All three kids had grown up suckling on a curdled brew of megalomania and isolation. Yet only one of them had evinced obvious cruelty at the ranch.
Just the opposite, in the case of Typhon. Grace had seen him treat Lily with... tenderness. And everything she’d learned about the man Typhon grew into — what she’d observed firsthand — worked against his being a cold-blooded murderer.
Yet his adoptive parents had also met an unusual end.
She drove a few more miles before realizing an interesting irony: The sons of Arundel Roi had waited longer to be adopted than their cute little sister, but once they’d been taken in, they’d scored the kind of affluent dream placements social services rarely produced, growing up as rich boys.
Lily, on the other hand, had remained working-class, at best.
That brought her back to the boys’ adoptions: Why had the Van Cortlandts and the Wetters, prosperous enough to go the private route, dealt with social services at all?
People like that didn’t have to settle for teenage boys hauling serious baggage.
Grace knew nothing about the Van Cortlandts but what she’d learned about Roger Wetter Senior said he had as much use for altruism as a snake had for lace panties.
A man who made his living cheating poor people suddenly proffering the milk of human kindness to an orphan? No way.
On the other hand, a man like Wetter Senior might be swayed by a concrete incentive, as in cold hard cash. And that fit with Wayne’s musings about the Fortress Cult avoiding extended press coverage due to a high-level connection.
Had one of Roi’s three co-wives been a rich girl — the prodigal daughter of a family with the clout to play human chess on a tournament level?
A couple of grandsons sired by a lunatic and mothered by a reprobate slut? Shucks, nothing money couldn’t take care of.
It would’ve taken serious money to lure grubbers like Roger and Agnes Wetter into parenthood. As for the Van Cortlandts... who knew?
To a crooked businessman like Roger Wetter, the deal would’ve been enticing: serious money for short-term stewardship because Roger né Samael was due to reach majority in a few years.
Andrew né Typhon shortly after.
But neither of the boys had cut the cord at eighteen, Roger listing the Alamo address as his own and probably working Daddy’s insurance scams.
Andrew, bright, obedient, outwardly pliable, taking well to the life of a Santa Monica preppie. Perhaps Ted and Jane had grown to love him. Or establish a reasonable facsimile. Grace imagined the Van Cortlandts feasting on parental pride when their boy secured admission to Harvard-Westlake, then to a still-unidentified first-rate college, then to grad school at Stanford.
The research award at twenty-seven. A doctorate in engineering.
But once financially independent, Andrew had decided to work on the other side of the world; you couldn’t move much farther from hearth and home.
So perhaps his affection for his new parents hadn’t run deep.
Get what you want from them, move on.
Years later: Collaborate to have them tossed over a cliff?
Grace shifted back to Roger Wetter Junior. No evidence, so far, of academic accomplishment on his part. But no need to get A’s in the Wetter household. Other qualities were prized higher.
The very qualities Venom Boy possessed in spades before he met the Wetters.
Senior takes Junior into the family business, tutors him in the fine points. Then Senior announces his retirement, he and Mom move to L.A. — pulling the rug out from under Junior?
Now you’re on your own, son.
Soon after, Mom and Dad experience the cold blue kiss of the ocean.
Head swimming, Grace pulled off at the next exit.
Sad little intersection housing two gas stations, an Arby’s, and a Pizza Hut. Nothing with WiFi. She drove farther east, spotted an even shabbier commercial block featuring mostly boarded-up storefronts but also a Wild Bill’s Motor Hotel decked out with a poorly painted sign of said lawman on a bucking bronco and smaller placards claiming satellite TV, massage beds, and Internet hookup.
She paid cash for a forty-three-dollar room, scrawled something illegible in the register, ignored the oh-sure smirk of the moron behind the desk.
Parking in front of the unit, she took her bag and her laptop to a room reeking of Lysol and hard-boiled eggs. Opening the drapes on a flyspecked window in order to keep the Escape in view, she sat on a mattress that felt stuffed with mixed nuts, tried to log on, failed, repeated, failed again.
On her fourth attempt, the Data Monster announced itself with an insipid chorus of beeps.
roger agnes wetter theodore jane van cortlandt rewarded her with three immediate hits.
Correction: one hit, reiterated twice.
Both couples had lent their names to the steering committee of a political fund-raiser. Big bash, nearly fifteen years ago, the Biltmore Hotel, downtown, championing the reelection of State Senator Selene McKinney. Old news cached on the site of the party-planning outfit that had set it up.
McKinney served the affluent Westside, including the Van Cortlandts’ upscale slice of Santa Monica. Her district didn’t include the Wetters’ abode in Encino but back then, the couple had lived in Northern California so there had to be more than constituency at play.
You didn’t need to be a constituent to benefit from a politician’s good graces.
Grace googled McKinney and got a Wikipedia bio. The legislator known as Ms. Moderate had won that election but eighteen months later, she was dead, victim of a heart attack.
Born to big money, McKinney’s decades of public service had earned her seniority and the plum positions that went along with it. At the time of her death she’d long chaired the Senate Standing Committee on Insurance. Which put her in charge of “indemnity, surety, and warranty agreements.”
A woman well worth supporting, if you were Roger Wetter Senior. She’d also served on the dental health licensing committee, which might have put her in contact with Dr. Van Cortlandt.
Grace continued to search, switching between her keyboard and eyeballing the rented SUV through the window. One time, she had to step out of the room, as two boys, fifteen or so, began slinking around, walking expensive ten-speed bikes up to the Escape and eyeing the rear hatch.
Cheap motel, low-rent district, but these two were well dressed, well fed, nicely tended. Couple of rich kids biking down from one of the horsey estates that rose above the tree line to the east?
A quick stare-down from Grace caused them to hightail. Softies. Grace returned to her laptop, pairing selene mckinney with roger wetter, alice wetter, alamo adjustments, insurance scam. When that brought up nothing, she plugged in a stream of additional bad deeds: bribery, extortion, con, deception, fraud.
Still, nothing.
She phoned Wayne Knutsen.
His voicemail message was curt, almost dismissive, you’d never associate it with the man who’d come through for her twice.
“It’s me. Did Selene McKinney have a daughter?”
She’d packed up when movement outside her room’s window caught her eye. The pair of adolescent reprobates had returned and one boy was leaning insolently against the SUV’s right-side headlight.
As if he owned the damn thing.
Grace flung her door open, strode to the driver’s door, tossed in her belongings, started up, revved hard, and peeled out in reverse, knocking the kid off balance and causing him to cry out.
She drove off the motel lot, glancing at her rearview mirror. The kid had remained on his feet but looked shaken, mouth agape, holding his hands up as if questioning the gods.