The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 21

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.