The Murderer's Daughter (15 page)

Grace said, “I'm ready.”

The furniture had
been moved around so that a table that usually stood near a couch was in the center of the room and two folding chairs were positioned opposite each other. On the floor was a briefcase, dark green, with a handle—more like a small suitcase. Gold lettering read
WISC-R.

Malcolm Bluestone closed the door and said, “Settle where you'd like, Grace,” and took the chair facing her. Even sitting, he blocked out a whole bunch of the room.

“Okay,” he said. “This test is broken up into sections. On some I'm going to be timing you, using this.” Lifting the briefcase with two fingers, as if it were made out of feathers, he drew out a round, silver watch. “This is a stopwatch. On some of the tests I'm going to tell you time's up, don't worry if you haven't finished. I'll let you know beforehand if you're being timed, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay…one more thing: If you're tired or need to go to the bathroom, or need water—which I've brought”—pointing to several bottles in the corner—“be sure to let me know.”

“I'm okay.”

“I know you are, but should that—never mind, Grace, I have a feeling you know how to take care of yourself.”

Some of the
test was fun, some was boring. There were questions so easy Grace couldn't believe there was anyone who couldn't answer them, harder questions that she still thought she did okay on. One test was just vocabulary words like in school, another was putting together puzzles. There was math like in the curriculum, she got to tell stories with picture cards, make shapes out of colored plastic blocks.

As he'd promised, Malcolm Bluestone told her when he was going to use the stopwatch. Grace didn't care, there was plenty of time for almost everything and when she didn't get something she knew it was okay because he'd told her it would be like that. Also, she really didn't care.

When he said, “That's it,” Grace decided she'd had an okay time. He looked tired and when he offered her water and she said, “No, thank you,” he said, “Well, I'm feeling parched,” and drained two bottles quickly.

As he finished the second bottle, he put his hand over his mouth to cover a burp but a little croaky noise escaped anyway and Grace had to struggle not to laugh.

He laughed. “ 'Scuse
me
—any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Nothing at all, huh? Listen, I can score this in a few minutes and give you some feedback—tell you about the things you did especially well on. That interest you?”

“If it helps get me a better curriculum.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I'll bet you're incredibly bored.”

“Sometimes.”

“I'll bet nearly all the time.” His big bear eyes were aimed at Grace and looked extra eager, like he wanted her to agree with him.

She said, “Yes, sir, most of the time.”

“Okay, you can go outside, get some fresh air, and I'll call you in.”

Instead of obeying
him—because she didn't feel like following any more instructions—Grace went into the kitchen where Bobby sat slumped in his special belted-in chair and Ramona was trying to feed Amber pieces of egg and Amber was shaking her head and whining, “No, no, no.”

“What's up, Grace?”

“Can I have some juice, Mrs. Stage?”

“Help yourself.”

Bobby made a noise and resumed drinking one of those milk shakes Ramona poured for him into small cups because he wasn't strong enough to hold a big cup.

“That's right,” Ramona told him, as if she were talking to a baby, “it is delicious.”

Bobby slurped. Amber said, “No, no, no.”

Grace poured herself some juice and hung around near the sink and looked out at the desert but really didn't focus on it.

Thinking, as she had a thousand times:
Special needs, she's like the others, gets more money for it.

Followed by the question that bothered her:
What's my special need?

Bobby snorted and sputtered and coughed and Ramona rushed over and slapped his back softly until he stopped. Amber started to cry and Ramona said, “One moment, darling.”

Grace had wondered for a while about what made Bobby weak and have trouble breathing but knew better than to ask Ramona about something that wasn't her business. Instead, she snuck into his room one afternoon when Ramona was downstairs trying to feed him a snack milk shake and had a look at some of the medicine Ramona was giving him. The words on the labels didn't tell her anything and she already knew about the oxygen tank next to his bed—a bed with side rails, so he wouldn't fall out. But she did notice a piece of paper on the dresser and it had one of those snake symbols doctors used.

The first line read,
County Dependent Medical Status Report: Robert Evan Canova.

The second line began,
This twelve-year-old Caucasian with multiple congenital anomalies…

Grace heard Ramona coming up the stairs and scooted to her own room. Later that day, she opened the big dictionary and looked up “congenital” and “anomalies” and figured it out: Bobby had been born with problems. That really didn't tell her much but she supposed that was all she'd be able to learn.

Malcolm Bluestone came
into the kitchen. “There you are. Ready?”

Ramona looked at him, her eyebrows climbing, like she wanted to be in on the secret.

Dr. Bluestone didn't notice, was looking only at Grace and holding his huge arm out, motioning her back to the living room.

