The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 13

By noon the serene beauty of the beach had frayed Grace’s patience. An hour later, her composure was shredded, every roll of tide clenching her jaws, the tweets and snorts of shorebirds curling her hands into claws.

Locking up the house with no food in her belly and no desire to put any in there, she got in the Aston and drove north aimlessly. Speeding past Neptune’s Net, she continued through the swath of state parkland dynamited decades ago to continue the highway — talk about forced entry.

As she passed the Thornhill Broome dune, an Everest of loose sand used by physical fitness types to test their endurance, she recalled something she’d seen last year: A baby seal had meandered onto the asphalt and been run over.

Maybe vacation was a bad idea; at this moment, she’d pay dearly to rescue anything.

She’d tackled the dune exactly once, avoiding small talk from the only other climber, a steroidal type who showed off by running up the near-vertical grade. Later, having completed the circuit and walking back to her car on PCH, Grace watched him slink behind his Jeep, doubled in agony as he retched and fought for breath.

The climb had winded her, too, but she had nothing to prove and that made for a nice, unruffled life.

In the end, no one cared about you.

Fifteen miles later, the coast highway split: to the west, Rice Avenue and Oxnard’s strawberry fields, storage depots, and gas stations; to the east, Las Posas Road, where Camarillo’s agricultural table presaged that clean, bright town. Choosing the latter, she pumped the Aston to seventy, zipped past artichokes, peppers, and tomatoes. As she neared the Camarillo business district, she slowed because this was a spot cops used to fill their quotas.

Sure enough, just past a wooden shack was a cruiser.

Grace decelerated to five miles under the limit, passed a couple of intersections before coming upon the on-ramps to the 101.

Another choice: northbound or southbound. Randomly, she chose the latter.

Big lie, the decision had been anything but random. But it took her twenty miles to realize it.

An hour after leaving her home, she was back in her office.

In the absence of human interaction, the entire cottage felt sterile and cold and that began to settle Grace down.

A safe place. Here, she determined the rules.

Here she could phone her service, yet again, and not be judged as neurotic because she was simply a responsible practitioner doing her job.

She waited an itchy five minutes before doing so, figuring she needed to test herself, the past day and a half had been... different.

Different required adaptation.

No message from Andrew Toner, nor from any other patient. But a Detective Henke had left a 213 number for callback.

“Did he say what it was about?” Grace asked the operator.

“No, Doctor. And he’s a she.”

She Googled Henke, found no Facebook, just a single citation in a three-year-old Daily News piece on a North Hollywood Division gang bust. Detective Elaine Henke termed the arrests “the culmination of extended teamwork on the parts of LAPD, the district attorney, and the county sheriffs.”

Henke had probably been chosen to talk to the press because she was dependable, media-friendly, knew how to speak bureaucratese.

Three years ago, she’d worked North Hollywood. Today, she’d left a downtown number.

Probably a referral. The only people Grace knew downtown were the occasional prosecutor or D.A.’s secretary who asked her to see patients.

Sorry, Detective, I’m on vacation.

Or not. Let’s hear what Elaine has to say.

She called the number. A girlish pleasant voice said, “Detective Henke.”

“This is Dr. Grace Blades returning your call.”

“Doctor, thanks for getting back to me.” Suddenly serious.

“If this is a referral, I was planning to be out of the office for two weeks. But if it’s an emergency—”

“Actually,” said Henke, “I called about a homicide that I picked up last night downtown — early morning, actually. The victim’s a white male, early to midthirties with no identification, which is the worst thing for us. That’s where I’m hoping you can help us, Doctor. When they got him to the morgue and undressed him they found one of your business cards in his left shoe.”

“His shoe,” said Grace, fighting to keep her voice even.

“Odd, no? Does that physical description mean anything to you?”

The queasy, vertiginous waves that had gnawed Grace since last night were replaced with new discomfort: a sudden, piercing stab of... despair?

Reality catching up with the signals her body had been giving her.

Fighting to sound unruffled, she said, “Can you tell me more than that?”

“Hmm, okay,” said Henke. “Hold on... brown hair, blue eyes, wearing a Harris Tweed sport coat and khaki pants... brown shoes. Kind of generic, Doctor, but I’m afraid that’s it. If only everyone had tattoos.”

Grace said, “I can’t be sure.” Oh, yes, I can! “He might be a patient I saw yesterday evening.”

“Name?”

“If it’s not him, I’m bound by confidentiality.”

“Hmm,” said Henke. “I could email you a photo right now. I promise to pick one of the... easier ones. You can stay on the line. Up for that, Doctor?”

“Sure.” Grace gave her the address.

Moments later, the terrible truth flashed on her screen. Close-up of Andrew’s handsome face, slackened and grayed by death. No blood, no obvious wounds, maybe the bad stuff was beneath his neckline.

She said, “The name he gave me was Andrew Toner. He said he was from San Antonio, Texas.”

“He said? You have reason to doubt him?”

