The Murderer's Daughter (16 page)

T
hen everything changed.

Fifth pass, two fifty-three a.m., and there it was, the familiar blocky bulk of the sedan—indeed a 300, dark gray with blackened windows—parked half a block east of the cottage.

Bent front bumper but otherwise intact.

Using the same vehicle seemed breathtakingly careless.

Or arrogant. If so, all the better.

Grace drove by, regrouped mentally. She'd just driven by the cottage, seen the lights still out, no sign of forcing at either gate. So what was the plan tonight? Break in, rummage for records, and leave? Or lie in wait for Grace.

Or both.

Assuming the worst, Grace circled well east of the cottage and parked two blocks to the Chrysler's rear. Taking what she needed from the Jeep, she got out and stretched. Continued a block on rubber-soled running shoes, concealing herself as best she could in the shadows.

Twenty-three minutes later, a man-sized shape exited the sedan. The door closed. Loudly. No attempt at concealment. Grace was definitely being underestimated but she wouldn't make the same mistake.

She watched as the man walked—swaggered—toward the cottage. A bit taller than average but not huge or particularly wide.

Definitely two of them.

He, too, pressed himself into the shadows.

Grace began the stalk.

He reached the
garage side of her property, looked around briefly, took something out of his pocket, and proceeded to her garden gate. Kneeling, he went to work.

Nothing like the movies, it took a while but finally he was in.

The gate shut silently. Now he was being careful.

Hunter's instincts honed as he neared his goal?

Making sure she wasn't being tailed herself, she padded toward the gate, stopped a few feet short. No sounds from the other side of the cedar fence. He was probably inside—how had he managed to avoid tripping the alarm?

Someone with experience. She stood there, listened, checked up and down the block, finally used her key and cracked the gate an inch. Waited. Spread the wood another inch. Waited again.

Not a peep, not a ruffle of grass.

Definitely inside. She waited for lights to go on, a sound, anything.

Nothing but silence. So maybe he was skulking around in the dark as she had, using a narrow-beam like her Maglite.

She pushed the door wide enough to slip through.

An arm, polyester-sleeved and steel-rigid, shot out from the left and hooked around her neck.

Grace brought her heel down hard on where she guessed an instep would be.

The man trying to drag her back by her neck grunted and paused for an instant. But Grace's rubber-soled shoes lacked the weapon-value of a spiked heel and he said, “Stupid bitch,” and Grace felt his other arm leave the small of her back and heard a
snick
and knew he'd be stabbing her.

Reaching up and behind, she clawed her hands and went for his eyes but lacked the reach. Still, the very fact that she'd attacked threw his timing off and he grunted and lost balance and her second claw at his face made contact with flesh.

She dug her nails in deeply, raked down viciously, doing her best to flay him. Felt dermis and stubble give way, then a warm wet rush.

He cried out in pain and loosened his grip and Grace spun out of reach and they were facing each other in the dark garden.

His features were barely limned by skimpy starlight. Forty or so, angular face, heavy features contorted in pain and rage as his left hand pressed down on the bloody tracks Grace had inflicted on his right cheek.

His right hand held a knife, double-edged, some sort of sling-blade or push-dagger.

“Fucking bitch,” he said, and charged her.

The garden—small, concealed from neighborly eyes—must've seemed an ideal kill-spot and he was smiling through his pain as he continued his advance. Moving slowly and steadily.

Grace purposely fulfilled his expectations by mewling, “Don't hurt me, please,” and backing away.

That emboldened him and, waving the knife in concentric circles, he prodded Grace toward the rear wall of the garden. Once they reached the wall, no escape, a woman left vulnerable as a rib roast. Confidence loosened his movements.

Grace busted his expectations by charging toward him.

Aiming herself straight at his blade and that confused him the way she hoped it would and he looked down at the weapon as if wondering why it no longer frightened her.

