Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Grace exerted gentle pressure on his hand. His skin seemed to ping, as if electrified. “Please, Wayne, do not excoriate yourself. You and Ramona were the only people in the system who made a difference. A significant difference.”

“Whatever... so what did I sell out for? Another system equally amoral — worse than amoral, Grace. Venal, I’m an extremely well-paid attack dog.” He finished the second martini. Smiled. “Of course I do get to wear Brioni.”

Xavier started from across the room. Wayne shooed him away. “Grace, please reconsider this quest of yours. There has to be a better way.”

Grace squeezed his fingers. “I’m no martyr, Wayne, but there’s really no choice, we both know that knowledge is power.”

Dropping her hand into her purse, she ran a fingertip against the small envelope.

The resulting sound — doll’s nails on a toy chalkboard — caused Wayne to jump. He pulled his hand away from Grace’s. “Look at it after I leave, Grace. And please, not here.”

“Absolutely, Wayne. And I swear, you’ll never be connected to this.”

“Well...,” he said. Instead of finishing the sentence he slid clumsily out of the booth. “Pressing social event in Pasadena at eight and I’m sure you’d rather be... doing what it is you plan to do, rather than jawing uselessly with an old fart.”

Removing several bills from a gold clasp, he placed them gently on the table and was gone.

Grace got to the restaurant parking lot in time to see him tooling away in a silver Jaguar sedan. The valet counted out what looked like a generous tip.

She drove two blocks south, parked on a quiet residential block, slit the tiny envelope open with a fingernail.

Inside was a flimsy square of paper folded in half. The kind of cheap stock you’d find on a memo pad headed From the Desk of... if the person with the desk was low on the corporate totem pole. He’d probably lifted it from a gofer’s cubicle.

She unfolded and read three typed lines.

Samael Coyote Roi

Typhon Dagon Roi

Lilith Lamia Roi

Something on the flip side, as well:

Lilith: to Howell and Ruthann McCoy, Bell Gardens, Ca.

Typhon: to Theodore and Jane Van Cortlandt, Santa Monica, Ca.

Samael: to Roger and Agnes Wetter, Oakland, Ca.

No dates for any of the adoptions. For all Wayne’s filth and lucre, a nervous leaker had been unwilling to hand over hard copy.

But Wayne had listed the three names twice. On the outer page, more likely to be seen first, just the names. First and middle.

He wanted Grace to focus on the names.

She reread them. Weird-sounding monikers, she’d check them out. But what snagged her attention was a change in sequence. On the outer page, the list went oldest to youngest, but when listing the adoptions, Wayne had reversed the sequence.

Because that was the actual chronological order? Nonthreatening, silent, querulous little “Lily” finding a permanent home first?

Mild-mannered, quiet Typhon lucking out next.

Leaving firstborn Samael, despite belief in his own charisma, to wait. Maybe in the hellhole Grace had experienced...

The real surprise, Grace supposed, was that he’d been adopted at all, given his age. Most adoptive parents craved warm and cuddly, not postpubescent and strong-willed.

So maybe interesting people, Roger and Agnes Wetter.

Of Oakland, California.

Right next to Berkeley.

She drove to an Internet café a few blocks west. Figuring out the theme behind the names was a couple of clicks away.

Samael, Hebrew for “God’s venom,” was a favored tag for seriously dark-minded Satanists. Coyote — who knew? — evoked an American Indian devil.

Typhon: a Greek devil. Dagon, a Philistine sea demon.

Lilith, according to myth, had been Adam’s first wife, a lusty, disobedient wench who’d been eliminated in favor of compliant, fruit-loving Eve. Despite being adopted as an icon in some feminist circles, she was also part of the satanic pantheon.

Last but not least, Lamia. A night-prowling Greek devil who preyed on children.

Charming.

So crazy, power-mad Arundel Roi had embraced the dark side. So what else was new?

There had to be more... maybe emphasizing the names was Wayne’s way of letting her know not to waste her time, they’d been changed.

Or he was seriously freaked out and still trying to deter her.

If so, sorry, Uncle.

She got on the 405 South and drove to an Enterprise rental lot in Redondo Beach, where she exchanged the Jeep for a Ford Escape (how appropriate). The story she’d prepared — preferring something smaller — remained an unspoken lie. The clerk never asked, challenged by paperwork and eager to get back to texting.

Redondo was a pretty beach town but too low-rise and open, the vacation feel all wrong. Heading east to its utilitarian neighbor, Torrance, she booked herself into a Courtyard by Marriott, ended up with a room that was close to a Xerox of her digs at the Hilton Garden.

The comfort of familiarity. Grace had guided countless patients in that direction.

But setting up her laptop and connecting to blessed business-hotel WiFi, she warned herself not to get too familiar with anything.

For someone like her, no point to it. Nothing lasted.

Grace began by searching roger agnes wetter.

Instant hit: 1993 San Francisco Examiner follow-up coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

That 6.9 temblor had battered cities from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, taking down homes, commercial buildings, freeways, a serious chunk of the Oakland Bay Bridge. Sixty-three fatalities, nearly four thousand serious injuries, over ten thousand people left homeless, loss of power for millions.

Six billion dollars’ worth of nightmare for policyholders, an actuarial disaster for the insurance companies who’d promised to take care of them.

Four years later many claims had been paid but often after prolonged delays and manipulative legal wrangles. The article described cases that remained unsettled. Often the culprits were fly-by-night insurers declaring bankruptcy rather than paying out claims. In other cases still-functioning companies continued to stall.

Stalemates approaching half a decade have been achieved using rotating freelance adjustors who lose paperwork compiled by their predecessors, impose new demands and promulgate needlessly complicated and misleading forms to be filled out under unreasonable deadlines. These fly-by-nights also make a habit of missing appointments or claiming policyholders failed to show up in person at inspections, falsely stating that absenteeism voids policies. Even when paperwork manages to work its way through the bureaucratic morass, damage is often grossly underestimated. In some instances, psychological pressure to settle at low levels of compensation is accomplished with cajoling and threats.

“They told me,” said one struggling octogenarian who’d lost her home and insisted on remaining anonymous, “that if I didn’t take six hundred dollars for the whole kit and kaboodle, they’d sue me and I’d end up losing my Social Security.”

One firm whose name keeps coming up as a player in some of the poorest and hardest-hit Bay Area communities is Alamo Adjustments of Berkeley. Alamo’s representatives, whom many policyholders describe as “just kids,” have submitted the highest rate of claim denials, nearly 80 percent. Similar allegations against Alamo when it was based in San Antonio, Texas, have surfaced. Alamo’s president, Roger F. Wetter, didn’t respond to inquiries.

Samael, last of the Roi orphans to be adopted. Until a perfect-storm encounter with a seasoned psychopath wanting to be a dad.