Jonathan Kellerman: The Murderer's Daughter

Sometimes, when the strangers were asleep, she’d sneak into the kitchenette and stuff her face with whatever was there. Careful to clean up. Though she was the only one who really did any cleaning of the trailer.

By five, Grace had learned how to take care of herself.

Sometimes when she left the single-wide hungry, a neighbor would notice and give her something. Mrs. Reilly was the best. She actually cooked and baked and when she wasn’t wild-eyed and dehydrated from vodka and ranting about niggers and greasers, she’d be generous with Grace and the other kids in the trailer park. Even the Mexican kids.

During the day, Mrs. Reilly cleaned model homes in sprawling developments that remained mostly unsold. The Antelope Valley, with its punishing heat and bitter night winds, was up and down economically, usually more down than up.

The bulk of the residents at Desert Dreams worked low-paying jobs. Some were disabled, mentally or physically or both, and sat around wondering how long they’d live. A few able-bodied idlers did nothing but drink and toke and loaf. Everyone at the trailer park was knowledgeable about the alphabet soup of government programs a person could score when functioning at or near the poverty line.

One of those funds was for day care, which at Desert Dreams meant that the state and the county paid Mrs. Rodriguez to watch a dozen children at her Peach State double-wide with the pots of cactus ringing the trailer. With that many kids, no one got much attention, but with the TV always on to cartoons, and boxes of books and toys left over from Mrs. Rodriguez’s now-adult children, plus castoffs and dumpster-dive prizes, plus plenty of space in the dirt to crawl around, just be careful of the needly plants, the day care was okay with Grace.

She wasn’t much for playing with other children, liked watching Sesame Street and Electric Company, and by four she’d learned from the shows how to put letters together into rudimentary words. Years later, she realized she’d been blessed with an inherent grasp of the architecture of language. At the day care, she just looked at it as word-fun, another way of figuring things out because that was her thing: figuring the strangers out, figuring out how to eat, how to stay clean, what people meant when they did and said things.

Grace at five could read at an advanced first-grade level but she never told anyone, why would she?

For sure the strangers wouldn’t care; by now Ardis was mostly drunk when he bothered to show up at all and Dodie had taken to mumbling about getting the hell out of there and going somewhere she could be free.

When drunk and mumbling collided, the result could be scary. Ardis never hit Dodie with a closed fist but there was plenty of faking blows like he was going to and a whole lot of open-hand slaps that connected with flesh haphazardly. Sometimes Ardis barely touched Dodie. Sometimes his hand on her flesh made loud, snappy noises.

Sometimes Dodie had marks on her and had to use extra makeup. Lots of women at Desert Dreams were patching up the same way.

Some of the men were hiding injuries, too. Like Mr. Rodriguez, who didn’t usually live with Mrs. Rodriguez — one day Grace saw him bleeding from his nose and running away from the double-wide, Mrs. Rodriguez stepping out and picking up a cactus pot like she was going to throw it at him.

She didn’t. He was gone too fast and Mrs. Rodriguez loved her plants.

With Ardis and Dodie, the damage could go both ways, Dodie butting into Ardis’s chair on purpose when he slumped in the kitchenette, snoring. That made him wake with a start and drool and start choking on his drool, then he’d nod off again and Dodie would point at him and make stupid faces and laugh.

Sometimes she flipped him off behind his back or called him dirty names, not caring that Grace could see and hear.

Sometimes, when Ardis was deeply asleep, really stoned, Dodie would sneak up behind him and use her nails to flick the back of his head hard and if that didn’t do the trick, she’d give his hair a yank and wait to see what happened.

When Ardis’s droopy eyes opened, confused, Dodie would be standing behind him pointing and laughing silently.

Grace pretended not to notice any of that. Mostly she crawled into the corner of the trailer’s front room that served as her sleeping space. The single fetid bedroom at the back of the trailer was reserved for Dodie and when Ardis showed up, both of them. Often at night, instead of sleeping Grace would turn on the TV and watch without sound, laughing to herself at how crazy people could look moving their lips. Or, she’d read one of the books she stole from Mrs. Rodriguez and, later, from the preschool.

She had her collection of words, new ones arriving all the time, and she could also add up numbers and make sense of how numbers worked and how to figure things out without asking anyone.

One day, she figured, she’d be by herself and that stuff could probably help.

Dr. Grace Blades cradled the woman in her arms.

Many therapists shied away from physical contact. Grace shied away from nothing.

The Haunted needed more than kind words, soft looks, and uh-huhs. They deserved more than the pathetic lie known as empathy.

Grace had no respect for the concept of empathy. She’d lived in the red room.

The woman continued to cry on Grace’s shoulder. Her hands, nestled in Grace’s cool, firm grip, were small and moist and limp. Watching the way she melted into Grace’s comfort, an observer might guess this was an early phase of treatment.

The woman was a therapeutic success who returned yearly for what Grace thought of as “show-off” sessions.

Look how well I’m doing, Doctor.

Yes, you are.

This year, as always, she’d requested an appointment on that worst of days, the anniversary, and Grace knew much of the forty-five minutes would be spent in tears.

The woman’s name was Helen. She’d begun treatment three years ago, seeing Grace as often as she needed, until moving from L.A. to Montana. Grace had offered to find her a local referral but Helen refused, as Grace figured she would.

Four years ago, to the day, Helen’s nineteen-year-old daughter had been raped, strangled, and mutilated. Identifying the monster who’d accomplished all that hadn’t taken much in the way of detection. He lived with his parents across an alley from the girl’s studio apartment in Culver City, with a rear window affording him a full view of the girl’s bedroom. Despite an extensive record of peeping that had escalated to sexual battery, he’d been coddled by the courts and allowed to live his life at will. Stupid and impulsive, he hadn’t bothered to dispose of his bloody clothing or the bent, crimson-stained knife he’d lifted from his victim’s kitchen.

A trial would’ve been torture but useful for Helen. She’d been cheated again by the monster, as he’d charged a phalanx of arresting officers with a screwdriver and ended up sieved by LAPD bullets.

Case closed for everyone but Helen. She kept calling the district attorney’s office, only to break into sobs and apologetic confession that there was no reason for her to be phoning. Once or twice she forgot who she’d dialed. Eventually, the deputy D.A. in charge of the case stopped taking her calls. His secretary, far more insightful and caring, had suggested that Helen see Grace.

A psychologist? I am not crazy!

Of course not, ma’am. Dr. Blades is different.

What do you mean?

She really gets it.

As was true of every patient she saw, Grace made Helen feel as if she were Grace’s sole focus. The key was always about finding the kernel of individuality within each human being, but the truth was, a commonality existed among the Haunted and over the years Grace had distilled her treatment paradigm: Do what it takes to establish rapport because without rapport, there’s no therapy. Be available 24/7 and when the time is right — and here the art of therapy took over — begin the process of rebuilding. With all that, it was important to set realistic goals: Pre-monster happiness was out of the question.