The Murderer's Daughter

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Grace said, “My contacting you proves I’ll be okay.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Not only am I self-protective, I know how to ask for help.”

  He scowled, drank. “I suppose I appreciate it.”

  “Appreciate what?”

  “Your coming to me. Because Lord knows I could’ve done a helluva lot more back when you were a kid.”

  “Wayne, of all the people—”

  He waved her off. “What did I really do for you other than delegate responsibility?”

  “Ramona was—”

  “The best alternative, granted. But as soon as I punted to her, I washed my hands. Of you, of everyone, of the entire system. Sure, I can rationalize it as burnout, but what does that say about my character?”

  “I think your character is beyond—”

  “When Ramona called to tell me she thought your IQ was through the roof, I kissed her off, darling. How did I know she’d take care of it optimally? How would it have hurt me to spend some time researching curricula? And please don’t tell me everything worked out fine. The issue isn’t outcome, Grace, it’s process.”

  Grace exerted gentle pressure on his hand. His skin seemed to ping, as if electrified. “Please, Wayne, do not excoriate yourself. You and Ramona were the only people in the system who made a difference. A significant difference.”

  “Whatever…so what did I sell out for? Another system equally amoral—worse than amoral, Grace. Venal, I’m an extremely well-paid attack dog.” He finished the second martini. Smiled. “Of course I do get to wear Brioni.”

  Xavier started from across the room. Wayne shooed him away. “Grace, please reconsider this quest of yours. There has to be a better way.”

  Grace squeezed his fingers. “I’m no martyr, Wayne, but there’s really no choice, we both know that knowledge is power.”

  Dropping her hand into her purse, she ran a fingertip against the small envelope.

  The resulting sound—doll’s nails on a toy chalkboard—caused Wayne to jump. He pulled his hand away from Grace’s. “Look at it after I leave, Grace. And please, not here.”

  “Absolutely, Wayne. And I swear, you’ll never be connected to this.”

  “Well…,” he said. Instead of finishing the sentence he slid clumsily out of the booth. “Pressing social event in Pasadena at eight and I’m sure you’d rather be…doing what it is you plan to do, rather than jawing uselessly with an old fart.”

  Removing several bills from a gold clasp, he placed them gently on the table and was gone.

  —

  Grace got to the restaurant parking lot in time to see him tooling away in a silver Jaguar sedan. The valet counted out what looked like a generous tip.

  She drove two blocks south, parked on a quiet residential block, slit the tiny envelope open with a fingernail.

  Inside was a flimsy square of paper folded in half. The kind of cheap stock you’d find on a memo pad headed From the Desk of…if the person with the desk was low on the corporate totem pole. He’d probably lifted it from a gofer’s cubicle.

  She unfolded and read three typed lines.

  Samael Coyote Roi

  Typhon Dagon Roi

  Lilith Lamia Roi

  Something on the flip side, as well:

  Lilith: to Howell and Ruthann McCoy, Bell Gardens, Ca.

  Typhon: to Theodore and Jane Van Cortlandt, Santa Monica, Ca.

  Samael: to Roger and Agnes Wetter, Oakland, Ca.

  No dates for any of the adoptions. For all Wayne’s filth and lucre, a nervous leaker had been unwilling to hand over hard copy.

  But Wayne had listed the three names twice. On the outer page, more likely to be seen first, just the names. First and middle.

  He wanted Grace to focus on the names.

  She reread them. Weird-sounding monikers, she’d check them out. But what snagged her attention was a change in sequence. On the outer page, the list went oldest to youngest, but when listing the adoptions, Wayne had reversed the sequence.

  Because that was the actual chronological order? Nonthreatening, silent, querulous little “Lily” finding a permanent home first?

  Mild-mannered, quiet Typhon lucking out next.

  Leaving firstborn Samael, despite belief in his own charisma, to wait. Maybe in the hellhole Grace had experienced…

  The real surprise, Grace supposed, was that he’d been adopted at all, given his age. Most adoptive parents craved warm and cuddly, not postpubescent and strong-willed.

