by Lisa Gardner
The days her mother had had a voice. Jillian had not even heard her hum in years now.
Tom Pesaturo had settled back into the sofa. His face was finally relaxed, his big hands resting comfortably on his knees. Jillian’s parentage had done the trick. They were now old friends and he was happy to have her in his living room. It was funny, but during the last twelve months that Jillian’s and Meg’s lives had been intertwined, she’d never visited Meg’s house. Not Carol’s home either. By some unspoken rule, the group always met in restaurants or other public places. It was as if after everything they’d told one another, they couldn’t bear to share this last little bit.
“I was worried,” Mr. Pesaturo said abruptly, maybe even a little apologetically. “When I heard the news on TV, when I couldn’t find Meg. I went a little nuts.”
“I understand.”
“You got kids?”
Jillian thought of Trish and her bright, bright eyes. She thought of her mother, wheelchair-bound since her stroke. “No.”
“It’s not easy. You wanna keep ’em safe, you know. I mean, you want ’em to go out in the world. Be strong. Make you proud. But mostly, mostly you want ’em to be safe. Happy. Okay.”
“She’s okay,” Mrs. Pesaturo murmured. “They’re both okay.”
“If I coulda been there, that night . . . That’s what kills me, you know. This Como guy,” Mr. Pesaturo spat. “He’s not even that big. If I’d been there that night, I would’ve kicked his sorry spic ass.”
Jillian thought of Trisha’s dark apartment. Her sister’s unmoving form on the bed. Those strong, strong hands grabbing her from behind. She said, “I wish you would’ve been there, too.”
“Yeah, well, I guess there’s not much I can do about it now. At least the guy’s dead. I feel better about that. Hey”—his head jerked up—“think Meg’ll be all right now?”
Jillian was puzzled. “I think Meg is already all right.”
“No, no. Start remembering. Get her life back. You know.”
“I’m . . . I’m not sure. I really don’t know that much about amnesia.”
“She don’t talk about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Her amnesia. What that asshole did to her. Don’t you girls talk about this stuff over coffee or something like that?”
“Mr. Pesaturo . . .” Jillian began, but Laurie Pesaturo beat her to the punch.
“Tom, shut up.”
Mr. Pesaturo blinked at his wife. “What?”
“Jillian is not going to tell you about our daughter’s state of mind. If you want to know what Meg is thinking, ask her yourself.”
“I was just asking,” Tom said defensively, but he hung his big head, suitably chastised. Jillian took some pity on him.
“For the record,” she told him. “I think Meg is doing remarkably well. She’s a strong young lady, Mr. Pesaturo. You should be proud of her.”
“I am proud of her!”
“Are you? Or are you mostly afraid for her?”
“Hey now!” Mr. Pesaturo didn’t like that much at all. But when he found Jillian staring at him steadily, and his own wife regarding him steadily, his shoulders hunkered again. “I’m a father,” he muttered. “Fathers protect their daughters. Nothing wrong with that.”
“She’s twenty years old,” Laurie said.
“Still young.”
“Tom, it’s been years . . .” Laurie said. Which Jillian didn’t get. Didn’t she mean one year?
Mr. Pesaturo said, “Yeah, and we’ve been lucky to get her this far.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re telling me.”
Jillian was very confused now, which must have shown on her face, because suddenly both Mr. and Mrs. Pesaturo drew up short. They looked at their guest, they looked at each other, and that was the end of that conversation.
“I should get going,” Jillian said at last, when the silence had gone on too long. Meg’s parents didn’t waste any time getting up off the couch.
“Thank you for bringing Meg home,” Mrs. Pesaturo said. “We’ll make arrangements to retrieve her car.”
“The champagne . . . Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Mrs. Pesaturo smiled kindly at her. “It’s been a long, strange day, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Jillian said, and she didn’t know why, but at that moment she wanted to cry. She pulled herself back together. Her nerves were rattled, had been all day, and her private conversation with Sergeant Griffin had only made things worse. But her weariness didn’t matter. There were probably still cameras outside. You had to wear your game face. Besides, she would need her strength for when she returned home, to where her aphasia-stricken mother had probably already heard the news and was now sifting through her picture book, trying to find an image that could communicate My daughter’s murderer died today and I feel . . .
