“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
2:00A.M.
Dear Aurora Grace,
I’m a blonde again. I’m going to tell you about that first, because it’s the easiest thing to talk about. Prom night, Gabriel and I drove for miles and miles. We picked up some hair dye from a Savon all the way in Ventura. At dawn, on a long road that was all cactus and sagebrush, we got our tank filled at a gas station with old-fashioned-looking pumps, by an attendant who didn’t speak any English but knew enough to give Gabriel the bathroom key. We went in there together and colored our hair. I had chosen Diamond Blond—a color as light and shiny as the hair of a Barbie doll. It doesn’t look quite like that on me, though. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to leave it in, the bleach kind of blended with my old copper color and came out strawberry blond. It isn’t bad, though. Gabriel dyed his hair black. He looks kind of like a tall Eddie Munster now, but I wouldn’t tell him that. He probably wouldn’t think it was funny and besides, I’m not talking to him. (You’ll know why when I tell you about the next thing.)
Not far from the gas station, we found a new motel. It’s called the Bristol Arms. Don’t let the fancy name fool you. It’s a step down from the Drop Inn. Our room doesn’t have a TV, for one thing. There are no cockroaches in the bathroom, but guess what? The bathroom is down the hall. The last time I went, I had to wait twenty minutes for some skank to finish doing whatever it was she was doing in there. (I think she was probably shooting up.) She wore hot pants and cork sole platforms and a bandanna tied across her boobs. When she finally left the bathroom and saw me waiting there, she got right up in my face. “What are you looking at, you little bitch?” which was kind of funny, since she’s the same size as me. She stank of cigarettes and cheap perfume. Spit flew out of her mouth when she talked and it reminded me of bullets spraying out of a machine gun.
There are times when I think about the girl I was before this whole thing with Gabriel happened. That girl would have backed away from that skank without saying a word. She may have even apologized for staring or said something really lame like, “Please don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again.” She would have run.
But not me. Not the girl I am now. I grabbed that skank by her skinny neck and told her in a low, calm voice that if she ever takes that long in the bathroom again, I’ll cut her, forehead to belly button. She walked away fast.
Anyway, Gabriel is asleep now, so I can tell you about the next thing, which is a lot harder to talk about than the color of my hair.
Back at Pullman Park, Gabriel told me to take all the things out of our car. He walked up to Brian Griggs’s powder blue Honda Accord, and tapped on the window. I couldn’thear what he said to Brian and Carrie and I couldn’t see if he showed them the gun. But for whatever reason, they let him get in back. And then, they drove away.
They never saw me. I hid in the shadows and listened to the music playing on the car radios. I leaned the duffel bag full of Ed Hart’s things up against a tree and put my head on it like a pillow and inhaled the warm air that smelled like beer, pretending I belonged there.
I didn’t think Gabriel would be that long. I figured he’d probably make Brian drive somewhere secluded and then show him and Carrie the gun, make them get out of the car and walk home. But ten minutes passed, then twenty, then forty. Then an hour. I closed my eyes, just as a way to relax. But I wound up falling asleep instead. I don’t know how long I slept. I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this, other than maybe I’m stalling.
When I woke up, the parking lot was empty, everything glowing from the rising sun. Gabriel was standing over me, the powder blue Honda Accord parked in one of the spaces. He looked pale. His hair was wet. And when I followed him to the car, I noticed a red drizzle on the back of his jeans, his white sneakers. “Did you send them home?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Brian and Carrie. Did you kick them out of the car and send them home?”
Still no answer.
“Where are Brian and Carrie?”
I felt it before I saw it happen. Like a door slamming into my face. The shock of it was worse than the hurt, but I can feel the pain of it now, my swollen, tender jaw, the metal taste in my mouth. At least I didn’t lose any of my teeth.
After it happened, Gabriel kept saying he was sorry, over and over and over. He said he was just nervous and upset and he didn’t mean to hurt me. “I’d never hurt you, you have to believe me.”
I just stared at him. He wasn’t even making sense. How could I believe he’d never hurt me when hurting me was exactly what he’d just done? The worst part, though, was this: Gabriel would never have hurt me like that unless he’d completely lost control. And what had made him lose control? My asking him about Brian and Carrie.
I don’t want to think about it. Instead, I will tell you what I said to Gabriel. The last thing I said to him, through all this driving and coloring our hair and finding and checking into the Bristol Arms. What I said was this: “I want to see Jenny.”
