The Survivors Club

by Lisa Gardner

  A sound intrudes. In the dream hotel room, the dream Jillian turns her head. She listens to the loud, squawking sirens racing down the street.

  But then the hotel room falls away. Baby Trisha falls away. And dream Jillian and the real Jillian realize at the same time that the noise is not a siren on the street.

  It is in the house. It is in Jillian’s bedroom.

  Someone has pressed the panic alarm.

  Sound. Carol heard it again. A thud in the nether regions of her home. It was followed by a thump.

  Someone was in her house. Someone was genuinely inside Carol’s home. The panic that held her in its grip all night gained momentum and became suddenly, terrifyingly real.

  Carol’s breathing accelerated. Very slowly, she straightened legs that had grown cramped and numb while curled beneath her. Then she drew back the pile of towels and slid way down, until just her eyes peered above the rim of the bathtub. More noises down the hall. Maybe the bedroom. That bedroom. The bedroom.

  Very carefully, Carol raised the barrel of her .22 and aimed it at the door.

  Now the sound was in the hallway. Footsteps, definitely, coming her way.

  “Dan?” she called out hoarsely. Questioningly. Hopefully.

  There was no reply.

  And then the footsteps stopped, two dark shadows coming to rest in the lighted crack beneath the bathroom door. He was here.

  Goose bumps rippled up Carol’s arms.

  Steady, Carol. Steady . . .

  The gun in her hand. The breath held in her chest . . .

  She watched the brass doorknob slowly begin to twist.

  Jillian bolted out of bed. She grabbed her bathrobe, made it to her door, then did an abrupt about-face and raced back to her bed for her pepper spray. The alarm still sounded shrilly through the house.

  Running out into the hallway, she found Toppi standing in a white linen nightgown, looking sleepy-eyed and dazed.

  “Did you—”

  “No.”

  “Libby!” they both cried and went rushing for her room.

  Jillian shoved through the door, leading with her pepper spray and looking around frantically. Libby was lying in her bed. Her face was stark white. She had the security remote clutched tight against her chest.

  “Mom, Mom, what is it?”

  Libby raised her trembling arm. She pointed to the window behind them. And very slowly, Jillian and Toppi turned.

  Eleven thirty-three P.M.

  Griffin was still at headquarters sifting through paperwork and rubbing the bridge of his nose tiredly when the officer on duty stuck his head into the conference room.

  “Sergeant.”

  “Officer Girard.”

  “Sir, 911 just got a report of a disturbance over in East Greenwich. A home security system is going off, and apparently a woman in a bathrobe is now running through the yard. I thought you’d want to know—the house belongs to Jillian Hayes.”

  “Damn.” A disturbance at Jillian’s house tonight of all nights could not be a good thing, and he was at least twenty minutes away. Griffin started talking as he headed for the door.

  “Do me a favor, Officer, and put in a call to Detective Fitz.”

  “He’s with Providence?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Sorry, sir, but I believe the Providence detectives are out on a call. I heard it on the scanner, though they seem to be keeping the details hush-hush. Some kind of incident on College Hill.”

  Griffin drew up short. “On College Hill?”

  And Officer Girard repeated, “Yes, sir. College Hill.”

  The bathroom door swung open. Carol closed her eyes, then squeezed the trigger.

  Pop, pop, pop. The tiny .22 leapt in her hand. And the dark shrouded form fell flat on the floor.

  “Oh my God,” the dark shrouded form moaned. “I think you just shot me.”

  And Carol said, “Dan?”

  Jillian was running. She tore through her yard in her baby-blue bathrobe, shoving back tree limbs, pouncing on bushes. Lights were blazing, neighbors gathering, sirens roaring down the street. She was making a spectacle of herself. She didn’t care.

  “Come out, come out, you bastard!” she cried. She pointed her pepper spray and attacked a shuddering leaf. “You want to play a practical joke? I’ll show you a joke, you cowardly son of a bitch. Come on. Show yourself!”