Finishing her juice, she washed and dried the glass and followed him.

He said, “Vitamin C, good for you.”

Back at the
testing table, he said, “First off, you did extremely well—amazingly well, actually.”

He waited. “
Astonishingly
well.”

Grace said, “Good.”

“Put it this way, Grace, if we were testing a thousand kids, you'd probably get the highest score of anyone.”

Again, he waited.

Grace nodded.

“May I ask how you feel about that?”

“Fine.”

“Well, you should feel fine. You got an amazing—more than that, your abilities are uniform. That means you did great on everything. Sometimes people do very well on one part but not so well on another part. Nothing wrong with that. But you excelled on
everything.
I hope you feel proud of that.”

“Proud” was a word whose definition Grace understood. But it meant nothing to her.

She said, “Sure.”

Malcolm's soft brown eyes narrowed. “Let me put this another way: You're almost nine years old but on some of the subtests—on most of them, actually—you knew as much as a fourteen- or a fifteen-year-old. In some cases, even a seventeen-year-old. I mean your vocabulary is fabulous.”

He smiled. “I have a tendency to over-explain because most of the children I deal with need that. So I'm going to have to watch myself with you. Like defining ‘uniform' when you know exactly what it means.”

Without thinking, Grace let the words shoot out. “Having the same form, manner, or degree.”

Malcolm smiled. “You read the dictionary.”

Grace felt her stomach tighten up. How had he figured her out so easily? Now he'd think she was weird, put that in a county status report.

Or maybe being weird would help her, keep her as a special-needs ward, so Mrs. Stage could keep getting extra money and Grace could stay here.

He said, “That's
fantastic,
Grace, that's a great way to build up vocabulary, learn the structure of language, philology, etymology—where words come from, how they're built. I used to do the same thing myself. Back when
I
was a bored kid, and let me tell you, that was most of the time because let's face it, for people like us—not that I'm as smart as you—life can get downright tedious if we're forced to go slow. And
that's
what I'm going to help you with. You're a race car, not a bicycle.”

Grace felt her stomach loosen.

“I mean that, Grace. You deserve to be considered on your own terms.”

A week later
he brought her new curriculum materials. A week after that, he said, “How'd you like it?”

“Good.”

“Listen, would you mind if I tested you again—just a few questions on the material in the packet. So I can know where we take things.”

“Okay.”

Ten questions later, he was grinning. “Well, it's obviously time to move on.”

Five days later, Ramona brought a box into Grace's room and said, “From the professor, looks like he thinks you're pretty smart.”

Drawing out a textbook, she said, “This is college science, young lady. How'd you learn enough to get to this level?”

Grace said, “I read.”

Ramona shrugged. “Guess that explains it.”

Three boxes later,
he showed up again and said, “How's everything going?”

Grace was out by the fence around the green pool, thinking about swimming, not sure if getting all slimy was worth it.

She said, “Fine.”

“I'm not going to test you on the curriculum, Grace, not for a while. You tell me you know it, that's good enough.”

“I don't know everything.”

His laugh was deep and rumbly like it came from deep inside him. “No one does, that would be the worst thing, no?”

“Knowing everything?” That sounded like the best thing.

“Having nothing more to learn, Grace. I mean for people like us, learning is everything.”

Almost every time he visited, he said that.
Like us.
Like he and Grace were members of a club. Like he also had special needs.

She said, “Yes, sir.”

His look said he knew she was just saying it without meaning it. But he didn't get angry, his eyes got even softer. “Listen, I've got a favor to ask you. Could I test you some more? Not about the curriculum, different types of tests.”

“Okay.”

“You don't want to know anything about the tests?”

“You don't give shots,” said Grace. “You can't hurt me.”

His head drew back and he roared with laughter. When he finally settled, he said, “Yes, that's true, these definitely won't hurt. But they're a little different, there's no right or wrong, I'll be showing you pictures, asking you to make up stories. You okay with that?”

“What kind of stories?”

“Anything you want.”

That sounded stupid and despite herself, Grace frowned.

Malcolm Bluestone said, “Okay, no problem, let's forget it. Because I can't honestly tell you it'll help you.”

Then why waste time?

“It's for my sake, Grace. I'm curious, always trying to understand people, and these tests sometimes help me.”

“Someone making up stories?”

“Believe it or not, Grace, yes. But if you don't want to, that's really okay, nothing will change in our—I'll still bring you curriculum materials.”

“I'll do it.”

“Well,” he said, “that's nice of you, but take some time to think about it and next time, let me know.”

“I'll do it right now, sir.”

