The Murderer's Daughter

by Jonathan Kellerman

  When that was over, he said, “If you’ve got energy, we can do something totally different. Tapping and moving along a maze—you might find that fun.”

  “Okay.”

  He brought more tests from his big brown station wagon. They weren’t fun but they filled in the time and when he drove away, Grace kind of missed being busy.

  The first time Grace met Shoshana Yaroslav, she watched the woman, four feet eleven, maybe a hundred pounds, looking sweet and innocent and girlish, much younger than her forty years, disable a man named Mac who was twice her size. He was one of Shoshana’s intermediate students who’d volunteered for the role of mugger, a former army medic with thick arms, a slab-like build, and the confidence of a guy who could take care of himself.

  Shoshana moved so fast it was impossible to process what she’d done. Mac, prone on the mat, caught his breath and grinned and said, “Why the hell do I keep doing this?”

  Shoshana said, “Because you are a gentleman.”

  For the next four months, she taught Grace her philosophy of self-defense and rode Grace mercilessly until the student’s responses were borderline reflexive.

  Borderline, not absolute, Shoshana was careful to add, because reflexes were “for lower animals, you should never stop thinking.”

  Black-belted in several martial arts, Shoshana took an approach that was conceptually simple—home in on the enemy’s vulnerabilities—but required maddening amounts of practice. And she saw the defensive arts the same way Delaware did: a great workout and a whole lot better than no training at all, but unlikely to stand up against a bad person with a gun or knife or a blackjack.

  During Grace’s second session, Shoshana looked at Grace’s hands. “Do you have strong nails?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Foolish answer, they’re too short for you to think anything. Grow them out a bit and see if they hold up. If they do, file them so they’re more pointed than usual. Nothing too conspicuous, we don’t want anyone calling you Ms. Scissorhands. But do create a tiny bit of blade at the apex. Meanwhile we’ll practice with what you’ve got.”

  Entering and exiting a side door of the studio, Shoshana returned with a weird-looking wooden board around three feet square and perforated by circular holes. Her other hand held a jar full of brown murky fluid close to her chest. Uncapping the jar released a hideous stench that filled the room: sewer gas overlaid with…rotten barbecue?

  Grace blinked back revulsion as Shoshana’s tiny hand dipped into the jar and fished out something round and glassy and gray that dripped onto the wooden floor.

  “Sheep’s eye.” Flipping the board over, she exposed a series of hinged metal cups backing each hole. Unsnapping one cup, she dropped the sheep’s eye in where it nested snugly, then snapped it shut. Repeating the procedure with six additional eyes positioned randomly, she held the board in front of Grace. “Go.”

  “What do you want me to—”

  Grasping the board in one hand, Shoshana managed to reach around with the other and jab. The eyes had seemed out of her visual field but one of them exploded.

  “You just failed,” she told Grace. “In the time it took to ask a question, your throat would’ve been cut.”

  Without warning, Shoshana’s hand shot out again, terminating at the spot where Grace’s neck joined the hollow above her sternum. A forefinger tickled Grace’s Adam’s apple. Grace stumbled back but Shoshana pressed forward maintaining the same harassing contact. Grace tried to slap Shoshana’s arm away. Now Shoshana was behind Grace, tickling the mastoid process behind Grace’s left ear.

  Grace wheeled.

  Shoshana had stepped out of reach, stood loose-limbed, hands buried in the pockets of her cargo pants, casual as a tourist.

  Grace said, “Okay, I get it.”

  “That’s doubtful, Doctor. Don’t say things to make me or anyone else happy.”

  Grace suppressed a smile. You may be murderously tough but you don’t understand me.

  She lunged for the board. Missed and hit wood and suppressed searing pain in her fingertips and thrust forward again, putting her weight behind the nail-stab.

  Shit, the little buggers were hard to hit, and Grace knew immediately that she was way off. Risking another painful collision she checked her blow and feinted to the right. Chose another eye and went for it.

