was ever in the military?”

  Kittrie closed her eyes and shook her head again.

  “What about relatives? The coroner’s office has to notify someone.”

  “There’s nobody in the city. I wouldn’t bother with Ackley. She’s from South Carolina. She was away from home.” Kittrie’s eyes were still clos
ed, her hands holding the tissue without fidgeting.

  This last remark seemed an odd choice of words in light of the fact that Samenov was obviously in her mid-thirties, had been married a number of years, divorced a number of years, and certainly had lived in Houston long enough for it to be regarded as her home. The phrase would have seemed more appropriate in reference to a college student.

  “But…well…” Kittrie added, “I’d like to tell them myself.” She cleared her throat.

  “Do you know them?”

  “I’ve met them before. They’d remember me.” Her eyes were still closed.

  “I’m sure the coroner’s office would appreciate that. You should check with them.” Palma paused, signaling a change of tone in her questioning. “What about boyfriends? Did she have anyone special?”

  “No.” Kittrie opened her eyes. She seemed sure of it.

  “Had there been anyone special, in the recent past?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What kind of men did she date in the last year or so?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. After a while they all seem the same…just guys.” Spoken like a woman twice her age. Kittrie couldn’t have been more than twenty-three.

  “Can you give me the names of some of the men she’d been dating so we can check with them as to when they last saw her?” Palma made it routine.

  “I know she dated a guy at Computron, Wayne Canfield. He was in marketing. There was another guy, Gil—I think it was—Reynolds, I met him at her place a few times. I don’t know anything about him.”

  She stopped.

  “Is that it?” Palma asked.

  Kittrie sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Uh, let’s see. There was a Dirk she knew from a night class; she took an accounting course at the University of Houston.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, last year, spring semester. For a while she dated a bank vice president…” she frowned. “…the bank…I don’t know the bank, but I think his last name was Bris…Bristol. Yeah, Bristol.” She looked at Palma, irritated. “I don’t know. That’s all I can remember.”

  “She live alone?”

  Kittrie nodded, her hands working the wadded tissues once again.

  “I understand that on Thursday evening, the last time you saw her, a group of people from your office had stopped off for drinks.”

  “Right, at Cristof’s. That’s near Greenway Plaza. We do that a lot, to wait out the traffic.”

  “Who was in the group?”

  “The two of us, Marge Simon, Nancy Segal, Linda Mancera.”

  “All of you in separate cars?”

  “Yes…no, Marge and Linda were together.”

  “How often do you do that? Several times a week?”

  “Sure, two or three times a week.”

  “At the same place?”

  “About half the time at Cristof’s. It’s on the way home.”

  “Do you ever meet men there, or date the men you meet there?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.” Kittrie punched a hole in her tissue with a shiny fuchsia fingernail, doubled the tissue, and punched another hole, kneading it roughly.

  “Did Dorothy seem concerned about anything that Thursday? Out of sorts? Anything bothering her?”

  “Nothing, nothing like that. And I’ve thought about it, too. Asked myself if I had noticed anything different.” She ducked her head and shook it. “But this came out of nowhere…I can’t imagine its having anything to do with her. I mean, that it would be related to anything. I just can’t imagine that it would.”

  “Was she planning to go home after she left all of you at the club?”

  “We all were.”

  “She wasn’t going to stop off somewhere, the laundry, the grocery? Had she made any offhand references to something like that?”

  Kittrie shook her head as she ran a hand through her long ginger hair.

  Palma thought of Sandra Moser. The last time she had been seen was by her maid and children as she was leaving home in the evening to go to exercise class. She never arrived. The next time she was seen was when the maid at the Doubletree Hotel on Post Oak went into the room the next morning and found her nude on the bed in the same funereal posture as Samenov.

  “You had an exercise class with Ms. Samenov on Saturday morning. Where was the class?”

  “The Houston Racquet Club,” Kittrie said, and then pulled some more tissues from the box sitting on the coffee table and dabbed at her nose again.

  Sandra Moser had been on her way to Sabrina’s, a tony health club off Woodway in the Tanglewood area not far from Moser’s home. Whatever else Palma might learn of the man who had killed these two women, it was already apparent that he had rarefied tastes. He was working territory that was squarely in the middle of two suburbs whose demographics placed them among the wealthiest in the nation.

  Palma studied Kittrie for a moment. “Do you have any ideas about this?”

