There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “How’s your mom?” Eric said finally. His voice sounded strange. Hollow.

“Um. Fine? They’re probably going to release her soon.”

“That’s great,” he said.

“What’s going on with you?” she said. “Shawn didn’t fire you, did he?”

“No.”

“So . . .”

“Listen, Robin. I got a call from Detective Morasco. He’d been trying to call you, but I guess your mailbox is full.”

“And?”

“Quentin Garrison confessed.”

“What?”

“He said he shot both your parents during a dispute at their house. It’s all on tape. Morasco says he’s going to let you listen to it. And he wants to talk to your mom again.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Well . . . is he in custody? Has he been officially charged? Are there going to be a shitload of reporters at my mom’s house when I go to get her clothes?”

“Well, see, Robin, this is the thing.”

“Yeah?”

“They have his confession on tape because he emailed the audio files to the cops,” he said. “But Garrison’s not at the station. He isn’t at his hotel. Nobody knows where the hell he is.”

Twenty-Eight

Robin

“WHEN DID YOU talk to him?” Morasco said.

Robin pulled out her phone, checked her recent calls. Found the one with the 213 area code and read out the time. “9:13 A.M.,” she said. They were sitting in the waiting area on her mother’s floor, Morasco having met her here about twenty minutes after she’d spoken to Eric. He’d agreed to be the one to break the news to Renee about Quentin Garrison and question her again, free of Baus, plus he’d agreed to do it with Robin present. Morasco’s priority was finding Quentin Garrison, while Robin’s was making sure her mother wasn’t traumatized into a relapse—and those two priorities didn’t need to be at cross-purposes.

Plus, from what Robin could gather, she had been the last person to have any contact with Garrison.

“Why did you call Quentin Garrison?” Morasco said. It was for the benefit of his voice recorder. She’d told him already.

“I wanted to know why the hell my father had his phone number and his name, and his mother’s name written down,” she said.

“And what did he say?”

“He said he couldn’t talk. Which really made me angry. He said he’d meet me in an hour, anywhere I wanted.”

“Where were you going to meet?”

“The cafeteria at St. Catherine’s. Downstairs from my mom’s room.”

“And he agreed to that location.”

“Yes,” she said. “But he sounded weird. Nervous. And you know . . . he never showed up.”

“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.”