The Survivors Club

by Lisa Gardner

  And maybe pay the shooter a bonus? Oh wait, he’d already received one.

  Jillian or Meg must have kicked Carol under the table, because she finally sat back and seemed to work on regaining some measure of control.

  Fitz cleared his throat. “We think it would be best if you all came with us,” he told them.

  “Why should we go with you?” Jillian set down her mug. She gestured with her hand to include her fellow Survivors Club members. “We’ve been here all morning. If Eddie Como’s dead, we obviously didn’t do it.”

  “There are a few things we’d like to discuss with you—” Fitz tried again.

  “I don’t understand,” Carol interrupted. “He’s dead. It’s over. We don’t need to talk to you anymore. The case, the trial, everything, it’s done.”

  “The detective is fishing,” Jillian told her calmly. “While we didn’t shoot Eddie Como, he’s thinking we might have arranged for whoever did.”

  “How did you know he was shot?” Fitz asked sharply. “I didn’t say he was shot.”

  “Detective, haven’t you seen the morning news?” Jillian paraphrased softly: “‘Shortly after eight-thirty this morning, shots broke out at the Providence County Courthouse. According to initial reports, it is believed that the alleged College Hill Rapist, Eddie Como, was gunned down as he was being unloaded from the prison van. Sources close to the investigation believe an unidentified man fired the fatal shot from the rooftop of the courthouse. Also, an explosion in a nearby parking lot has left one dead.’ Isn’t that about right? I think that’s about right.”

  She smiled, cool and undaunted, while Fitz muttered something harsh under his breath. Griffin could only shrug. Of course the press had gone ahead with the story even without confirmation of Eddie Como’s identity. The College Hill Rapist was big news. Real big news. And why act responsibly when you could further fuck up a murder investigation?

  Maureen, Maureen, Maureen, he thought again, and suddenly had a bad feeling about that tape.

  “All right,” Fitz said grudgingly. “Eddie Como was shot. He’s dead. But I don’t think this is the place to have a discussion about that. I think it would be best if all of you accompanied us down to the station.”

  “No,” Jillian said firmly. “But thanks for asking.”

  “Now, ladies—”

  “We don’t have to go with them,” Jillian cut in. She turned her gaze to Meg and Carol, and once more Griffin was impressed by her composure. “We don’t have to answer any questions. Without probable cause, Detective Fitzpatrick and Sergeant Griffin can’t make us do or say anything. I would keep this in mind, because Detective Fitzpatrick didn’t come here to pay us a friendly visit. This is a big day for us, ladies. Eddie Como was shot, and we’ve just graduated from rape victims to murder suspects.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Griffin spoke up.

  “What?” Jillian Hayes zoomed in on him with narrow eyes. Fitz was scowling at him.

  “Well, aren’t you going to tell them the rest of it?” he asked innocently.

  “The rest of it?”

  “Absolutely. The rest of it. These women are your friends, right? Surely you want them to understand everything. For example, if you ladies don’t want to speak with us, then we’ll just have to move on down the list. Contact your friends, your family. Husbands, fathers, uncles, mothers, sisters, aunts. Coworkers. Subject them all to police scrutiny. Oh, and we’ll subpoena your financial records, of course.” All three women sat up straighter. Griffin shrugged. “You have motive and opportunity, that gives us probable cause. We’ll pull your bank records, the bank records of every member of your family. Maybe even your uncle’s business.” He gazed serenely at Meg. “Or maybe a husband’s law practice.” He gazed at Carol. “Any recent payments that can’t be accounted for . . .” He gave another helpless shrug. “A murder is a murder, ladies. Cooperate now, and maybe we can work out a deal where you don’t serve life.”

  Meg and Carol didn’t look as certain anymore. Jillian, on the other hand . . . Jillian was looking at him as if she’d just noticed an unpleasantly buzzing fly in the room, and was now about to squash the bug with her bare hand.

  “Diminished capacity,” she challenged.

  “Not for a hired gun. Requires premeditation. If you were going for a plea, you should’ve showed up in the courthouse and shot Como yourself.”