  So maybe interesting people, Roger and Agnes Wetter.

  Of Oakland, California.

  Right next to Berkeley.

  —

  She drove to an Internet café a few blocks west. Figuring out the theme behind the names was a couple of clicks away.

  Samael, Hebrew for “God’s venom,” was a favored tag for seriously dark-minded Satanists. Coyote—who knew?—evoked an American Indian devil.

  Typhon: a Greek devil. Dagon, a Philistine sea demon.

  Lilith, according to myth, had been Adam’s first wife, a lusty, disobedient wench who’d been eliminated in favor of compliant, fruit-loving Eve. Despite being adopted as an icon in some feminist circles, she was also part of the satanic pantheon.

  Last but not least, Lamia. A night-prowling Greek devil who preyed on children.

  Charming.

  So crazy, power-mad Arundel Roi had embraced the dark side. So what else was new?

  There had to be more…maybe emphasizing the names was Wayne’s way of letting her know not to waste her time, they’d been changed.

  Or he was seriously freaked out and still trying to deter her.

  If so, sorry, Uncle.

  —

  She got on the 405 South and drove to an Enterprise rental lot in Redondo Beach, where she exchanged the Jeep for a Ford Escape (how appropriate). The story she’d prepared—preferring something smaller—remained an unspoken lie. The clerk never asked, challenged by paperwork and eager to get back to texting.

  Redondo was a pretty beach town but too low-rise and open, the vacation feel all wrong. Heading east to its utilitarian neighbor, Torrance, she booked herself into a Courtyard by Marriott, ended up with a room that was close to a Xerox of her digs at the Hilton Garden.

  The comfort of familiarity. Grace had guided countless patients in that direction.

  But setting up her laptop and connecting to blessed business-hotel WiFi, she warned herself not to get too familiar with anything.

  For someone like her, no point to it. Nothing lasted.

  Grace began by searching roger agnes wetter.

  Instant hit: 1993 San Francisco Examiner follow-up coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

  That 6.9 temblor had battered cities from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, taking down homes, commercial buildings, freeways, a serious chunk of the Oakland Bay Bridge. Sixty-three fatalities, nearly four thousand serious injuries, over ten thousand people left homeless, loss of power for millions.

  Six billion dollars’ worth of nightmare for policyholders, an actuarial disaster for the insurance companies who’d promised to take care of them.

  Four years later many claims had been paid but often after prolonged delays and manipulative legal wrangles. The article described cases that remained unsettled. Often the culprits were fly-by-night insurers declaring bankruptcy rather than paying out claims. In other cases still-functioning companies continued to stall.

  Stalemates approaching half a decade have been achieved using rotating freelance adjustors who lose paperwork compiled by their predecessors, impose new demands and promulgate needlessly complicated and misleading forms to be filled out under unreasonable deadlines. These fly-by-nights also make a habit of missing appointments or claiming policyholders failed to show up in person at inspections, falsely stating that absenteeism voids policies. Even when paperwork manages to work its way through the bureaucratic morass, damage is often grossly underestimated. In some instances, ps
ychological pressure to settle at low levels of compensation is accomplished with cajoling and threats.

  “They told me,” said one struggling octogenarian who’d lost her home and insisted on remaining anonymous, “that if I didn’t take six hundred dollars for the whole kit and kaboodle, they’d sue me and I’d end up losing my Social Security.”

  One firm whose name keeps coming up as a player in some of the poorest and hardest-hit Bay Area communities is Alamo Adjustments of Berkeley. Alamo’s representatives, whom many policyholders describe as “just kids,” have submitted the highest rate of claim denials, nearly 80 percent. Similar allegations against Alamo when it was based in San Antonio, Texas, have surfaced. Alamo’s president, Roger F. Wetter, didn’t respond to inquiries.

  Samael, last of the Roi orphans to be adopted. Until a perfect-storm encounter with a seasoned psychopath wanting to be a dad.

  Had the adoption been more about training an acolyte than nurturing an orphan? Roger Wetter, adept at using young thugs, figuring Mr. Venom of God would be the perfect addition to his family?

