The Murderer's Daughter (22 page)

“I'm sure of it. He had all the early trappings of psychopathy and there's no way that oxygen tube could've come free on its own.”

“What if Bobby experienced a seizure and yanked it hard enough—I'm just being lawyerly.”

“Bobby could barely walk, let alone muster the strength to rip loose his dressings. Ramona was careful, she taped the tube tight. I know because sometimes I was the one to untape him in the morning.”

“She used you as an aide?”

“I insisted on helping, it made me feel strong, in control. And I could tell her own strength was fading.”

“I see…this is going to be a terrible question, but I'm an attorney, I have to ask.” He shifted in his chair. “Given Ramona's fading health, growing attached to this Bobby, is there the remotest possibility that she would have—”

“Euthanized a child?” said Grace. “No way. When she discovered Bobby dead, she was horrified. I'm certain the shock is what finished her off.”

“My God,” said Wayne Knutsen. “What a nightmare…poor Ramona. Poor child—and there was no one else who could've—”

“It was him, Wayne.”

“Yes, yes, you'd know. You say his name was Sam? That's not much to go on. How old was he?”

“Thirteen, fourteen, give or take.”

“Old enough, I suppose,” he said. “What with all the crazy stuff one keeps hearing…all right, it's a horrible thing to consider but I defer to your judgment. What happened to you after the ranch closed? Though I'm not sure I want to hear what I suspect.” His head shook; his jowls vibrated. One hand swiped clumsily at his eyes.

Grace leaned over and took his hand, comforted him the way she would any patient.

“Actually,” she said, “everything worked out fine.”

N
ancy the Detective drove fast to juvenile hall and Grace knew she couldn't wait to get the job over with. Within moments of passing through a series of locked doors, she was gone and Grace was being escorted by a huge black woman who called her “honey,” and reassured her she'd be fine.

Saying nice words, but in a tired voice, like she'd swallowed a tape recorder and pressed the
Play
button.

Grace's clothes were
taken away and she was given bright-orange pants and a matching shirt. A plastic band with her name misspelled “Blande” was snapped tight around her scrawny wrist. The room she was placed in was tiny and smelled of pee and poop, with crude graffiti all over the walls and bars for one wall. The only window, set high up, was black because it looked out on the night. Furniture was a cot, a dresser, and a metal toilet without a lid.

The big black woman said, “Sorry we got to use a solitary cell for you tonight, honey, but it's for your own good, there's no sense placing you in a dorm, you didn't do nothing to end up here. Not like some of the kids, they're real bad, no need for you to know, just take it as fact, okay?”

“Okay.”

“That's why I'm going to have to lock you in, honey. For your own good. Try to get a good night's sleep and in the morning you can ask questions, the morning people gonna answer your morning questions, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I mean, honey, you won't be in here long anyway, it's just until your case gets adjudicated. That means fixed up.”

I know what it means. Press
Stop
on your tape machine.

“Honey?” the woman repeated.

Grace walked into her jail cell.

The following morning
when another black woman came by with breakfast on a tray and said, “Rise and shine, what can I get you, missy?” Grace said, “Books.”

“Books…” As if Grace had requested moon rocks. “How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Hmm, see what I can do.”

“I read adult books.”

The woman frowned. “You talking dirty stuff?”

“No,” said Grace. “Grown-up reading material—psychology, biology.”

The woman stared at her, skeptical. “You some genius?”

“I'm curious.”

“That ain't so good around here, missy.”

Six hours later
three dog-eared fifth-grade textbooks ended up in her cell. Baby math, baby English, baby science.

This was punishment, Grace decided, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She wondered where Sam, Ty, and Lily had ended up. Maybe they were right here in different prison cells. Maybe once Grace was let out, she'd see them. She hoped not.

As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about on that account. For three consecutive days she was never let out, mostly the staff seemed to forget about her. She kept quiet, thinking and sleeping, feeling more and more stupid like her brain was rotting and she was drowning in her own emptiness.

And she'd done nothing wrong. Just like the red room.

Keeping calm wasn't always easy; it required blocking out the cries and screams of prisoners who did make noise. Sometimes big boys in orange suits, who might as well have been men, walked by loosely supervised by guards who did nothing to stop them from eyeing Grace and rubbing their crotches and saying filthy things. A couple of times, they actually pulled out their penises and stroked them hard while smirking.

The first time, Grace was too surprised to react. The second time, she laughed.

The boy she laughed at was tall and wide, with black fuzz all over his pimpled face. When Grace laughed, he got soft and tucked himself in quickly. His look said if he could rip the bars free, he'd destroy her.

From then on, Grace curled on her bunk, facing away from the scant world beyond.

On the eve
of the fourth day, another black woman—the staff seemed comprised totally of such—unlocked the cell and said, “You're out, Miss”—she consulted a clipboard—“Miss Blades. Here's your clothes, get dressed, I'll wait and take you.”

“Take me where?”

“Your next destination.”

“Where's that, ma'am?”

“They don't tell me, I just do pickup and delivery.”

Grace slipped out of the orange uniform, not caring if some filthy-minded boy passed by and saw her in nothing but her underpants. Dressed in the clothes she'd arrived in, she followed the attendant out past the same locked doors that had let her into this hell. Into the small reception room she'd been whisked through.

Malcolm was there.

“My God,” he said. “So, so sorry. It took a while to find you.”

Grace's belongings dangled from one of his long arms. He held out the other, offering to gather her in, a spontaneous gesture of comfort. Grace didn't like to be touched, never had, and at that moment her aversion dominated common sense.

He's here to rescue me so do everything he wants.

But she didn't want him to hug her, three days in jail had made her even steelier about human contact. She didn't move.

Not smart. Okay. Try.

She took a painful step.