  “Not necessarily. Diminished capacity simply means outside influences made you commit an act you otherwise wouldn’t have done—that you were not operating in your proper mind, so to speak. You could argue the trauma of being raped, the fear of being attacked again, drove you to employ a hired gun.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been thinking this over.”

  “You never know what you’ll need to know until you need to know it.”

  “Do you have a legal background, Mrs. Hayes?”

  “Ms. Hayes. I have a marketing background. But I know how to read.”

  “Defense statutes?”

  “You’re not asking the right question yet, Sergeant.”

  “And what question is that?”

  Jillian Hayes leaned forward. “Did we have reason to be afraid? Did we have probable cause to fear for our lives?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “He called us, Sergeant. Did Detective Fitzpatrick tell you about that? For the last year, Eddie Como has been phoning and mailing us constantly. Do you know what it’s like to get a shiver down your spine every time the phone rings?”

  “I’ve suffered through my fair share of telemarketers,” Griffin said. But he was looking at Fitz questioningly.

  “He shouldn’t have been able to call them,” Fitz supplied. “In theory, inmates have to enter a pin number into the pay phones to get a dial tone, and each pin number has only so many numbers approved for calling. Trust me, none of the women were ever approved, but then again, this is prison. For every rule the officials impose, the inmates find a way around the rule. Probably with outside help.”

  “You can ask to censor outgoing mail,” Griffin said with a frown. “Impose a no-contact order.”

  “If an inmate is threatening. Eddie never threatened them, so we couldn’t deny access. Basically, they changed their phone numbers, he went to mail. They put a hold on prison mail, he got someone to mail his letters from a different location. Eddie was persistent, I’ll give him that.”

  “And what was he so persistently trying to say?”

  “That he was innocent,” Jillian said dryly. “That we had made a huge mistake. He never meant to hurt anyone. This was all some big misunderstanding. And then, toward the end, of course, he was demanding to know why we were ruining his life, why we were taking him away from his child. He murdered my sister, Sergeant, and then he’s asking me how come I’m denying him access to a child?”

  “He wouldn’t leave us alone,” Carol interjected vehemently. “For God’s sake, he even contacted my husband at work! He asked him for a list of recommended attorneys! My rapist, consulting my husband for a good legal defense! And when that didn’t yield results, he started mailing us countless letters with all the free stamps available to inmates. Think about that. My rapist, harassing me, with stamps I provide as a taxpayer. The man was a fucking monster!”

  Griffin looked at Meg. She merely shrugged. “My parents don’t let me answer the phone or get the mail.”

  “The point is,” Jillian spoke up, pulling attention back to her, “you’re barking up the wrong tree, Sergeant. So someone blew away Eddie Como. We don’t care who did it. And we don’t need to know who did it. Frankly, we are damn grateful that he’s dead.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Jillian

  DETECTIVE FITZPATRICK AND SERGEANT GRIFFIN STUCK around the restaurant for another five minutes. They thrust, Jillian parried. They punched, she counterpunched. The two cops grew frustrated. Jillian didn’t much care. She’d been telling Meg and Carol the truth. They didn’t have to say anything or go anywhere. As of
this moment, they were still merely Eddie Como’s victims. They might as well enjoy that advantage while it lasted.

  One year ago, when Jillian had first thought up the Survivors Club, she’d had no illusions about the road ahead. She’d woken up that morning with the crushing realization that Trisha was still dead and she was still not. She’d lain there, terrified of each noise in her own home, painfully aware of just how physically weak and inadequate she was, and then she’d gotten mad again. No—she’d gotten furious. She didn’t want more police questions. She didn’t want DA’s walking through her hospital room, cops grilling her about what she had done and said the night her little sister was viciously raped and murdered. She didn’t want to get out of bed knowing that the man was still out there. He had killed Trish. He had attacked two other women. And the police hadn’t done a damn thing about it.

  Jillian had gotten out of bed then. And she had picked up the phone.

