A Rush to Violence (A Spellman Thriller)

by Christopher Smith

  “That’s the day he died.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Come on. Read it.”

  “‘To my eternal disappointments, Camille and Emma being the clear exceptions. Although it’s already legally marked here in my will, I thought I’d take a moment to personally write all of you and let you know that today, you essentially were written out of it. Some will think it’s cruel what I’ve done, but I don’t care and I certainly don’t regret it. What I do regret is that you’ve taken advantage of your mother since you were children. She indulged you because that’s the kind of person she was. I allowed her to do it because my money was always her money. Her kindness is why I loved her. Ironically, her kindness is why you took advantage of her. So, for you, it’s unfortunate that I’m not her. None of you has done anything with your lives. Up until two years ago, you enjoyed total financial freedom. What irritates me to this day is that even though none of you has ever made an effort to find a job, you also never made an effort to donate time to a charity in an effort to help someone less fortunate than yourselves. It’s always been about you. I can only guess that over these past two years, all of you somehow have been holding out on finding a job because you think that with my death will come the millions you’ve been anticipating. But that won’t happen. With my death, it all ends. Camille and Emma will receive the fortune I inherited from my parents and which I turned into a larger fortune because I worked hard and put my education to use, unlike any of you. I wish all of you well not because I love you—I don’t—but because you’ll need it. I hope it’s not too late for you to join the workforce, because you’ll also need that. If you use your contacts wisely and if you’re creative, you shouldn’t have a problem finding a job. And if you can’t find one, we all know that you can just sell the houses your mother purchased for you and, if you’re smart, live off the interest while taking up residence at a reasonably priced apartment while eating frozen foods and buying cheaper booze. As difficult as that is for you to imagine, I’d encourage you to give it some thought. At this point, it’s the best advice I can give you. In fact, it’s all that I’m giving you.’”

  Marty dropped the will in his lap.

  “Holy shit,” Jennifer said.

  “Right to the bone.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. Carr told you that Camille’s brothers and sisters will inherit what’s left of the estate should Camille or Emma die.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, what is this?”

  “A slap across the face. And a curiosity. Obviously, Miller knew his children would learn what was in his will. But before the beneficiaries were read, Eliot Baker was likely instructed to read that letter aloud first. Hearing those words must have stung like a son of a bitch, especially with the unscathed Camille and Emma there to listen. There’s nothing but hatred in that letter. It must have scared the hell out of them. But later, when the list of beneficiaries was read, imagine the relief they felt that on some level they had a chance at that fortune. The letter and the will contradict each other. Miller said exactly what he wanted to say in the letter, but for some reason he caved by including them in the will itself.”

  “Was he just screwing with them?”

  “On one level, of course he was. But I think he included the letter because he knew that if they contested the will, this letter would kill that effort, which it did. I also think he included the others after Camille and Emma because having them as beneficiaries is what his wife would have wanted. It could have been the olive branch he planned to extend to her in heaven, assuming Miller believed in the afterlife. It might be as simple as that. Or it could be more complicated.”

  She nodded at the will. “Do we know the time it was revised?”

  Marty looked on the front of the document. “Twenty-seven minutes after nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “Which means he was there at the start of business hours. Not at noon that day. Not at three. But first thing in the morning. That suggests a mission. He wanted this done with. What’s odd is that it took his lawyer twenty-seven minutes to read over the changes and give them his blessing. Why so long?”

  “Maybe you can find out. You are going to do a feature on him, after all.”

  “Oh, he’ll be grilled by me when I leave the room. I especially want to know when that appointment was made. Kenneth Miller could demand anything from anyone who worked for him. He might have picked up his telephone that morning and told Baker that he planned to see him at nine that morning, regardless of the man’s schedule.” She looked at him. “I think it’s a coincidence Miller died that afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “If anyone knew he was about to change the will, they would have killed him sooner. So, they didn’t know. Or maybe they did know, but were too late in getting to him. When the will was read, they contested it. When they failed, they hired Carr. What does the declaration say?”

  Marty flicked through the pages, came upon the declaration and saw that it underscored that this document served as Miller’s last will and testament, thus revoking all previously made wills and codicils. He read down and got to the details of the beneficiaries. It was just as he expected.

  And then it wasn’t.

  “That’s strange,” he said.

  “What’s strange?”

  “The beneficiaries don’t end with Camille’s six siblings.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s another person?”

  “Who?”

  He looked up at her. “Somebody by the name of Pamela Decker. She’s next in line to receive the estate should the Millers die.”

  “Who is Pamela Decker?”

  Marty turned to his computer. “Let me send a note and the video footage to Roz. Then we’ll find out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “You’ve never cleaned anything in your life, have you, Grace?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I can tell. You’ve always had someone else do it for you. It’s obvious by the awkward way you’re pushing around that mop. I know you’re cleaning up your brother’s blood and everything, which is probably upsetting even if he is a murderer, but the way you’re doing it is just comical.”

