Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  She stared at him. “Threatened?”

  “Or your mom? Was she concerned about your dad’s safety?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t think so.”

  “So your dad’s patients were never a concern.”

  “No . . .”

  “In his private practice, can you recall your dad ever having any kind of falling-out with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “How about your mother?”

  She looked at him. “Everybody loved my mother.”

  “Okay,” Morasco said. “Would you describe your parents as close?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happily married.”

  “Very.”

  “They weren’t arguing about anything recently that you know of?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “So your dad sounded pretty happy,” Morasco said, “during that last conversation.”

  Robin remembered her father’s voice on the phone, the catch in it. Have we been good parents to you? “Actually, he said he was feeling melancholy.”

  Morasco raised his eyebrows.

  “The Yankees were losing,” she said. “I know that sounds weird but it isn’t. He . . .” Tears sprung into her eyes. This had been happening lately. Grief, pouncing on her when she least expected it. Attacking. A tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away. “He always took it personally when the Yankees lost.”

  Morasco gave her a smile. “I get that.”

  Baus said, “I’m a Mets guy.”

  Morasco ignored him. “So just to be clear,” he said, “there isn’t anything unusual that you can think of that happened in the past forty-eight hours—”

  “Well, there was the column.”

  “Yes, right,” he said. “I’m thinking more about anything that might have happened with your parents.”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure,” Baus said. “Absolutely positive.”

  Morasco scribbled something in his notebook.

  The thought crept up on her. The phone call . . . “Wait.”

  Morasco looked up from his pad.

  “This is probably nothing,” she said.

  “Let us be the judge,” said Baus.

  “I got a phone call at work from a podcast producer. A guy from California named Quentin.”

  “Quentin Garrison,” Morasco said.

  “Yes. How did you—”

  “Was he trying to get hold of your father as an expert?”

  Robin started to answer, then stopped. “Yeah,” she said, her brain creating the lie and her mouth forming the words before she even knew she was saying them. “For some true crime podcast. About some murders in the ’70s.”

  Morasco nodded.

  “We knew about that,” Baus said. “We talked to that guy. He already told us that.”

  “He did?” There was a humming in Robin’s ears, in her brain. She wanted to ask them if Quentin Garrison had said anything about April Cooper or the Inland Empire Killers, but she couldn’t make herself say the name. Ask your mother about April Cooper, the voices in her head told her. Quentin Garrison’s voice and then her own. Ask Mom about her. Don’t say anything to the cops until you talk to Mom.

  If you can ever talk to Mom . . .

  “Okay,” Baus said. “I think we’ve covered the podcast guy.”

  Robin exhaled. “So, is that it?”

  “Nope,” Baus said. “Just one more question.”

  Robin sighed. Always one more question.

  “When and why did your mother purchase the firearm?”

  Robin stared at Morasco, then at Baus, those beady glass eyes watching her expectantly. “My mother,” she said slowly. “My mother doesn’t own a gun.”

  “Yes, she does. Smith & Wesson M&P 45 compact.”

  “Ehrlich,” Morasco said.

  Baus grinned. “He won’t call me Boss. Everybody else does, but not this guy. Nobody’s your boss, huh, Nick?”

  “My mother hates guns. My husband knows that.” Her gaze darted around the kitchen. Where was Eric? Why would he sneak out when they told him he could stay? A heat rose from the pit of Robin’s stomach and bloomed in her cheeks. She was red-faced, the back of her neck breaking out in a sweat. “She . . . she’d never buy a gun. She wouldn’t even know how to shoot one.”

  Baus said, “Ms. Diamond, try not to get hysterical.” And she wanted to leap across the kitchen table, grab him by the throat.

  She turned to Morasco. “There’s a mistake. There has to be.”

  He shook his head.

  “Where’s this gun that my mother supposedly owns?” she said. “I want to see it for myself.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Why? Why can’t I see it?”

  “It’s being held as evidence.”

  “What?”

