Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

At this distance, her features came across small and flat in a doughy face, her eyes squinty. She was positioned on the other side of the baby but paid no attention to it. Instead, she stared off into the distance. Vacantly, it seemed to Grace. Mike Leiber’s soulmate?

Second by second, her body sagged lower until she was hunched, limbs settling flaccidly. Grace continued spying as the woman’s mouth dropped open and remained that way. Azha played with the baby but her companion seemed cut off from the fun. Indeed, from all of her surroundings. Grace began to wonder if she was subnormal intellectually.

Or perhaps, like so many others attracted to cults, she was damaged goods — brain damage due to dope, some other psychoneurological insult.

Whatever the reason, she continued sitting like a lump and it went on that way for a while, neither Azha Larue nor the baby paying her any mind. Then Azha turned and took hold of the other woman’s chin delicately and guided her face so that they faced each other.

Manipulating her, the way you would a toy. The shorter woman complied as if made of soft plastic, maintaining eye contact but not responding after Azha said something to her. But when Azha handed her the baby, she accepted it and Azha lay down flat on her back and placed her left arm over her eyes.

Naptime for Mommy.

Whatever the other woman’s deficits, Azha trusted her with her child. And she did know how to hold it properly, nestling it close to her, supporting the supple neck.

The baby was at ease with her, as well. Relaxed, smiling, laughing again when the short woman chucked it under its chin.

A gesture not unlike Azha’s toward her.

Azha was dozing now, chest rising and falling rhythmically as her companion did a fine job of babysitting. The infant never wavered from good cheer; lucky kid, blessed with a good temperament.

How long would that last?

Suddenly, the shorter woman placed the baby belly-up on the grass. Again, no fuss from Model Tot, as it gazed upward. Now the woman had altered her own position and was hovering above the baby. Looking directly down at it.

Azha Larue’s chest rose and fell at a slower pace. Her companion watched her for a few seconds then returned her attention to the baby.

Waving her hands at the infant — some sort of pantomime show, or just weird movement by a weird woman — no, there was purpose to this, the baby knew it, was rapt as fingers flew.

Rapid movements taking shape. Communicating.

The baby continued to pay attention as the hands above it shaped air, pointed, circled.

Comprehending. As pre-verbal babies often did when trained in American Sign Language.

Could it be?

Of course it could.

Lilith had been eight or nine when Grace first saw her, putting her at nearly thirty now — the age of the shorter woman.

Nothing at odds with the smaller woman’s appearance either: a fair-haired deaf-mute girl grown to a fair-haired deaf-mute woman.

Not mentally dull, just cut off from Azha Larue because Azha didn’t know — or didn’t care to know — sign language. Manipulating Lily’s face and speaking directly at her.

Read my lips.

Azha had also ignored Lily completely until the moment she needed her — Watch the baby so I can catch some Z’s. Not the approach you took with a friend, this was more master — servant.

Like any cult, Dion Larue’s family embraced a strict line of command: Guru at the top, followed by the guru-ess, then the worker bees.

Lily with her deafness and her passivity was the perfect serf. What must be crippling passivity in light of Larue’s murder of her parents.

Had Larue found another woman of approximately the same age and size to substitute as a sacrifice? A hitchhiker or a street girl he’d picked up during the drive from California to Oklahoma? Burning the house down because how better to obliterate physical evidence?

Maybe one day, she’d look into it...

First guesses are often right on, maybe because they spring from a deep, intelligent place in the unconscious, and Grace realized hers had been freakishly acute.

Venom Boy, wanting to relive the glory days of his father’s insanity, moving steadily toward that goal for a decade. Slaughtering the McCoys as they slept silently in their little Oklahoma house but taking Sister Lilith with him first.

Confident she’d offer no resistance. And if she did, he had ways of handling it, witness Brother Typhon.

Amy Chan perceived the meeting in the restaurant as a chance encounter but perhaps it had been anything but. Big Brother watching his brother for a while. Learning he was in town and stalking him from behind the wheel of his Prius.

Watching as Amy and Andrew entered the vegan joint — maybe a place he frequented himself, if he continued to eschew animal products. Announcing to Azha, still and silent in the passenger seat, that he was treating her to dinner out.

No argument from her. About anything. Ever.

The “spontaneous” encounter had spelled the beginning of the end for Andrew.

Your basic spider-fly scenario.

Because Andrew hadn’t reacted well, none of that Lily-passivity.

On the contrary, he was repulsed.

Idiot Typhon had turned moral.

Thinking about it, Grace was surprised to feel herself shuddering. Flipping a page of the Californian, she scanned a paragraph of self-righteous student journalism. Something about micro-triggers of pre-post-traumatic “discomfort” due to a long list of isms...

Cries from the lawn snapped her out of that.

There he was.

Gilded and straight-backed, handsome face uglied by rage.

Grace watched, unable to act, as Dion Larue raised his foot and kicked the sandaled sole of a now-awake and wide-eyed Azha. Azha sat up looking panicked and Larue turned his wrath on Lily, now holding the baby. Stabbing an accusing finger at her. Snarling something.

He began fluttering his own hands as he berated her — a mocking parody of sign language.

The baby, easygoing until now, wrinkled its face and turned scarlet and wailed. Larue ripped it out of Lily’s hands hard enough to whip its tiny head forward, then back. Too much of that and school would be a challenge when the kid grew up.

The baby cried louder. Larue looked at it as if it were an insect.

Contemplating something terrible? Would Grace be forced to act? What a disaster.

She got ready to spring from behind her arboreal shield. Thankfully, Larue thrust the baby into the shaking hands of its mother. Began attacking her verbally, waving a fist as if it were a cudgel.

Too distant to make out words but imagined lines of dialogue sailed through Grace’s brain like subtitles.

You fell asleep? Gave it to her?

Your job, not hers.

She was signing at it, you idiot. Since when do we allow that?

Azha hung her head. Larue clapped his hands on his hips, raised himself taller, and glared down at both women.

The baby cried louder.

Larue advanced on it with a fist and Azha placed a hand over its mouth.

Larue stood there, yet another Crown Prince of an entitled generation.

Azha Larue managed to roll her child close to her breasts while extending both hands toward him, her head bowed lower.

Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Larue watched his wife demean herself then barked something harsh and turned back to Lily and kicked her hard on a bare shin. Azha winced in empathy. Lily didn’t respond.

Larue’s face began darkening. He rocked on his heels, fingers drumming his hips.

His kicking foot raised higher.

How much could Grace allow? But again, she was saved from action as Lily began aping Azha’s penitent gestures.