Book Read Free

The Murderer's Daughter

Page 23

by Jonathan Kellerman


  Samael—or, and Grace had to face it, possibly Samael and Typhon—setting out on a road trip for their first family slaughter?

  County benefit checks put the lie to an inheritance motive. Why travel thousands of miles to immolate a shy, inoffensive poor family?

  Three deaf people sleeping through a nighttime break-in.

  Grace hadn’t picked up on Lily’s hearing impairment. She hadn’t paid much attention to the Roi kids, period.

  Looking back, the little girl hadn’t uttered a word. But neither had Ty. The same went for lots of new arrivals at the ranch, children numbed by the foster process or stunned by unfamiliar surroundings.

  Lily, hearing-impaired. Ty, choosing not to speak? Both driven to mute submission by their older brother?

  The same subservience that had led them to keep silent about Bobby Canova?

  A remorseless murderer by early adolescence, Samael/Roger had two decades to hone his craft. For whatever reason, Typhon/Andrew had finally decided to do something about it and had ended up stabbed to death.

  She searched the Center Street address that Roger Wetter Junior had listed as his home. The building was the subject of a brief squib in a local paper, due to be revamped for a mixture of commercial and government uses funded in great part by federal grants.

  An image search revealed a blocky, six-story structure that looked like an old factory. Nothing residential about it. One of those loft situations? Or had Roger simply lied and his home was somewhere else?

  She ran another search on him, came up empty.

  But andrew van cortlandt engineer pulled up five hits, all to Asian bridge and dam projects contracted to Schultz-McKiffen, an international construction firm. In each case, Andrew’s name came up as a side detail: He’d been part of a working team of nearly a hundred staffers, one of fourteen structural engineers.

  No personal details, no photos. Schultz-McKiffen’s headquarters were in Washington, D.C., with satellite offices in London, Düsseldorf, and Singapore. One hit cited Andrew’s attendance at a meeting in Germany.

  Officially living with his parents but a world traveler.

  Grace endured more recall of every moment she’d spent with him. She had trouble recasting the earnest, troubled young man as a cold-blooded murderer, even working under the tutelage of his psychopath brother.

  But anyone could be fooled and the facts told her not to trust her instincts: His sister had been burned alive a decade ago but he’d been allowed to live until days ago, suggesting some sort of favored status in his brother’s mind. The kind of privilege that came from co-conspiracy.

  Using the Tenth Street address of the Van Cortlandts, she tried several real estate sites, found what she was looking for at the third.

  The property had been sold for $2.7 million to a family trust representing the interests of William and Bridget Chung. William’s name popped up as president of an Internet start-up company in Venice.

  Selling the homestead two years after his parents’ death, Andrew had cashed in big-time.

  No reason for the Chungs to know anything about his motives for selling but maybe they—or someone in the neighborhood—would recall something Grace could use.

  Tomorrow: Berkeley. Today: Keep it local.

  —

  Torrance to Santa Monica was a half-hour hop under ideal conditions. Nothing about L.A. was ideal anymore and it took Grace an hour and eighteen minutes to reach the two-story sage-green Craftsman where Andrew Van Cortlandt had spent his privileged adolescence.

  Attractive, well-maintained structure, with a full-width front porch, a neat square lawn flanked by a pair of mature magnolias, precise beds of flowers rimming the grass. Generous but proportional to the narrow lot and dwarfed by the newer look-at-me Spanish and Mediterranean stucco heaps that replaced several older structures.

  A silver Volvo station with a Save the Bay bumper sticker sat in the driveway. Grace parked six houses south and turned off her engine. Eight minutes later a slim, ponytailed, thirtyish blonde wearing a shoulder-baring blue cashmere sweater over white skinny jeans teetered on three-inch heels as she toted an almond-eyed, doll-like infant and a diaper bag into the Volvo.

  The woman-likely-to-be-Bridget-Chung spent a considerable amount of time offering Tenth Street a view of her enchanting glutes as she settled the baby into a rear restraint-seat. Far too little attention was paid to cross-traffic as she backed out of the driveway at full speed.

