The Murderer's Daughter

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Found herself staring at the face of Roger, the man she’d fucked mindlessly last night and dismissed the moment it was over.

  No way to dismiss him, now. Ever.

  He laid eyes on her and seemed to shrink. Then he loomed in Grace’s visual field.

  Him. Oh God. Neurons popped as Grace’s brain worked to make sense of what was happening. All that mental activity produced…nothing.

  Roger/Andrew was doing no better. Still seated, a magazine in his lap, his jaw had dropped and he’d turned ghostly pallid and Grace felt her own mandible sag uncontrollably.

  Aping a patient? She’d never been suggestible. What was happening?

  The authoritative smile she’d entered with lingered, unwanted, idiotic. Grace forced her lips shut, wasn’t sure what expression was squatting on her face.

  She felt stiff, inanimate, a waxwork dummy. Had no idea what to say. Even if she’d managed to come up with words, they’d have remained trapped by her strangulated larynx.

  Roger/Andrew kept staring at her, finally moved his lips. Out came a mouse-squeak of humiliation.

  Grace turned hot. Cold. Frozen.

  Andrew and Grace.

  Roger and Helen.

  He’d lied about his name, too.

  No comfort, there. Grace’s limbs were permafrost.

  Sound filtered through a window. A car with a faulty muffler rumbling by.

  Thankful for the distraction, Grace prayed for more noise. None followed. She remained rooted. Paralyzed.

  This was new, different, this was dreadfully different.

  Sweat pooled in Grace’s armpits. Trickled down her rib cage. Pores opened, she felt herself bathed in perspiration.

  She never sweated.

  And now her chest was tight and breathing had become a challenge. As if a huge animal had settled on her diaphragm.

  Andrew Toner stared. Grace stared. Two helpless…offenders?

  No, no, no, she was stronger than that, there was always a solution.

  None came to her.

  Stupid girl.

  redredredredred.

  Grace remained standing in the doorway. Andrew Toner remained seated.

  Both of them encased in an aspic of shame.

  Again, he was the first to find his voice. Dry-croaking: “My God.”

  Grace thought: If there is a God, He’s laughing His deified head off.

  Her brilliant response: “Well…”

  Why had she said that?

  What could she say?

  Stupid girl. No no no I’m smart.

  And I haven’t done anything willfully wrong.

  Miles from actually believing that, she dredged up enough rationalization to look straight in the pretty blue eyes of Andrew from San Antonio, Texas. A man who’d traveled to see her because she had something valuable to say about…wearing the same tweed sport coat and rumpled khakis as last night.

  Different shirt.

  So his hygiene is decent. Who gives a fuck!

  Grace forced air into cement lungs. Thought about how to phrase her apology.

  Yet again, he beat her to it. “I’m so sorry.”

  What did he have to apologize for?

  Grace said, “You’d better come in.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Really,” said Grace. “This isn’t the end of the world. We need to work it out.”

  With nothing more than hope and bluster to propel her, she headed back toward the therapy room.

  Hearing footsteps behind her.

  There he was. Following instructions.

  Just as he had last night.

  Five-and-a-half-year-old Grace was an expert at hiding.

  With no alcoves or nooks in the single-wide and only one door in and out, the key was to stay close to walls. As far as she could from the strangers.

  Out of arm’s reach, when possible.

  She didn’t have a word for the concept but had learned about arm’s reach by accumulating bruises and sore spots, a couple of bloody noses, the loss of one tooth. A baby tooth, but when Ardis’s hand shot out to slap Dodie’s face and the combination of weed, whiskey, and anger shoved him off course and his knuckles collided with Grace’s mouth, it hurt a lot.

  She didn’t cry. Crying didn’t come naturally to her and besides, she didn’t want to be noticed. She’d been eating a Fudgsicle and dropped it and stooped to pick it up.

  The blow hurt Ardis, too. He kept shaking his hand and screaming in pain.

  Dodie laughed and that made Ardis even more mad and the second time he went for her, he punched her in the forehead and it was her turn to scream, calling him filthy names.

