Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  “Did he say anything to you on the phone that sounded like an apology?”

  “No. But he texted me later.”

  “And when was that?”

  Robin checked her phone “Looks like nine thirty P.M.”

  “That same night.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have a screenshot of the text.”

  “Right.”

  Morasco took a breath. “All right, Ms. Diamond. Is there anything else you remember about that call? Anything that struck you as unusual?”

  Robin started to say no, then stopped herself. “Actually, yes,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  “I heard noises when he was talking. Children playing. It sounded like he was in a park.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s helpful.” Though she wasn’t sure whether he meant it or not. There were hundreds of parks in the tristate area. And he’d spoken to her from one of them more than twenty-four hours ago. God only knows where he’d been when he’d texted her.

  Robin said, “Why would you confess to a murder and just disappear?”

  “Why is for psychiatrists,” Morasco said. “What I’m interested in is how, when, and where.”

  MORASCO AND ROBIN waited until Dr. Wu had examined Renee, declaring her to be in excellent health and ready to be released the following day barring setbacks. And even then, Robin was nervous.

  “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” Renee said. And then she noticed Morasco, lingering near the doorway. “What now?” she said, her face going pale.

  Robin watched her. What’s wrong? What are you thinking?

  “Mom,” Robin said. “Quentin Garrison confessed to shooting you and Dad.”

  Slowly, her color came back. “He did?”

  “Do you remember anything about that night?”

  “No . . .” Renee’s eyes went to the detective. “Why don’t you ask Quentin Garrison about it? He’d probably have a better memory of it than me.”

  “He’s not available, ma’am.”

  “Not available?”

  Robin said, “They haven’t found him yet.”

  Renee sat up in bed, her eyes blazing. She stared at Morasco. “How could you lose a confessed murderer?”

  “Mom, please calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. There’s a man who tried to kill me, and no one knows where he is.”

  “We have you under constant surveillance, ma’am. We’re doing everything we can to ensure your safety.”

  “Except catching a damn murderer.”

  “Mom.”

  “I need to rest, Robbie. I need you both to leave.”

  “Do you remember anything from that night, ma’am? Any tiny snippet, any image . . . anything at all . . .”

  Renee closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, her thin body expanding and settling with it. Robin thought she might tell them to leave again, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “We had a fight,” she said quietly. “Your father and me. That’s all I remember. The last image I have in my mind of him is full of anger. It isn’t fair . . .”

  “Do you remember, ma’am,” Morasco said, “what the fight was about?”

  Robin watched her, the rising and falling of her chest, her neck and arms frail beneath the hospital gown.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  Robin’s eyes widened.

  “It was that podcaster, Quentin Garrison,” she said. “That’s what we were arguing about. He’d spoken to him. He thought we should speak to him. I didn’t.”

  Robin looked at Morasco.

  “We,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just noticed that you said ‘we.’ Not he. Your husband was a forensic psychiatrist and this was a true crime podcast—”

  “Mr. Garrison was delusional, apparently,” she said quietly. “He saw me online. He thought I looked like someone I’m not. He’d had a tragedy in his family and I felt sorry for him. But I was leery about meeting him face-to-face. He sounded . . . unbalanced.”

  “Mom?” Robin said. “You’re just remembering this now?”

  She stared up at the ceiling. “Yes.”

  “But you still don’t remember the actual shooting.”

  “No,” she said. “Can you please leave, Detective Morasco? Can you find that poor, delusional young man and bring him to justice so I can take a nap without getting murdered in my sleep?”

  “Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Morasco said. He nodded at Robin and slipped out the door.

  After he was gone, Renee took the pitcher of water from her bedside, poured herself a plastic cupful and drank until it was empty. Then poured herself another and did the same. “I’m sorry for that young man. I’m sorry about what happened to his family,” she said. “But that doesn’t give him license to try and destroy ours.”

  “Did you know her, Mom?” Robin said. “Did you know April Cooper?”

  “Of course not, Robin.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Your father felt very sorry for that young man,” she said, a tear leaking down her cheek. “I did too, but I didn’t think . . . It felt like your father wasn’t taking my safety into consideration . . .”