  She ran close to the perimeter. Her neighbors shrank back. She ignored them, tears streaming down her face, her nose running from the blowback of pepper spray. He had to be out here somewhere. He couldn’t have gone far. And she would find him, and she would grab him by his scruffy, probably teenage neck, and, and . . .

  She needed to hurt someone. She needed to inflict violence and pain, and that scared her, too, so she kept running, trampling new budding bulbs and freshly planted pansies. She had to move. She had to fight. She was not in a dark basement anymore. She was not powerless!

  There, that bush. It moved. Cowardly son of a bitch . . .

  Jillian made a beeline for the trembling sand cherry, and abruptly ran into something hard. “Umph,” she said, falling back a few steps, then belatedly raising her eyes to discover Sergeant Griffin’s large, unrelenting form.

  “Jillian,” he said quietly.

  “Did you see what he did?”

  “The officers told me what happened.”

  “It was my mother’s bedroom. Do you know what that did to her? The EMTs had to come, she’s having problems breathing. If that sick bastard gave her another heart attack, I swear I’ll kill him myself. I’ll find him and I’ll rip him from limb to limb!”

  “Jillian,” he said quietly.

  “It was my mother’s bedroom! What kind of idiot does such a thing? Today of all days. My poor mother. Oh God, my poor mother . . .”

  Her shoulders convulsed, then she was swaying from side to side. She looked down to see that her bathrobe had come open and she was standing half-naked in the middle of her lawn. Sirens everyplace, police lights washing her home in violent red light. People everywhere, staring at her, staring at her home, gossiping about her pain.

  Eddie Como lives. Scrawled across her mother’s bedroom window in red dripping spray paint. Eddie Como lives.

  “It’s not funny,” she mumbled. “It’s a horrible, horrible practical joke.” And then she swayed again and Sergeant Griffin had to catch her in his arms.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  “I hate this!” Her voice was muffled against his chest.

  “Jillian . . .” he said gently, and something about his tone finally cut through her haze. Slowly, she raised her head. His blue eyes were somber. So somber. She stared and stared and stared. And then, for no good reason, she was thinking of his dead wife. What had it been like to love this man? To be held in these strong arms, to look up at this steady gaze, and to still feel yourself, slowly but surely, slipping away?

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  “I’m very sorry. I just talked to Detective Fitzpatrick . . . On College Hill. There’s been another incident.”

  “But there can’t be. Eddie . . . he’s gone. It’s over, it’s ended. Even this . . . It’s probably just some teenage jerk with a spray can. Please tell me it’s just a teenage jerk with a spray can. I need it to be just a teenage jerk with a spray can.”

  Sergeant Griffin didn’t say a word. His arms were still around her, supporting her half-crumpled form, shielding her from her neighbors. He wouldn’t let her go until she was ready. She understood that now. He would stand here as long as she needed, support her as long as she needed. It was his job, and even back then, on the pedophile case, the reporters had said that he took his job seriously.

  She studied his face, broad, hard-planed, firm. She looked into his steady blue eyes. Impulsively, she reached up a hand and touched the raspy line of his chin. She wondered what he would think to know that no one had touched her, and she had touched no one, for well over a year.

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nbsp; Then very slowly, she straightened up, stepped away, and belted her robe at the waist.

  “Brunette?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Latex strips?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she . . . ?”

  “Manual strangulation.”

  Jillian closed her eyes. “All right, Sergeant. Maybe you had better come inside.”

  Twelve twenty-one A.M.

  The lights were out in the Pesaturo home. Tom and Laurie slept peacefully on the opposite sides of their king-sized bed. Little Molly was curled up with her head at the foot of her pink Barbie bed. While in her room, Meg began to thrash from side to side in the throes of a dream.

  Rich chocolate eyes. Soft, gentle hands. A slow lover’s smile. His fingers stroke her hair. His hand drifts down to her breast. She arches her back and aches for him to do more.

