Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Loathing was fertile grounds for rapport. Grace said, “That’s obvious from her driving. Just as I got here, she zoomed out of her driveway, nearly T-boned another car. With her baby inside.”

“Exactly,” said Dena Kroft. She handed the card back. “We’ve been on the block for thirty-two years. It was a perfect neighborhood until the N.R.’s started moving in.”

“N.R.’s?”

“Nouveau riches,” said Dena Kroft. “Asian, Persian, or they can be anything, whatever. They tear down lovely houses, get variances through their connections, and build monstrosities on every inch of lot. If you want all interior space and no greenery, why not just get a condo?”

“Indeed,” said Grace.

“Before them, the block was mostly doctors, top-notch people on the staff at Saint John’s. My husband’s a radiologist there. Peter Kroft.”

As if Grace was supposed to recognize the name. “Great hospital.”

“Best in the city,” said Dena Kroft. “I was hoping he’d keep the house. The son of the people who lived here.”

“He’s a doctor?”

“Some kind of engineer.” Kroft leaned in, lowered her voice. “Adopted, but you’d never know. They actually got him into Harvard-Westlake.” Peering at Grace. “Did you go to Buckley? You look like a girl in my daughter’s class.”

“No, ma’am, sorry. You’d never know he was adopted because—”

“It’s like going to the pound and picking out a mutt, you never know what you’re going to end up with. But Teddy and Jane were fortunate with Andy. A very well-behaved boy, quiet, no shenanigans.”

Grace said, “Sounds like the perfect neighbor.”

“The perfect neighbors would be a quiet family, ” said Kroft. “But certainly, a quiet young man would be better than the likes of them. It’s a lovely house, though a bit dark. I must admit I’m a bit peeved that Andy wasn’t more sentimental. He was never here, anyway. Ended up selling.”

“Maybe he thought it was too much house for one person.”

“One adapts,” said Dena Kroft. “But he was away all the time. In the Orient, that’s where he spends a lot of time. He was there when Teddy and Jane had their accident — they fell off a mountain hiking. They were always hiking, big physical fitness buffs, you know.”

“Must’ve been hard on him,” said Grace. “Being away.”

“Andy? I’m sure. He showed up two days later. I remember him being dropped off by a cab, carrying his bags, looking terrible, just crestfallen. I suppose he can’t be faulted for not wanting to be tied down with the property but I sure wish he’d done his civic duty and sold to somebody decent. So tell me the truth, young lady. You’re one of those credit checkers, right?” She hooked a thumb at the green house. “They’re in trouble, all that computer money is smoke and mirrors and they’re going to lose the place.”

Grace smiled. “You never know, Mrs. Kroft.”

Dena Kroft laughed. “What goes around comes around.”

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.