Meg was back. “Come on,” she told Jillian. “I’ll walk you to the door.”
Jillian followed her down the narrow hallway. Meg’s little sister, Molly, peered out at them from around the corner, a mass of dark corkscrew curls and big doe-brown eyes. Trish, Jillian thought. She had to get out of this house.
When Meg opened the door, Jillian was startled to see that it was already dark outside. The night wind felt cool on her face. The street was long and empty. Not a reporter in sight, which made her both grateful and more unsettled. Where were all the flashing lights and rapid-fire questions? Where had the day gone? It was already a blur.
Meg was swaying slightly in the breeze. “Thank you,” she murmured.
“For what?” Jillian was still staring into the night. On her right, something moved in the bushes.
“I’m starting to feel better already, you know. The shock’s wearing off, I guess. I didn’t think it would be this fast, but now . . . I feel like for the first time in twelve months, I can finally breathe.”
Jillian just stared at Meg. And then she got it. Meg was talking about Eddie Como’s demise. She was thanking Jillian for Eddie Como’s murder.
“But you’re right,” Meg continued expansively. “We shouldn’t talk about it. The police will probably still be coming around, at least for a few days. Then the worst will be past. The dust will settle. And we’ll be . . . we’ll be free.”
“Meg . . .”
“Isn’t it a beautiful night?”
“Oh God, Meg . . .”
“Such a lovely, lovely night.”
“You’ve had more to drink! Why do you keep drinking?”
“I don’t know. The doctors said not to push. The mind will heal itself. But it hasn’t, and really, as of today, I thought it should. So I added some bourbon. But you know, it didn’t work.”
“Meg, you just need rest.”
“No, I don’t think I do. I think it’s all much weirder than that. I’ve had rest, I’ve had peace and now I’ve had closure. But I can still feel the eyes following me. What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I want to be happy. I don’t think I was. Because if I had been happy, shouldn’t I be able to remember it? Shouldn’t it come back to me?”
“Meg, listen to me—”
“Shhhh, the bushes.”
Jillian stopped, drew up short. She looked at the bushes, still twitching on the right. She looked at Meg. This close, she could see the glassy sheen to the girl’s dark eyes, the red flush of bourbon warming her cheeks.
“Whoever is hiding in the bushes, you’d better come out,” Jillian called.
“Beautiful, beautiful night,” Meg singsonged. “Oh, what a lovely night, just like the last night, that night.”
“I’m warning you!” Jillian’s voice started to rise in spite of herself as another leaf quivered and Meg rocked back and forth like a giant pendulum.
“A beautiful, beautiful night. A lovely, lovely night . . .”
“Goddammit!” Jillian strode over to the bush. She thrust in her hand as
if she would drag out the interloper by his ear. She’d yank him out. And then she’d . . . she’d . . .
The gray tiger-striped cat sprang out of the bush with a hostile MEOW and Jillian staggered back, her heart hammering hard in her chest. She had to take a deep breath, then another. Her heart was still racing. The hairs had prickled up on the back on her neck. Oh God, she suddenly wanted away from this house and out of this too-empty street. She couldn’t stop shivering.
On the porch, Meg had a beatific smile plastered on her face. “Gone now. He’s all gone now.”
“Please go inside, Meg,” Jillian said tiredly.
“It won’t make a difference. He’s here, he’s here, he’s here.”
“Who is here?”
And Meg whispered, “I don’t know. Whoever’s worse than Eddie Como.”
CHAPTER 17
Griffin
“WE GOT A PROBLEM.”
