“Isn’t that what it was?”
He exhaled. “I can’t really discuss the case with you, Ms. Diamond.”
“Detective Morasco—”
“We don’t discuss ongoing investigations with—”
“Please.” Her voice shook. Her hands clenched into fists. The wine was wearing off and the Xanax was long gone and her feelings were showing themselves again—pain and powerlessness and an exhaustion that was agonizing, as though she’d been swimming against a strong current for hours, days. She took a breath. “I need to hear what’s going on, Detective. I won’t tell anyone. Not even my husband if you don’t want me to. But I need to hear the truth. From someone. Please.”
He looked at her. “You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise to keep this between us.”
“I promise.”
He leaned in closer, barely moving his lips when he spoke. “There was no evidence of a break-in,” he said. “No broken windows or locks. The alarm hadn’t been engaged. No one in the neighborhood heard a noise until the gunshots. So even though we’re still looking into every possibility, it seems very likely that the shooter had been invited in.”
“Oh,” Robin said.
She felt footsteps behind her. Without turning around, she knew it was Eric, before his gentle hand on her shoulder, his shiny black shoes on the grass, the smell of his cologne, her favorite. The same cologne he’d worn the night of her father’s death, that late dinner he’d had with a source...
“Hi, Detective Morasco,” Eric said. “I’m not sure if you heard, but we’re having some food and drinks at our house.”
“That’s really nice of you, but I should be heading out.” His gaze moved from Eric’s face to Robin’s. “We’ll be in touch,” he said.
Robin nodded. She took Eric’s hand and walked up to the parking lot slowly, stopping to accept hugs and condolences, her head resting on his shoulder, inhaling cologne. When they were nearing their limo, she turned to him. She gazed up into his clear blue eyes, and wanted to trust him, wanted to trust someone... “Who were you texting earlier?”
“What?”
She didn’t repeat herself. She’d said it perfectly clearly, and he’d heard her. That was obvious. She could see him stalling for time, his brain working behind those clear eyes, clicking through responses. At last, Eric opened his mouth, but she put a finger to his lips. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“But I was just—”
“I mean it, Eric. I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t want to know. Not today.”
He nodded, slowly. They got into the limo together, neither one of them saying a word. As they headed out of the parking lot, Robin told herself, the way her father would have told her, that everything was fine. That Eric was probably just texting a work colleague about an important matter and even if he wasn’t, that was something to save discussing for another time, when there wasn’t so much going on.
Robin found herself remembering instead what Mr. Dougherty had told her the night of the shooting, about seeing a strange car near her parents’ home. She scanned the parking lot for silver sedans, because that was something concrete and simple to do with her brain. There were many silver sedans in the lot. Next to one of them, she spotted silver-haired, bright-eyed Nikki talking to a tall, young bespectacled man in a dark T-shirt and jeans, who looked...Could it be? Her gaze went to the Chevy insignia on the back of the car, the name of the make.Chevrolet Cruze.
It could have been important. Or not. During the hours she’d spent in the waiting room at St. Catherine’s the night of the shooting, Robin had looked up Chevy Cruze on her phone. Turned out it was the most popular car at East Coast rental agencies by more than 30 percent. If you rented a car to come to the funeral, odds were you’d get a Cruze.
More interesting than the model and make of the car was the young man Nikki had been speaking to and how, in the midst of their rather animated conversation, he’d raised his head and watched the limo as it left the parking lot, his gaze intent, as though he were trying to see inside. Robin pulled her phone out of her bag. Looked up images of Quentin Garrison. Sure enough, his headshot from the NPR station came up first, and Robin saw him staring back at her—the young man from the parking lot. Her mother’s old friend Nikki was talking to Quentin Garrison. About what, she had no idea. But Robin wanted to know.
Fourteen
Quentin
WHEN QUENTIN WASa kid, his mother would sometimes take him to Westwood Village Memorial Park—a patch of green between towering L.A. office buildings and the eternal resting place of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Kate’s idol, Marilyn Monroe. He had hazy memories of those visits: Kate’s cool hand wrapped around his own, that rare touch of her skin and the whispering breeze, the bright flowers on the graves of the stars and Marilyn Monroe’s crypt, the most beloved one of all, the stone gone pink from years of lipstick kisses. He’d been to other cemeteries since, of course. But as he stood under the hot sun that afternoon at Tarry Ridge Cemetery, watching the funeral of Mitchell Bloom from a respectful distance, Quentin found himself feeling much the way he had back then.
It could have been the summer heat or the dewy grass beneath his sneakers, but more likely it was the emotion coursing through him—the same one he’d felt holding his mother’s hand as she sobbed and sobbed over Marilyn, a dead celebrity she’d never met. It was a disquiet he couldn’t put a name to; an awful, powerless feeling, like pounding on soundproof glass.
Quentin watched Robin Diamond walk to the head of her father’s grave. He watched her take the shovel, her matchstick arms bracedas she forced it into the earth. It was hard to reconcile this frail, tired-looking woman with the one in the Mother’s Day video, same as it was hard to think of the woman in intensive care as Renee Bloom. Both of them tungsten-strong in that video, both impossibly, infuriatingly happy. Now, Robin looked dead on her feet, Renee was fighting for her life. And Mitchell Bloom...
I should warn you, the man in the coffin had said to Quentin three days ago, when he’d spoken to him at 4:00P.M.at his office in Tarry Ridge.Since I’ve been in private practice, I’m no longer as up on all the current theories as I once was.
You think I want your expertise as a forensic psychiatrist?
You don’t?
I’m sorry, sir, but no.