“Kimmy was just eleven years younger than April Cooper,” Reg was saying. “She could have been her little sister, but that... that girl just stood there. Her boyfriend shot my daughter in cold blood. He took away everything I loved and April Cooper stood there, like she was watching a movie. Do you understand me now?”
Dark thoughts whirled through Quentin’s brain. He tried another of Dean’s deep, healing breaths. “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
“Good.”
Quentin pulled his steno pad out of his pocket. With shaking hands, he thumbed through the pages he’d covered in notes from the hours he’d spent online, reading old issues of theSan Bernardino Sun.
“I haven’t seen one of those since I was still working.” Reg gestured at the pad. “I did the books for a Ford dealership in La Quinta. Spent twenty-five years in that same office, one secretary the whole time. Sweet old lady named Dee. I bet a kid your age wouldn’t even know what shorthand is, but Dee was sure good at it.”
Quentin cut him off too quickly. “Tell me about June twentieth, 1976,” he said, reading from his notes. “It was a hot day, right? Close to ninety degrees.”
“Yes. It was.”
“And it was a Sunday. Did you guys go to church?”
“Yep.”
“How soon after church did you and Kimmy go to the gas station?”
“We went home, had lunch. Kimmy asked if we could go for ice cream. The gas station was a quick stop first. But Kimmy loved it there.”
“She loved the Arco station?”
“Yeah. There was a mural there—I think the owner’s kid painted it. Noah’s Ark, with all the animals.”
“That’s sweet.”
“It was.”
Quentin asked Reg to set the scene—to describe the sights and sounds and smells at the Arco station once he and Kimmy arrived. He wanted him to remember it in full, to the point of crying, so that listeners might feel something for this man. Thathemight feel something for this man...
Reg obliged, his voice soft and contemplative and weary. Good radio, though Quentin couldn’t get himself to concentrate. “... steam coming off the pavement,” Reg was saying. “His shouts. They echoed. The boy wasn’t in his right mind. He was drunk or stoned. Maybe both. He was swaying on his feet. I told Kimmy to get down, and she did. But... she was holding her favorite plastic horse. The shiny black one. She dropped it. It made this clattering sound on the pavement, and then LeRoy just... he just...” A tear trickled down Reg’s cheek. “I begged her. I looked right into April Cooper’s eyes and I said, ‘Please make him stop...’ But she didn’t. She... she gave me this look. Like she expected this to happen. I think she might have smiled.”
Quentin closed his eyes for a moment.
“You okay?” Reg said.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it...But he said it. He had to.
“Everything you love.” And it was as though Quentin stepped off the edge of a cliff, years and years of pain and anger spread out below.
“What?”
“The burning house,” Quentin said. “You said it takes down everything you love.”
“That’s right.”
“What about your other daughter? What about Kate? She wasn’t taken down. LeRoy and Cooper didn’t get her. Are you saying that you didn’t love Kate?”
Reg wiped the tear from his face with the back of his hand, jaw squared, eyes turning to ice. There would be no more crying, Quentin knew that much. He’d mentioned the elephant in the room about twenty minutes too early.
“That isn’t what I—”
“Have you ever wondered about Kate? Tell me, sir. Have you ever felt bad about ruining her life?”
“You are nothing but a sleazy, fake-news journalist.”
“Do you know what it’s like for a child to grow up, completely ignored by her own father?”