  This time her finger impacted a momentary barrier of plastic-like skin that popped. Cold jelly encased the digit to the first knuckle. Ooze flowed over her hand. She pulled free. The room stank worse.

  Shoshana Yaroslav propped the board on a table easel. Seemingly indifferent, she destroyed the remaining eyes in less time than Grace had taken for one.

  Grace said, “This is useful, let’s keep going.”

  Shoshana said, “Here you don’t make the rules. Here you wait and I show you what I use for testicles.”

  —

  Grace hadn’t thought about Shoshana for a while but now, driving away from the cottage in darkness, that little-girl voice sounded in her head.

  “If you don’t get one thing right at the beginning, you’re wasting time. Someone comes for you, get them first.”

  She drove back to Malibu using a different route: Wilshire to San Vicente to Channel Road to PCH, watching everyone and everything all the way to La Costa Beach, concentrating so hard her head throbbed and that felt great.

  Nothing out of the ordinary emerged during this drive and she spotted no obvious disruption as she sped past her house. That didn’t mean someone hadn’t managed to pick the lock and get in. If so, they’d learn nothing that could hurt her.

  A quick reversal at Trancas Beach, a return to the city, and she was back at the cottage inside seventy minutes. Keeping her distance from the building as she drove and observed.

  The sun was peeking through fuzzy gray clouds. Stylish WeHo residents walked stylish dogs and jogged. None of them expressed interest in anything but physical fitness and canine poop and the Chrysler 300—anything square and uncool—was nowhere in sight. But she’d run the car up into a berm so maybe it had sustained enough damage for Mr. Beef to find new wheels.

  Interesting game, this: analysis, factoring out variables.

  Two more circuits convinced her the coast was clear. She drove to Sunset, turned north on Laurel Canyon, and made it to the Valley by nine a.m.

  —

  Breakfast was pancakes and eggs at a coffee shop in Encino. Sometimes she treated herself to the flaps of sugar and starch when she wanted to feel enlarged.

  Or, maybe, it dawned on her for the first time, she went for pancakes because the first time she’d met Malcolm that’s what he’d been eating.

  All at once, she was thinking of colors—green water, red rooms, then Malcolm’s brown bearish presence and her eyes burned.

  Appetite faded, she left cash on the table and exited.

  Checking the coffee shop parking lot, more for practice than out of worry, she drove west on Ventura Boulevard, caught the 101 West at Reseda Boulevard, got off in Calabasas, and checked into a Hilton Garden Inn with a special deal on king-bed rooms.

  Fourteen miles from the beach, far enough for comfort.

  —

  Working out in the hotel gym, she showered in her room, dressed in one of two robes hanging in the lav, plugged in her laptop, and connected with Hilton WiFi.

  Trying to identify Andrew under his alias was most likely a waste of time but just when you thought you were smart, life could make you feel stupid, so she had to try.

  Keywording andrew toner turned out to be half an hour of futility as she came up with precisely the useless information Elaine Henke had reported.

  Next step: Use roger, the name he’d given Grace at the Opus, grouped with civil engineer and various Texas cities beginning with San Antonio. That created a list of eighteen names. Eleven came with Facebook or LinkedIn listings and photos that eliminated their owners. An hour later, she’d fished up phone numbers for the remaining seven, on business link
sites. Using one of the three prepaid cells, she began calling.

  Four men answered their own phones. Three secretaries offered variants of “Hold on, I’ll see if Mr. [fill in the blank] is available.”

  Dead ends.

  She paired the name with homicide, murder, and rape. A staggering number of Rogers had committed serious felonies and it took Grace nearly two hours to eliminate them.

  The final iteration was roger paired with brother and murderer. That pulled up a Catholic priest who’d stabbed a nun to death eighteen years ago in Cleveland.

  So much for background research. Her best bet was to pursue her pursuers. If they came for her again, it would be at the cottage, probably under cover of darkness. Checking the double-bolt on her door, she slipped on eyeshades and fell promptly asleep. Waking at five p.m., she dressed, exited the Hilton through a rear door that led to the parking lot, and had a look around the immediate neighborhood.