Malcolm dropped his arm.

Now he's mad, why am I being stupid?

Bending, he half whispered, “I'm so sorry, Grace, this never should've happened. I'd like to take you with me, is that okay?”

“Yes.”

“Great, I'm parked outside, station wagon's in the shop so I brought Sophie's car, it's just a two-seater but it'll do fine.”

Talking fast and nonstop as he walked toward the exit, he held the door open for Grace. As if his own
Play
button had been pushed.

But this was sound Grace wanted to hear.

Sophie's car was
an old but gleaming black Thunderbird convertible, upholstered in immaculate white leather.

Grace had seen ads for cars like this in old magazines. Beautiful rich people in their convertibles, racing horses, sitting on impossibly beautiful beaches.

She's rich but he's not? Maybe that's why she keeps her own name. So he'll remember they're separate people, that she has the money.

Malcolm said, “Pretty sporty, no? Sophie's the sporty one,” stashed Grace's things in the trunk, held the passenger door open for her, and got in behind the wheel. Even with the seat pushed all the way back he looked cramped, like a grown-up in a kiddie car. He inserted the key in the ignition but didn't start up the engine.

“I'm really regretful, Grace,” he said, looking back at the gray bulk of juvenile hall. “This must've been dreadful.”

“It was okay.”

“Well, you're brave to say that. The problem was I had a devil of a time finding out what happened. Which is outrageous. Ramona is—was—my sister-in-law and as her only surviving relative, any responsibility for her affairs is totally mine. I miss her deeply…I was never informed about anything, Grace, showed up at the ranch, found it empty, began calling the authorities, got stonewalled. Finally, a supervisor at the sheriff's told me what happened. After the shock wore off, I said, ‘What about the kids?' That's when he told me about Bobby. Once
that
shock wore off, I pressed him on the other children and he said he didn't know. Even though, turns out it was his people who brought you here, the idiots. It's unconscionable, Grace, stupid bureaucrats treating you like a felon.”

Grace shuddered, not sure why. She wished he'd just drive.

He said, “Poor thing,” and reached out an arm again to offer comfort, checked himself immediately. Turning the key brought the car to roaring life. Malcolm began driving out of the parking lot. Slowly, like speed frightened him. Being timid seemed wrong for this car. Maybe Sophie treated it properly.

When he reached the exit to the street, Grace said, “Where are we going?”

He braked, slapped his own forehead. “Of course, how would you know? Sorry, again, I plead temporary attention deficit due to…I'm taking you to my house. Our house, mine and Sophie's. If you approve, I shouldn't assume anything. Though to be honest, Grace, there's no better alternative right now—”

“I approve,” said Grace. “Please drive fast.”

She expected a
long trip, figuring the ugly area where juvenile hall sat would be far from a house nice enough for Malcolm and
wealthy
Sophie Muller.

She was half right: The house was huge and beautiful and so were its neighbors, with wide green lawns, old trees, bright flowers. But it didn't take that long to get there, Malcolm driving on a street called Sixth that passed through a lot of grayness and shabbiness.

He pulled into the driveway, said, “Voilà.”

The house was two stories tall with a high pointy roof covered with what looked like gray sheets of rock. The front was brick with dark beams crossing it in a bunch of places. Grace recognized the style from her reading: Tudor, named after a family of English kings. She had no idea people lived in them in America.

“To give you your bearings,” said Malcolm, “this neighborhood is called Hancock Park, and the street is June Street. It's more for bankers and lawyers and doctors than professors but this is where Sophie's parents lived. They were among the first Jews allowed to buy—not that you need to hear about that, sorry.”

A beat. “Sophie and I are Jewish, you know.”

“I know.”

“Oh,” he said. “Our names tipped you off?”

“The Holocaust.”

“Ah…smart thinking. Anyway, we're not at all religious, so it's not like you're going to have to learn rituals and prayers, that kind of thing.”

Rituals and prayers sounded interesting to Grace. Among the materials Malcolm had given her were articles on all kinds of religious customs.

“Anyway,” he said, squeezing himself out of the Thunderbird and retrieving Grace's things. By the time he circled to open the passenger door Grace was already out.

His key unlocked a heavy wooden door with a brass knocker shaped like a lion. Grace followed him into an empty room with black-and-white-checked marble floors that seemed to have no purpose other than sitting in front of a much larger room. That space was full of old-looking fat sofas and chairs with lots of pillows, dark wood tables with curved legs, fancy-looking dark wood bookshelves stuffed with books. More books sat on the floor. In one corner stood a clock even taller than Malcolm. On the left side, a carved wooden staircase with wide steps led upstairs. A blue-and-red-and-white rug ran down the center.

The back wall of the big room was a bunch of glass doors that offered a view of a garden.

Not the acreage of the ranch, this property was smaller but not small, with a swimming pool that was bright blue and clear, trees with low-hanging branches, beds of red and pink and white flowers, and the greenest grass Grace had ever seen. She was breathless.

Professor Sophia Muller appeared, as if magically, wearing a dark-blue sweater unbuttoned over a top of the same color, tan slacks, and flat brown shoes. Her ash-blond hair was tied in a bun. Eyeglasses dangled from a chain around her neck.

She smiled and held out her hand to Grace. Doing both a little shyly, as if she wasn't used to visitors.

This time Grace did the right thing and offered her own hand.

Sophia Muller said, “It's so nice to have you, Grace.”

She took Grace's things from Malcolm, told him the station wagon was fixed; if he wanted he could call a cab and catch the dealer before closing.

He said, “You sure?”

“Yes, darling. I need the T-Bird tomorrow.”

Malcolm nodded and walked through the big room, turned through a right-hand doorway and was gone.

Sophia said, “Come, your room is ready.”