The Survivors Club

by Lisa Gardner

  “Yes.” After he tried to rip him from limb to limb. Down in that basement, with the acrid smell of lime and the deeper stench of death. Down in that basement, with those poor, poor kids. Down in that dark, dark basement, from which he’d been clawing his way back up ever since.

  “I learned something that day,” Griffin said abruptly.

  “Not to have friends?”

  He had to smile at that. “Maybe. But that’s not true. I’ll tell you something, Jillian. I’ll tell you something about only a dozen other people officially know. For everyone else, it’s merely a rumor.”

  She hesitated, chewed her lower lip, then worried the gold medallion hanging around her neck. He understood her dilemma. Accepting a confidence was like accepting a gift. If she took it, they wouldn’t be strangers anymore. Maybe they’d even have a bit of a bond. And he doubted that right now, for a variety of reasons, Jillian Hayes wanted to bond with a cop.

  Her curiosity won out. “What?” she asked.

  “When I figured out it was David Price, my friend, my neighbor, it was bad. But when I went down to that basement, when I saw what he’d done to those kids, it was even worse. I went a little nuts that day. I went after David, and if I could’ve gotten my hands on him, I would’ve killed him. I would’ve ripped off his head with my bare hands, I would’ve pummeled him into a bleeding mass of bruised flesh. And I would’ve felt good about it. I didn’t though. Two other detectives got in my way. They took his beating, and they did it because they were professionals who didn’t want that son of a bitch to get off on charges of police brutality, and they did it because they were my friends and they understood. It’s because of them he’s now in prison for the rest of his life. And it’s because of them that I still have a job. One friend betrayed me. But two other friends saved me. When all is said and done, it’s still very good to have friends.”

  Jillian didn’t say anything. Whether she knew it or not, she was leaning forward slightly, a strange look on her face. Yearning, maybe? Had she trusted anyone since the day her sister died? Even the Survivors Club, did she really trust them?

  “But that’s not the lesson I learned that day,” he said.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. What I really learned is that it’s arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.”

  Jillian recoiled just as a back door opened and Carol Rosen came walking out of the restaurant into the parking lot.

  “Jillian, there you are—” Carol spotted Griffin and suddenly drew up short. Her gaze dashed between the two of them, standing alone together in the parking lot, and it was clear she didn’t like what she saw.

  “Yes?” Jillian belatedly turned around to face Carol. Her movements were jerky.

  “Ummm, Meg . . . We, uh . . . Can I see you inside for a moment?”

  “I don’t know.” Jillian still seemed distracted, but she recovered her bearings quickly, turning back to Griffin. “Are you done accusing me of murder, Sergeant?”

  “For now.”

  “Well then”—she gave him a thin smile—“I think I’ll be on my way.”

  She headed back to Carol, chin up, shoulders square. But then at the last minute, halfway through the restaurant’s back door, she turned again.

  “You’re wrong, Sergeant,” she called out to him.

  “About Eddie?”

  “About the world. You have to be certain of some things. Otherwise you’d go crazy.”

  It was Griffin’s turn to smile. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” he said lightly as she disappeared through the doorway. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that at all.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Price

  GRIFFIN SWUNG BY HIS HOUSE A LITTLE AFTER 4:30. AT the rate things were going, the workday was going to stretch deep into night. Not the ideal first day back for a man who’d gone bonkers just eighteen months ago, but what could you do? As he’d told Fitz, back was back.

  Besides, he was increasingly intrigued by this case. Puzzled, confused, fascinated. In other words, in that perverse sort of way homicide detectives had, he was enjoying himself immensely.

  Griffin parked outside the little waterfront shack he’d recently purchased in North Kingstown, and went inside to prepare the working homicide detective’s Big Case Kit. In other words, a duffel bag containing two fresh shirts, two ties and lots of clean underwear. You could never have too much clean underwear. Oh yeah, he also added a toothbrush and an electric razor—never as good as a blade, but handy in a pinch.

  He stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water as he idly went through his mail. Bill, bill, grocery store flyer. Ooooh, oranges for ninety-nine cents a pound. God bless the USA.