  Commercial blocks relieved by industrial parks. A nearby strip mall provided admirable diversity of cuisine and dinner was forgettable pad Thai at a storefront café named Bangkok Benny, chased by iced tea and lots of water.

  Returning to her room, she waited until an hour after sunset, retrieved the Jeep from the garage, and repeated the same Malibu-WeHo cycle she’d completed twelve hours ago. Kept doing it, covering the sixty-mile round-trip four times and having to stop for a gas fill-up.

  Adding as much variety to her route as possible but no matter what you did you ended up on the coast highway.

  She made one more circuit.

  No sign of anything irregular.

  Not good; this couldn’t go on interminably.

  Then everything changed.

  Fifth pass, two fifty-three a.m., and there it was, the familiar blocky bulk of the sedan—indeed a 300, dark gray with blackened windows—parked half a block east of the cottage.

  Bent front bumper but otherwise intact.

  Using the same vehicle seemed breathtakingly careless.

  Or arrogant. If so, all the better.

  Grace drove by, regrouped mentally. She’d just driven by the cottage, seen the lights still out, no sign of forcing at either gate. So what was the plan tonight? Break in, rummage for records, and leave? Or lie in wait for Grace.

  Or both.

  Assuming the worst, Grace circled well east of the cottage and parked two blocks to the Chrysler’s rear. Taking what she needed from the Jeep, she got out and stretched. Continued a block on rubber-soled running shoes, concealing herself as best she could in the shadows.

  Twenty-three minutes later, a man-sized shape exited the sedan. The door closed. Loudly. No attempt at concealment. Grace was definitely being underestimated but she wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  She watched as the man walked—swaggered—toward the cottage. A bit taller than average but not huge or particularly wide.

  Definitely two of them.

  He, too, pressed himself into the shadows.

  Grace began the stalk.

  —

  He reached the garage side of her property, looked around briefly, took something out of his pocket, and proceeded to her garden gate. Kneeling, he went to work.

  Nothing like the movies, it took a while but finally he was in.

  The gate shut silently. Now he was being careful.

  Hunter’s instincts honed as he neared his goal?

  Making sure she wasn’t being tailed herself, she padded toward the gate, stopped a few feet short. No sounds from the other side of the cedar fence. He was probably inside—how had he managed to avoid tripping the alarm?

  Someone with experience. She stood there, listened, checked up and down the block, finally used her key and cracked the gate an inch. Waited. Spread the wood another inch. Waited again.

  Not a peep, not a ruffle of grass.

  Definitely inside. She waited for lights to go on, a sound, anything.

  Nothing but silence. So maybe he was skulking around in the dark as she had, using a narrow-beam like her Maglite.

  She pushed the door wide enough to slip through.

  An arm, polyester-sleeved and steel-rigid, shot out from the left and hooked around her neck.

  Grace brought her heel down hard on where she guessed an instep would be.

  The man trying to drag her back by her neck grunted and paused for an instant. But Grace’s rubber-soled shoes lacked the weapon-value of a spiked heel and he said, “Stupid bitch,” and Grace felt his other arm leave the small of her back and heard a snick and knew he’d be stabbing her.

  Reaching up and behind, she clawed her hands and went for his eyes but lacked the reach. Still, the very fact that she’d attacked threw his timing off and he grunted and lost balance and her second claw at his face made contact with flesh.

  She dug her nails in deeply, raked down viciously, doing her best to flay him. Felt dermis and stubble give way, then a warm wet rush.

  He cried out in pain and loosened his grip and Grace spun out of reach and they were facing each other in the dark garden.

  His features were barely limned by skimpy starlight. Forty or so, angular face, heavy features contorted in pain and rage as his left hand pressed down on the bloody tracks Grace had inflicted on his right cheek.

  His right hand held a knife, double-edged, some sort of sling-blade or push-dagger.

  “Fucking bitch,” he said, and charged her.