  “The gun Detective Baus is talking about,” Morasco said. “The one registered to your mother. It’s the same gun that was used to shoot them both.”

  AFTER THE TWO detectives left her house, Robin went looking for Eric. She shouted his name a few times downstairs, then headed up to the second floor and did the same, louder, her throat aching from it. For a few, unbalanced moments, she actually thought he might have left her—jumped into his car and sped away as she was being questioned by police.

  But then she saw Eric from the bedroom window. He stood in their backyard with his back to the house, facing their small garden, his shoulders slumped and sad in his somber blue dress shirt and black pants, dressed for the funeral minus his suit jacket. What are you doing out there? What are you thinking about? She hurried downstairs and outside into the heat, her heels sinking into the dirt. It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized that he wasn’t slumped in thought. He was on his phone, texting.

  He spun around when she said his name. Dropped the phone in his shirt pocket too quickly. “Hi,” he said. “Did the questioning go okay?”

  Robin’s gaze fell on the phone, glowing beneath the cloth of his shirt, as though it were trying to interrupt. “Why did you leave?”

  “I . . . I didn’t really think I was needed, and—”

  “My mother owned a gun.”

  “What?”

  “The gun that killed my dad was registered to her.”

  “That’s crazy. There’s got to be some mistake.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  He shook his head. “Your mom would never—”

  “I know.” Robin felt numb and battered, her mind assaulting her with thoughts she didn’t want to have. The call from that podcaster. Ask your mother about April Cooper. That Inland Empire Killers movie, the teenage actress on her TV screen, her gun spewing bullets. Her father on the phone, his last night alive. The sadness in his voice. Her father, whom Quentin Garrison had told police he’d wanted to reach. As an expert . . .

  Had Quentin Garrison tracked down Dad? Had he told him to ask Mom about April Cooper? Had Dad asked her? And if he had, was her answer the reason why he’d sounded so sad over the phone? Was her answer the reason why she’d left the house?

  Was her answer the reason why they’d both gotten shot?

  Robin shut her eyes. She wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but she needed to come back.

  Eric said, “After the funeral, let’s talk about this more. We know your mother better than those cops do. And if they’re on a lead like that, I think we might be better off hiring a private eye.”

  “Maybe.”

  He stroked her face, kissed her forehead. In her entire life, Robin had never felt so entirely alone. “I’d better finish getting ready,” she said.

  Robin turned and walked inside, thinking back to the half second when she’d come up behind her husband, how it had appeared to her as though every molecule in his body had been directed into that phone.

  Texting as though his whole world depended on it. She didn’t know to whom.

  Robin didn’t know anyone in her life. Not a sin
gle living soul.

  Twelve

  June 13, 1976

  2:00 P.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  There is something bad inside Gabriel. It’s like lava in a volcano. If you don’t see it or feel it, it can’t hurt you, so it doesn’t seem real.

  But it is real. This bad thing is always there, bubbling closer and closer to the surface, until finally, it explodes out of him, destroying everything it touches. You know you can’t stop it, not any more than you would be able to stop real lava in its tracks. So all you can do is stay as quiet as possible and pray with everything you have that it doesn’t touch you too.

  I never saw Gabriel kill Papa Pete. I only heard the shots from outside. By the time I walked in through the front door, he was already dead. “I didn’t mean to,” Gabriel said, and I believed him. I believed him because I hadn’t seen him fire the gun. I hadn’t seen his eyes as he pulled the trigger. I hadn’t seen the veins popped out on his forehead or that smile on his face that isn’t really a smile at all, just skin stretching. I hadn’t seen the lava.

  Through all these months of meeting Gabriel the way I did and liking him and loving him and not loving him and disliking him and even hating him a little, I had no reason to truly fear him, even when he was holding a gun to my head. And that was because I had never seen the lava. Not until today.

  We showed up at Ed Hart’s house at about 1:00 P.M. It’s a small house. No bigger than mine. I asked Gabriel if he was sure it was the right house because it didn’t look like a place where a rich Hollywood guy would live, especially not someone who was friends with people like David Soul.