  He got to the last item, a plain white envelope, and then his heart accelerated in spite of himself. To: Good Neighbor Griffin. At Griffin’s new address. From: Your Buddy Dave. No return address.

  David Price never could stand being bored.

  Little psychopathic shit.

  David had written many times before, mostly to the old house in Cranston, where Griffin had stayed for nearly a year after the Big Boom. He probably should have put it up for sale immediately after he took his medical leave, but who was going to buy the home next to the home where the Candy Man had brutally murdered ten kids? Who was going to buy the home of the dumb fuck detective who’d lived twenty feet away and never suspected a thing?

  David Price, who used to pop over and mow their lawn when Griffin and Cindy got too busy. Small, boyish David Price, who looked seventeen even though he was twenty-eight, who could barely lift a forty-pound bag of potting soil but was hell on wheels with electrical wires. Easygoing, neighborly David Price, who helped Griffin lay the pipes for his irrigation system one summer, who liked to come over for barbecued hamburgers and beer, who fixed the light over the sink when the buzzing threatened to drive Cindy mad, who had no family of his own and over the course of three years somehow became part of theirs.

  When Cindy had first learned of her cancer, a mere two days after Griffin had landed the Candy Man case, she’d told David about the disease herself. Griffin had an important case, she’d explained. Griffin was going to be very busy. It was so reassuring to her then that David lived right next door.

  David had cried that night. All of them had. In the small family room Cindy had painted butter yellow and decorated with pictures of birds in flight. And then David had held Cindy’s hand and promised her he’d do whatever she needed. They were going to beat this thing! They were going to win!

  Six months later, Cindy was dead.

  And five months after that, Griffin was talking to a little girl who had managed to escape from a man who’d tried to pick her up on the school playground. The stranger had been there when Summer Marie Nicholas had first come out, playing on the swings, but when he’d offered to give her a push, she’d gotten nervous.

  His pants were “too full,” she had said. The little girl had noticed that the man had an erection.

  She had run straight back into the school, where she had found a janitor cleaning the gym. And he’d been wise enough to call the police. The man was gone from the playground by the time Griffin had arrived, of course, but seven-year-old Summer Marie had been brilliant.

  She announced without hesitation that the man looked exactly the same as the boy in that big eighties movie Back to the Future. She liked that movie. That mad professor made her laugh so hard! Plus, when she was old enough to get a car, she wanted one just like that, with the funny doors.

  Griffin had stared at little Summer Marie. And through the haze of depression and grief and exhaustion that had kept him half-functioning for months, he had a memory as clear as day: Cindy, Griffin and David sitting on the back porch the first time David had come over. Cindy laughing, saying, “Hey, Dave, anyone ever tell you that you look exactly like Michael J. Fox?”

  David, an independent contractor with flexible hours. David, whose electrical
jobs took him to different neighborhoods all over the state. David, whose small build, boyish face and easy smile would seem completely nonthreatening to a child. At least until it was much too late.

  The girl’s description earned them a search warrant. Two hours later Griffin was back in his own neighborhood, leading a small posse of detectives that included Mike Waters into David’s home, while his next-door neighbor stood by silently, a strange smile fixed upon his face.

  Fifteen minutes later, the first detective opened the door to the basement. The initial waft of odor was so overwhelmingly floral the detective had actually sneezed. And then they’d all caught the smell beneath the smell. The incredibly hard to conceal odor of death.

  Down into that basement, with the hard-packed dirt floor and soundproofed ceiling. Down into that basement, with its three harshly glaring bare bulbs. Down into that basement, with a stained mattress and an old workbench covered in handcuffs, dildos and porn. Down in that basement with another corner where the dirt wasn’t hard-packed at all. Where instead the dark, loamy soil undulated in ten tiny lime-topped waves.

  Ten heartbreaking little white-flecked waves.

  David had brought each child down here, down to the odor of death. And he had done unspeakable things to them while they had inhaled the stench of death. Had it made him even more excited?

  Or had that come later, when he’d gone next door to mow a state police sergeant’s lawn?