  The Volvo narrowly missed colliding with a white Lexus barreling from the north. Horn honks were followed by window-glass-muted outrage from the older woman behind the wheel of the Lexus.

  No reaction from Lithe Mom Bridget. As she drove away, her hand and eyes were fixed on her phone.

  Smiling and texting.

  Grace remained in her Escape for ten additional minutes. Several more cars drove by, all luxury models. A two-minute lull broke when a slim, middle-aged woman who could’ve been Bridget Chung’s mother stepped out of the neighboring Spanish—one of the older, original houses, a smallish one-story—and began watering potted plants near her front door.

  Grace got out, walked to the green Craftsman, and studied its façade.

  The woman stopped watering. “May I help you?”

  Squinting, tight-lipped. One of those Neighborhood Watch stares.

  All the better.

  Grace smiled and approached her.

  The woman remained wary, hands tight around the handle of her watering can. Her lips moved as she read the fake business card Grace held out.

  “Commercial and Industrial Security. Like alarm systems?”

  “We consult to individuals and corporations contemplating real-estate transactions.”

  “Consult about what?”

  “Residential patterns, upkeep, environmental and civic issues that might come up.”

  “Come up when?”

  “In the event of a transaction.” Grace cocked a head at the Craftsman.

  “They’re selling? To a company?”

  “That I can’t say, ma’am. I get a list of addresses, come out and record the data.”

  “Well, you need to know that this is a first-class neighborhood.”

  “No doubt about that, Ms…. ”

  “Mrs. Dena Kroft.” She glanced at the green house. “If it was up to me, they’d be out tomorrow.”

  “Problem neighbors?”

  “Loud,” said Dena Kroft. “Parties all the time, yelling around the pool, what sounds like heavy drinking. He’s some kind of computer nerd, Asian, more money than God. She’s an airhead.”

  Loathing was fertile grounds for rapport. Grace said, “That’s obvious from her driving. Just as I got here, she zoomed out of her driveway, nearly T-boned another car. With her baby inside.”

  “Exactly,” said Dena Kroft. She handed the card back. “We’ve been on the block for thirty-two years. It was a perfect neighborhood until the N.R.’s started moving in.”

  “N.R.’s?”

  “Nouveau riches,” said Dena Kroft. “Asian, Persian, or they can be anything, whatever. They tear down lovely houses, get variances through their connections, and build monstrosities on every inch of lot. If you want all interior space and no greenery, why not just get a condo?”

  “Indeed,” said Grace.

  “Before them, the block was mostly doctors, top-notch people on the staff at Saint John’s. My husband’s a radiologist there. Peter Kroft.”

  As if Grace was supposed to recognize the name. “Great hospital.”

  “Best in the city,” said Dena Kroft. “I was hoping he’d keep the house. The son of the people who lived here.”

  “He’s a doctor?”

  “Some kind of engineer.” Kroft leaned in, lowered her voice. “Adopted, but you’d never know. They actually got him into Harvard-Westlake.” Peering at Grace. “Did you go to Buckley? You look like a girl in my daughter’s class.”

  “No, ma’am, sorry. You’d never know he was adopted because—”r />
  “It’s like going to the pound and picking out a mutt, you never know what you’re going to end up with. But Teddy and Jane were fortunate with Andy. A very well-behaved boy, quiet, no shenanigans.”

  Grace said, “Sounds like the perfect neighbor.”

  “The perfect neighbors would be a quiet family,” said Kroft. “But certainly, a quiet young man would be better than the likes of them. It’s a lovely house, though a bit dark. I must admit I’m a bit peeved that Andy wasn’t more sentimental. He was never here, anyway. Ended up selling.”

  “Maybe he thought it was too much house for one person.”

  “One adapts,” said Dena Kroft. “But he was away all the time. In the Orient, that’s where he spends a lot of time. He was there when Teddy and Jane had their accident—they fell off a mountain hiking. They were always hiking, big physical fitness buffs, you know.”

  “Must’ve been hard on him,” said Grace. “Being away.”