  “We should stop,” he whispers in her ear.

  “No, no . . .”

  “It wouldn’t be right.” His thumb flickers over her nipple. His fingers squeeze tight.

  “Please . . .”

  “This is wrong.”

  “Oh please . . .”

  His hand moves down. She arches her hips toward him, straining. And then . . . His hand presses against her. Her whole body thrums. She throws back her head.

  Rich chocolate eyes. Soft, gentle hands. A slow lover’s smile.

  Meg thrashed again in her sleep. She whispered, “David.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The Survivors Club

  “I SHOT MY HUSBAND.”

  “You shot your husband?”

  “Last night, when he came home. I was scared. I’d just received another card from Eddie Como—this time bearing your address, Jillian. And . . . I swear I called out Dan’s name first. But he didn’t answer. So I pulled the trigger, and I . . . well, I hit him in the upper arm. Pretty good, really. The doctor was impressed.”

  Jillian frowned. “I thought we agreed no guns.”

  “No, Jillian, you said no guns. I, on the other hand, still reserve the right to think for myself. So how do you like that?” Carol’s tone grew hot.

  In contrast, Jillian’s voice remained particularly cool for this first emergency meeting of the Survivors Club. “I think the real question is,” she said dryly, “how did Dan like that?”

  Meg sighed and slid down deeper in her chair. This was not going well. Carol was so agitated she couldn’t even sit at the table they’d reserved in the private room of this intimate Federal Hill restaurant. Jillian, on the other hand, was wearing a navy blue power suit buttoned up to her chin and sitting stiffly enough to do the Queen of England proud. The tension was sky high. Except for Meg, of course. She never knew enough to be tense. Besides, this morning she was too busy nursing her first hangover. At least she thought it was her first hangover.

  “In the words of my mother,” she spoke up now, “could you two please use your inside voice?”

  Carol glared at her. Jillian’s look was droller.

  “Little slow getting going this morning?” Jillian asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “Did you get to worship at the porcelain God last night?”

  It took Meg a moment to get it. Oh, puking. “No. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’ll live.”

  “Excuse me,” Carol interjected curtly. “I was discussing shooting my husband. What do I have to do—kill him?—to get some attention around here?”

  “I don’t know,” Jillian replied. “Is that why you shot him?”

  “Oh for God’s sake—”

  “No, you listen to us for a minute—”

  “There is no us, Jillian. There’s just you. It’s always been you. Meg and I are merely window dressing for your holy pursuit of justice. Survivors Club. That’s a joke. This club isn’t about surviving, it’s about vengeance. You just can’t use that word in front of the press. Well, here we are now. Eddie Como’s dead, I’ve shot my husband, another girl has been attacked, and the press is crying miscarriage of justice. What are you going to do, Jillian? How are you going to spin this one?”

  Jillian got up from the table. She walked a small circle, then repeated the motion two more times. Her movements were stiff and jerky. Her face was pale and impossible to read. Meg had seen her in this mood only once before. The first time Eddie Como had contacted them. Meg had honestly been a little frightened of Jillian that day.

  “Someone trespassed on my property last night,” Jillian said crisply. “Someone loosened all the bulbs in my motion-activated lights, then walked up to my home and spray-painted ‘Eddie Como lives’ on my mother’s bedroom windows. Then he screwed the lights back in. For God’s sake, my mom had to receive oxygen to recover from the shock. You think I don’t understand fear, Carol? You think I don’t know what went on in your head last night as you heard unknown footsteps coming down the hall? If I’d had a gun twelve hours ago, I would’ve shot someone, too. And I probably would’ve hit a neighborhood boy, which is why I said no guns.”

  “Holier-than-thou Jillian . . .”

  “Goddammit. You want to have this conversation, Carol? Fine. Detective Fitz and Sergeant Griffin are going to be here in less than ten minutes, so let’s get it done.”

  “There you go again, Jillian. I’m trying to have a conversation and you’re setting an agenda.”