  Kittrie’s eyes flinched. “Ideas? Jesus, no,” she said. Her surprise was reflexive, genuine, one of those spontaneous facial reactions that occurred in an unguarded moment and told you more about someone’s relationship to a particular person or situation than two weeks of background investigation could reveal. Kittrie ducked her head again, plying the tissues.

  Palma decided to go to the heart of the issue. “What can you tell me about Ms. Samenov’s sex life?”

  Kittrie jerked her head up and looked at Palma with a mixture of resentment and anxiety. “Jesus Christ. Do you have to do this?” She started crying again, wiping at her cheeks and eyes which already had been washed of their makeup, revealing them to be paler and smaller and less striking than she would have liked. Her unmade face now seemed at odds with her sophisticated hairstyle and assertive clothes. Her vulnerability was now as visible as her unpowdered freckles.

  “The more I know about her, the better chance I have of understanding what happened,” Palma persisted. “She might have been a random victim; she might not have been. I need to be able to put her private life into perspective.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Kittrie blurted. “I don’t know who…or…anything. Christ!” She started sobbing uncontrollably and couldn’t talk. She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shuddered rhythmically. Palma didn’t believe her. She was too insistent, and her flustered denials seemed out of proportion to the question. She simply could have said she didn’t know. But Palma had no doubts about the sincerity of her grief.

  There was no reason to try to go any further with her now. Palma looked around for the absent couple, but they were nowhere in sight. Or so she thought, until she glimpsed a wisp of bright crimson in a doorway on the other side of a round Venetian table that sat in the center of the room. She remembered the sarong with its pattern of taupe and gold, and its crimson hem.

  6

  She left Vickie Kittrie crying on Nathan Isenberg’s sofa, wondering if Kittrie’s “friends,” who had not yet arrived, really existed. Helena had come back into the room when she heard Palma closing the interview and walked her to the sunken entrance hall where they visited a minute by the front door. Palma learned that she had seen nothing out of the ordinary, no one coming or going from Dorothy Samenov’s home during the past several days. Helena appeared to be in her mid-forties, with dark, kind eyes and the figure of a woman less than half her age. She said she would see that Kittrie got home safely. Palma wondered about these two Good Samaritans and their willingness to help. She had noticed that Helena had worn no wedding ring.

  It was almost noon when she walked out into the heat and bright sunlight again and saw the rear of the morgue van going away from her under the overhanging trees at the far end of Olympia. Cushing and Leeland’s car was already gone, as well as one of the patrol cars. She crossed the street and nodded at VanMeter and another patrolman still lingering in the shade of the magnolia. They would stay there until it was d
ecided the scene could be left alone. Palma walked into Samenov’s condo through the front door, which had been left open. Someone had turned up the thermostat.

  She returned to the bedroom where Birley was standing in Samenov’s large clothes closet taking notes.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, not looking up from his notepad.

  “She was pretty upset. Where’s LeBrun? His van’s still outside.”

  “He’s in one of the back bathrooms, getting the sink traps.”

  “Was he able to get anything from the bathroom floor?”

  “I think so.” He looked at her, his eyes wrinkling with an amused smile. “That was pretty fancy, what you did earlier.”

  “You mean smart aleck,” she said, walking over to him.

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “Sorry, but I wasn’t about to let Cushing take it away from us.”

  “Fine with me. You did good. Here,” he said, leaning out of the closet and handing Palma a brown leather address book, the gauzy sleeve of a peach negligee caught on his left shoulder. “I thought you might like to go through this first thing.”

  Which is just exactly what she did. Dennis Ackley’s name was there, his address and two telephone numbers. The book obviously was not used for her business accounts because, with the exception of a liquor store, a dry cleaner, a shoe shop, a pharmacy, a hairdresser, and a few other similar, personal-use commercial businesses, all the other names were of individuals. And in most cases only the first names were entered and no addresses were given.

  “Kittrie told me about an ex-husband,” Palma said. “It wasn’t a good divorce. He’s in here, address and telephone number. I’m going to have a patrol unit go by and see if he’s at home.”

  “Fine,” Birley said from the closet.

  Using the telephone on a bedside table, Palma called the dispatcher and made the request and then dialed the second number under Ackley’s name, thinking it might be his business. There was no answer. She dialed the first number, but again no answer. She dialed information, which had no listing for Dennis Ackley and did not show an unlisted number. She put the address book in her purse.