Baus said, “I’m a Mets guy.”
Morasco ignored him. “So just to be clear,” he said, “there isn’t anything unusual that you can think of that happened in the past forty-eight hours—”
“Well, there was the column.”
“Yes, right,” he said. “I’m thinking more about anything that might have happened with your parents.”
“No.”
“You’re sure,” Baus said. “Absolutely positive.”
Morasco scribbled something in his notebook.
The thought crept up on her. The phone call... “Wait.”
Morasco looked up from his pad.
“This is probably nothing,” she said.
“Let us be the judge,” said Baus.
“I got a phone call at work from a podcast producer. A guy from California named Quentin.”
“Quentin Garrison,” Morasco said.
“Yes. How did you—”
“Was he trying to get hold of your father as an expert?”
Robin started to answer, then stopped. “Yeah,” she said, her brain creating the lie and her mouth forming the words before she even knew she was saying them. “For some true crime podcast. About some murders in the ’70s.”
Morasco nodded.
“We knew about that,” Baus said. “We talked to that guy. He already told us that.”
“He did?” There was a humming in Robin’s ears, in her brain. She wanted to ask them if Quentin Garrison had said anything about April Cooper or the Inland Empire Killers, but she couldn’t make herself say the name.Ask your mother about April Cooper, the voices in her head told her. Quentin Garrison’s voice and then her own.Ask Mom about her. Don’t say anything to the cops until you talk to Mom.
If you can ever talk to Mom...
“Okay,” Baus said. “I think we’ve covered the podcast guy.”
Robin exhaled. “So, is that it?”
“Nope,” Baus said. “Just one more question.”
Robin sighed. Always one more question.
“When and why did your mother purchase the firearm?”
Robin stared at Morasco, then at Baus, those beady glass eyes watching her expectantly. “My mother,” she said slowly. “My mother doesn’t own a gun.”
“Yes, she does. Smith & Wesson M&P 45 compact.”
“Ehrlich,” Morasco said.
Baus grinned. “He won’t call me Boss. Everybody else does, but not this guy. Nobody’s your boss, huh, Nick?”
“My mother hates guns. My husband knows that.” Her gaze darted around the kitchen. Where was Eric? Why would he sneak out when they told him he could stay? A heat rose from the pit of Robin’s stomach and bloomed in her cheeks. She was red-faced, the back of her neck breaking out in a sweat. “She... she’d never buy a gun. She wouldn’t even know how to shoot one.”