  Perhaps Meg and Carol had joined the group looking for comfort. Maybe, these days, it even was a source of comfort. But Jillian wasn’t ready for soft things yet. First and foremost, she had needed action for Trish, for herself, for all of them. She had formed this group, then honed this group to be their sword.

  “We are not the Victims Club,” she had told them at their inaugural meeting. “We are the Survivors Club, and while we may have lost control once, we aren’t ever going to lose control again. These attacks are our attacks. That rapist is our rapist. And we’re going after him. The three of us are going to use the press, we’re going to use the attorney general’s office, we’re going to use the police and we’re going to find the man who did this to us. And then we’re going to teach him what it means to have messed with us. I promise you that. From the bottom of my heart, I promise you we will get this man and we will make him pay.”

  And in a matter of three short weeks, they watched the police lead Eddie Como away. What Providence detectives hadn’t been able to do for nearly two months, the Survivors Club had accomplished in half that time.

  Detective Fitzpatrick and Sergeant Griffin left. A waitress came by. Her look was both curious and sympathetic.

  “More chai?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Stay as long as you’d like, girls. Oh, and don’t fret the bill. After everything you’ve been through, this is on the house.”

  The waitress bustled away. Jillian looked at Carol and Meg. No one seemed to know what to do next.

  “Free breakfast,” Carol murmured at last. “Who said being raped didn’t have its advantages?”

  “We didn’t get free breakfast for being raped,” Jillian countered. “We received free breakfast for killing Eddie Como. Quick, let’s run to Federal Hill. There’s no telling how much free food we can get there.”

  Federal Hill was Providence’s Italian section, famous for its restaurants, pastry shops and Mafia connections. Maybe they could get toasted by various mob bosses or receive free cannolis from made men. It was a thought.

  Meg spun her now empty mug between her hands. She looked up at Carol, then Jillian. Then she shocked them both, probably even herself, by speaking of serious matters first.

  “Maybe you should’ve told them,” she said to Jillian. “You know, about the disk.”

  “Why? Eddie has contacted us before without the police doing anything about it.”

  “But this time was different.”

  “‘Sticks and stones may break my bones,’ ” Jillian quoted, “‘but words will never hurt me.’ ”

  “He sent the tape to your house.” Carol now, clearly agreeing with Meg. Carol hated the fact that Eddie Como could access their private residences. As she had told Detective Fitzpatrick six months ago, when the first phone call had come, it was like letting a murderer return to the scene of the crime. Eddie had been charged with three counts of first-degree sexual assault, one count of manslaughter and one count of assault with the intent to commit first-degree sexual assault. After all that, how was it that he still had the freedom to make phone calls and send mail? Eddie Como might have been the one behind bars, but most of the time, they agreed, they were the ones who felt as if they were in prison.

  “He’s contacted all of us at our homes,” Jillian said. “Face it—he likes to play games. He likes trying to mess with our minds. This was just his latest effort.”

  “But he threatened to kill you,” Meg argued. “Detective Fitzpatrick told us he could do something if Eddie became threatening. And that video file”—Meg shuddered delicately—“that was definitely threatening.”

  The computer disk had been sent to Jillian’s house on Friday. The return address had been Jillian’s business—yes, Eddie was very smart in his own way. So she’d opened the manila envelope, thoughtlessly popped in the disk, figuring it was from Roger or Claire, and then . . . Then Eddie Como’s face had been staring back at her from her own computer screen. And as she fumbled for the eject button or the mouse, or the escape button, or for God’s sake, some kind of button, he had begun to speak.

  “You fucking bitch,” Eddie Como told her as she sat in her own home, ten feet away from her ailing mother, fifteen feet away from her mother’s live-in assistant, two feet away from a photo of Trisha, smiling and happy and still so full of life. “You fucking bitch, you’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined my kid’s life, my mother’s life and my girlfriend’s life. Why? Because I’m a spic? Or just because I’m a man? It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m gonna get you, even if it takes me the rest of my life. I’m gonna get you even if it’s from beyond the grave.”

