Never Look Back Read online

  I make myself smile. At first, my lips won’t stop twitching but after a while it gets easier. I mouth the words to “Hollywood Swinging” and bop my head to the hey, hey, heys.

  Gabriel grins at me. He tells me my smile is sexy. He sings along with the song and then he says maybe we’ll wind up in Hollywood ourselves—a supercouple, like Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors.

  He puts his hand on my knee. The smile stays plastered to my face. “Oh baby,” I tell him, “that would be a dream come true.”

  Once you tell one lie, you wind up lying forever.

  Seven

  Robin

  WHEN IT STARTS, it’s barely perceptible. An unmet gaze. The flushing of his skin at an odd moment. A late-night work call, taken in another room.

  The next phase, though, is harder to ignore. You can feel the rift, the cold whistling through it, that awful unbreachable gap. Or so it seemed to Robin Diamond as she scanned her husband’s Twitter feed while waiting for her boss, Eileen, to read her column, clicking on his “tweets and replies” with her jaw clenched. Eric Diamond, executive producer on a cable TV “news” show called Shawn Labatoir’s Anger Management, always said he had little time for social media. He used it solely to plug his stories, he said. No personal pictures or information.

  But clearly, he made an exception for GinnyMarie, a “lover of the beach,” according to her Twitter bio. Proud Mama to My Furbabies, Yoga Is Life, God Bless the USA. The banter between those two . . . Well, it sparkled, didn’t it? It scintillated. Apparently, Ginny was looking for a funny movie to see and Eric was suggesting the works of Ernst Lubitsch, extolling the virtues of Trouble in Paradise in five separate tweets, less than a minute apart, all this taking place during lunchtime today, when he’d claimed to be in the throes of a breaking story and too busy to meet up. Granted, a Twitter conversation took moments, while lunch with one’s wife was more of a commitment. But was Robin wrong to ask for commitment from a man who seemed so distant lately? Who had worked more late nights in the past two months than in the previous three years? A man who failed to mention in half a dozen tweets about Trouble in Paradise that he had seen that very movie with his wife at the Film Forum in NoHo fifteen years ago, that it was one of his wife’s favorites, and that when they were both grad students at Columbia, she’d taken him, well, dragged him to it, actually, as part of an ongoing campaign to educate this otherwise knowledgeable man on films made before 1990? What’s on your mind? Robin had asked Eric last night when she’d rolled over to find him sitting up in bed, eyes open, staring. Nothing, he had replied, which for all she knew was the truth. Eric the enigma. Unreadable, even as his wife transformed into the type of person who stalked his Twitter feed, who was jealous of a lover of the beach in a red, white, and blue bikini top who called her ferrets furbabies and hashtagged the word blessed.

  Robin’s work extension buzzed. Assuming it was Eileen, she closed Twitter and corralled her thoughts back to her column—about a proposed all-female remake of The Magnificent Seven, which she was in favor of, despite (or more likely because of) all the online hate it was receiving from men.

  Robin cleared her throat. “That was fast,” she said.

  “Ms. Diamond?” The voice was male and young. Reedy. Touch of vocal fry.

  Robin glanced at the caller ID screen and saw an unfamiliar outside line. A 213 area code. Los Angeles. Movie publicist, she thought, readying for the pitch. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of wine . . . “Yes?”

  “Hi. My name is Quentin Garrison. I work for KAMC, an NPR affiliate in the Los Angeles area, but I’m out in New York right now.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m working on a podcast.”

  Robin frowned. “Yes?”

  “I hear noise in the background. Is it hard for you to talk privately where you are?”

  Robin glanced around the room, as though she were seeing where she was for the first time. The Daily Culture offices were set up as an open newsroom—art, copy, and editorial all in the same large space. At the next desk over, Jill the music editor was ordering Thai food in her too-loud voice. David from photo was a few desks away, going over red-carpet art on an enormous screen with Michael the creative director, the two of them complaining about all the rearview poses, the over-the-shoulder. “If I have to look at one more set of ass implants,” Michael was saying.

