“And you never mentioned that either, Mom? You never told the cops?”
“It wasn’t relevant,” she said. “Kate was Nikki’s friend. I never even knew she’d ever been married or had a son.”
Robin started to respond, but Nicola spoke first. “Robin’s right,” she said. “It is strange. Me knowing that family like I did. So many years ago. Isn’t it strange, Renee?”
“It’s a smaller world than we realize,” she said. “You know, Detective Morasco’s wife has perfect autobiographical memory. She literally never forgets a face. And he said that she once told him that there are only a handful of people in the entire world she hasn’t seen at least twice.”
Robin thought of Quentin Garrison’s small family and her own small family, orbiting each other for so many years before finally colliding. She thought of April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy, somehow fueling it all. All these connections... Strange seemed a mild word for that, “small world” even milder.
Renee moved to her and stroked her hair. She put a warm hand on her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek, her lips cool and dry on her skin. “Life is full of coincidences, honey,” she said. “We try and put them all together and we hope they’ll add up to make something meaningful. But the sad truth is, they hardly ever do. They’re just coincidences, that’s all. Stupid, pointless coincidences.”
ROBIN HAD NOintention of going to work right away, but still she drove all the way to the train station before calling Detective Morasco. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt compelled to follow her regular routine. Maybe because she had told Renee she was on her way to the office, and making that initial effort felt less to her like she was lying to her mother—something Robin got a lot guiltier over than most forty-one-year-old women. “I’d like to listen to thatrecording Quentin Garrison made,” she said, once Morasco picked up. “Is this an okay time to come by?”
He agreed, and Robin called Eileen and let her know she’d be coming in late. “I’ve been asked to go to the police station this morning,” she explained, which was only a half lie, really. And she needed to hear the audio recording.
When she was just a few blocks away from the Tarry Ridge station, Morasco called her and told her not to go through the front door, that he’d meet her in the parking lot, and when she got there, she understood why. There were two news vans out front, along with a handful of reporters.Guess the story hasn’t faded from the news cycle.
There was a parking lot behind the station, and Robin checked her Twitter once she’d pulled into a space. #PodcastKiller was trending again. #DeanConrad was too, his picture popping up all up and down her feed. A ringer for Jon Voight inMidnight Cowboy, with a little Steve McQueen thrown in to make things interesting.Handsome, heartbroken Dean...Morasco greeted her at the back entrance. “Quentin Garrison’s husband is coming in later today, and the press found out about it,” he explained, though she’d already figured that out.
He ushered her in, leading her through an enormous squad room with floor-to-ceiling windows, gleaming hardwood floors and executive-size desks, many of them empty. Like every municipal building in town, the Tarry Ridge police station was ridiculously sleek and architectural and far too big for what was needed of it. There had been a scandal involving a developer a few years back, but before his arrest, most all of Tarry Ridge had been supersized and overrenovated, losing all the charm Robin remembered it having when she was growing up.
She found the town borderline monstrous in its perfection thesedays, a gracious matriarch who’d undergone one too many facelifts. And the Tarry Ridge police headquarters was a perfect example. She remembered visiting the station with her fourth-grade class, and it had been a third this size back then—a simple brick colonial building with a patch of lawn out front. Perfectly reasonable for its purposes. Now, it had a rose garden out front—ten varieties of roses!—and the inside was even sillier in its excess. The interview room where Morasco had taken her could have probably held an entire New York City precinct house. She peered around the room—the freshly painted cream walls, the leather cushions on the chairs, the enormous plexiglass table that looked as though it had been shipped in from MoMA. One chair had been pulled up to the table, on which had been placed a digital recorder and some bagged items—a belt, a watch, a wallet, and wedding ring, and various other items that had been found on Quentin. “Thanks for setting this up for me,” Robin said.
“Actually,” said Morasco, “this is all for Dean Conrad. I’m sneaking you in early.”
“Oh yes. Of course.”
“How’s your mom doing?”
Robin looked at him. “She says she remembers less now about that night than when it actually happened.”
“That’s a blessing.”
“I guess.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” he said. “What made you decide to listen to the recording?”
“Well... I read about the note in theNew York Post.”
“Yeah, we’re thrilled about that.”
“I know. The leak sucks,” Robin said. “But I was glad I saw it because there was something weird about the note. I want to see if he talks the same way in the audio.”
“What do you mean by weird?”
“Okay.” She set the headphones down. “So, I did a little research on Quentin Garrison online. This was before the suicide. Back when I was just curious about him.”
“Yeah?”
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d apologize to ‘friends and family.’ I mean, what family?”
He blinked at her.
“I guess when I say it out loud, it doesn’t exactly sound like a smoking gun.”
Morasco gave her a sad smile. “He was a troubled guy,” he said.
“You’re sure about that.”