She veered to the right. No knife for her, concealed in her right hand, as it had been from the time she entered the garden, was her lovely little Beretta .22, eleven and a half ounces of lethality.

A gun Shoshana had derided.
“Might as well slap a bad guy with your hand.”

But a petite weapon had its time and place and thinking for yourself was always best.

Her would-be killer wasn't smart enough to imagine. Never looking down at her hand, he growled and lunged and Grace stepped just clear of the arc of his blade and he ended up slashing air.

Before he could recoup, she thrust forward, pressing the Beretta's stubby barrel against his chest.

Knowing she'd found the spot where his heart resided, she pulled the trigger and danced backward.

His clothing and his body muffled the gunshot but the sharp
pop-slap
was still an assault on early-morning silence and Grace hoped she wouldn't need to fire again.

He stood there. Surprise slackened his face. His arms dropped. The knife fell to the grass.

Still bleeding from the gouges on his cheek, he lurched, stumbled, fell flat on his face.

Grace waited, saw no movement, approached him and stepped hard on his back.

No reaction. Gone, he had to be. She checked for a pulse. Zero. She jostled him hard.

Definitely lights-out.

Standing over him, she appraised the situation. His cheek wound and the bullet hole were smack against her pretty lawn.

She'd have to find a way to clean the grass.

Among other things.

O
ne down, one more to go?

Leaving the dead man in her garden, the .22 still pressed to her flank, Grace eased her way out of the gate. Expecting another nasty surprise; this time she'd be ready.

The street was empty.

Again, she walked west—away from the Chrysler—rounded the corner and passed the front of the cottage and was sure no one was lurking there before continuing to the nearest corner where she turned right.

It took a while to reposition herself half a block behind the boxy sedan.

Feeling a visceral sense of purpose, muscular and savage, that she'd never experienced before.

Maybe the gravity of what she'd done—the ending of a human life—would rebound on her but at this moment to hell with the bastard who may have ended Andrew's life.

With his fat friend.

She was alive.

Now I'm more than a murderer's daughter.

She slinked closer to the Chrysler, knew black glass could conceal anything but continued anyway and got right up against the car's rear bumper. Gun in hand, she kicked the rear bumper softly.

No response.

Her second kick was harder. The vehicle remained the stolid inanimate object it was.

Crouching low, she scurried to the front passenger window, pointed the Beretta at the glass. Rapped the window hard with her knuckles.

Silence.

She tried the door. Locked. Same for the driver's side.

If Beefy was in there, he'd have reacted. She retreated and waited anyway. Ten minutes, twenty thirty forty.

The car sat there.

So tonight had been a one-man mission. Maybe Beef had been injured when she'd run him into the berm.

Or he was fine and the two of them simply figured Grace an easy victim.

Invade her space, search her records, and if Mr. Average Size was lucky enough to find her, gut her and slit her throat and dump her in a dingy, demeaning place.

Best-laid plans.

Now he was no-man.

B
ack in the garden, Grace bypassed the corpse and walked to the cottage's rear door. Unlocking and disabling the alarm—he'd never gotten in—she headed for the patient bathroom and retrieved a box of rubber gloves from beneath the sink. Part of the gear used by her once-a-week cleaning woman, Smeralda.

Who, she realized, would be by in three days.

Plenty of time.

Returning outside, she gloved up and shined her Maglite on the corpse. As she'd expected, no exit wound. She prodded his back anyway; not even a bulge. Shifting her beam to the lawn, she searched for the ejected cartridge, finally located it a few feet from the body, nestled in grass.

Pocketing her find, she kneeled by the body, carefully turned it on its back, and illuminated the inert face.

Her initial impression had been on point: forty give or take, unremarkable features leaning toward coarse, two or three days of beard growth, a short, bristly haircut, dark on top, graying at the temples.

The wounds she'd inflicted on his cheek looked deep but were surprisingly pallid and not leaking much blood. She'd figured she'd done more damage. Then she understood: His nonbeating heart had stopped pumping juice to his skin.