  Gabriel said, “He is rich. He’s just not showy.”

  Gabriel said he knew Ed Hart well when he was little. As it turns out, Gabriel’s real dad is a hotshot entertainment lawyer who used to take him to movie and TV sets a lot. He stopped doing that a long time ago, when he left Gabriel’s mom for a dancer on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and never saw the family again. Gabriel hates him, of course, and that’s why he never spoke about him to me before. But back when he was in elementary school, Gabriel used to worship his dad, and he and Ed were pals. He met him on the set of some cop show, and while his dad yapped away with his TV producer client, Ed showed Gabriel prop guns, fake handcuffs, even a phony bomb. They got together a few times after that, and Ed told him that when he was old enough, Gabriel could apprentice for him. Become a property master himself.

  “He’ll be glad to see me,” Gabriel said. “He was like a second father.” But when he answered the door, Ed didn’t seem to have any idea who we were.

  Ed Hart was balding and kind of short. He was wearing baggy, Wrangler-type jeans and a green Lacoste sports shirt that stretched tight across his belly. His eyes were wide and bright and his cheeks were very red, as though he’d once gotten so embarrassed that his face froze like that. He had a sweet, confused smile that reminded me a little of Jenny. Even though Ed was old enough to be a dad or maybe even a grandfather, there was something almost babyish about him—something that made it hard to look him in the eye for very long. “Can I help you kids with anything?” he said.

  I will never understand why he opened the door all the way.

  June 15, 1976

  4:00 A.M.

  From the Inland Empire Eagle

  WEST COVINA, June 14—Police are investigating the apparent murder of property master Edward Royland Hart, 61, after his body was found this morning in his home at 655 Mercer Lane, bound at the wrists and feet and riddled with more than a dozen bullet wounds.

  The body was discovered by Mr. Hart’s housekeeper, Margaret Ingram, who immediately called police. “This is tragic,” Mrs. Ingram said. “Mr. Hart was such a nice man. He had no enemies. I never even heard him raise his voice to anyone.”

  Though Mr. Hart’s wallet and watch had been taken, along with assorted movie and TV memorabilia, police sources say that the crime appeared to be unusually violent for a simple robbery. “There seemed to be an element of overkill,” said Lieutenant Barrett Grange of the L.A.P.D. County Sheriff’s Department, whose detectives are assisting West Covina police. “Even if the assailant was a complete stranger, the violence visited on Mr. Hart was unusually excessive for a simple robbery.” Mr. Hart was shot in both legs, the groin, abdomen, and face, all apparently while bound and gagged.

  Mr. Hart was divorced, with no children. Said Lieutenant Grange, “Anyone with any knowledge as to what person or persons may have committed this crime is encouraged to contact the law enforcement team at the tipline, listed below.”

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  Newspapers are strange. They tell you about things after they happen, but when you read them, you feel as though they’re happening right in front of you. This article is a good example. Ed Hart will never be alive again, and yet when you read that article you want to help. You want to save him. Don’t you? I want to save him.

  I wanted to save him when it was happening but I was too scared. I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak and I hated myself for that. As we drove away from his house, I wished with all my heart that I’d been brave enough to stop Gabriel. To change things. But now I’m not sure. Now, I’m thinking that maybe it was meant to be. That Gabriel and I were steered by the Hand of Fate down that quiet street and up Ed Hart’s driveway and into his house to give him exactly what he deserved. Does that sound crazy? Does it sound like I’ve been reading the Bible too much?

  I was supposed to throw this newspaper out, but I ripped out that clipping when Gabriel wasn’t looking. I stole a tube of glue from Ed Hart’s house and that’s what I used to stick it to the page. When you are old enough, I want you to read the article, but I want you first to read what I am about to write here, so you know and understand the whole story.

