Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

The lack of maintenance Grace had noticed in the garden extended to the interior. Bathrooms were old and balky and papered with warnings not to flush anything but toilet paper and “scant amounts of that.”

Of the four boys in her class, one was obese with a stammer, two were shy to the point of muteness, and one, the oldest pupil in the senior class, was a tall, rangy, good-looking seventeen-year-old named Sean Miller, gifted in math and physics. He had dark curly hair, hazel eyes, nice features marred by virulent acne.

Also shy, that seemed to be the Merganfield way. But definitely interested in Grace, she could tell because every time she looked up from her notebook, she caught him averting his eyes. Just to confirm her hypothesis, she sidled up against him at the end of rhetoric class and smiled.

He colored crimson around his zits and lurched away, as if hiding something.

Definitely hiding something. The front of his khaki pants had tented.

This could be interesting.

Three weeks after arriving at Merganfield, having earned nearly straight A’s on every test and certain that she was considered “fully integrated,” she encountered Sean Miller as he left the garage/gym that hardly anyone used because P.E. was optional (though Dr. Merganfield did espouse “Grecian ideals of integrating mental and physical mastery”).

Not a chance encounter. Grace had observed Sean and he was predictable as a well-tuned clock, lifting weights and running on a treadmill every Wednesday after class. Grace had finally convinced Malcolm and Sophie to let her walk the mile and a half home, promising to keep to Sixth Street, with its busy traffic and easy visibility. Tonight, both of them would be coming home late due to meetings. Sophie had pre-cooked a tuna noodle casserole for Grace to microwave.

She wasn’t hungry for pasta and canned fish.

Sean Miller learned that quickly enough.

Soon, they were doing it every Wednesday, outside behind the gym, and Grace had shoplifted enough condoms from a local pharmacy to keep everything nice and safe.

The first time Sean attempted to talk to her afterward, she quieted him with a finger over his lips and he never tried that again.

It was one p.m. when Grace drove away from Wild Bill’s, leaving the two punks gaping. If her energy held up, she could make the trip in six or seven hours. If she started feeling less than optimal, she’d stop in Monterey.

For the first fifty miles, she tried to empty her head by listening to music.

Unsuccessful; her brain pinged rudely through Bach and doo-wop and alternative rock and jazz, a heckler at a lecture.

Random noise clarified to a yammering voice reminding her.

She’d killed a man.

How did she feel about that?

She didn’t know.

Rationalization was obvious: bad guy, obvious self-defense. But still, it was odd. The fact that she’d actually ended a life.

The permanence.

The sound of her victim’s corpse bumping down the canyon grew to a drumbeat.

Her victim.

Not an everyday event, dispatching another human being. She knew from her training that soldiers had trouble getting used to it.

So how did she feel about it?

She really didn’t know.

Focus.

All right then, the old affective system, first. Mood-wise, she’d have to describe herself as calm, settled. Basically okay.

What did that say about her?

Murderer’s daughter, prisoner of genetics? Keeping up a family tradition? Could she have adapted more smoothly than most to the military? To something expressly homicidal, say, sniping?

She’d worked with former snipers, had a decent idea about what that entailed.

Sitting there, suppressing your breathing, focusing on the target, reducing organic matter to a kill-spot.

Could she do that?

Probably. Whatever it took to survive. She’d always been driven to survive. Which was why she was still around.

A bit of luck didn’t hurt, either. Fate, karma, divine will, choose your delusion.

Be nice to have religious faith, to believe in life fitting together like a gorgeous puzzle. And looking back at her own life, Grace could see how an otherwise rational person could tease out a pattern that really didn’t exist.

Hard-luck orphan with a Ph.D. and a house on the beach. Pretty damn miraculous when you thought about it, call Hollywood!

To Grace, it just felt like her life.

Still, it would be nice to have faith in something. To believe she was destined to be around.

Meanwhile, survival meant you took care of business, so that settled it, she was fine, had done what was necessary.

As she repeated that mantra, keeping her foot steady on the gas pedal, Beldrim Benn’s face faded in her head until it was little more than an airy sketch.

She kept going and it thinned to random lines.

A dot.

Erased.

So why did her eyes ache? The sound... bump bump bump ... No, the Escape was bucking and swaying and she realized she’d allowed herself to speed up — edging close to ninety — taxing its suspension.

She quickly slowed down. Checked the rearview and saw nothing but asphalt.

She’d be fine.

Twenty miles later, Benn’s stubbly visage had crept back into her consciousness and nothing she did could get rid of it.

She stopped fighting and just went with it, allowing herself to wonder.

Did he have a wife? Kids? Were his parents alive? What about hobbies? Something other than knifing people?

Switching to the right lane, she reduced her speed further. Annoyingly, though, her pulse had quickened, she could feel the thrum in her neck, at her wrists, her ankles, all those pressure points thumping like a steel band. And now her aching eyes were wet...

The Escape had settled at fifty-five. Time to work on slowing her own engine.

Reaching for the beef jerky, she chewed two sticks to pulp. Worked her jaws like a maniac and finally scoured her brain free of memory.

She was coasting smoothly when the disposable she’d used to call Wayne beeped.

She said, “Uncle.”

“I’m happy to be your uncle, but no need for subterfuge, I’m alone.”

“Me, too. What’s up?”

“Got your message about Selene McKinney. Talk about a blast from the past. It took some time to figure out who to call but I think I may have something.”

Grace said, “She had a child.” A girl, tell me a girl.

Wayne said, “Apparently, quite a while back, a girl lived in Selene’s house but no one ever confirmed she was Selene’s daughter. In fact the assumption was that she was a niece or some kind of ward because Selene never introduced her as a daughter and more important, Selene had never been known to date a man. Or a woman. Her sex was politics.”

“Single woman lives with a child who isn’t hers?”

“It wasn’t that uncommon back then, Grace. Families were closer-knit, people took in relatives all the time.”

“How long ago are we talking about?”

“Shortly after Selene was first elected, which would make it at least forty years.”

“How old was the girl?”

“My source recalls her as six or seven, but she won’t swear to it, she honestly can’t remember the details. Whatever the arrangement was with Selene, it was brief. The girl was seen at the house for a couple of years, then she wasn’t.”

Grace calculated mentally. Forty-six or so, today, meant a woman in her early twenties at the time of the Fortress Cult showdown, no problem having three kids.

So lovely when things came together. “Does your source have any theories about what happened to her?”

“She claimed she’d never thought about it and I believe her. Let’s just say curiosity isn’t her strong suit. When I pressed her, she said young ladies of a certain age often got sent to boarding school but that was just a guess. Bear in mind that Selene was born into huge money, politics was her avocation. We’re talking social circles neither of us have experienced firsthand, Grace, but I know a few things about the mega-rich because my father was a chauffeur for a banking clan in Brentwood. All the children were sent away to ‘develop.’ It wasn’t out of the ordinary. Dad used to joke that if he had the money, he’d do the same to my brothers and me so he could enjoy his life. Would you care to tell me why you’re interested in Selene McKinney years after her death?”