  “Believe me,” Robin said. “No one is paying attention to this conversation.”

  “Great.” He cleared his throat. “Great, we can talk then . . .”

  Robin googled his name on her Mac: Quentin Garrison, adding NPR and podcasts for good measure. A picture popped up at the top of her screen—a bespectacled, sweet-faced young man—along with a bio from KAMC’s website. She glanced at it. “I think you may have the wrong person,” she said. “Alice Cerulli is our true crime editor.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m working on a podcast called Closure about the Inland Empire Killers. I have a relative who was one of their victims, hence the title.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “I’m trying to get in contact with your mother.”

  Robin blinked. “My mother.”

  “I tried social media, but she doesn’t seem to be on it. I found her last name, Bloom, from your wedding announcement, but your parents’ number is unlisted.”

  “You want to talk to my mother? For a murder podcast?”

  “Actually, I’d love to talk to both of you. Your dad too of course. He’s retired, right?”

  “No, he has a private practice now.”

  “Anyway, the whole conversation can be deep background. I won’t record it if you don’t want me to. If you want to get your truth out but not your identities, I won’t name names or locations. And I have the ability to disguise voices. If you don’t want to participate at all, I respect that. But I’d at least love the opportunity to share with you what I’ve learned.”

  “Mr. Garrison.”

  “Call me Quentin.”

  “Quentin,” Robin said quietly. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  There was a long pause, to the point of Robin thinking maybe the connection had died. “Hello?” she said.

  “You’re being straight with me, right?”

  Robin’s other extension buzzed. Eileen. “Hold on a sec.” She clicked on the second line, told the editorial director she’d be in as soon as she ended her call, then got back on with Garrison. “Listen, I’ve got to go to a meeting.”

  “Ms. Diamond, how much do you know about your mother’s teenage years?”

  “She had me at nineteen.”

  “How about before that?”

  Robin’s extension buzzed again. “I really have to go.”

  “Okay,” he said quickly. “Okay, look. You have my number on your caller ID. Can you call me back when you’re free to talk?”

  “I don’t know. I’m really busy.”

  “You can call late if you want. I’m still on West Coast time.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Can you at least do me one favor?”

  “I have to go, Quentin.”

  “Ask your mother about April Cooper. Ask her if she’s ever heard of her.”

  “I have to go.” Robin slammed down the phone, her cheeks burning. The words had come out louder than expected. She could feel eyes on her, Jill gesturing at her dramatically, the phone still in her hand from the Thai order, mouthing, Are you okay?

  “Publicist,” Robin said, affecting an eye roll. As she stood up and started for Eileen’s office, she could still feel the phone in her hand, his voice in her ear, her pulse in the tips of her fingers. And that tingling, as though there were something horrible taking place just out of her eyeshot and if she turned ever so slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse . . .

  “Shitty publicist,” Michael said.

  Robin forced out a laugh. “Right?” She had to shake this off. She was worked up. Emotional.
It had to be hormones. Or a chemical imbalance. She’d been on meds for a short time as a teen—low-dose Valium to calm her. Ritalin to help her focus. A rarity in her neighborhood back in those days, but not when your dad was a psychiatrist. Maybe she needed a similar combo now, in early middle age. Maybe she should ask her father for the name of a good shrink . . .

  No. What she needed was a decent night’s sleep. Robin had terrible insomnia lately, and it was taking its toll. Obviously.

  Quentin Garrison was mistaken. Robin’s mother was a housewife from Tarry Ridge who baked pies and volunteered at the hospital and had once nursed a baby bird back to life. She’d been married and a mother for nearly as long as she’d been alive. What would she know about the Inland Empire Killers, whoever they were?

  Robin gripped the back of her chair, hoping no one was watching her. She took a steadying breath and headed for Eileen’s office feeling better, but still . . . Still.

  There was one thing she couldn’t shake off. That name. April Cooper. She’d heard it before.