  “Mrs. Bloom? Are we okay?” It was that young, freckled nurse, who apparently had no knowledge of second person singular.

  She wiped her face. Smiled. “I’m . . . fine. Just tired.” Renee turned to Robin. “I’m going to take a little nap, honey. Is that okay with you?”

  “Of course, Mom.”

  As Robin left the room, she heard the squeak of the nurse’s shoes on the slick hospital floor. “Oh, we do look like we could use some rest,” the nurse was saying. “Let’s take our vitals.”

  As Robin took the elevator down to the first floor where the cafeteria was located, she thought about something her mother had once told her, when she was going through some junior high school drama. At your age, you don’t even know who you are yet. That’s what growing up is—getting closer and closer to becoming yourself.

  On her way into the parking lot, Robin nearly bumped into Detective Morasco. He nodded at her.

  “I got kicked out too,” she said.

  “I don’t blame your mother,” he said. “If I were her, I’d be pissed off too that this guy is on the loose.”

  “Hopefully, he won’t be for long.”

  “Yep . . . Something you might want to tell your mother, though. The shooting wasn’t about her, or who Quentin Garrison might have thought she knew.”

  She looked at him. “It wasn’t?”

  “In his confession, he says he went to your parents’ house to interview your dad, as an expert. He says they got into an argument, and things got out of hand. For what it’s worth, it sounds like he never intended to cause them any harm, but his anger issues got the best of him.”

  She exhaled. “Doesn’t do us much good at this point.”

  “True,” he said. “But it might help your mother feel less guilty over it all. He apologizes to your family directly. You both can come by the station and listen, any time you want.”

  Robin winced. “I don’t know that I’ll be ready until he gets captured,” she said. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready to listen to him.”

  “I hear you,” said Detective Morasco. “And I’d like to be able to say you’ll get over this. But I lost my dad more than twenty years ago, under a lot less violent circumstances.”

  “We just have to move forward,” Robin said. “Right?”

  “Hang on tight to your mom, Ms. Diamond. She fought hard to stay with you.” He gave her a quick wave and headed for his car, and Robin got into hers, a song running through her head. “Hang on, to what we got . . .” Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. A song her mother used to sing with CoCo, when all of them were young.

  Twenty-Nine

  June 19, 1976

  2:00 A.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  I’m a blonde again. I�
�m going to tell you about that first, because it’s the easiest thing to talk about. Prom night, Gabriel and I drove for miles and miles. We picked up some hair dye from a Savon all the way in Ventura. At dawn, on a long road that was all cactus and sagebrush, we got our tank filled at a gas station with old-fashioned-looking pumps, by an attendant who didn’t speak any English but knew enough to give Gabriel the bathroom key. We went in there together and colored our hair. I had chosen Diamond Blond—a color as light and shiny as the hair of a Barbie doll. It doesn’t look quite like that on me, though. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to leave it in, the bleach kind of blended with my old copper color and came out strawberry blond. It isn’t bad, though. Gabriel dyed his hair black. He looks kind of like a tall Eddie Munster now, but I wouldn’t tell him that. He probably wouldn’t think it was funny and besides, I’m not talking to him. (You’ll know why when I tell you about the next thing.)

  Not far from the gas station, we found a new motel. It’s called the Bristol Arms. Don’t let the fancy name fool you. It’s a step down from the Drop Inn. Our room doesn’t have a TV, for one thing. There are no cockroaches in the bathroom, but guess what? The bathroom is down the hall. The last time I went, I had to wait twenty minutes for some skank to finish doing whatever it was she was doing in there. (I think she was probably shooting up.) She wore hot pants and cork sole platforms and a bandanna tied across her boobs. When she finally left the bathroom and saw me waiting there, she got right up in my face. “What are you looking at, you little bitch?” which was kind of funny, since she’s the same size as me. She stank of cigarettes and cheap perfume. Spit flew out of her mouth when she talked and it reminded me of bullets spraying out of a machine gun.