  “You really are your mother’s daughter, Emma. You truly are.”

  “And you really have lived a privileged live, Grace. You truly have. Look at you. You’re just swishing everything around, thinking that’s how you clean when you’re really just making more of a mess. It’s like you’re doing a pantomime of how to mop a floor, which you probably learned by watching one of your maids, if you pay them any attention at all, which I doubt. But you’re failing, because if that’s your idea of clean, I’m here to tell you that you’re deluded. So, take the bucket, rinse it out, fill it up again with hot soapy water just like we did before and get the blood off this damned floor.”

  Grace Miller sank the mop into the bucket of murky red water and wiped her sweaty blonde hair off her forehead. She looked tired, angry, humiliated, frightened and defeated. Her face was alive with those emotions. Her eyes were imprinted with them. She had soaked through her white silk blouse and now it clung to her slender frame. The hem of her brown silk pants were darkened with the bloody water, as were her high-heeled shoes.

  “The blood has congealed, Emma. Some of it is starting to dry. I’ll never be able to get it clean. You can give me all the hot soapy water you’ve got, but it’s not going to come clean.”

  “Yes, it will.”

  “No, it won’t. We dragged his body to the end of the house. You can see the trail of blood from here. We put him in the kitchen pantry. Do you understand how far away that is? Do you have any idea what kind of a job this is? This house is massive. And look at the walls. The chair, the desk and the curtains. How do you expect me to get them clean? They’re covered with him. I can’t do it by myself.”

  “But you are going to do it by yourself.”

  “What’s the point?”
/>
  “The point is that all of you have my grandfather’s blood on your hands. Now you’re going to know what it takes to get them clean.”

  “I did nothing to my father.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I never would have killed him. I loved him. How dare you say such a thing.”

  “How dare you think you can lie to me when you haven’t even spilled one tear for your dead brother. Explain that.”

  “I’m in shock.”

  “Oh, please. Do you even watch the news? Do you know what shock and grief look like? And by the way, you say you loved your father, but your father didn’t love you. He said so in the letter he attached to his will. I was there when it was read. We all heard it. I can’t imagine how much that pissed you off.” She stopped herself. “Actually, that’s not true. Since you helped to murder him, I know exactly how much that pissed you off.”

  “We had nothing to do with his death. There was no evidence of foul play. He tripped over his dog. I don’t know where this is coming from.”

  Her eyes were fixed on Emma’s. They never once wavered. Was she telling the truth? She remembered back to that day when they contested the will and the look Grace and Sophia shot at her. It wasn’t just a look of evil. It was an arrogant look of confidence that they were going to win their share of her grandfather’s fortune.

  All of them are manipulative. They always have been.

  She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she just shrugged.

  “I’m telling you that none of this is going to come clean.”

  “Grace, that’s not even the point. I want to see you squirm. Then we’re going to make a few phone calls and make other people squirm. Take the bucket and do as I asked.”

  She got up from where she was sitting and pointed the gun at her aunt. “Come on. Let’s go. You’ll fill the bucket, I’ll watch to make sure you don’t try something stupid and then we’ll come back here and you’ll go through the motions of what cleaning looks like to you. But before we do that, I need something I’m sure my uncle has tucked away somewhere in this joint.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A laptop,” Emma said. “And I need it now.”

  * * *

  They found one in his office on the third floor. It was a MacBook Pro, which was perfect because Emma had one herself back at the hotel. Once she got Grace set up with a fresh pail of hot soapy water, she sat down in a chair that faced her aunt, kept her gun in her lap so she could snatch it in case Grace was overcome by a rush of heroics and started the machine.

  There were two things she wanted to know.

  First, Rotterdam. She wanted to read about the orphanage her mother presumably set on fire that cost dozens of children their lives. She wanted to see if her mother was implicated in any of the stories, or if any of it was even true. She still wasn’t sure if Grace was pulling something out of her ass in an effort to throw her off and make her question her current actions.

  Second, she wanted to do a search on the characteristics of lying. Was it just the eyes that gave someone away or was there some other kind of body language she was missing?

  The screen flashed and Emma was faced with the computer’s desktop wallpaper. It was a photograph of her uncle Scott in his youth. He was sitting high on a white horse, his left brow was arched and he was smirking at the camera. Poised at his lips was one of his pink Sobranie Cocktail cigarettes. Then, his hair had been black, but here it was light brown and even less becoming. She thought he looked just as ugly back then as he did when she arrived here tonight. Only a younger version of ugly, which she supposed was somehow worse. Who wants to be ugly in their youth? Especially in their youth?

  Others were with him—Sophia, Grace, Michael, Tyler. No sign of Laura. All were on horses and sporting proper riding attire, because that’s how her aunts and uncles rolled. Another man and woman were with them, but Emma didn’t recognize them. They were friends, she supposed, each of whom were giving off a similar air of affluence. She thought they looked like an impossible, haughty bunch of snobs.

  She wondered who they were.

