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.

At this point, there had to be at least a few intrepid reporters thrown into the mix, who had learned Mom was staying at Robin’s. She imagined them camped at the foot of her driveway, phones poised, waiting for shooting survivor Renee Bloom to go out for a breath of fresh air. Maybe the cops would scare them off.

Robin’s screen beeped—an incoming email to her work address, the sender (somebody from the National Enquirer) and subject (Quentin Garrison) flashing briefly. This had happened so many times today already, she was starting to think she was being overly optimistic in her belief that there were just a few reporters outside her house rather than dozens. Poor Mom.