Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Had the adoption been more about training an acolyte than nurturing an orphan? Roger Wetter, adept at using young thugs, figuring Mr. Venom of God would be the perfect addition to his family?

Roger and Son...

Roger. The name Andrew had claimed when chatting with “Helen” in the Opus lounge.

Grace and Andrew had both hidden behind alter egos but for Grace the choice had been casual, plucking the name of the woman she’d most recently spoken to. Had he dug deeper, becoming “Roger” that night because Roger had been on his mind?

Because the brother he’d known as Samael, the monster he feared, was now Roger Junior ?

She typed away and found a seven-year-old obituary in the L.A. Daily News for Roger and Agnes Wetter, of Encino. The couple, described as “elderly,” had vanished during a boating trip off Catalina Island, their forty-foot catamaran found drifting and unoccupied. Divers had failed to find the bodies.

No mention of vicious business practices, only that Wetter was a “freelance investor,” his wife a “homemaker and docent.”

So Alamo had nothing to do with the Fortress Cult, it was simply a recycle of a company started in San Antonio. The city Andrew had claimed as home because it, too, was on his mind?

Probing the past because he’d learned of sins in the present. Not just those of the brother he’d once known as Samael, but of an entire family criminal enterprise?

After being taken in by separate families, had the brothers somehow resumed contact? From Berkeley to Encino. Right over the hill from Andrew’s adopted home in Santa Monica. For all Grace knew, they’d run into each other at a football game. So many other opportunities — for all she knew they didn’t have to resume, had maintained contact all those years.

Grace reread the Wetters’ obit. One year prior to the accident at sea, Alamo Adjustments was still operating in Berkeley. With Beldrim Benn Junior running security. An outfit like that would need muscle and Grace had no problem imagining a much younger Benn scaring away poor, old, disenfranchised policyholders.

But shortly after, the family had moved. Motivated by too much scandal to sit on? Or, as Senior’s “freelance investor” status implied, had he simply retired to enjoy the fruits of sin?

Nice house, nice boat, wife a docent, all the signposts of the leisurely good life.

An adult son the couple had raised since adolescence?

Sole heir?

Most California counties were happy to give up their coroner’s records if you ponied up a fee, filled out forms, and were willing to wait weeks, even months. Several online services obliged cheaper and quicker and within seconds Grace had summaries of the deaths of Roger Wetter, seventy-five, and Agnes Wetter, seventy-two.

Cause of Death: Unknown but suspected drowning. Manner of Death: Accidental.

Nearest Kin: Roger Wetter Junior. Center Street, Berkeley. The same address as Alamo’s business headquarters.

Samael had, indeed, morphed to Junior. Seven years ago, he’d have been thirty or so. Had he decided to cash in early? Had Andrew found out and, still guilty — A. Toner — over his failure to report Bobby Canova’s murder and who-knew-what-else, wrestled with exposing his brother’s parricides?

Approaching thirty himself, he’d needed encouragement to do the right thing because he was conflicted, trying to deal with evil kinship.

Turning to the great Internet oracle for wisdom, he’d happened upon Malcolm’s research on survival and guilt, learned Malcolm was deceased but noted Grace’s frequent co-authorship at the tail end of Malcolm’s career. Switched his sights to her and came upon the solo article that clinched it.

But again, Grace was forced to wonder: Had he somehow suspected Grace was the subject as well as the author? No one else had. Then again, no one else knew about the girl living at Stagecoach Ranch the night Bobby Canova died.

She scoured her memory — had they even talked once as kids? She didn’t think so. Had Ramona introduced her beyond “Grace”?

Stop. Reload.

The facts were what mattered: Andrew had found his way to her, everything had gone to hell, and he’d died terribly within hours of leaving her office.

Googling his adopted parents, the Van Cortlandts, stopped her short.

Six-year-old obituary in the L.A. Times.

Dr. Theodore Van Cortlandt, retired endodontist, seventy-nine, and Jane Burger Van Cortlandt, retired hygienist, seventy-five, had perished six years ago during a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, the victims of a calamitous fall due to a freak rockslide.

Hurriedly, Grace logged back onto the death-report service.

Cause: Blunt trauma. Mode: Accidental.

Sole heir, a son: Andrew Michael Van Cortlandt. Living at the same Tenth Street address. An engineer.

He’d used his adopted first name. Artlessness or arrogance?

The similarities between the deaths fought Grace’s image of Andrew as moral combatant and gave way to a far uglier scenario.

Two pairs of elderly affluent parents, a couple of sizable inheritances.

Big bro sets the example, little bro follows a year later?

Back to their devil roots as Samael Coyote and Typhon Dagon?

But if Andrew had been involved in murdering his parents, why show up at Grace’s office?

Atoner.

He’d come for the same reasons most conspirators spill: racked with guilt, worried about his own skin, or both.

Or worried — no, terrified — because a new threat had arisen from his brother?

And if Roger Wetter Junior, a multiple murderer, had found out his weakling sib was planning to blab to a therapist, he’d be sure to act decisively.

By coming to Grace, Andrew had pasted a target on her back.

She forced herself to reel back the night she preferred to forget, reviewing the details of their time together in the Opus lounge. His story had been a mix of truth and lies.

Not Roger, but yes, an engineer.

Not from San Antonio. But, yes, in L.A. on business. But nothing to do with his work. His was the business of self-preservation.

Thinking herself the director, not an actor, Grace had bought every word.

Had he been that good? Or had she slipped too deep into her own screenplay? All those wonderful lies spun for countless men she’d lured into hunger for her.

She began crying. No sense trying to stop it.

When the tears dried up, she sat in her hotel room emitting dry-eyed growls that tapered to pathetic mewling. Hating her weakness, she slapped herself across the face twice and grew silent. A quickly gulped mini-bottle of vodka from her hotel mini-bar left her parched and hot and jumpy. She drained two bottles of water, deep-breathed for a long time, was finally able to return to her laptop.

More work to do. Three children of Arundel Roi had showed up that night at Stagecoach Ranch.

Even before her fingers touched the keyboard, Grace had a good notion of what she’d learn about Howell and Ruthann McCoy of Bell Gardens.

Older couple victimized by a fake accident. Seven or fewer years ago, if some twisted reverse birth-order game was at play.

The prime scion of the Fortress Cult rewarding the people who’d taken in him and his siblings with slaughter for monetary gain.

But as the web kicked back an immediate response, Sophie Muller’s cool, erudite voice sounded in Grace’s head.

Ass u me.

Not seven years ago, ten.

Not California.

This obituary showed up in the Enid (Oklahoma) News & Eagle.

The bodies of three people, all believed to be members of a Waukomis family, were discovered this morning in the burned-out wreckage of a house on Reede Road. Preliminary examination indicates that the male and two females who perished were Howell McCoy, 48, his wife, Ruthann, 47, and their only child, a daughter, Samantha, 21. The possible use of an accelerant has led Waukomis PD to call in arson investigators from Enid.