Now at the state police headquarters in North Scituate, Griffin finally paused in the middle of five piles of paper. It was a little after six-thirty, and he was trying to get the command post up and running in the vast gray-carpeted Detective Bureau meeting room. It never failed to amaze him how much paperwork could be generated by a single crime. Contact reports, witness statements, detective activity reports (DARs), financial workups and preliminary evidence reports. He was already knee-deep in paperwork and even as he pored over documents, uniformed officers, financial crimes detectives and CIU detectives were breezing through the conference center to drop even more reports on the table. Occasionally, the lieutenant or major or colonel also stopped by, wanting to know if he’d magically solved the case yet. Oh yeah, and the phone rang a lot. Reporters wanting quotes. Local businessmen wanting justice. The AG wanting to emphasize once again that he didn’t like shootings in his backyard and that the mayor felt major explosions were bad for tourism.
Now he had Fitz on the phone. “Are you watching this?” Fitz was saying. “Can you fuckin’ believe this?”
“I’m not watching anything.”
“Then turn on the TV!”
Griffin raised a brow, sifted through the precariously stacked mounds of paper for the remote, then turned on the TV. He was instantly rewarded by a live news feed being shown on Channel 10.
“Ah, so that’s where all the reporters went. I kind of wondered when they magically disappeared from the parking lot.”
“This is not good,” Fitz moaned. “So really not good.”
Eddie Como’s public defense lawyer, an earnest fellow by the name of Frank Sierra, was now explaining to the equally earnest press corps that a true tragedy had happened this morning on the steps of justice. Why, just last night, he’d gotten a fresh lead that proved once and for all his client’s innocence. He’d been planning on introducing the new evidence first thing this morning to clear Eddie Como’s name. Another fifteen, twenty minutes, that was all he would’ve needed, and Mr. Como would have been as free as a bird.
“That doesn’t sound promising,” Griffin informed Fitz by phone.
“I fucking hate lawyers,” Fitz growled.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure they hate you, too.”
Griffin paused long enough to listen to Sierra’s next statement. In the conference room, Waters and a bunch of other Major Crimes detectives had also halted to watch the show. Better than Barnum & Bailey, most of these press conferences.
“Late last night,” public defender Frank Sierra was saying, “I made contact with a witness who can place Mr. Como halfway across town on the night and time of the second attack, offering corroboration of my client’s activities on the evening in question. Ladies and gentlemen, may I please introduce Lucas Murphy.”
Eddie Como’s lawyer stepped aside, and a gangly kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen took his place. The kid, all arms, legs and zits, stared at the flashing cameras like a deer in headlights. For a moment, Griffin thought the kid might bolt, and Sierra must’ve thought so, too, because he grabbed the teenager’s arm. Then he remembered his audience, and smiled brightly for all the pretty people.
“A witness,” Fitz muttered on the phone. “What the hell kind of evidence is that? For fifty bucks or less even I could conjure up a witness.”
Sierra announced, “Mr. Murphy works at Blockbuster Video over in Warwick.”
Griffin said, “Uh oh.”
“Mr. Murphy, on the night of May tenth, could you please tell these fine people where you were?”
“Oh my God!” Fitz went apoplectic. “He’s treating him like a witness. Right here on the evening news, he’s launching into his defense. I cannot fucking believe this!”
“I was . . . uh . . . well . . . working,” the kid squeaked. “You know, um, at Blockbuster.”
Sierra was getting into things now. “And did you happen to see Mr. Como that evening, the evening of May tenth, in your video store on Route Two in Warwick?”
“Um . . . yes.”
The reporters obligingly gasped. Fitz swore again. Griffin simply rolled his eyes.
On TV, Eddie Como’s lawyer practically rubbed his hands together with glee. “Mr. Murphy, are you certain you saw Eddie Como on the night of May tenth?”
“Um, yes.”
“But, Mr. Murphy, because I know the fine members of the press will ask this next, how can you be so certain it was Mr. Como who came into your store that night?”
“Well . . . I saw his name. You know, on his membership card.”
The press gasped again. Fitz mumbled something along the lines of “Oh my God, someone shut that kid up. Quick, get me a gun.”
