The Murderer's Daughter

Chapter 49

Could it be?

Of course it could.

Lilith had been eight or nine when Grace first saw her, putting her at nearly thirty now — the age of the shorter woman.

Nothing at odds with the smaller woman’s appearance either: a fair-haired deaf-mute girl grown to a fair-haired deaf-mute woman.

Not mentally dull, just cut off from Azha Larue because Azha didn’t know — or didn’t care to know — sign language. Manipulating Lily’s face and speaking directly at her.

Read my lips.

Azha had also ignored Lily completely until the moment she needed her — Watch the baby so I can catch some Z’s. Not the approach you took with a friend, this was more master — servant.

Like any cult, Dion Larue’s family embraced a strict line of command: Guru at the top, followed by the guru-ess, then the worker bees.

Lily with her deafness and her passivity was the perfect serf. What must be crippling passivity in light of Larue’s murder of her parents.

Had Larue found another woman of approximately the same age and size to substitute as a sacrifice? A hitchhiker or a street girl he’d picked up during the drive from California to Oklahoma? Burning the house down because how better to obliterate physical evidence?

Maybe one day, she’d look into it...

First guesses are often right on, maybe because they spring from a deep, intelligent place in the unconscious, and Grace realized hers had been freakishly acute.

Venom Boy, wanting to relive the glory days of his father’s insanity, moving steadily toward that goal for a decade. Slaughtering the McCoys as they slept silently in their little Oklahoma house but taking Sister Lilith with him first.

Confident she’d offer no resistance. And if she did, he had ways of handling it, witness Brother Typhon.

Amy Chan perceived the meeting in the restaurant as a chance encounter but perhaps it had been anything but. Big Brother watching his brother for a while. Learning he was in town and stalking him from behind the wheel of his Prius.

Watching as Amy and Andrew entered the vegan joint — maybe a place he frequented himself, if he continued to eschew animal products. Announcing to Azha, still and silent in the passenger seat, that he was treating her to dinner out.

No argument from her. About anything. Ever.

The “spontaneous” encounter had spelled the beginning of the end for Andrew.

Your basic spider-fly scenario.

Because Andrew hadn’t reacted well, none of that Lily-passivity.

On the contrary, he was repulsed.

Idiot Typhon had turned moral.

Thinking about it, Grace was surprised to feel herself shuddering. Flipping a page of the Californian, she scanned a paragraph of self-righteous student journalism. Something about micro-triggers of pre-post-traumatic “discomfort” due to a long list of isms...

Cries from the lawn snapped her out of that.

There he was.

Gilded and straight-backed, handsome face uglied by rage.

Grace watched, unable to act, as Dion Larue raised his foot and kicked the sandaled sole of a now-awake and wide-eyed Azha. Azha sat up looking panicked and Larue turned his wrath on Lily, now holding the baby. Stabbing an accusing finger at her. Snarling something.

He began fluttering his own hands as he berated her — a mocking parody of sign language.

The baby, easygoing until now, wrinkled its face and turned scarlet and wailed. Larue ripped it out of Lily’s hands hard enough to whip its tiny head forward, then back. Too much of that and school would be a challenge when the kid grew up.

The baby cried louder. Larue looked at it as if it were an insect.

Contemplating something terrible? Would Grace be forced to act? What a disaster.

She got ready to spring from behind her arboreal shield. Thankfully, Larue thrust the baby into the shaking hands of its mother. Began attacking her verbally, waving a fist as if it were a cudgel.

Too distant to make out words but imagined lines of dialogue sailed through Grace’s brain like subtitles.

You fell asleep? Gave it to her?

Your job, not hers.

She was signing at it, you idiot. Since when do we allow that?

Azha hung her head. Larue clapped his hands on his hips, raised himself taller, and glared down at both women.

The baby cried louder.

Larue advanced on it with a fist and Azha placed a hand over its mouth.

Larue stood there, yet another Crown Prince of an entitled generation.

Azha Larue managed to roll her child close to her breasts while extending both hands toward him, her head bowed lower.

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Larue watched his wife demean herself then barked something harsh and turned back to Lily and kicked her hard on a bare shin. Azha winced in empathy. Lily didn’t respond.

Larue’s face began darkening. He rocked on his heels, fingers drumming his hips.

His kicking foot raised higher.

How much could Grace allow? But again, she was saved from action as Lily began aping Azha’s penitent gestures.

Going through the motions, Grace thought, but not feeling it.

Larue agreed; he kicked her harder.

Lily bent nearly double, face in the grass, and that seemed to be the proper response because Larue turned his back on all of them and pranced across Monkey Island Park, creepily effete.

Heading in the opposite direction from where Grace sat and now she spotted the faint gleam of sunlight on black automotive paint, peeking through foliage in random triangles and rectangles.

His Prius parked at the periphery. She hadn’t seen him drive up.

She needed to be more careful.