  The garden—small, concealed from neighborly eyes—must’ve seemed an ideal kill-spot and he was smiling through his pain as he continued his advance. Moving slowly and steadily.

  Grace purposely fulfilled his expectations by mewling, “Don’t hurt me, please,” and backing away.

  That emboldened him and, waving the knife in concentric circles, he prodded Grace toward the rear wall of the garden. Once they reached the wall, no escape, a woman left vulnerable as a rib roast. Confidence loosened his movements.

  Grace busted his expectations by charging toward him.

  Aiming herself straight at his blade and that confused him the way she hoped it would and he looked down at the weapon as if wondering why it no longer frightened her.

  She veered to the right. No knife for her, concealed in her right hand, as it had been from the time she entered the garden, was her lovely little Beretta .22, eleven and a half ounces of lethality.

  A gun Shoshana had derided. “Might as well slap a bad guy with your hand.”

  But a petite weapon had its time and place and thinking for yourself was always best.

  Her would-be killer wasn’t smart enough to imagine. Never looking down at her hand, he growled and lunged and Grace stepped just clear of the arc of his blade and he ended up slashing air.

  Before he could recoup, she thrust forward, pressing the Beretta’s stubby barrel against his chest.

  Knowing she’d found the spot where his heart resided, she pulled the trigger and danced backward.

  His clothing and his body muffled the gunshot but the sharp pop-slap was still an assault on early-morning silence and Grace hoped she wouldn’t need to fire again.

  He stood there. Surprise slackened his face. His arms dropped. The knife fell to the grass.

  Still bleeding from the gouges on his cheek, he lurched, stumbled, fell flat on his face.

  Grace waited, saw no movement, approached him and stepped hard on his back.

  No reaction. Gone, he had to be. She checked for a pulse. Zero. She jostled him hard.

  Definitely lights-out.

  Standing over him, she appraised the situation. His cheek wound and the bullet hole were smack against her pretty lawn.

  She’d have to find a way to clean the grass.

  Among other things.

  One down, one more to go?

  Leaving the dead man in her garden, the .22 still pressed to her flank, Grace eased her way out of the gate. Expecting another nasty surprise; this time she’d be ready.

  The street was empty.

  Again, she walked west—awa
y from the Chrysler—rounded the corner and passed the front of the cottage and was sure no one was lurking there before continuing to the nearest corner where she turned right.

  It took a while to reposition herself half a block behind the boxy sedan.

  Feeling a visceral sense of purpose, muscular and savage, that she’d never experienced before.

  Maybe the gravity of what she’d done—the ending of a human life—would rebound on her but at this moment to hell with the bastard who may have ended Andrew’s life.

  With his fat friend.

  She was alive.

  Now I’m more than a murderer’s daughter.

  She slinked closer to the Chrysler, knew black glass could conceal anything but continued anyway and got right up against the car’s rear bumper. Gun in hand, she kicked the rear bumper softly.

  No response.

  Her second kick was harder. The vehicle remained the stolid inanimate object it was.

  Crouching low, she scurried to the front passenger window, pointed the Beretta at the glass. Rapped the window hard with her knuckles.

  Silence.

  She tried the door. Locked. Same for the driver’s side.

  If Beefy was in there, he’d have reacted. She retreated and waited anyway. Ten minutes, twenty thirty forty.

  The car sat there.

  So tonight had been a one-man mission. Maybe Beef had been injured when she’d run him into the berm.

  Or he was fine and the two of them simply figured Grace an easy victim.

  Invade her space, search her records, and if Mr. Average Size was lucky enough to find her, gut her and slit her throat and dump her in a dingy, demeaning place.

  Best-laid plans.

  Now he was no-man.

  Back in the garden, Grace bypassed the corpse and walked to the cottage’s rear door. Unlocking and disabling the alarm—he’d never gotten in—she headed for the patient bathroom and retrieved a box of rubber gloves from beneath the sink. Part of the gear used by her once-a-week cleaning woman, Smeralda.

  Who, she realized, would be by in three days.