Robin said, “It’s no trouble.”
Renee looked at her. “Yes, it is.” She said it quietly and firmly, as though she were scolding a child. Then her face relaxed. “Honestly, honey. I’m fine. Nikki is taking me to the doctor this afternoon, and I’m sure I’ll pass my checkup with flying colors.”
“What about the reporters?” Eric said. “They’ll be back, as soon as they find out you’re home. At the very least, we can call the cops, run interference, say ‘no comment.’”
“I can do all those things,” Renee said.
Nicola smiled. “And so can I.”
“Okay, I guess.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Waved to Nicola. “Have a nice day.”
He kissed Robin next—gently, carefully. Then he took both her hands in his own, touched his forehead to hers. “It’ll be okay,” he whispered, less a statement than a plea.
“What will?”
“Everything.”
After Eric left, Robin moved to the kitchen table, bringing the platter of eggs and bacon that Mom and Nicola had made, along with some paper plates and plastic cutlery for easy cleanup. ThePostwas still open to the article Eric had been reading—a one-pager headlinedPODCAST KILLER’S LAST WORDS. There was a largephotograph of a letter, typed up and printed out, the words blurred except for Quentin Garrison’s signature, and the closing:Good-bye. Someone had leaked his suicide note. Morasco could not have been happy about that.
At least the article was a short one—just four inches, and print outlets tended to hang on to stories a little longer than online ones. Last night, #PodcastKiller was no longer trending on Twitter. The shootings were fading from the news cycle, Robin thought. Or at least hoped.
Interesting that Eric hadn’t shown the article to her, though. Or even mentioned it... Then again, it took Eric a long time to mention things, and even then he sometimes had to be blackmailed into it...
She shooed the thought away. She’d come back to it later, she knew. But right now, she had to focus on Garrison. The note that had been found next to his body—a “mini-confession,” as the papers put it, with a signature to make it binding. An audio file emailed to the cops, plus the note, which had been pinned to the jacket of his ruined body. Even for the most thorough of journalists, Quentin’s confession felt a bit excessive.
Robin sat down and started to read, as Mom and Nicola joined her at the table, Nicola carrying a fresh pot of coffee and a bowl of cut-up melon. Mom said, “What are you reading, sweetie?”
Robin showed her the article, and she winced.
“Did Detective Morasco show you this note, Mom?”
“Yes,” she said. “He also played me the recording he made.”
“Did it help you remember anything?”
Renee glanced at Nicola. “No more than I already have,” she said. “I think the detective was hoping the sound of Quentin Garrison’s voice might trigger something. But, honestly, I can’t remember anything from that night now. It’s worse than when I first came out of the coma.”
Robin nodded. It did make sense. The human body was full of defenses.
The article paraphrased what was in the suicide note and began with a direct quote from it:My apologies to friends and family, who have been so good to me, but I’ve done something unforgivable. I can no longer live with myself.
As Robin continued to read, her mom complimented Nikki on the bacon. “How do you get it so crispy without burning it?” she said, as though her husband’s killer’s suicide note weren’t sitting inches away.
Besides apologizing to the Bloom family, and saying he didn’t deserve someone as wonderful as his husband, Quentin had also gone into some detail about the events of that night: How he’d parked his car a block over and walked quietly to the Bloom residence, digital recorder in hand. How he’d surprised Mitchell in the kitchen as he prepared a sandwich, how Renee had heard them arguing and burst in with the gun and how Quentin had gotten it away from her and shot them both. All over an interview request.I wanted to speak to Mitchell Bloom to gain insight into human rage—something that’s long been festering within me, he had written.Ironically, that rage caught fire and transformed me that night, into something I’ve worked my whole life not to be. The presence of the gun made for the perfect storm. May God forgive me.
Mom and Nicola were discussing the best way to make eggs à la française. “Mom,” Robin said. “In Quentin Garrison’s suicide note, he said you brought the gun in the room. Did you?”
“He’s a liar,” Nicola said. But Robin didn’t even glance at her.
Her mother looked pale, her eyes sad. “No, he isn’t,” she said. “I did.”
Robin said, “You said Dad bought the gun.”
“It actually wasn’t Dad,” she said quietly. “It was Nikki.”
Robin looked at her. Nicola put a hand over Mom’s and squeezed. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
“There was an incident. It scared me. I called Nikki, and she advised me to purchase a firearm. She took me to a range so I could practice. Nikki’s a former police officer. She knows these things.”