“You really don't need to call me sir, Grace. Unless you want me to call you mademoiselle or senorita, or something like that.”

Again, a word shot out of Grace's mouth. “Fräulein.”

“You know German?”

“It was in the language packet you gave me last week.” International Greetings.

“Ah,” he said. “Guess I should read the packets myself. Anyway, next time—”

“I can do it now, Professor Bluestone.”

“Do—oh, those picture tests. You sure?”

Grace looked at the green pool. Slimier than ever. Once he left, she'd have nothing much to do but start a new packet. “Sure,” she said.

The picture tests
were like he'd described, strange. Not photographs, black-and-white drawings of people that she had to make up stories about. Then another one with weird shapes that looked like bats or cats and while Grace talked, Malcolm Bluestone wrote down stuff in a little book.

When that was over, he said, “If you've got energy, we can do something totally different. Tapping and moving along a maze—you might find that fun.”

“Okay.”

He brought more tests from his big brown station wagon. They weren't fun but they filled in the time and when he drove away, Grace kind of missed being busy.

T
he first time Grace met Shoshana Yaroslav, she watched the woman, four feet eleven, maybe a hundred pounds, looking sweet and innocent and girlish, much younger than her forty years, disable a man named Mac who was twice her size. He was one of Shoshana's intermediate students who'd volunteered for the role of mugger, a former army medic with thick arms, a slab-like build, and the confidence of a guy who could take care of himself.

Shoshana moved so fast it was impossible to process what she'd done. Mac, prone on the mat, caught his breath and grinned and said, “Why the hell do I keep doing this?”

Shoshana said, “Because you are a gentleman.”

For the next four months, she taught Grace her philosophy of self-defense and rode Grace mercilessly until the student's responses were borderline reflexive.

Borderline, not absolute, Shoshana was careful to add, because reflexes were “for lower animals, you should never stop thinking.”

Black-belted in several martial arts, Shoshana took an approach that was conceptually simple—home in on the enemy's vulnerabilities—but required maddening amounts of practice. And she saw the defensive arts the same way Delaware did: a great workout and a whole lot better than no training at all, but unlikely to stand up against a bad person with a gun or knife or a blackjack.

During Grace's second session, Shoshana looked at Grace's hands. “Do you have strong nails?”

“I think I do.”

“Foolish answer, they're too short for you to think anything. Grow them out a bit and see if they hold up. If they do, file them so they're more pointed than usual. Nothing too conspicuous, we don't want anyone calling you Ms. Scissorhands. But do create a tiny bit of blade at the apex. Meanwhile we'll practice with what you've got.”

Entering and exiting a side door of the studio, Shoshana returned with a weird-looking wooden board around three feet square and perforated by circular holes. Her other hand held a jar full of brown murky fluid close to her chest. Uncapping the jar released a hideous stench that filled the room: sewer gas overlaid with…rotten barbecue?

Grace blinked back revulsion as Shoshana's tiny hand dipped into the jar and fished out something round and glassy and gray that dripped onto the wooden floor.

“Sheep's eye.” Flipping the board over, she exposed a series of hinged metal cups backing each hole. Unsnapping one cup, she dropped the sheep's eye in where it nested snugly, then snapped it shut. Repeating the procedure with six additional eyes positioned randomly, she held the board in front of Grace. “Go.”

“What do you want me to—”

Grasping the board in one hand, Shoshana managed to reach around with the other and jab. The eyes had seemed out of her visual field but one of them exploded.

“You just failed,” she told Grace. “In the time it took to ask a question, your throat would've been cut.”

Without warning, Shoshana's hand shot out again, terminating at the spot where Grace's neck joined the hollow above her sternum. A forefinger tickled Grace's Adam's apple. Grace stumbled back but Shoshana pressed forward maintaining the same harassing contact. Grace tried to slap Shoshana's arm away. Now Shoshana was behind Grace, tickling the mastoid process behind Grace's left ear.

Grace wheeled.

Shoshana had stepped out of reach, stood loose-limbed, hands buried in the pockets of her cargo pants, casual as a tourist.

Grace said, “Okay, I get it.”

“That's doubtful, Doctor. Don't say things to make me or anyone else happy.”

Grace suppressed a smile.
You may be murderously tough but you don't understand me.

She lunged for the board. Missed and hit wood and suppressed searing pain in her fingertips and thrust forward again, putting her weight behind the nail-stab.

Shit, the little buggers were hard to hit, and Grace knew immediately that she was way off. Risking another painful collision she checked her blow and feinted to the right. Chose another eye and went for it.