  Griffin should’ve killed David Price that day. Most nights, when he awoke drenched in sweat and choking back screams, he still wished that he had. Sometimes when people did the right thing, it was still much too wrong. He’d spent eighteen months in therapy, when frankly, he probably could’ve cured himself that day with one properly landed punch.

  Shrinks just didn’t know shit about this job.

  Now Griffin looked down at the envelope in his hand. He should throw it away, toss it in the bin like so much garbage. But he didn’t. In all honesty, he’d come to consider these little notes the very best in home sanity tests. The state had its fitness-for-duty diagnostic; Griffin had this.

  He opened the envelope. It was short by David’s standards. Generally he included several pages about his life in maximum-security prison. The carpentry classes he was taking. His newfound love of yoga—good for the body and the mind. Rumors that the ACI might win a contract soon to have inmates make American flags and wouldn’t that be a heck of a lotta fun? Oh, and by the way, here’s a sketch of a rose to put on Cindy’s grave. I still miss her, buddy.

  In contrast, this letter contained only two lines. It read: Best wishes with the new case. It’s going to be a good one.

  Griffin’s blood went cold. He grabbed the envelope, flipped it over. Postmarked Saturday, the eighteenth of May. But that was before Griffin had gone back to work, before Eddie Como had been shot. How could David . . . ? What did David . . . ?

  The ringing building in his ears. Heart starting to race, blood starting to pump, sweat bursting from pores.

  Griffin took a shaky breath, counted to ten, closed his eyes, and in the next moment, the anxiety attack passed. His breathing calmed. His powers of reason returned.

  David was simply fucking with him. He’d probably learned of Griffin’s first day back on the job the same way he’d learned Griffin’s new address. The power of the prison rumor mill, coupled with way too many big mouths on TV.

  And when Griffin returned to work, of course he was assigned a new case. He was a detective, after all. That’s what he did. To read any more than that into the note was like giving a psychic all the credit for predicting that “soon, your luck will change.”

  David Price didn’t deserve that kind of credit. And he certainly didn’t deserve that kind of power.

  Griffin stepped on the foot pedal of the kitchen’s white trash bin. The lid popped open and he dropped David Price’s letter into the pile of used Kleenexes and sticky eggshells.

  “Fuck you, too,” he murmured. Then for good measure, he looked at his hands. Not a tremor in sight. Yeah, eighteen months later, he was doing just fine. Eighteen months later, he was fucking fabulous.

  Griffin grabbed his Big Case Kit and hit the road.

  CHAPTER 15

  Carol

  CAROL LEFT THE RUE DE L’ESPOIR SHORTLY AFTER 4:00 but didn’t return home until nearly 6:30. First, she spent some quality time at Nordstrom. Dan would scream when he got the bill, but let him scream. It was four in the afternoon on the opening day of her rape trial, which was no longer the opening day of her rape trial, and by God, she would shop if she damn well wanted to shop.

  So Carol went to Nordstrom, where a petite young thing helped her select a multitude of designer suits while trying hard not to stare. Carol didn’t mind the staring. She’d gotten used to it by now. In the beginning, when Jillian had first proposed the Survivors Club, she had spelled out the side effects of going public. On the one hand, never underestimate the power of three beautiful women standing in front of a crowd of TV cameras demanding that the police ratchet up their investigation and do more to protect the female population of the great Ocean State.

  On the other hand, never underestimate the power of the press to descend on three bruised and battered women like vultures on roadkill. Did they have any idea who was behind these vicious attacks? What about the slow progress of the ongoing investigation? Did they still suffer nightmares? What about their husbands, fathers, sisters, brothers? Did they have any advice for other women out there?

  Jillian fielded all the questions, of course. Jillian was good at that sort of thing. Crisp, professional, never giving too much away.

  Now, Carol, if she’d gotten her hands on the mike . . . Of course I have fucking nightmares! Women, you want to protect yourselves, buy a gun. Shoot first, question later. Fuck ’em all, ladies. It’s the only way.