  After it was done, Gabriel wanted me to help him take Ed Hart into the backyard. He’d found a shovel in his garage, and his idea was to bury him there. When I said I couldn’t do that, Gabriel had the idea of pouring gasoline on him and burning him. But then he worried about the fire spreading and hurting innocent people, and so he came up with putting Ed into his own car. We would wrap Ed in one of his own sheets and put him in the trunk of his car. And then we would drive it to a wrecking yard and make sure the car got crushed, with Ed Hart in it. Gabriel had seen that in a movie once, he said. It would be easy.

  Gabriel said, “Don’t you see? He’ll be gone. No one will find him. We won’t have to think of him ever again.”

  I thought it was a terrible idea. I doubted we would be able to carry Ed together. And even if we could, we didn’t know the area. How were we supposed to find a wrecking yard? Look it up in the Yellow Pages? Ask the neighbors? I wanted to say all that, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t talk.

  I couldn’t even stand. I was on the floor of Ed Hart’s house, curled up into a ball with the stiff shag rug pressing into the side of my face, that copper and smoke smell all around me again, seeping into my skin just the way it had with Papa Pete. Gabriel was standing over me, pleading with me to stand up, all the while talking about throwing Ed into the back of a car like he’d seen in some stupid Charles Bronson movie and I wanted to shut the door on all of it, on him, on this nightmare I seemed to have found my way into.

  Finally, I was able to get one word out. I pointed to Ed on the floor, tied up with pairs of his own socks, and I said it. “Why?”

  Gabriel’s face changed into something I’d never seen before. It was as though he was a jar and sadness was water, and someone kept filling and filling him until it spilled over the edges. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t say the words.”

  It turns out Ed Hart wasn’t a second father to Gabriel. He wasn’t a mentor or a teacher or even a human being to him. Ed did things to Gabriel when he was little that he still can’t talk about for the shame of those things, not even to me. “Especially to you, April,” was exactly what he said.

  Gabriel figured Ed would remember those things he’d done to
him and feel guilty enough to give us a bunch of money and some names of people in Hollywood. But when Gabriel saw Ed’s face—the blankness and confusion—that small, weird hope of his turned to something else. Something he couldn’t control.

  Gabriel didn’t tell me any of that until we were sitting at a diner off the 10, forty miles away. He bought me a slice of lemon meringue pie and a strawberry milkshake with money from Ed’s wallet, and he explained it all to me in a voice so quiet, I had to strain to hear him.

  Listening, I understood why he’d wanted to burn Ed’s body, to bury it in the ground, to mash it to a pulp. It wasn’t enough to kill him. He wanted to make Ed Hart into something that had never happened.

  It scares me, how well I understand Gabriel. How perfectly I can read his thoughts. It makes me think he may be right when he says that we were meant to be together, and that we always have been, from the dawn of the world and through many lifetimes up until now. There’s no controlling that, is there? Is there a way to stop something that’s meant to be, even if it’s something you don’t want?

  There’s something else I need to tell you, Aurora Grace. I am the one who tied up Ed Hart. I got the socks out of the drawer in his bedroom. They were thin, stretchy knee socks, long enough that I was able to do the knots Papa Pete taught me from his days in the navy during the Korean War. I made the knots tight and perfect, leaving him no chance of escape. Yes, Gabriel told me to do it. Yes, he had a gun aimed at Ed and me both, and yes, I do believe that Jenny’s life still depends on my obeying Gabriel at all costs. But I could have tied looser knots.

  When we were in the diner, after Gabriel finished telling me why he killed Ed Hart, he pulled something out of the duffel bag he’d filled with all the things he’d taken from the house before we left. It was a coffee mug, with a picture of Starsky and Hutch on it. “For you,” he said.

  A better girl might have thrown the mug in his face. A better girl might have said that she could never accept a gift that had belonged to a murdered man, even if that man had done horrible things to a child. Even if that man deserved to die. But I took the mug, Aurora Grace. I took it, and I thanked him and told him I will keep it with me, always.