His polyester jacket was unremarkable but for the sizable hole above his left breast. Blood rimmed the edges of the shredded fabric, but again, nothing copious.

Like Grace, he wore dark cargo pants, probably for similar reasons. Same for the Nikes on his feet.

Dress for success…Mr. Knife meets Dr. Blades…

Speaking of which…she found the weapon, wiped it down, laid it on the grass, and unzipped his jacket. Underneath he wore a light-colored V-neck T-shirt. No pockets. But the pants offered plenty of storage and Grace found a cellphone, a steel ring hosting a dozen or so delicate-looking lock picks, and a short chain bearing four keys and an alarm trigger with a Chrysler logo.

She took another look at the knife. Nasty little push-blade thing.

She fought off a thought:
This could be him looking down at me.

Slipping out the garden door again, she scanned the street, found it empty, made her way back to the Chrysler. Beeping the car alarm off, she waited.

Nothing.

Time to have a look.

The interior was spotless but the glove compartment gave up a fat wallet and a folded, legal-sized manila envelope secured by an eyelet and a string. In the trunk, she found three weapons in black nylon cases: a shotgun, a rifle, and a gray-metal handgun, larger and heavier than her Glock.

He'd come with a personal armory but had left all his firepower in the car.

Take a knife to a gunfight…

Overconfidence or wanting to avoid undue noise?

Either way, Grace knew she'd been lucky. It took her two trips to get the weapons and the other contents of the car back to her garden, another while to wipe the car down.

Now, seeing the body, she felt nothing but serenity. One day she might wonder what that said about her. Right now, introspection was an enemy; she had three hours until sunrise, needed to use the time wisely.

Yet another silent
walk up the street led her to her rented Jeep. Keeping the headlights off, she rolled slowly to her garage. Remote-controlling the door open, she backed into the space vacated by the Aston, sealed herself from view with another click.

A second inspection of the body revealed no additional seepage but when she lifted it at the shoulders, she spied a ten-inch patch of grass where the chest had made contact that was tamped and moist and dark. Above that, a smaller blotch where the cheek wounds had leaked.

Red dew.

Returning to the cottage, she brought back several of the heavy-duty black garbage bags Smeralda favored and a roll of duct tape she'd used years ago, improvising a quick fix of a kitchen sink leak as she waited for the plumber.

Double-bagging Knife's face, she created a makeshift hood that she taped tight. The bags were too small to contain the rest of the body so she cut one into three rectangles and created a triple-ply postmortem plastic bandage that she taped snugly over the chest wound. Two more bags, each lashed tightly at wrist and biceps, served to cover his hands and arms.

She stood and inspected her handiwork. The thing on the ground resembled something out of a horror movie. Snip a couple of eyeholes in the hood and he'd be the crazed killer. As it was, he was the hapless victim, and Grace was fine with that.

Now the hard part. She was strong for her size but his deadweight was substantial. Cutting up another bag, she worked for a long time easing it under the body. Additional tape, quadruple layered, created two loops across his chest and over his knees: handles for gripping the harness she'd fashioned.

As she'd hoped, the plastic served as a lubricant when she began the twenty-foot drag to the garage. But there was slippage as well and the trip was an ordeal. Once she reached the Jeep's rear hatch, she went back and retrieved the weapons and everything else she'd gotten from the Chrysler and placed them on the floor behind the front seat. Lowering the rear seat performed double duty, creating a long bed for storage and concealing the stash from casual inspection.

Getting the body up and in left her panting.

Recovering her breath, she regarded the mummy she'd created with sour pride, checked the rear-deck carpeting for evidence of seepage, found none. But she didn't delude herself that some high-tech DNA swab wouldn't pick up a trace of something.

