She made one more stab, anyway: Stanford. And wouldn’t you know.
Seven years ago, Andrew Van Cortlandt, age twenty-seven, had won an engineering department award for a doctoral thesis exploring the structural damage wreaked upon the Oakland Bay Bridge by the Loma Prieta quake.
Samael helps his father torment disaster victims, Typhon seeks scientific enlightenment.
Palo Alto, the town Stanford ate for breakfast, was less than fifty miles from Berkeley. The schools were rivals, academically and athletically. Stanford had been founded by a rich man irate over his son’s rejection from Berkeley.
That made an encounter between the brothers, planned or otherwise, damn feasible.
Grace imagined it: Two damaged souls separated during adolescence bump into each other as young men. Easy recognition. Auld lang syne.
The two of them have a couple of beers, decide to rekindle their relationship. But the passage of time has done nothing to alter the original dynamic: glib, dominant Samael; quiet, submissive Typhon.
Had Mr. Venom drawn his little brother over to the dark side? Convinced him to collaborate on a hideous plan?
Time to get rid of the fools who adopted us, score some serious bucks.
A problem: no fit with the murder of the McCoy family, ten years ago. So maybe Roger had done that one alone. For fun, thrills, some kind of sick, dark joke. Same reason he’d snuffed out Bobby Canova.
Or: a rehearsal for what was to come.
Or: Roger had located his baby sister first, tried to get her to return to the fold, but she’d refused. Maybe even threatened to go public on Bobby.
Bad move, Lily.
The taste of murder still sweet on his tongue, he reunites with Andrew a few years later and hatches a plan.
Maybe even a barter: I kill yours, you kill mine.
How convenient that would be: a pair of outwardly unrelated staged accidents, the sole heirs equipped with perfect alibis, should suspicion arise. But it hadn’t; the deaths had been convincing enough to fool two coroners.
If Dena Kroft was correct, Andrew had been in Asia the day his parents tumbled off a cliff. For all Grace knew, Roger Wetter Junior had been surfing in Maui when his parents were dumped in the ocean.
Neat, clean, sewed up tight.
Accidents were the ultimate loss of predictability and control. The Reaper swinging his scythe unmindful of personal agenda or best intention. Grace was no stranger to instability. Every morning she reminded herself anything could happen anywhere anytime to anyone. Despite that, she felt her chest tighten and her head filled with thoughts and images she’d believed long vanished.
Turning off the lights of her cookie-cutter hotel room, she crawled into bed and drew the covers completely over her. Sucking her thumb, she gave herself the command for dreamlessness.
This time her will failed her and she did nothing but dream, REM waves offering up the adventures of a woman who looked exactly like Grace but wore black tights and a cape and was able to perform miracles of time, space, and matter.
She awoke feeling great. Less so when she realized she was still an earthling.
Out of the Marriott by nine fifteen a.m., she stashed her dirty clothes in a hotel dumpster and drove to the Redondo Beach wig salon she’d spotted on the way to the hotel. The cheerful, curvy women who operated the pink-and-lace shop giggled approvingly when Grace informed them she needed a new look for her boyfriend. When she added that money was no object, they became her new best friends.
She wanted to come across high-tax-bracket because a quick survey of the goods displayed on pink Styrofoam stands was disappointing. Nearly all of them, even selections approaching four figures, looked stiff and unconvincing.
The exception was a collection of five wigs exhibited in a tall, locked Lucite case behind the register. Even up close, these could’ve fooled her.
Within moments, “Hi, I’m Trudy” and “Hi, I’m Cindy” were schooling her in the composition of the “absolute best hair masterpiece available.”
European-cuticle human hair preselected for natural silkiness and processed in tiny batches at an exclusive French “atelier.” Hand-tied lace top, meticulously wefted back, and hypoallergenic tabs located at crucial “slick-spots,” a natural hairline that only resulted from “long years of experience and major talent, basically a hair Rembrandt.”
Grace tried on two wigs from the case and bought them both, a honey-blond layered thing that reached three inches beneath her shoulders and an artfully streaked brunette flip half a foot shorter. Each listed for twenty-five hundred dollars but she bargained Cindy and Trudy down to thirty-eight hundred for the pair. Pretending to scan the store again, she pointed to an electric-blue pageboy near the entrance.
“You don’t want that, it’s a cheapie,” said Trudy.
“Tacky, just for fun,” said Cindy. “We keep it like for teenagers, parties, you know.”
Grace winked. “Todd can get tacky. How much?”
“Aha!” Cindy giggled and checked. “Sixty-three.”
“Can you throw it in?”
The women looked at each other. “Sure.”
As Grace left, boxes in tow, Cindy called out, “Todd’s a super-lucky guy.”
Trudy said, “You can take photos but trust me, don’t post them, ha ha ha.”
Next stop was a small optician’s store where Grace confounded the owner by asking for frames set with clear glass.
He said, “I’ve only got three or four. We use them as demos.”
“I’ll take them.”
“They’re no good for anything.”
“It’s for a movie.”
“Which one?”
Grace smiled and drew a finger across her lips.
The man smiled back. “Ah, okay.” The cash Grace forked over kicked up his glee. He said, “Anytime, I’d love doing movies.”
Eleven a.m., a beautiful California morning.
Grace was embarking later than she’d planned, but still with ample time to reach her destination and catch some quality sleep tonight, dreamless or otherwise.
During breakfast, she’d changed her mind about taking the inland route, opting for the coast highway in order to avoid the blahs. As she cruised into Malibu and reached La Costa, she allowed herself a quick glance at her house, resisting the urge to go in and stand on her deck, listen to the ocean, scrub gull shit off the railing.
One day, she’d be back. Lulled by the tides, riding waves of solitude.
An hour and a half into her second attempt north, she was hyper-alert, nibbling jerky as she passed Santa Barbara. A few scorched spots remained on the eastern hillsides, scars from a fire the previous spring that had ravaged a couple thousand acres before the winds cooperated. Nothing insidious behind the blaze; a perfectly legal campfire had gotten out of hand.
Unlike the gasoline-fueled blaze that had destroyed the McCoys.
The deaths of the McCoys were beyond evil. Take away the profit motive and why bother?
If Samael/Roger had been acting out a family-cleansing fantasy, why kill Lily but leave Andrew alive?
Then she remembered: He hadn’t.
Still, the time-lapse puzzled. Ten years between Lily and Andrew. Sister first — had she been a priority?
Grace recalled how closely the tremulous little girl had stuck to the boy she knew as Typhon. The brother who’d been gentle with her.
Unlike Sam, who’d held himself apart from both his younger sibs.
Lack of attachment: another psychopathic quality.