“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,