The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 34

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.

Unlike the gasoline-fueled blaze that had destroyed the McCoys.

The deaths of the McCoys were beyond evil. Take away the profit motive and why bother?

If Samael/Roger had been acting out a family-cleansing fantasy, why kill Lily but leave Andrew alive?

Then she remembered: He hadn’t.

Still, the time-lapse puzzled. Ten years between Lily and Andrew. Sister first — had she been a priority?

Grace recalled how closely the tremulous little girl had stuck to the boy she knew as Typhon. The brother who’d been gentle with her.

Unlike Sam, who’d held himself apart from both his younger sibs.

Lack of attachment: another psychopathic quality.

All three kids had grown up suckling on a curdled brew of megalomania and isolation. Yet only one of them had evinced obvious cruelty at the ranch.

Just the opposite, in the case of Typhon. Grace had seen him treat Lily with... tenderness. And everything she’d learned about the man Typhon grew into — what she’d observed firsthand — worked against his being a cold-blooded murderer.

Yet his adoptive parents had also met an unusual end.

She drove a few more miles before realizing an interesting irony: The sons of Arundel Roi had waited longer to be adopted than their cute little sister, but once they’d been taken in, they’d scored the kind of affluent dream placements social services rarely produced, growing up as rich boys.

Lily, on the other hand, had remained working-class, at best.

That brought her back to the boys’ adoptions: Why had the Van Cortlandts and the Wetters, prosperous enough to go the private route, dealt with social services at all?

People like that didn’t have to settle for teenage boys hauling serious baggage.

Grace knew nothing about the Van Cortlandts but what she’d learned about Roger Wetter Senior said he had as much use for altruism as a snake had for lace panties.

A man who made his living cheating poor people suddenly proffering the milk of human kindness to an orphan? No way.

On the other hand, a man like Wetter Senior might be swayed by a concrete incentive, as in cold hard cash. And that fit with Wayne’s musings about the Fortress Cult avoiding extended press coverage due to a high-level connection.

Had one of Roi’s three co-wives been a rich girl — the prodigal daughter of a family with the clout to play human chess on a tournament level?

A couple of grandsons sired by a lunatic and mothered by a reprobate slut? Shucks, nothing money couldn’t take care of.

It would’ve taken serious money to lure grubbers like Roger and Agnes Wetter into parenthood. As for the Van Cortlandts... who knew?

To a crooked businessman like Roger Wetter, the deal would’ve been enticing: serious money for short-term stewardship because Roger né Samael was due to reach majority in a few years.

Andrew né Typhon shortly after.

But neither of the boys had cut the cord at eighteen, Roger listing the Alamo address as his own and probably working Daddy’s insurance scams.

Andrew, bright, obedient, outwardly pliable, taking well to the life of a Santa Monica preppie. Perhaps Ted and Jane had grown to love him. Or establish a reasonable facsimile. Grace imagined the Van Cortlandts feasting on parental pride when their boy secured admission to Harvard-Westlake, then to a still-unidentified first-rate college, then to grad school at Stanford.

The research award at twenty-seven. A doctorate in engineering.

But once financially independent, Andrew had decided to work on the other side of the world; you couldn’t move much farther from hearth and home.

So perhaps his affection for his new parents hadn’t run deep.

Get what you want from them, move on.

Years later: Collaborate to have them tossed over a cliff?

Grace shifted back to Roger Wetter Junior. No evidence, so far, of academic accomplishment on his part. But no need to get A’s in the Wetter household. Other qualities were prized higher.

The very qualities Venom Boy possessed in spades before he met the Wetters.

Senior takes Junior into the family business, tutors him in the fine points. Then Senior announces his retirement, he and Mom move to L.A. — pulling the rug out from under Junior?

Now you’re on your own, son.

Soon after, Mom and Dad experience the cold blue kiss of the ocean.

Head swimming, Grace pulled off at the next exit.

Sad little intersection housing two gas stations, an Arby’s, and a Pizza Hut. Nothing with WiFi. She drove farther east, spotted an even shabbier commercial block featuring mostly boarded-up storefronts but also a Wild Bill’s Motor Hotel decked out with a poorly painted sign of said lawman on a bucking bronco and smaller placards claiming satellite TV, massage beds, and Internet hookup.

She paid cash for a forty-three-dollar room, scrawled something illegible in the register, ignored the oh-sure smirk of the moron behind the desk.

Parking in front of the unit, she took her bag and her laptop to a room reeking of Lysol and hard-boiled eggs. Opening the drapes on a flyspecked window in order to keep the Escape in view, she sat on a mattress that felt stuffed with mixed nuts, tried to log on, failed, repeated, failed again.

On her fourth attempt, the Data Monster announced itself with an insipid chorus of beeps.

roger agnes wetter theodore jane van cortlandt rewarded her with three immediate hits.

Correction: one hit, reiterated twice.

Both couples had lent their names to the steering committee of a political fund-raiser. Big bash, nearly fifteen years ago, the Biltmore Hotel, downtown, championing the reelection of State Senator Selene McKinney. Old news cached on the site of the party-planning outfit that had set it up.

McKinney served the affluent Westside, including the Van Cortlandts’ upscale slice of Santa Monica. Her district didn’t include the Wetters’ abode in Encino but back then, the couple had lived in Northern California so there had to be more than constituency at play.

You didn’t need to be a constituent to benefit from a politician’s good graces.

Grace googled McKinney and got a Wikipedia bio. The legislator known as Ms. Moderate had won that election but eighteen months later, she was dead, victim of a heart attack.

Born to big money, McKinney’s decades of public service had earned her seniority and the plum positions that went along with it. At the time of her death she’d long chaired the Senate Standing Committee on Insurance. Which put her in charge of “indemnity, surety, and warranty agreements.”

A woman well worth supporting, if you were Roger Wetter Senior. She’d also served on the dental health licensing committee, which might have put her in contact with Dr. Van Cortlandt.

Grace continued to search, switching between her keyboard and eyeballing the rented SUV through the window. One time, she had to step out of the room, as two boys, fifteen or so, began slinking around, walking expensive ten-speed bikes up to the Escape and eyeing the rear hatch.

Cheap motel, low-rent district, but these two were well dressed, well fed, nicely tended. Couple of rich kids biking down from one of the horsey estates that rose above the tree line to the east?

A quick stare-down from Grace caused them to hightail. Softies. Grace returned to her laptop, pairing selene mckinney with roger wetter, alice wetter, alamo adjustments, insurance scam. When that brought up nothing, she plugged in a stream of additional bad deeds: bribery, extortion, con, deception, fraud.

Still, nothing.

She phoned Wayne Knutsen.

His voicemail message was curt, almost dismissive, you’d never associate it with the man who’d come through for her twice.

“It’s me. Did Selene McKinney have a daughter?”

She’d packed up when movement outside her room’s window caught her eye. The pair of adolescent reprobates had returned and one boy was leaning insolently against the SUV’s right-side headlight.

As if he owned the damn thing.

Grace flung her door open, strode to the driver’s door, tossed in her belongings, started up, revved hard, and peeled out in reverse, knocking the kid off balance and causing him to cry out.

She drove off the motel lot, glancing at her rearview mirror. The kid had remained on his feet but looked shaken, mouth agape, holding his hands up as if questioning the gods.

Unwilling to believe anyone could do that.

Shocked that not everyone cared about him.

Get used to reality, you spoiled little bastard.