  That made him laugh and he lunged for her again. She feinted out of the way and tried to outlaugh him, which enraged him further and he wound up to deliver one of his roundhouses, the blows that left Dodie’s face swollen and, the next day, all black-and-blue.

  But Ardis’s rhythm was off and he ended up on the floor and Dodie got off with a fingernail graze.

  Grace thought: Now he’s using his fist all the time. They’re both so stupid.

  Throughout the melee, neither of them noticed her, backed into the farthest spot she could find, blood mixing with chocolate from the Fudgsicle, creating a sweet, repellent mud that streamed down her face.

  Her mouth hurt really bad but, of course, she kept quiet about her pain because when you complained it got worse; they—especially Dodie—could get mad at you.

  Instead, she thought of nice things, anything that wasn’t pain.

  Sometimes that meant shows she’d seen on TV or books she’d read at preschool. Sometimes it meant imagining the strangers gone. Like tonight.

  She tried to eat more Fudgsicle. That’s when her tooth crunched and bent and she reached inside her mouth and it came right out and she could feel air whistling through the space.

  More blood than chocolate now and the Fudgsicle was tasting like liver and she didn’t want it anymore.

  It had been her entire dinner but she wasn’t hungry.

  Across the cramped trailer, Ardis was sitting on his butt, dazed, and Dodie was laughing at him. And then both of them were laughing and Dodie was pulling him up and he was touching her booby and she was touching his zipper.

  The two of them drunk-waltzed toward their sleeping space, Dodie yanking at the curtain as she giggled and got dragged along by Ardis. The curtain only closed part of the way and if Grace had wanted to, she could’ve seen everything.

  Wiping her face with a piece from one of the toilet paper rolls Ardis stole from the McDonald’s, she left the single-wide and walked into the night.

  Not even having to do it quietly; no one was interested in her.

  She covered a few feet, found a spot in the dry dirt where she could sit, and swabbed away blood with paper napkins until all that was left was a copper-penny taste in her mouth.

  The air was cold. Sounds came from other trailers, most of them electronic. Grace shivered. Opened her mouth and created her own little breeze whistling through the new space in her mouth.

  —

  After that fight, Ardis wasn’t around much and sometimes Dodie muttered complaints about him to Grace, because no one else was around to listen. “Good riddance to bad rubbish. Know what that means?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What?” Dodie demanded. She’d just fooled with the trailer’s chemical toilet and everything smelled bad and Dodie had got stuff on her hands and cussed like crazy. All that made her super grumpy and when she got like that she always demanded Grace say what she wanted her to say.

  “What?” she repeated. “You tell me right now what that means.”

  “You’re happy he’s not here.”

  “Yeah,” Dodie conceded. “But it’s more than that, you’re a kid, you don’t get it.”

  “Get what?” said a voice from the door and there was Ardis, carrying a bucket of fried chicken. He shot a quick glance at Grace and raised his eyebrows, as if surprised she was still arou
nd. Then he gave Dodie a long look and did that wiggly thing with his hips and swung the bucket.

  Dodie clamped her hands on her hips and didn’t move them at all. The more Ardis wiggled, the stiffer she got. Sniffing her fingers, she cursed and frowned and washed some more. “Well, look what the wind blew in. Figures.”

  “Hey, dinner.” Ardis wrinkled his nose. “Stinks like shit in here.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what it’s like in a luxury condo.” Dodie eyed the bucket. “You’re at KFC, now? They kick your ass out of Mickey D?”

  “Nah, still Mickey D, but I got connections.”

  “Connections for some fuckin’ chicken.” Dodie curled a finger. “Whoopy doo.”

  “Breasts and thighs.” Ardis winked. Checked to see if Grace had noticed. She had but she’d turned around to pretend she hadn’t.

  “Breasts and thighs, thighs and breasts,” said Dodie, with lightness in her voice.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The two of them shuffled off to the sleeping space, Ardis taking time to put the bucket on the kitchenette counter.

  Grace went outside. When she passed Mrs. Washington’s trailer, Mrs. Washington was having a sober evening and called out, “Child? C’mere,” and gave Grace a rib from a batch she’d cooked yesterday on her outdoor grill made out of an oil can.