Well, his real name could be Roger. Or Beano. Or Rumpelstiltskin. “No... I’m just... thrown by this. I saw him last night at six p.m. He left around fifteen minutes later.”

“That’s kind of a short session, no?” said Henke. “For a psychologist, I mean. Unless it was just to dole out medication — but no, you don’t do that, that’s for psychiatrists, right?”

“Mr. Toner left the session early.”

“May I ask why?”

“It was a first session, that kind of thing happens.”

“Did he make a second appointment?”

All business, Elaine. “No.”

“From Texas,” said Henke. “That’s pretty far to come for therapy.”

“It is.”

“What else can you tell me about Mr. Toner?”

“Unfortunately, that’s it.”

“He’s dead, Doctor, you don’t need to worry about confidentiality.”

“It’s not that,” said Grace. “As I said, I only met him once and not for very long.”

Twice, really, but no sense getting into that, Elaine.

Though cradled by her desk chair, Grace felt her balance give way. Her head wobbled, unmoored, like overripe fruit swaying on a flimsy stalk. She clamped one hand on her desktop to steady herself.

“Well,” said Henke, “at this point you’re all I’ve got so would you mind if we chatted a bit further? I’m in the neighborhood.”

The murder had taken place downtown. Why would Henke be in West Hollywood? Unless she considered Grace — what did the police call it — a person of interest?

Last person to see Andrew alive. Of course she did.

Or was it something Grace had said? Hadn’t said. Had her voice, despite her best efforts, betrayed the turmoil coursing through her?

Or maybe Henke was just thorough.

Grace said, “Sure, I could see you right now.”

“Um,” said Henke. “How about in an hour, Doctor?”

In the neighborhood, indeed.

As soon as Henke hung up, Grace phoned the Beverly Opus and put on her own version of a chirpy Cal-Gal voice.

“Andrew Toner, please.”

The desk clerk clicked an unseen mouse. “Sorry, no one by that name is registered.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am, miss.”

“Oh, geez, how can that be? He said he’d be there — the Beverly Opus.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, miss—”

“Wow,” she said. “Oh, yeah, sometimes Andy uses his nickname. Roger.”

“I searched using the surname, miss,” said the clerk. “It wouldn’t make a difference.”

“This is weird. Did he maybe check in a few days ago and leave early for some reason? Why didn’t he tell me? I’m supposed to pick him up for the reunion.”

“Hold on.” Click click. Muffled voices. “No one by that name has been here, miss.”

“Okay... there are other hotels near where you are, right?”

“This is Beverly Hills,” said the clerk and he hung up.

Andrew Roger Roger Andrew.

Grace had assumed he was staying at the Opus but obviously he’d just dropped in to... have a drink? A confidence-building snort before tomorrow’s therapy when he’d be dealing with moral parameters?

He’d ended up with much more than booze.

Roger, the engineer. If the name was false, the same could apply to the occupation. Ditto a flight from Texas.

Was anything he told her true? Who’d been played?

But she remembered his shock at seeing her in her office, no one could act that well. So the part about having a problem was likely valid. And the fact that he’d been spurred by the Jane X article clarified the problem: a criminally dangerous murderous relative.

Moral parameters... not a blast from the past, something ongoing. A tortured, internal debate about whether or not to go public.

And now he was dead.

Just to make sure he hadn’t learned about her some other way, Grace did something she found abhorrent: Googled herself. All that came up were academic citations, not a single image, lending credence to at least part of Andrew’s story.

She thought about the geography of his last living day.

Drinks in B.H., therapy in West Hollywood.

Death downtown. For as long as Grace could recall, the district underwent development that seemed to end up overly optimistic. Despite Staples Center, converted lofts, yuppie condos, and bars, huge swaths of downtown L.A. remained bleak and dangerous as soon as rush hour ended and the streets were commandeered by armies of homeless schizophrenics, criminal illegals, addicts, dealers, and the like.

Had Andrew, new to the city, simply wandered into the wrong area and come up against a psychotic obeying a command hallucination?

Pitiful, dingy way to die.

Or did his murder indeed relate to his moral quest, best intentions and all?

An eddy of curiosity whipped up in Grace’s gut, displacing some of her anxiety.

If Henke made good on that one-hour prediction, fifty-one minutes remained before Grace met her first homicide detective.

Meanwhile... a bracing walk around the neighborhood would kill some time but she felt oddly disinclined to move. She tried catching up on journal articles but couldn’t focus.

Andrew Toner.

Something about the name bothered her but she couldn’t figure out what until her eyes drifted to her date book. The notation she’d made regarding his appointment, followed by the phone number he’d given her exchange.

A. Toner. Viewed as a collection of letters, the answer was obvious.

Atoner.

A man seeking expiation.

What Detective Elaine Henke would consider a clue.

Grace decided not to mention it to Henke. She’d come across weirdly over-involved, turn herself into a person of greater interest.

Atoner.

What was your sin, Andrew? Or have you taken on someone else’s iniquity?

Given what we did in the parking lot, do I really want to know?

Ignorance could truly be bliss. But she called the number he’d left, anyway.

Not in service.