Jonathan Kellerman - The Murderer's Daughter

Receding into the shadows when she could, she proceeded toward Avalina, encountering no one, not even a stray cat, and continued to the end of the cul-de-sac where she waited and watched.

Both Priuses in the drive. The same window lit, the same low-voltage hodgepodge.

When nothing happened for half an hour, she put on the mask and the gloves and entered the property. Stopping again to assess, then continuing. Repeating the process.

Just as before, getting around to the back of the house was simple. The window Larue had cranked remained shut.

The same light blinked from the rear. Provided just enough illumination for her to make out vestiges of former grandeur.

Tamped-down dirt remained where lawns had once flourished, vacant flower beds were sectioned into hexagons and circles by fractured brick edging, arms of boxwood lacked entire chunks, dead trees turned to thatch gave way to bullying by thriving competitors — mostly cedars whose branches dragged in the dirt.

She pushed forward, maintaining the same walk, stop, turn, watch routine. Slow going but no need to rush. Finally she got close enough to the carriage house to see that the branches stretching diagonally across its front were flimsy, allowing a filtered view of the overall structure.

The size of a double garage, the building sported a too-heavy slate roof and a girdle of brick running along its lower half. The top section was leaded-glass panes. More of a conservatory than a coach house. The interior fit horticultural usage, too: rows of ceramic pots long emptied of plants lined sagging wooden shelves. Shards and fragments littered a buckling cement floor.

Most of the windowpanes were flyspecked, pigeon-streaked, or just filmy from poor maintenance. But those of the door had been cleaned and it was through them that Grace saw it.

Lily lying on her stomach, stretched out on a green-painted potting table, facing the door.

Shapeless black dress pushed above her waist. Both hands dangling over the table rim.

Her lips were turned down but the rest of her face remained expressionless.

Looming from behind, Walter Sporn pumped himself in and out of her.

From the angle of entry, clearly not vaginal sex. Sporn wore a black T-shirt but was otherwise naked, his skin the consistency and color of cold tallow, pants and shoes and socks gathered in a heap in a corner.

The light Grace had seen issued from a six-bulb fixture missing three bulbs.

Eyes squeezed shut, piggy face contorted in what looked like rage, Sporn thrust. The table rocked. Lily’s face remained still as that of an inflatable sex toy.

Sporn began smacking Lily’s ass hard enough to turn it magenta, switched to grabbing her hair and yanking her head upward. Every movement was harsh, rapid, punishing. Nothing altered the frown on Lily’s lips, the blankness everywhere else.

Resigned.

As Grace thought through her next move, Sporn released Lily’s hair and shoved her head hard, causing it to flop on the table. The enormous hand he’d freed reached around and ringed Lily’s throat and now something changed in her listless eyes.

Wider, brighter. The incandescence of fear.

Then again: nothing.

Surrender.

Grace sucked in breath and reached into her right-hand lower jacket pocket just as Sporn’s other hand began flailing Lily’s butt hard enough for the sound to filter through glass.

She pushed the door, felt it give, sprang forward, her silent entry aided by Sporn’s still-clenched eyelids and his raspy laughter as he smacked and throttled Lily.

Lily saw Grace. Her eyes widened. Her mouth formed an oval of surprise.

A willing participant? God, Grace hoped not.

No. The poor thing was nodding at her. Encouraging her. That reverted to terror as Sporn’s paw tightened around her neck. Her tongue flopped. Her lips swelled and her eyes rolled backward.

Grace ran forward, Glock in hand. Sporn, still lost in sadistic ecstasy, didn’t notice. Then Grace’s toe kicked something on the floor — a piece of terra-cotta that began rattling on the cement, insistent as a snare drum.

Sporn’s eyes opened. Rage reddened his irises. His lips drew back in a snarl.

Not just a swine, a wild boar, feral and crafty.

Gleeful fury as he saw that his assailant was female and wispy. The leer of a wrestling favorite entering the ring, prepared to demolish.

He let go of Lily and rushed at Grace, lips curling higher, revealing nasty-looking peg teeth. Below the hem of his T-shirt, a jelly-filled sack of belly flopped up and down. Tree-trunk thighs, on the other hand, were firm. His penis, shiny with lube and ruddy at the tip, was shrinking comically above shrunken steroid balls.

Shooting him in the groin was tempting but no sense substituting symbolism for common sense.

Grace stepped back as if afraid of his attack, waited until Sporn was well away from the table where Lily remained prone and inert, then aimed three bullets at his open mouth.

Two found their mark, the third shattered the space between Sporn’s nose and upper lip. Surprised — abashed — his eyes widened and he kept coming at her, a felled redwood.

Then he stopped. Stared at Grace’s black-masked face. Said, “Huh,” and now it was his eyes that were rolling back. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground and he toppled over, face-first.

Blood leaked onto the ground as he twitched a few times before growing still.

Just for good measure, Grace shot him a fourth time in the back of the head. Straight trajectory to the medulla oblongata, where a bullet was certain to snuff out basic respiration. Who knew her grad school neuropsych would come in so handy?

She turned to Lily, who still hadn’t moved.

Had she, indeed, been a willing partner in a long-standing B-and-D game rather than a victim? Grace didn’t want to have to deal with an unplanned foe.

Holding the Glock at her side, she approached the table but stood well back as she tried to engage Lily’s eyes.

Lily did nothing. Then she mouthed something.

Thank you.

Grace nodded and pointed at Lily’s pushed-up dress. Lily, suddenly embarrassed, rolled onto her side and moved her shoulders, trying to raise her arms to pull it down.

A mere shrug resulted. Arms refusing to cooperate.

Paralyzed? Had Sporn’s abuse of her neck injured her cervical spine?

But then Lily’s right hand quivered and she was able to shake it. Then the left. Awakening after going numb from the pressure.

She began covering herself but not before Grace took notice of buttocks splotched raw and littered with tiny bleeding crescents — nail marks. Similar marks were scabbed. Where the skin hadn’t been clawed it was black-and-blue.

Blood oozed from some of the fresher wounds and a separate trail of crimson ran from between the cheek crack down the left thigh.

Lily tried to lift herself, couldn’t. Grace prepared to help her.

Lily’s face changed.

Animated by horror as her lips worked and her eyes blinked faster than Grace thought possible.

Lily arched her neck. Pointed.

A warning.

Something behind Grace.

Too late.

Dual points of impact ignited sparks of agony.

At the small of her back and the nape of her neck, the latter from an attempt to yank at her ski mask from behind. She twisted out of the way but went down hard, scraping her face and her knees and her elbows on the harsh, cold floor of the conservatory. The Glock flew from her hands, thick plastic thudding to the right side of the green table where Lily now sat up, hands to her mouth, whimpering.

Dion Larue’s attire told Grace she hadn’t screwed up, just an unlucky break.

Black silk robe with red quilted shawl lapels, loosely belted over a naked body.