  Jillian thinned her lips, then switched her gaze to Meg. “Do you want out?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want out? Have you had enough? Are you sick of this group?”

  “I don’t . . . No,” Meg said more firmly. “I don’t want out.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . because we need each other. Look at us. Who else could discuss midnight vandalism and shot husbands without looking at us as if we were freaks? With other people . . . the conversations aren’t real.”

  “But these conversations aren’t real either!” Carol said impatiently. “That’s my whole point. It’s been a year. We’re beyond polite conversation, victims’ rights or legal strategy. At least we should be. If we are the Survivors Club, then it’s time we got down to the business of surviving. Or maybe the fact that we’re not surviving. Except you don’t want to have those conversations, Jillian. You’re fine about getting the police in here to give us briefings, or getting D’Amato to present legal tactics. But when it’s simply us, all alone, ragged, raw, emotional. You shut down, Jillian. Worse, you shut us down. And that’s not fair. Frankly, if I wanted to be treated like that, I’d go home to my husband.”

  “Armed?” Jillian asked.

  “If I had a brain in my head,” Carol snapped.

  Jillian finally smiled. The wan expression, however, only made her look tired.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  Carol regarded her suspiciously. Meg yawned, wishing they would both just get on with it. Jillian’s and Carol’s personalities were like oil and water, but they did need each other. They all needed each other, especially now, when a new girl had been raped and murdered. Meg kept thinking it could’ve been her. And poor Jillian, she had to be thinking of Trish. After a night like last night, how could she not be thinking of Trish?

  Jillian’s chin had come down a fraction. She regarded Carol steadily. “It’s possible . . .” Jillian’s voice trailed off. She cleared her throat, tried again. “When I’m under stress, when I’m angry, it’s easier for me to remain focused. To outline a plan of attack and implement that plan. I need to keep busy. Keep . . . moving. I suppose I might be forcing that approach onto the group.”

  “I can’t do that,” Carol said flatly. “I go home to the same house every night, to the same husband who didn’t come home in time, to the same second-story room where a man crawled through a window and took away my life. You can get some distance from things. Meg can get some distance from things. I can’t. That night has become like mud, and I’m just spinning my wheels in it over and over again.”
/>   “Why don’t you sell the house? Why don’t you move?” Meg this time. She was curious.

  “Dan loves that house,” Carol said immediately.

  “I’m sure he loves you more.”

  Carol didn’t say anything. The look on her face was enough.

  “He shuts you out that much?” Jillian asked softly. The mood in the room shifted. Grew more subdued. And Meg was thinking again, that poor, poor girl. They were fighting with each other, but really, underneath it all, that poor, poor girl.

  “Dan shuts me out so much, I don’t know why he bothers coming home,” Carol was saying. Her shoulders had come down, her angry expression giving way to a pain that was far worse. “He won’t talk. He won’t fight, grieve or even rationalize. The subject is strictly off-limits. We live in a house with a giant elephant both of us pretend not to see.”

  “You’ve never talked about the rape?”

  “In the beginning we talked about what the doctors said. Then we talked about what the police said, or what D’Amato said. Sometimes we talk about what our group says. So we talk. About what other people say.”

  “It’s got to be hard for him,” Meg spoke up. “I mean, he’s a guy. Look at my father. He still hates himself for not being there when Eddie attacked me, and he didn’t even live in my apartment. For your husband, that’s gotta feel like a hundred-pound weight around his neck. I wonder what other guys say to him.”

  “Other guys?”

  “Well, sure, guys talk. Well, okay, not really. I mean, not like us. But he’s a guy and other guys know his wife was raped in his own home. That’s gotta make him feel . . . bad. Like a first-class failure. What kind of man doesn’t protect the woman he loves? I know if something ever happened to my mom, my father would get out the brass knuckles. Then probably a chain saw. And then my Uncle Vinnie would . . . Well, that’s a whole ’nother story.”