Returning to the garden, she hosed down the wet spots in the grass, keeping the hose at low pressure to avoid making noise. Finally, the bloodstains had run off completely into the flower beds edging the east wall of the cottage. Using a spade from the garage, she gently tilled the dirt until she was satisfied everything looked normal. A reexamination of the lawn on all fours revealed a few stray specks of dried blood stiffening a few grass tips. Using her Maglite, nail scissors, and a sandwich bag, she snipped and barbered, deposited the trimmings into the bag, which she encased in two other bags, everything sealed. The feather-light package was secreted in her pant pocket. Same for the knife that had nearly killed her, now compressed to a stubby black oblong.

She gave the backyard several more minutes of serious scrutiny, could see no sign of disruption.

The entire encounter with Knife had taken seconds not minutes.

The two of them dancing smoothly, each thinking they were leading.

Back in the garage, she closed the Jeep's hatch, got in the driver's seat, was gone.

Returning to the
Valley, this time on Benedict Canyon, she got back on the 101 but exited well short of the Hilton on Calabasas, gliding onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard. To the north was suburbia. South shot straight into a tortuous canyon and that's where she needed to be.

The road that snaked past the junction of Old Topanga and New Topanga was treacherous if you didn't know where you were going. Grace had driven it hundreds of times at night, for recreation, working the Aston at high speed around S-curves that gave the engine a chance to breathe.

To her left were uninterrupted banks of hillside. The right was the same except when limestone and dirt broke unpredictably, creating thousand-foot dead-drops.

Miscalculate a turn and you were toast.

More than once, Grace, trusting her gut and her memory, had shut her eyes as she raced along the borders of oblivion.

Now she kept them wide open.

During the entire
ride, she didn't spot another vehicle but she did notice a few deer standing stock-still, including an elaborately pointed buck who seemed to sneer at her. And as she neared her first destination a smallish canine thing that was either a baby coyote or a fox scampered over the precipice.

Lowering her speed, she searched for a turnoff, found one but bypassed it for another and pulled to the side and U-turned with barely enough room for the maneuver. Doubling back a mile, she parked the Jeep in the narrow strip of dirt running parallel to the blacktop.

That placed her inches from a yawning abyss. Keeping the motor running but the lights doused, she got out, unlatched the Jeep, and eased the plastic-shrouded body down to the dirt. Breathing deeply, she used her sneakered toes and her gloved hands to nudge it closer to the edge.

She'd chosen well; visibility was generous in both directions and the acute slope maximized the chance of a long, unimpeded drop.

She waited to make sure no headlights approached, steeled herself, and pushed the body over. It thumped and rustled, faster and faster, an accelerating drumbeat.

Finally: silence.

If she was lucky her package would remain there a long time. Or forever. If not, she couldn't see how it could ever be linked to her.

Driving several yards north and reparking, she walked back and flashlit the spot where she'd dumped the body. She hadn't left footprints, the ground was too firm, but faint tire tracks rutted and swelled the dirt and she smoothed them.

Returning to the Jeep she U-turned again, drove south for several miles, stopped and flung the rifle over the side.

Ten minutes later, same treatment for the handgun.

Another five minutes and the blood-tipped grass clippings were history.

Continuing south she came to Topanga's terminus on PCH.

Apparently, her karmic destination.

Maybe at heart, she was just another California beach girl.

She drove fifty
miles north to Oxnard, gliding along the blackened agricultural fringes of the gritty harbor town. The knife was flung over chain link onto a strawberry field. Maybe some lucky stoop-laborer would score personal protection.

One of six dumpsters fronting an electronics importer in an industrial park just off Sturgis Road served as the shotgun's new home. The park was deserted and Grace managed to hoist herself high enough to rearrange the container's contents. Tossing cardboard and paper and packing materials like some celluloid salad, she shielded the weapon from easy discovery.

Driving to Camino del Sol led her to Del Norte Boulevard and that got her right to the 101.

She was back in her room at the Hilton at five forty-eight a.m.