This time her finger impacted a momentary barrier of plastic-like skin that popped. Cold jelly encased the digit to the first knuckle. Ooze flowed over her hand. She pulled free. The room stank worse.

Shoshana Yaroslav propped the board on a table easel. Seemingly indifferent, she destroyed the remaining eyes in less time than Grace had taken for one.

Grace said, “This is useful, let's keep going.”

Shoshana said, “Here you don't make the rules. Here you wait and I show you what I use for testicles.”

Grace hadn't thought
about Shoshana for a while but now, driving away from the cottage in darkness, that little-girl voice sounded in her head.

“If you don't get one thing right at the beginning, you're wasting time. Someone comes for you, get them first.”

She drove back to Malibu using a different route: Wilshire to San Vicente to Channel Road to PCH, watching everyone and everything all the way to La Costa Beach, concentrating so hard her head throbbed and that felt great.

Nothing out of the ordinary emerged during this drive and she spotted no obvious disruption as she sped past her house. That didn't mean someone hadn't managed to pick the lock and get in. If so, they'd learn nothing that could hurt her.

A quick reversal at Trancas Beach, a return to the city, and she was back at the cottage inside seventy minutes. Keeping her distance from the building as she drove and observed.

The sun was peeking through fuzzy gray clouds. Stylish WeHo residents walked stylish dogs and jogged. None of them expressed interest in anything but physical fitness and canine poop and the Chrysler 300—anything square and uncool—was nowhere in sight. But she'd run the car up into a berm so maybe it had sustained enough damage for Mr. Beef to find new wheels.

Interesting game, this: analysis, factoring out variables.

Two more circuits convinced her the coast was clear. She drove to Sunset, turned north on Laurel Canyon, and made it to the Valley by nine a.m.

Breakfast was pancakes
and eggs at a coffee shop in Encino. Sometimes she treated herself to the flaps of sugar and starch when she wanted to feel enlarged.

Or, maybe, it dawned on her for the first time, she went for pancakes because the first time she'd met Malcolm that's what he'd been eating.

All at once, she was thinking of colors—green water, red rooms, then Malcolm's brown bearish presence and her eyes burned.

Appetite faded, she left cash on the table and exited.

Checking the coffee shop parking lot, more for practice than out of worry, she drove west on Ventura Boulevard, caught the 101 West at Reseda Boulevard, got off in Calabasas, and checked into a Hilton Garden Inn with a special deal on king-bed rooms.

Fourteen miles from the beach, far enough for comfort.

Working out in
the hotel gym, she showered in her room, dressed in one of two robes hanging in the lav, plugged in her laptop, and connected with Hilton WiFi.

Trying to identify Andrew under his alias was most likely a waste of time but just when you thought you were smart, life could make you feel stupid, so she had to try.

Keywording
andrew toner
turned out to be half an hour of futility as she came up with precisely the useless information Elaine Henke had reported.

Next step: Use
roger,
the name he'd given Grace at the Opus, grouped with
civil engineer
and various Texas cities beginning with San Antonio. That created a list of eighteen names. Eleven came with Facebook or LinkedIn listings and photos that eliminated their owners. An hour later, she'd fished up phone numbers for the remaining seven, on business link sites. Using one of the three prepaid cells, she began calling.

Four men answered their own phones. Three secretaries offered variants of “Hold on, I'll see if Mr. [fill in the blank] is available.”

Dead ends.

She paired the name with
homicide, murder,
and
rape.
A staggering number of Rogers had committed serious felonies and it took Grace nearly two hours to eliminate them.

The final iteration was
roger
paired with
brother
and
murderer.
That pulled up a Catholic priest who'd stabbed a nun to death eighteen years ago in Cleveland.

So much for background research. Her best bet was to pursue her pursuers. If they came for her again, it would be at the cottage, probably under cover of darkness. Checking the double-bolt on her door, she slipped on eyeshades and fell promptly asleep. Waking at five p.m., she dressed, exited the Hilton through a rear door that led to the parking lot, and had a look around the immediate neighborhood.

Commercial blocks relieved by industrial parks. A nearby strip mall provided admirable diversity of cuisine and dinner was forgettable pad Thai at a storefront café named Bangkok Benny, chased by iced tea and lots of water.

Returning to her room, she waited until an hour after sunset, retrieved the Jeep from the garage, and repeated the same Malibu-WeHo cycle she'd completed twelve hours ago. Kept doing it, covering the sixty-mile round-trip four times and having to stop for a gas fill-up.

Adding as much variety to her route as possible but no matter what you did you ended up on the coast highway.

She made one more circuit.

No sign of anything irregular.

Not good; this couldn't go on interminably.