  So, yes, I have nightmares . . . When I sleep . . . Which hasn’t been for months . . . And by the way, when I look at my husband I see a rapist’s face and when my husband touches me I feel a rapist’s hands. And I hate Eddie Como, and open windows and houses that grow too quiet at night. But most of all I hate the fact that when I do fall asleep, I dream of blood and slaughtered lambs, and when I wake up I am so angry I have to press my eyeballs into my sockets to keep them from bursting out of my head.

  Other than that, esteemed members of the fourth estate, I am coping just fine.

  Carol dropped two thousand bucks. Dan would go ballistic. Good for him. Yes, she was definitely in a mood.

  Maybe she should’ve stayed with Jillian and Meg. Jillian was going to drive Meg home, providing backup in case Meg’s father was there and saw his little girl under the influence of not one, but two bottles of champagne. Carol wasn’t even sure how Meg had gotten her hands on the second bottle. She’d gone to the restroom, and next thing she knew, a fresh bottle was on the table and half consumed. At least she’d been able to catch Jillian out in the parking lot. Of course, that had been weird, too. Jillian talking to Sergeant Blue Eyes. The two of them standing so close together, so deep in conversation . . . Then the way Jillian had jerked back. Startled. Guilty.

  Carol had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Betrayal, though she didn’t know why. Suspicion, though she had no proof.

  As she and Jillian walked back into the restaurant, Carol had asked her what she had been talking to Sergeant Griffin about. Nothing, Jillian had said. And Carol had wondered what kind of nothing took fifteen minutes to cover in a restaurant parking lot.

  Once Jillian was inside, she’d appraised the situation, as Carol had known she would. She’d come up with a plan of attack, as Carol had known she would. Carol could go on her way. Jillian would handle Meg, and by extension, her father, Tom Pesaturo. Go, Jillian.

  Personally, Carol didn’t like Tom. Based on things Meg said, he sounded overbearing, brutish and chauvinistic to the core. Making his daughter drop out of college. As if denying his child higher education was the secret to keeping h
er safe. For heaven’s sake, was there anything of value in the Y chromosome? One ounce of intelligence to go with all that raging testosterone?

  Of course, that made her think of Dan, and the scent of red roses and veal piccata. And that thought sliced through her heady steam of rage, her frenzy of self-righteousness. She was left suddenly empty and bereft, the legs taken right out from beneath her.

  She had loved him so much once. Did he ever remember those days? When just the sight of him across the room sent her heart beating rapid-fire with lust? When the thought of seeing him for dinner made her smile all day? When the scent of his cologne was the first thing she wanted to smell in the morning and the last thing she wanted to smell at night? When they used to sleep intertwined like vines, legs and arms coiling, her head planted securely on his chest?

  She still remembered those days. Some nights, when she was not busy hating Eddie Como, she stayed awake replaying those first wild, wonderful moments in her mind. She was never sure which set of thoughts hurt her more.

  Now she plopped down in the Nordstrom Café, where she had a heaping chicken Oriental salad, and yes, another piece of chocolate cake. Then she ordered a glass of wine. Or two or three or four.

  She was still hungry afterward, but that didn’t surprise her anymore. She had been hungry for well over a year.

  Being raped was an interesting thing. More interesting than Carol would’ve imagined. Yes, she now suffered from a variety of lovely mental conditions. Post-traumatic stress syndrome that left her with nightmares, cold sweats and irrational mood swings. Generalization that left her hating not just her rapist, but pretty much all men, including her husband, Detective Fitzpatrick and Ned D’Amato. Then there was her “trigger syndrome”—she literally could not turn off the TV because turning off the TV was one of the last things she’d done before being attacked, and thus her mind associated the act with causing the rape. And finally there was good old-fashioned guilt—guilt that she’d been attacked, guilt that she’d survived. Guilt that she’d inconvenienced her husband, guilt that she’d left her window open, guilt that she’d not been able to fend off a grown man. Jillian, whether she would admit it or not, still held the prize in the guilt category, but Carol thought she should get credit for having not just one of the various syndromes they’d read about in rape survivors’ handbooks, but pretty much all of them rolled up in a nice, neat, therapy-desperately-needed ball. In her own way, she was an overachiever, too.