  “Andy? I’m sure. He showed up two days later. I remember him being dropped off by a cab, carrying his bags, looking terrible, just crestfallen. I suppose he can’t be faulted for not wanting to be tied down with the property but I sure wish he’d done his civic duty and sold to somebody decent. So tell me the truth, young lady. You’re one of those credit checkers, right?” She hooked a thumb at the green house. “They’re in trouble, all that computer money is smoke and mirrors and they’re going to lose the place.”

  Grace smiled. “You never know, Mrs. Kroft.”

  Dena Kroft laughed. “What goes around comes around.”

  Before returning to Torrance, Grace had dinner at a quiet place in Huntington Beach, was back in her room by nine p.m.

  Figuring Andrew’s age was the same as hers, give or take, she searched for records of his high school days at Harvard-Westlake. The prep school was protective of its alumni, offering nothing, and an online search company required too much personal info to justify learning about his extracurricular activities.

  One impressive fact: He’d gotten into an exclusive Ivy League feeder after spending his childhood in a squalid desert cult. And witnessing bloodshed.

  You and me both, Andy.

  Curious if his academic success had continued, Grace paired his name with each of the Ivies. Wondering if the two of them could’ve actually been at Harvard together.

  But nothing from the hallowed halls of Cambridge. Same for New Haven, Princeton, Philadelphia…

  Then she thought engineer and tried MIT and Caltech. Zero.

  No big deal, there were plenty of other top schools to choose, beginning locally: USC, where Malcolm taught and Grace had earned her doctorate. The Pomona colleges, UCLA. If none of those panned out, the other UCs—Berkeley.

  The most venerable University of California campus dominated the city where Andrew’s brother had lived and learned the dark side of the insurance business.

  The only business, it occurred to Grace, that thrived on not providing service. Talk about a psychopath’s dream.

  Had the brothers’ reunion begun with a chance meeting on Telegraph or University Avenue?

  Pairing andrew van cortlandt with berkeley and every other UC campus produced the same negative results. Most students spent their undergrad years without attracting attention so this entire approach could be a waste of time.

  She made one more stab, anyway: Stanford. And wouldn’t you know.

  —

  Seven years ago, Andrew Van Cortlandt, age twenty-seven, had won an engineering department award for a doctoral thesis exploring the structural damage wreaked upon the Oakland Bay Bridge by the Loma Prieta quake.

  Samael helps his father torment disaster victims, Typhon seeks scientific enlightenment.

  Palo Alto, the town Stanford ate for breakfast, was less than fifty miles from Berkeley. The schools were rivals, academically and athletically. Stanford had been founded by a rich man irate over his son’s rejection from Berkeley.

  That made an encounter between the brothers, planned or otherwise, damn feasible.

  Grace imagined it: Two damaged souls separated during adolescence bump into each other as young men. Easy recognition. Auld lang syne.

  The two of them have a couple of beers, decide to rekindle their relationship. But the passage of time has done nothing to alter the original dynamic: glib, dominant Samael; quiet, submissive Typhon.

  Had Mr. Venom drawn his little brother over to the dark side? Convinced him to collaborate on a hideous plan?

  Time to get rid of the fools who adopted us, score some serious bucks.

  A problem: no fit with the murder of the McCoy family, ten years ago. So maybe Roger had done that one alone. For fun, thrills, some kind of sick, dark joke. Same reason he’d snuffed out Bobby Canova.

  Or: a rehearsal for what was to come.

  Or: Roger had located his baby sister first, tried to get her to return to the fold, but she’d refused. Maybe even threatened to go public on Bobby.

  Bad move, Lily.

  The taste of murder still sweet on his tongue, he reunites with Andrew a few years later and hatches a plan.

  Maybe even a barter: I kill yours, you kill mine.

  How convenient that would be: a pair of outwardly unrelated staged accidents, the sole heirs equipped with perfect alibis, should suspicion arise. But it hadn’t; the deaths had been convincing enough to fool two coroners.

  If Dena Kroft was correct, Andrew had been in Asia the day his parents tumbled off a cliff. For all Grace knew, Roger Wetter Junior had been surfing in Maui when his parents were dumped in the ocean.

  Neat, clean, sewed up tight.

