“Because I don’t want them expending a bunch of their time and energy trying to prove it was your mother who was responsible for the shooting,” he said. “Because I want them to catch the real killer.”
She wasn’t sure she’d ever loved him more.
“Have you talked to Garrison? I mean... since the shootings?”
Robin stared at him, all of it dawning on her... “I was supposedto.” She made for the counter. Unplugged her phone from the charger and clicked on her recent calls. Quentin Garrison’s number was near the top. She clicked on it. Called him again. “I was supposed to meet him at the hospital this morning,” she said. “He never showed up.”
The call went to Quentin’s voice mail.Mailbox full, the voice said. Strange. When she turned around, Eric had grabbed her laptop off the counter and was tapping away. “What are you doing?”
“You remember Dave Nixon?”
“Who?”
“We booked him to be a special guest onAnger Managementabout a year ago—he was part of true crime week. Shawn was trying to hop on the wholeMaking a Murdererthing, remember?”
“Not really.”
He sighed. “I might not have mentioned it to you.”
“You might not.”
Eric pressed on. “Dave Nixon’s wife was killed in a hit-and-run, back in the 1990s. Unsolved. We did a one-on-one interview, but we never wound up airing it.”
“Why?”
“Dave was unhinged. He wanted to track down his wife’s killer so that he could get revenge. He said, ‘Pain like this is a cancer. It doesn’t die until you kill what’s causing it.’”
“Scary.”
“Incredibly.” He cleared his throat. “I talked to Shawn and we wound up deciding not to air the interview. We realized we were feeding into this guy’s obsession, that it was dangerous. And if we encouraged him in any way, we’d be potentially responsible for a murder.” Eric’s eyes drilled into hers.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I think Quentin Garrison might be something moredangerous than a dirty journalist,” he said. “I think he might be utterly sincere in his beliefs.”
“Like Dave Nixon,” she said.
“Yes.” He brought the laptop to her. On the screen was a page from KAMC’s website, the wordsCALLS FOR SOURCESat the top. There were several short posts beneath, reporters asking “listeners and others in the know” to call various tiplines for podcasts-in-progress. “Look at the fourth one down,” Eric said.
The post had been dated six months earlier. Robin read it aloud, the back of her neck tingling. “Every day of my life, I suffer the pain that these two killers inflicted...”
Robin looked up at Eric. “Quentin Garrison sounded normal over the phone.”
“So did Dave Nixon. And not only that, he had a good job. Just like Quentin Garrison.” He took the seat beside her. “The thing is, Robin,” he said. “Normal people go off the deep end all the time. Half the tragedies in this world are because of regular guys who lose it.”
“Yeah...”
“It’s something to think about.”
She stared at him. “Mr. Dougherty said he saw a Chevy Cruze outside my parents’ house the night of the shooting.”
“Yeah?”
“I saw Garrison in the cemetery parking lot after the funeral. I’m pretty sure he was driving a Chevy Cruze.”
Eric stared at her. “He came to the funeral?”
“Yes...”