  There are times when I think about the girl I was before this whole thing with Gabriel happened. That girl would have backed away from that skank without saying a word. She may have even apologized for staring or said something really lame like, “Please don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again.” She would have run.

  But not me. Not the girl I am now. I grabbed that skank by her skinny neck and told her in a low, calm voice that if she ever takes that long in the bathroom again, I’ll cut her, forehead to belly button. She walked away fast.

  Anyway, Gabriel is asleep now, so I can tell you about the next thing, which is a lot harder to talk about than the color of my hair.

  Back at Pullman Park, Gabriel told me to take all the things out of our car. He walked up to Brian Griggs’s powder blue Honda Accord, and tapped on the window. I couldn’t hear what he said to Brian and Carrie and I couldn’t see if he showed them the gun. But for whatever reason, they let him get in back. And then, they drove away.

  They never saw me. I hid in the shadows and listened to the music playing on the car radios. I leaned the duffel bag full of Ed Hart’s things up against a tree and put my head on it like a pillow and inhaled the warm air that smelled like beer, pretending I belonged there.

  I didn’t think Gabriel would be that long. I figured he’d probably make Brian drive somewhere secluded and then show him and Carrie the gun, make them get out of the car and walk home. But ten minutes passed, then twenty, then forty. Then an hour. I closed my eyes, just as a way to relax. But I wound up falling asleep instead. I don’t know how long I slept. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this, other than maybe I’m stalling.

  When I woke up, the parking lot was empty, everything glowing from the rising sun. Gabriel was standing over me, the powder blue Honda Accord parked in one of the spaces. He looked pale. His hair was wet. And when I followed him to the car, I noticed a red drizzle on the back of his jeans, his white sneakers. “Did you send them home?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Brian and Carrie. Did you kick them out of the car and send them home?”

  Still no answer.

  “Where are Brian and Carrie?”

  I felt it before I saw it happen. Like a door slamming into my face. The shock of it was worse than the hurt, but I can feel the pain of it now, my swollen, tender jaw, the metal taste in my mouth. At least I didn’t lose any of my teeth.

  After it happened, Gabriel kept saying he was sorry, over and over and over. He said he was just nervous and upset and he didn’t mean to hurt me. “I’d never hurt you, you have to believe me.”

  I just stared at him. He wasn’t even making sense. How could I believe he’d never hurt me when hurting me was exactly what he’d just done? The worst part, though, was this: Gabriel would never have hurt me like that unless he’d completely lost control. And what had made him lose control? My asking him about Brian and Carrie.

  I don’t want to think about it. Instead, I will tell you what I said to Gabriel. The last thing I said to him, through all this driving and coloring our hair and finding and checking into the Bristol Arms. What I said was this: “I want to see Jenny.”

  He said it was dangerous, driving back to where he’d left her. That if we did that and the police caught us, they’d separate me from Jenny forever. He promised, though, that he’d let me talk to her again.

  And he kept his promise. Once we got checked in to this fleabag, we went to the pay phone outside. Gabriel dropped a bunch of coins in there and dialed a number that I secretly wrote down. I heard him talking to someone, telling them to put Jenny on. Just like before, she didn’t speak to me. But I heard her breathing again and I told her I love her and that I’m going to come for her soon and when I did, we’d be together forever. I would never let her out of my sight again.

  That was enough. It had to be.

  Oh, Aurora Grace, I don’t want to get into bed. I don’t want to go to sleep again, until life is normal and there’s nothing to be afraid of and nobody gets hurt for asking simple questions. Until no one gets hurt at all.

  Love,

  Future Mom

  4:00 A.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  It turns out the girl from down the hall isn’t a skank at all. She’s a hippie or something like that, I guess. But she’s super nice. Her name is Elizabeth.

  Just after I finished that last letter to you, she knocked on our door and told me she noticed how swollen my jaw was. She’d brought an ice bag and a bottle of lime-flavored vodka, and we sat on the bed, drinking and talking while Gabriel snored on the floor. She asked me if Gabriel was my brother or my boyfriend, and I sat there saying nothing for quite a while. Thinking. Finally, I said, “He’s kind of both. And neither.”