  She looked up and saw that Grace was watching her while she dragged the mop back and forth over the floor. About fifteen feet separated them. The front door was too far away for her to reach without Emma getting to her first. She was confident of that. And she wasn’t worried about the fifteen feet between them. The ridiculous heels Grace had shoehorned her feet into might as well be stilts. If she charged at her, Emma would have time to shoot her dead.

  She turned the computer screen around so it faced her aunt.

  “Who are these two people?” she asked.

  Grace squinted at the screen. “Which two?”

  “These two,” she said, pointing at the two strangers. “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re with them.”

  “They could be anyone. That photo must be fifteen years old. If not older.”

  “But they must be someone you know. That’s you there. Uncle Scott used it as his desktop wallpaper not just for any old reason, but because it meant something to him. Who are they?”

  “Emma, I can barely even see them from here.”

  She gripped the gun. “Then come over and look.”

  Her aunt put the mop in the pail and click, click, clicked closer. She looked down at the gun, then at the screen. “I think they were Scott’s friends. We were on holiday in England.” She scratched her nose with the back of her hand and tucked her hair behind her ears. “I don’t remember their names.”

  “Try to remember.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Emma, they were Scott’s friends, not mine. And why is it even important who they are? Do you want me to make up some names? Because I can do that if it’ll shut—if it’ll satisfy you. The truth is that I can’t remember. They were there. We went riding. We had dinner. The end. It was years ago, for God’s sake. Why are you grilling me like this?”

  Because I’ll catch you in a lie at some point. Or maybe this is how you lie. Either way, I’ll figure it out.

  But she didn’t have long to do so.

  She dismissed her aunt with a wave of the gun. “I was just curious, Grace. Go on, now. Back to the blood.”

  * * *

  While her aunt mopped, Emma Googled “Rotterdam orphanage fire” and was presented with pages of information of an event that took place twenty years ago.

  There were photos of the orphanage’s brick building before the fire, during the fire and the rubble left in its wake after the fire. There was video of the orphanage engulfed in flames and there was video of it after the flames succeeded in taking the four-story building down. She didn’t have time to read all of the articles, so she narrowed her search by adding “New York Times” in the search field.

  A story from the Times appeared at the top of the screen. She clicked on it and read.

  Forty-three children died in the fire, along with a man the locals knew as Jacobus de Kooning, who had owned the orphanage for twenty-four years and who was revered in the community because of his commitment to the children he helped and because of his advocacy efforts on their behalf.

  Before the event, he was known as a man who had sacrificed much of his life to make certain his charges had food, shelter, home-schooled educations, love and perhaps a future with a new family, though placement at the orphanage was historically low. Many considered the children too emotionally damaged to adopt. They didn’t present well. It was a harsh reality to face, but many couples didn’t want to leave the orphanage with the burden of their new child’s emotional baggage. The fact that de Kooning stood by them knowing this only galvanized his position in the community. Some considered him a saint.

  But as Emma read deeper into the story, details grew darker as the weight of de Kooning’s lies and deceptions were revealed.

  The man’s real name was Willem Lassooy. He was a fifty-six-
year-old predator who employed his young charges in the black market sex trade. His orphanage was a front for that sideline, which had made him a rich man. He was involved in the production of underground sex tapes, prostitution, private parties. Whatever it took to increase his wealth. No one knew who started the fire, but after an investigation, the authorities declared it was an act of arson.

  Did her mother have anything to do with this? Why would Grace be so quick to point it out if she hadn’t? She obviously believed it was true. Otherwise, given the pressure she was under now, there was no way she could have just randomly selected some orphanage in Rotterdam that was leveled by fire decades in the past and attribute her mother to it.

  Emma sank into thought. Twenty years ago her mother was doing just this sort of work. So, the timing was right and Lassooy fit the profile of the kind of man her mother’s group would have targeted, but nothing here hinted that she was involved. She scanned the story again and saw no sign of her mother’s name. No sign of a man named “Sam.” Not even an anonymous group that had come forward to take ownership of the act, which the Times considered unusual given the nature of Lassooy’s crimes.

  Rotterdam police speculated that perhaps someone who once lived at the orphanage and experienced its horrors exacted their revenge on Lassooy. A psychologist was quoted as saying that perhaps that person, now an adult, was still living through their own private hell given how Lassooy’s perversions had affected them. Maybe they were so psychologically damaged, they decided to burn down the building thinking that a better end for all inside was the ultimate end. Death.

  The rationale made sense. Death for Lassooy because the perpetrator wanted him dead for the shame and hell he put that person through. Death to the children because whoever set the fire knew first-hand the pain they were enduring and the hell that would haunt them for the rest of their lives if it didn’t end. The psychologist questioned by the Times thought the person may have considered death for those children an act of mercy and not one of murder. “He or she would have correlated their deaths with freedom and release,” the psychologist said. “They would have viewed the act as a kind of mercy, a way to protect them from the nightmare they were living because of Lassooy.”