  Jillian had gotten the disk out then. She had flung it back into the manila envelope and quickly resealed it, as if it were a poisonous spider that might try to escape. Then she’d sat there a long time, breathing too hard, shaking like a leaf, and in all honesty, very near tears.

  Jillian hated being near tears. Crying never helped. Crying never changed the world. Crying certainly didn’t fend off the likes of Eddie Como.

  “If I was going to contact Detective Fitzpatrick, I would have done it Friday night,” she told the group now. “I didn’t. So there you go.”

  “You should’ve told him,” Carol said, voice still disapproving. Carol was very good at disapproving. “Maybe he could’ve done something.”

  Jillian rolled her eyes. “It was after eight by the time I opened the envelope. Detective Fitzpatrick was already gone for the day. And . . . and it seemed juvenile at the time. A last-minute scare tactic by Eddie with the trial about to start on Monday. Besides, he’s sent this thing out, he’s probably already waiting for the police to come or the prison guards to come, or someone to come and give him a bad time. Then he could sit back and amuse himself with how much he rattled my cage. But if I say nothing . . . Then he spends all weekend waiting. Wondering. Not knowing. I liked that.”

  “Punishing him with silence,” Meg said softly. “It’s not half bad.”

  Jillian shrugged modestly. “But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Whatever Eddie has done, whatever he’s threatened to do . . . It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead.”

  A strange silence descended over the group. For the first time, alone with confirmation that Eddie Como had indeed been fatally shot, the words began to penetrate, grow real, become the new state of the universe. They looked at each other. No one knew what to say. No more Eddie Como. It defied the imagination. For the last year he had been the center of their world. Everything they hated, despised, feared. Weekly they met simply to talk about how mad he had made them, or how determined, how confused, how heartbroken, defenseless, shattered. Was there a thought that went through any of their heads that did not connect back to Eddie Como? A resolution that did not start with him? A good day, a bad day, a good episode, a bad episode that wasn’t directly attributed to him? Meg could not remember her life. Carol couldn’t turn off her TV. Jillian couldn’t relax, and one way or another it all had to do with Eddie Como. Except now he was gone and the world kept turning and the other
patrons kept eating and . . .

  “I don’t think we can talk about it,” Jillian said shortly.

  “We need to talk about it,” Meg said quietly.

  “We have to talk about it!” Carol seconded more vehemently. “We’d better talk about it! I for one—”

  “We can’t,” Jillian interrupted forcefully. “We’re suspects. If we talk about the shooting, or the fact that he’s dead, later someone—hell, maybe Ned D’Amato—could construe that as conspiracy.”

  “Oh for the love of God!” Carol cried. “The College Hill Rapist is dead and you’re still making up rules and setting agendas. Give it a rest, Jillian! We have spent the last twelve months gearing up for a trial that will suddenly never happen. Oh my God, I don’t know where to begin.”

  “We can’t—”

  “Let’s vote.” Carol was emphatic. “All in favor of dancing around Eddie Como’s grave, raise their hands.”

  Carol raised her hand. After a second, Meg’s hand also went into the air. She gazed at Jillian apologetically. “When the news report came on, I was so sure they were wrong,” she said quietly. “How could someone as evil as Eddie actually die? Did the shooter use a silver bullet? But then the cops came, so I guess this is all really happening, and well . . . I think I’m a little confused. He’s dead, but in my mind, he can’t be dead. Everything’s different, but everything’s the same. It’s . . . surreal.”

  Jillian frowned. She still smarted from Carol’s agenda comment. But then . . .

  Her skin felt funny, too tight for her bones. The air felt strange, too cool upon her cheeks. Meg was right. Everything was different, yet everything was the same, and had there been a night in the last twelve months when Jillian had not gone to bed wishing for Eddie Como’s death, praying for Eddie Como’s death, willing Eddie Como’s death with every fiber of her being?

  She had won. The Survivors Club had won. And then she finally understood what was wrong. Eddie Como was dead. But she didn’t feel victorious.