  “Thank you.”

  “Least I can do, you living with those…never mind, go on and find yourself a place to eat.”

  Grace didn’t settle, she just walked around the trailer park, eating the rib. Gnawing on the bone well after she’d stripped it of meat. Her tooth still hadn’t come in totally and the hot sauce made the hole Ardis’s fist had created weeks ago tingle and hurt.

  —

  When she returned to the single-wide, Ardis was inside sitting on a lawn chair with a bottle of whiskey and Dodie was cutting up chicken in the kitchenette.

  He looked mean and Grace stayed out of arm’s reach.

  Dodie said, “Fuckin’ KFC, what’s with all the bones.”

  Ardis said, “Chicken has bones, stupid. If it didn’t, it would be…boneless chicken.” Throwing his head back, he laughed and took a swallow from the bottle.

  Dodie stopped cutting. “You just call me stupid?”

  No answer from Ardis.

  “I asked you a question. You call me stupid?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Whatever?”

  “Hey,” said Ardis, taking another drink. “Stupid is like stupid does.”

  “Fuck that,” said Dodie. “Fuck you—I gotta take that from a retard?”

  “Who you callin’ a retard?”

  No answer from Dodie.

  Ardis repeated the question.

  Dodie snickered. “If the retard shoe fits.”

  Both of them talking in that loose, hard-to-understand way they always did when they drank too much or smoked too much weed or took pills. Which was almost always when they emerged from the sleeping space.

  Ardis said, “What fits is my dick up your fat ass.”

  Silence.

  Dodie said, “What’d you just shit outta your pie-hole? Retard.”

  Ardis repeated the insult. Stood up and advanced toward the kitchenette.

  Dodie said, “You know, you just need to just leave. And never come back. Retard.”

  “Fuck that. This is my home.”

  “Like hell it is,” said Dodie and now she was screaming. “I pay, you don’t do shit. Your home is someplace they stick useless retards!”

  “You pay?” Ardis bellowed. “Your welfare pays, bitch. You’re useless, sitting around, that ass a’ yours getting bigger and bigger, soon you’re not gonna fit through the fuckin’ door.”

  Dodie turned from the chicken and faced him.

  Ardis said, “What?”

  “You ain’t worth the time—you just go.”

  “I go when I say I go, I stay when I say I stay.” Ardis gave a crooked smile. “My dick goes up your ass when I say it’s the time for fun.”

  He laughed.

  Dodie had turned red as ketchup.

  “Look at you.” Ardis laughed. “You like a…tomato. You all ugly, you been whupped with the biggest fuckin’ ugly stick in the biggest fuckin’ planet.”

  “The planet is earth!” screamed Dodie. “We can’t live on another one ’cause there’s no air. Retard. You don’t know shit about science or anything because you’re stupid, know what they call you, even people you think like you? Dead Brain! Dead Brain Retard!”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Bull-no shit!”

  Quick as a snakebite, Ardis lunged toward Dodie, shooting out a shaky hand that still managed to connect with her nose. Blood spurted. Dodie’s nose looked different than ever before. Flat. Crushed.

  Breathing must’ve hurt because she began crying, tried to stanch the blood with KFC napkins, white turning to red real fast.

  Ardis laughed and hit her again, this time with the usual open hand, like he didn’t even care. But hard, slapping the side of her head so hard that it flipped to the side and sprayed blood from her ruined nose.

  This is different, thought Grace.

  Then something really different happened. Dodie turned and put her weight into it and hit Ardis back. A real fast upward swoop.

  Tracing the space beneath his chin.

  Weird place to hit someone. Then Grace saw it.

  A thin red line forming, Ardis’s eyes opening in wonder as the line started seeping and Ardis stumbled back causing the line to widen into a gaping slash.

  A second mouth, grinning across his neck.

  Now Ardis’s blood was coming out a lot faster than the blood from Dodie’s nose.

  He staggered, tried to talk. Nothing came out. One hand flew toward his throat but dropped before arriving. Weakly, he waved a fist at Dodie.