  “WHAT I’M TRYING to say is, I’m worried for your safety,” Eileen said.

  Robin was in her office, holding a cup of French press coffee, Eileen’s “secret stash” as she called it—they both hated the crappy breakroom coffee. “Like the old song says . . .”

  “Stop.”

  “Come on, Eileen.”

  “I mean it, Robin,” said Eileen, who had just finished reading Robin’s column about the Magnificent Seven reboot. “This is a legitimate concern.”

  For someone who walked through the newsroom repeating, “clickbait, clickbait,” like a mating call, Eileen was surprisingly squeamish when it came to actual controversy. Robin was probably the only person here who knew that about her. She’d been working for her since the launch of the site ten years earlier, and before that, they’d gone to Columbia Journalism School together, the two of them roughly the same age, the oldest Daily Culture staffers by far, though that too was something only Robin knew. Eileen Rand was assiduously, emphatically ageless.

  Robin tried, “How about we run the column as is, and I stay off social media for twenty-four hours or ten minutes or however long it takes everybody to be outraged at something else?”

  “It’s feminist propaganda.”

  “It’s a movie column.”

  “Not in my opinion, of course. I’m just trying to imagine what the trolls might say.”

  “We’re pandering to trolls now?”

  “No,” she said. “No, of course not. Let me think here . . .”

  Robin brought the mug to her lips. She swallowed the coffee too quickly, searing her tongue.

  “Maybe we could just soften the lede a little,” Eileen said. “Talk about what a classic the original Magnificent Seven was before launching right in.”

  “Fine.”

  “Then there’s that late reveal, where you announce that you’ve opted to be . . . you know . . .”

  “What?”

  “Child-free.” She actually said it in a whisper.

  Robin rolled her eyes. “Take it out,” she said. “Whatever.” She might have cared enough to put up a fight an hour ago, or at least to call out Eileen for treating the phrase “child-free” as though it were some type of slur. But now she just wanted to get out of this meeting.

  “Okay, you win,” Eileen was saying now. “I’m being too nervous Nellie about this. It is a movie column. Not the SCUM Manifesto.”

  Robin looked at her. “So, no edits? We’re not going to make it into a listicle or a meme?”

  Eileen sighed. “I’ve gotta stop worrying so much,” she said. “And you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “I really hate the song ‘Come on, Eileen.’”

  Robin sang the words softly. “At this moment, you mean everything . . .”

  “Do that again and you’re fired.”

  “You fire me, you’ll be the only one here old enough to remember that song.” Robin took a tentative sip. The coffee was cooler now, but she could hardly taste it. Her tongue was still numb from the burn. She remembered being a kid, her favorite meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup, Mom dropping an ice cube into the soup, So you won’t get hurt. Robin took another sip, that reporter’s voice in her head again. Quentin Garrison. Ask your mother about April Cooper. What was he talking about? Why had he called her?

  Eileen tapped at her keyboard. “Your column is officially live.”

  “Great.”

  “Enthusiasm is not your strong suit today.”

  “Eileen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Inland Empire Killers?”

  “Wow. Non sequitur.”

  “Have you?”

  “Umm . . . Wait . . . Oh, yeah. From the ’70s, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Robin said. “I’m asking you.”

  “I think there was a Lifetime movie about those murders.” She went back to the keyboard.

  “You looking it up?”

  Eileen nodded. “Here we go.” She turned the monitor around and Robin stared at the screen—two picture-perfect young actors in tight jeans and clean T-shirts, pasted-on scowls. A dark-haired boy in a blood-spattered shirt and a blond girl with bee-stung lips and hot pants. Both teens held shotguns, and Robin knew them. She knew those faces . . . “Movie of the Week actually,” Eileen said. “We didn’t have Lifetime in my house. I remember thinking the girl who played April Cooper had pretty hair.”

