Robin didn’t know a lot about this investigation. When it came to discussing details with her, the cops all seemed squeamish about it, even Morasco. The investigation is still active, they would say, which may indeed have been part of the reason. But Robin still sensed that there was something else going on. A great big elephant in the room that threatened to crush her memories to a pulp, to subvert and destroy everything she thought she’d understood about her family. And even a bunch of cops didn’t seem to want to be part of that just yet. They had time, after all. Mom wasn’t going anywhere.

Mom.

One of the doctors in the ICU had told her. She wasn’t sure which one. Everything was such a blur these days, lack of sleep and grief and wine and pills muddying the line between dreaming and waking, between nightmares and reality to the point of where she felt like she had to grab hold of events and stare at them, just to make sure they were real. But this doctor, whichever one, had told her that Dad had been shot through the lung, shoulder, leg, and abdomen, while Mom had been shot just once, in the abdomen. Just once. Robin hadn’t thought much about it then. She’d figured the shooter, the murderer, had gotten scared and run. But that was before she learned that the gun had been registered to her mother. And it was before she’d learned that no one had broken into the house. It was also before she’d found Quentin Garrison’s phone number, written in her father’s handwriting, along with those other two names . . .

She grabbed her laptop from her nightstand. Googled Kate Sharkey. Then Kathryn Sharkey. Then Kathleen. She found a lot of them. She added Quentin Garrison’s name and California and that’s when she found the obituary: Kathleen Sharkey Garrison, dead at the age of fifty-seven at the Mountain View Sober Living Facility in San Bernardino, California. Her gaze settled on her survivors: Kate’s father, Reginald, and her son, Quentin.

She recalled the one conversation she’d had with Quentin Garrison. The podcast title, Closure. How he’d explained it: I have a relative who was one of their victims, hence the title. She googled Inland Empire Killers + Names of Victims + Sharkey. And then she stared at the screen. “My God,” she whispered. “The four-year-old girl.”

Had Quentin Garrison and Dad discussed Mom’s connection with the Cooper/LeRoy murders? Had he told him what had happened to his mother’s little sister? Had he confronted Mom with that information and had she . . . No. She wouldn’t.

Still, she couldn’t tell the police about this. Not until she knew more.

Robin grabbed her phone from the charger and tapped in the number. The 213 area code.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line was quiet.

“Quentin.”

“Yes?”