Griffin told him kindly, “Oh yeah, now you’re in trouble.”
On TV, Sierra paused, beamed for the cameras again, and prepared to move in for the kill. “Mr. Murphy, isn’t it true that whenever someone rents a video at Blockbuster, there is a record of the transaction?”
“Well, yeah . . . you know. People hand over their card. We scan that in. Then, you know, we scan in the video. So the computer has um, the video, and um, who rented it, and oh yeah, at what day and at what time. You know, so we know who has what video and if it’s late when they return it, in case, you know, they owe any late fees, that sort of thing. You gotta know that stuff if you’re a video store.” The kid nodded earnestly. “Also, we got this program now, where if you return a new release right away, like, um, in twenty-four hours, you get a dollar credit on your Blockbuster account. So people come inside for the returns to show their card. I mean, a buck’s a buck.”
Eddie Como’s lawyer practically creamed his pants on live TV. “So,” he boomed. “Not only did you personally see Eddie Como returning a video to your store on the night of May tenth, at ten twenty-five P.M., just five minutes before the alleged attack on Mrs. Rosen, over on the East Side, which Eddie couldn’t possibly have driven to in just five minutes, you have a record of that transaction. A computer-generated record!”
“Fucking computers!” Fitz roared.
While on TV, Lucas Murphy, Blockbuster’s new employee of the month, said, “Mmmm, yes.”
The reporters started to buzz. In the conference room, Waters shook his head and sighed. Over the phone, Fitz sounded like he was moaning, then came the distinct crunch of antacid tablets.
“Come on,” Griffin murmured, staring intently at the TV. “Ask him the next question. Ask him the logical next question . . .”
But Eddie Como’s defense lawyer was smarter than he looked. Frank Sierra thanked the press, he thanked the Lord for giving them the truth, even if it was tragically too late, and then he yanked his young, big-eyed witness out of the line of cameras while he was still ahead. The news briefing broke up. Channel 10 cut to a shot of good old Maureen, her blue eyes brighter than ever, saying breathlessly, “Well, it has certainly been a big day in the College Hill Rapist case. New information casts doubt that Eddie Como, shot dead just this morning, was indeed the College Hill Rapist. Ladies, does that mean the real rapist could still be out there—”
“Sierra ambushed us,” Fitz growled between mouthfuls of antacid. “Didn’t give us any warning. Not even a peep about his new evidence, new witness, nada. One minute I’m down at the morgue watching the ME search for viable skin on a deep-fried John Doe, the next I got a call from my lieutenant telling me I’d better turn on the news. What the fuck is up with that? Sierra could’ve at least given us the courtesy of a phone call.”
“Ah, but then you could’ve prepared a reply,” Griffin said.
“This is bullshit,” Fitz continued, full steam ahead. “Sierra’s client is dead, so now he’s carrying out his case on the evening news, where he’ll never have to fear being cross-examined. The public will only hear what he wants them to hear.” His voice built again. “Forget about three raped women. Forget about Trisha Hayes, tied up and asphyxiating in her own apartment. Forget that Eddie Como irreparably damaged four innocent lives. Let’s just focus on the poor little rapist, who was probably potty-trained at gunpoint. For heaven’s sake, why didn’t Sierra just march over to the women’s homes and personally slap them across the face!”
“It’s not conclusive evidence,” Griffin said, addressing both Waters and Fitz at once. “Saying he could have Eddie’s name cleared by afternoon was overstating things a bit. Who’s the prosecutor?”
“D’Amato,” Fitz grumbled. He seemed to be working on taking deep breaths.
“Yeah, well, that’s why Sierra made his case on TV instead of in the courtroom. D’Amato would’ve eaten this kid alive. Do Blockbuster Video cards contain photo ID? No. Isn’t it true that anyone could’ve come in with Eddie Como’s card to return a movie, not necessarily Eddie Como? But he thought the guy did look like Eddie Como? Well then why didn’t he come forward before now? Why did he wait a full year to share this news? That’s the real question.”