  Roger and Son…

  Roger. The name Andrew had claimed when chatting with “Helen” in the Opus lounge.

  Grace and Andrew had both hidden behind alter egos but for Grace the choice had been casual, plucking the name of the woman she’d most recently spoken to. Had he dug deeper, becoming “Roger” that night because Roger had been on his mind?

  Because the brother he’d known as Samael, the monster he feared, was now Roger Junior?

  She typed away and found a seven-year-old obituary in the L.A. Daily News for Roger and Agnes Wetter, of Encino. The couple, described as “elderly,” had vanished during a boating trip off Catalina Island, their forty-foot catamaran found drifting and unoccupied. Divers had failed to find the bodies.

  No mention of vicious business practices, only that Wetter was a “freelance investor,” his wife a “homemaker and docent.”

  So Alamo had nothing to do with the Fortress Cult, it was simply a recycle of a company started in San Antonio. The city Andrew had claimed as home because it, too, was on his mind?

  Probing the past because he’d learned of sins in the present. Not just those of the brother he’d once known as Samael, but of an entire family criminal enterprise?

  After being taken in by separate families, had the brothers somehow resumed contact? From Berkeley to Encino. Right over the hill from Andrew’s adopted home in Santa Monica. For all Grace knew, they’d run into each other at a football game. So many other opportunities—for all she knew they didn’t have to resume, had maintained contact all those years.

  Grace reread the Wetters’ obit. One year prior to the accident at sea, Alamo Adjustments was still operating in Berkeley. With Beldrim Benn Junior running security. An outfit like that would need muscle and Grace had no problem imagining a much younger Benn scaring away poor, old, disenfranchised policyholders.

  But shortly after, the family had moved. Motivated by too much scandal to sit on? Or, as Senior’s “freelance investor” status implied, had he simply retired to enjoy the fruits of sin?

  Nice house, nice boat, wife a docent, all the signposts of the leisurely good life.

  An adult son the couple had raised since adolescence?

  Sole heir?

  —

  Most California counties were happy to give up their coroner’s records if you ponied up a fee, filled out forms, and were willing to wait weeks, even months. Several online services obliged cheaper and quicker and within seconds Grace had summaries of the deaths of Roger Wetter, seventy-five, and Agnes Wetter, seventy-two.

  Cause of Death: Unknown but suspected drowning. Manner of Death: Accidental.

  Nearest Kin: Roger Wetter Junior. Center Street, Berkeley. The same address as Alamo’s business headquarters.

  Samael had, indeed, morphed to Junior. Seven years ago, he’d have been thirty or so. Had he decided to cash in early? Had Andrew found out and, still guilty—A. Toner—over his failure to report Bobby Canova’s murder and who-knew-what-else, wrestled with exposing his brother’s parricides?

  Approaching thirty himself, he’d needed encouragement to do the right thing because he was conflicted, trying to deal with evil kinship.

  Turning to the great Internet oracle for wisdom, he’d happened upon Malcolm’s research on survival and guilt, learned Malcolm was deceased but noted Grace’s frequent co-authorship at the tail end of Malcolm’s career. Switched his sights to her and came upon the solo article that clinched it.

  But again, Grace was forced to wonder: Had he somehow suspected Grace was the subject as well as the author? No one else had. Then again, no one else knew about the girl living at Stagecoach Ranch the night Bobby Canova died.

  She scoured her memory—had they even talked once as kids? She didn’t think so. Had Ramona introduced her beyond “Grace”?

  Stop. Reload.

  The facts were what mattered: Andrew had found his way to her, everything had gone to hell, and he’d died terribly within hours of leaving her office.

  Googling his adopted parents, the Van Cortlandts, stopped her short.

  Six-year-old obituary in the L.A. Times.

  Dr. Theodore Van Cortlandt, retired endodontist, seventy-nine, and Jane Burger Van Cortlandt, retired hygienist, seventy-five, had perished six years ago during a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, the victims of a calamitous fall due to a freak rockslide.