  Robin stared at the picture, remembering. “April Cooper.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That was the girl killer’s name. The boy was named Gabriel and the actor who played him was not all that cute. I remember thinking she could do way better. Maybe that was the point, I don’t know. Of course, the women in those old TV movies were always hotter than the guys . . .”

  “I . . . I saw that . . . that show.” Though the truth was, she had only seen part of it. The beginning. She’d been seven years old. Maybe eight. Curled up on her living room rug, eating a bowl of chocolate ice cream, the announcer’s voice, low and rumbling and important. “Coming up next, The Inland Empire Killers: ’Til Death Do Us Part.” Her mother was in the kitchen, her father on the couch behind her. The announcer said, “What drove Gabriel LeRoy and April Cooper to murder a dozen people in cold blood?” The way he’d said the names. The way he’d said the word. Murder. It was thrilling. On the screen, the boy and girl, standing next to each other, guns aimed straight in front of them spitting bullets and fire and Robin watching, transfixed. Murder.

  Is this too scary for you?

  No, Daddy. I want to watch.

  And then Robin’s mother had swept into the room, yanking the remote out of her hand, shutting off the TV like someone else’s mean mother, a different person, a stranger. Mitchell, what the hell are you doing? Mom, who had never sworn before, at least not in front of Robin. Mom, who tsk-tsked at her father if he let a damn slip out.

  Mommy, please can I watch?

  Go to your room right now.

  But . . . Daddy said I could.

  Go to your room and stay there. No TV for the rest of the night.

  All these years later, it had stuck in her mind—the announcer’s voice, the teens on the TV screen, the blaze of their shotguns, that very same blaze as in her mother’s eyes. The shock she’d felt. The fear. Robin had never seen Mom that angry, not before then or since. Even her father had seemed confused. The way he’d looked at her, something shifting in his eyes. Calm down, Renee. You’re frightening your daughter.

  Robin looked at Eileen. “Your parents let you watch that?”

  She shrugged. “It was just a TV movie.”

  Robin nodded slowly. “You’re right,” she said. “It was.”

  She put her mug of coffee down and stood.

  “Robin,” said Eileen. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Robin said, though she couldn’t look at her. “Everything’s fine.”

  ALONE AT HE
R house in the Westchester County suburb of Tarry Ridge, Robin poured herself a glass of sauvignon blanc, made a Gruyère and spinach omelet for one. Her husband had texted her while she was still on the train:

  Dinner with important source. Will come home as soon as I can. Love you.

  Ok, she’d texted back. Just those two letters. She didn’t trust herself to type more.

  The show her husband worked for, Shawn Labatoir’s Anger Management, was a barely controlled vent-fest. A rotating group of so-called pundits screaming at each other without listening as Labatoir stood at his podium, smirking out the easiest seven-figure salary ever. The idea that Eric would be dining with an important, unnamed source for the show was, to put it mildly, hard to believe.

  But that wasn’t what had bothered her most about Eric’s text. It had been the Love you part, the way it had been tacked on at the end as an afterthought, a covering of tracks . . .

  “Stop.” She said it out loud. “Just stop.”

  Robin gulped the wine and took a bite of her omelet and gazed out of her kitchen window. It was 8:00 P.M. but still light out, the clouds blushing with the first hint of sunset. It’s not really that late anyway, she thought, summer working its magic, making everything seem just a little less serious. She remembered Quentin Garrison asking her about the Inland Empire Killers, and that seemed less serious too. Just an overzealous young reporter, following every tenuous lead he could find. Back at work, she’d looked up everything she could about April Cooper. And in this case, knowledge had wiped away most of her fears. As it turned out, the murderous teen had been three years younger than her mother was. And according to every story about her, she’d died in a fire. Mom may have known a murderer. Maybe they went to the same school or swam at the same public pool or went to summer camp together or something. Big deal. But it probably was to Robin’s mother, the type of person who would have blamed herself for allowing the murders to happen. No wonder she’d gone ballistic over her seven-year-old kid watching that ridiculous TV movie . . .