  Accidents were the ultimate loss of predictability and control. The Reaper swinging his scythe unmindful of personal agenda or best intention. Grace was no stranger to instability. Every morning she reminded herself anything could happen anywhere anytime to anyone. Despite that, she felt her chest tighten and her head filled with thoughts and images she’d believed long vanished.

  Turning off the lights of her cookie-cutter hotel room, she crawled into bed and drew the covers completely over her. Sucking her thumb, she gave herself the command for dreamlessness.

  —

  This time her will failed her and she did nothing but dream, REM waves offering up the adventures of a woman who looked exactly like Grace but wore black tights and a cape and was able to perform miracles of time, space, and matter.

  She awoke feeling great. Less so when she realized she was still an earthling.

  —

  Out of the Marriott by nine fifteen a.m., she stashed her dirty clothes in a hotel dumpster and drove to the Redondo Beach wig salon she’d spotted on the way to the hotel. The cheerful, curvy women who operated the pink-and-lace shop giggled approvingly when Grace informed them she needed a new look for her boyfriend. When she added that money was no object, they became her new best friends.

  She wanted to come across high-tax-bracket because a quick survey of the goods displayed on pink Styrofoam stands was disappointing. Nearly all of them, even selections approaching four figures, looked stiff and unconvincing.

  The exception was a collection of five wigs exhibited in a tall, locked Lucite case behind the register. Even up close, these could’ve fooled her.

  Within moments, “Hi, I’m Trudy” and “Hi, I’m Cindy” were schooling her in the composition of the “absolute best hair masterpiece available.”

  European-cuticle human hair preselected for natural silkiness and processed in tiny batches at an exclusive French “atelier.” Hand-tied lace top, meticulously wefted back, and hypoallergenic tabs located at crucial “slick-spots,” a natural hairline that only resulted from “long years of experience and major talent, basically a hair Rembrandt.”

  Grace tried on two wigs from the case and bought them both, a honey-blond layered thing that reached three inches beneath her shoulders and an artfully streaked brunette flip half a foot shorter. Each listed for twenty-five hundred dollars but she bargained Cindy and
Trudy down to thirty-eight hundred for the pair. Pretending to scan the store again, she pointed to an electric-blue pageboy near the entrance.

  “You don’t want that, it’s a cheapie,” said Trudy.

  “Tacky, just for fun,” said Cindy. “We keep it like for teenagers, parties, you know.”

  Grace winked. “Todd can get tacky. How much?”

  “Aha!” Cindy giggled and checked. “Sixty-three.”

  “Can you throw it in?”

  The women looked at each other. “Sure.”

  As Grace left, boxes in tow, Cindy called out, “Todd’s a super-lucky guy.”

  Trudy said, “You can take photos but trust me, don’t post them, ha ha ha.”

  Next stop was a small optician’s store where Grace confounded the owner by asking for frames set with clear glass.

  He said, “I’ve only got three or four. We use them as demos.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  “They’re no good for anything.”

  “It’s for a movie.”

  “Which one?”

  Grace smiled and drew a finger across her lips.

  The man smiled back. “Ah, okay.” The cash Grace forked over kicked up his glee. He said, “Anytime, I’d love doing movies.”

  —

  Eleven a.m., a beautiful California morning.

  Grace was embarking later than she’d planned, but still with ample time to reach her destination and catch some quality sleep tonight, dreamless or otherwise.

  During breakfast, she’d changed her mind about taking the inland route, opting for the coast highway in order to avoid the blahs. As she cruised into Malibu and reached La Costa, she allowed herself a quick glance at her house, resisting the urge to go in and stand on her deck, listen to the ocean, scrub gull shit off the railing.

  One day, she’d be back. Lulled by the tides, riding waves of solitude.

  —

  An hour and a half into her second attempt north, she was hyper-alert, nibbling jerky as she passed Santa Barbara. A few scorched spots remained on the eastern hillsides, scars from a fire the previous spring that had ravaged a couple thousand acres before the winds cooperated. Nothing insidious behind the blaze; a perfectly legal campfire had gotten out of hand.

 

‹ Prev