The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online

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    —
    Running a bath, she soaked in the clawfoot for a count of one thousand, toweled off, retrieved her briefcase, and checked her appointment book for tomorrow’s schedule.
    Light day prior to vacation: six patients, three before noon, three after, all but one of them a follow-up. One newcomer who’d been apprised by her service that she was leaving soon but had made the appointment anyway. So maybe one of those ambivalent “consultations.”
    Lying in bed, she planned tomorrow: Her morning would begin by peering into the soft eyes of a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Bev whose husband had died of a rare connective tissue cancer, the illness occupying most of their time together. He’d finally given up fourteen months after their honeymoon. Now newly engaged, her second wedding approaching, she’d be flying in from Oregon.
    More than matrimonial jitters. Grace was ready for whatever came up. Check.
    Patient number two was a sixty-four-year-old man named Roosevelt whose wife had been murdered by an armed robber while tending the couple’s South L.A. liquor store. Guilt was a big issue there, because the night shift had always been Roosevelt’s domain and Lucretia had taken over so he could attend a reunion with his high school football buddies.
    The unfortunate woman had been shot in the head within minutes of arriving at the store. Six years ago. Roosevelt’s therapy had lasted three years. Grace knew the date of the murder by heart. Another anniversary.
    Lovely man, Roosevelt, quiet, genteel, hardworking, Grace liked him. Not that liking mattered. She could comfort a wolverine if that’s what the job called for.
    Session number three was for a married couple, Stan and Barb, whose only son had fatally slashed his own wrists. No tentative cry-for-help by Ian; this was a deep, artery-demolishing excursion that led him to bleed out quickly. Toward the end of the process, he’d staggered into the bedroom where his parents slept, managed to switch on the light, and gurgled himself to nothingness in front of the people who’d given him life.
    Grace had obtained the poor kid’s psych records, found clear evidence of blossoming schizophrenia. So no clinical surprise, but that didn’t squelch the horror for Stan and Barb. Memories of what Stan called “sadistic etching.” That always made Barb wince and grow nauseous. Several times she’d rushed to the patient bathroom and vomited.
    Of course there was nothing much Stan and Barb could’ve done to help the boy, his brain was deteriorating. But that didn’t stop them from tormenting themselves. It took just over two years for Grace to guide them past that and their sessions had thinned to twice a month. So far so good.
    Patient four was Dexter, a young man who’d lost both parents in a plane crash. The usual small-craft disaster, amateur-pilot Dad at the helm of a single-engine, probable heart attack. Lots of anger to work through, there.
    Five was a woman whose in-vitro-conceived only child had perished from a rare liver disorder in infancy. Grace didn’t want to think much about that one because kids got to her and she needed to preserve herself so she could be useful. If she felt she lacked expertise, she could call Delaware.
    Last, and possibly least, was the new one, a man named Andrew Toner from San Antonio, Texas, who’d waited seven weeks for a slot to open up. Now that Grace thought about it, that was at odds with ambivalence, but who knew, she’d learn the details tomorrow.
    What she did know was that it was a self-referral spurred, according to the info recorded by her service, by Mr. Toner’s coming across some research she’d published. Not the typical treatises on stress and coping Malcolm and she had churned out for years.
    The piece Malcolm insisted Grace write alone.
    Grace regarded that article—all of her publications—as ancient history, but a patient citing it told her something about Mr. Toner: good chance he came from a