  Then he collapsed. Blood pooled beneath him.

  Dodie stared at him. Shifted her eyes to the knife in her hand. Little tan specks and bits—breading from the chicken pieces—clung to the blade, turning into red lumps as they mixed with blood.

  Dodie looked down at Ardis. Screamed his name and went over to him and shook him.

  He didn’t move. Flat on his back, eyes sightless, mouth gaping. The blood kept spurting out of his neck.

  Dodie’s attention now shifted to Grace, hugging herself with crossed arms. Pressed to the wall, wishing she could push herself through the wall.

  “You saw that,” said Dodie. “I had to.”

  Grace said nothing.

  “What? You think I started it?”

  Grace tried to shrivel to nothingness.

  “What?” screamed Dodie, advancing on her. “You’re saying it was my fault? That what you’re saying?”

  Grace remained silent.

  Dodie said, “You keep looking at me with that look. Like I’m—fine, have it your way, remember this.”

  Giving a weird, drunken smile, Dodie clutched the knife with both hands and raised it high. Letting out a laugh that sounded like a screaming coyote, she stiffened her arms and plunged the blade into her own belly.

  Laughter turned to an agonized shriek as the pain hit her and she looked down and saw what she’d done. Shaking hands fumbled to dislodge the blade, buried in her abdomen to the hilt. Each attempt twisted the knife, doing more damage.

  Dodie fell to her knees. Inches from Ardis.

  Her hands faltered and dropped. The knife remained deeply embedded but turned to one side.

  “Hep me,” she croaked to Grace. “Puh it ou.” Eyes dropping to the knife.

  She moaned in pain.

  Grace stood there.

  Dodie’s eyes fluttered. Slammed shut. The trailer was quiet but for the drip-drop of blood on the linoleum floor.

  Grace watched as the room turned red.

  By the time Grace was sitting behind the precious barrier provided by her desk, Andrew Toner was perched rigidly on the edge of the patient chair, shoulders tight as bridge struts, looking everywh
ere but at Grace.

  She had yet to completely collect her thoughts but began a cardboard speech that was better than nothing.

  “Obviously,” she began, “this is awkward for both of us. Let me begin by saying I’m sorry.”

  “No need, you didn’t know,” he said. “How could you?”

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “Still. You traveled a long distance for my help.”

  He brushed a wing of hair from his unlined brow and sat for a long time before mustering the faintest of smiles.

  “Guess there are all kinds of therapy.”

  Being a cheeky bastard? Would he be bragging to his friends in Texas the moment he left the office? Facebook, Twitter, some other hideous communication?

  Guys, you’ll never believe what happened, I shit you not, this was straight out of bad porn. I fly to L.A. to meet this shrink, go for a drink the night before and…

  But then he said, “Sorry, that was glib. I guess I just—I’ve never been that great at making conversation.”

  Not a lout. Too bad. Seeing his faults would’ve been a pathetic way for her to feel less stupid…

  She cleared her throat. He looked up. His mouth was set tight. Nothing more to say.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Andrew. But what happened, happened, no sense dwelling. On the contrary, I’m thinking we could try to use this time constructively.”

  His eyebrows arced.

  Oh, no, not that, not that at all.

  Grace leaned forward, faking calm and authoritative…professional.

  “What I mean,” she said, “is that you traveled a distance because of questions you have. If you can put aside the distraction, I’d be happy to hear what they are. Obviously I can’t treat you long-term, but I can do my best to direct you to the best local referral possible.”

  She had no dependable referrals in Texas but damn, she’d find one.

  Andrew Toner didn’t respond.

  “On the other hand,” she said, “if you find that too difficult, I understand.”

  “I…maybe…” Pinching khaki, he began to cross a leg. Changed his mind and replanted both feet flat on the carpet. “Do you have any idea what I’m after?”

  “If the article you mentioned to my answering service is relevant, I might.”

  “Yes!” A single whispered word, emphatic. He sat up straighter. “When I came across it, I said this is the person I need to talk to.” He turned to the side. “It took me a while to find it. It’s not a topic psychologists seem to pay much attention to.” A beat. “Why is that?”