  Luckily, she didn’t ask me any more about my life than that, because I didn’t want to lie to her and at the same time, I didn’t want her to run away. We talked about so many things. Our hopes and dreams. Where we see ourselves in ten years. We talked about witchcraft too, because Elizabeth is into witchcraft. She says she thinks our meeting each other was an act of magick because we look so much alike—same size, same color hair. Same smile, even. It turns out that for years, she’s been wishing for a sister.

  Elizabeth keeps a deck of tarot cards in her purse, and she read mine. I got Death, which Elizabeth says is not a bad card at all. In the Aquarian tarot deck, she said, the Death card means rebirth. A new beginning.

  Elizabeth is going to Hollywood. She doesn’t want to be an actress, though. She wants to be one of those people who take still photos on movie sets. After about an hour of talking, we went to her room, and she let me try on some of her clothes and we did a photo shoot. I brought over some of Ed Hart’s props with me—a whip, a fake gun, some phony-looking handcuffs. I didn’t tell her where I’d gotten them, and she didn’t ask. She took some Polaroids of me, and then I took a great one of her—posing with the fake gun like Sergeant Pepper Anderson from Police Woman. (She insisted on making the “I love you” with the other hand, though, because like I told you, she’s a hippie.)

  Elizabeth says she grew up in a commune in the desert. They raised llamas and chickens there. They made all their own clothes, and if anyone there used violence on each other, they got shut in the fruit cellar o
vernight. Elizabeth left, she says, because it was boring. No one to talk to except her brothers—she was the only girl—and she wasn’t allowed to smoke cigarettes or wear makeup and she had to read the Bible from cover to cover. I understand what Elizabeth was saying, but except for all those boys, it sounds like a perfect life to me. The Gideon compound, the commune is called. Just like the name on the cover of that motel Bible I read, back in West Covina, before I’d ever killed a man. It has to be some kind of sign.

  Thirty

  Robin

  Just three days earlier, Santa Rosa High School’s golden couple had been crowned king and queen of the prom. Now, the lifeless bodies of Carrie Masters and Brian Griggs lay handcuffed together in a vacant lot, both shot in the back of the head execution style. In one of life’s cruelest ironies, the bleak, overgrown plot of land was just eight miles away from the school where Brian and Carrie had fallen in love, most likely oblivious to a quiet, sullen freshman by the name of April Cooper.

  Had the hair-trigger temper of April’s lover Gabriel Allen LeRoy gotten the best of him yet again? Or had it been April herself who had done the brutal deed? Experts speculate that April Cooper trained the gun on the terrified teens as LeRoy bound them, using the handcuffs they’d stolen from Officer Neil Nelligan. And when she caught LeRoy ogling beautiful Carrie, the lethal wallflower flew into a jealous rage, murdering the angel-faced cheerleader and her adoring boyfriend in quick succession as her lover watched, aroused.

  ROBIN SHOOK HER head at the article on her screen—the cheesiest and most offensive one yet, from a 1979 issue of a True Detective knockoff called Crime Stoppers that some murder nerd had posted on Reddit. It wasn’t the best way to use her downtime on her first day back at work, but Robin couldn’t control it, the urge to search for information on the couple that had driven Quentin Garrison to kill her father.

  He was all over the news now, Quentin—the “true-crime-podcaster-turned-true-crime-subject” angle impossible to resist. Leaving Grand Central Station on her way to work, Robin had seen Quentin’s bespectacled young face on the cover of both the Daily News and the Post. On one of them, the headline had read, “SERIAL” KILLER. The other had included a still from that cheesy old TV movie her mother had refused to let her watch—actress April and actor Gabriel aiming pistols at the camera—accompanied by a caption block titled, Killer Quentin’s Final Podcast. Lower on the front page had been a picture of “the victim.” Dad. No picture of Robin’s mother, thankfully. Though she guessed that was only a matter of time. Mom was at her house, where she’d agreed to spend “one night only, for your sake” the previous afternoon after her early release from the hospital. There was a police detail outside their place, a cadre of armed guards watching her nervous mother—a necessary evil.