  Hurriedly, Grace logged back onto the death-report service.

  Cause: Blunt trauma. Mode: Accidental.

  Sole heir, a son: Andrew Michael Van Cortlandt. Living at the same Tenth Street address. An engineer.

  He’d used his adopted first name. Artlessness or arrogance?

  The similarities between the deaths fought Grace’s image of Andrew as moral combatant and gave way to a far uglier scenario.

  Two pairs of elderly affluent parents, a couple of sizable inheritances.

  Big bro sets the example, little bro follows a year later?

  Back to their devil roots as Samael Coyote and Typhon Dagon?

  But if Andrew had been involved in murdering his parents, why show up at Grace’s office?

  Atoner.

  He’d come for the same reasons most conspirators spill: racked with guilt, worried about his own skin, or both.

  Or worried—no, terrified—because a new threat had arisen from his brother?

  And if Roger Wetter Junior, a multiple murderer, had found out his weakling sib was planning to blab to a therapist, he’d be sure to act decisively.

  By coming to Grace, Andrew had pasted a target on her back.

  She forced herself to reel back the night she preferred to forget, reviewing the details of their time together in the Opus lounge. His story had been a mix of truth and lies.

  Not Roger, but yes, an engineer.

  Not from San Antonio. But, yes, in L.A. on business. But nothing to do with his work. His was the business of self-preservation.

  Thinking herself the director, not an actor, Grace had bought every word.

  Had he been that good? Or had she slipped too deep into her own screenplay? All those wonderful lies spun for countless men she’d lured into hunger for her.

  She began crying. No sense trying to stop it.

  —

  When the tears dried up, she sat in her hotel room emitting dry-eyed growls that tapered to pathetic mewling. Hating her weakness, she slapped herself across the face twice and grew silent. A quickly gulped mini-bottle of vodka from her hotel mini-bar left her parched and hot and jumpy. She drained two bottles of water, deep-breathed for a long time, was finally able to return to her laptop.

  More work to do. Three children of Arundel Roi had showed up that night at Stagecoach Ranch.

  Even before her fingers touched the keyboard, Grace had a good notion of what she’d learn about Howell and Ruthann McCoy of Bell Gardens.

  Older couple victimized by a fake accident. Seven or fewer years ago,
if some twisted reverse birth-order game was at play.

  The prime scion of the Fortress Cult rewarding the people who’d taken in him and his siblings with slaughter for monetary gain.

  But as the web kicked back an immediate response, Sophie Muller’s cool, erudite voice sounded in Grace’s head.

  Ass u me.

  Not seven years ago, ten.

  Not California.

  —

  This obituary showed up in the Enid (Oklahoma) News & Eagle.

  Family Perishes in Waukomis Home Fire

  The bodies of three people, all believed to be members of a Waukomis family, were discovered this morning in the burned-out wreckage of a house on Reede Road. Preliminary examination indicates that the male and two females who perished were Howell McCoy, 48, his wife, Ruthann, 47, and their only child, a daughter, Samantha, 21. The possible use of an accelerant has led Waukomis PD to call in arson investigators from Enid.

  All three victims were found in bed with no signs of a struggle. According to Waukomis investigators, the McCoys and their daughter were deaf, leading to the possibility that they slept through a break-in. The house’s location, on a four-acre lot in a secluded section of town, would shield criminal activity from casual view. A missing five-year-old Ford pickup points to robbery as a possible motive.

  The McCoys moved to Oklahoma four years ago from California, settling on a property owned for three generations by Ruthann McCoy’s family. Neighbors report them as pleasant but loners, possibly due to their hearing impairment, with few social ties to the community. Neither the parents nor the daughter were employed and county records indicate that all three residents received disability benefits.

  “This is terrifying,” said a neighbor. “Nothing like this happens here, we never even bother locking our doors.”

  A follow-up article two weeks later confirmed the arson, with gasoline as the accelerant. The pickup was located a week after the fire, over six hundred miles away, near Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

  Grace pulled up a map. From Waukomis to the park was a fairly straight westward trip, consistent with eventual return to California.