The Survivors Club

by Lisa Gardner

  “Where are you going with this, Sergeant?”

  Griffin laughed. It was the hollow, stressed-out laugh of a detective watching his case go down the tubes. “Well, we have two angles left. First, we hold with the vengeance theory, and pursue the possibility that there were other victims of the College Hill Rapist. Ones that have never come forward to the police.”

  The lieutenant was silent for a moment. “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “Isn’t it? Jillian Hayes and her mother came up with it. Remember, rape is a drastically underreported crime. I checked with Fitz, and they did some initial legwork. Ran the rape profile through VICAP, etc. No hits, but that doesn’t mean much. If there are other victims, they may never have gone to the police at all.”

  “Did they try the rape hotline or a rape-crisis organization?”

  “Uh, no . . .”

  “Well, maybe you’d like to send out some detectives, Sergeant. A rape-crisis organization won’t give you names, but they can tell you if they received calls from someone who suffered a similar attack. Then at least you’ll know if you’re on the right track.”

  “Ummm, good point.”

  “That’s why my name starts with the initials LT. Now what’s your second theory?”

  “It involves the Sylvia Blaire case. Fitz is hoping it’s a copycat, praying really, that it’s a copycat, but there are some problems with that theory.”

  “The douche.”

  Griffin scowled. “For a neglected lieutenant, you’re keeping well informed.”

  Morelli said, “I’ll have you know, I do look very good today. Plus, it just so happens that Lieutenant Kennedy from Providence has the hots for my sister. Which is, by the way, the only thing that is keeping Detective Fitzpatrick from wringing your neck. Well, that and the fact that Detective Fitzpatrick has his own problems at the moment.”

  “I appreciate that,” Griffin said seriously. “Well, okay. So Fitz and I had an interesting discussion on the Sylvia Blaire case this morning. One possibility is that Eddie Como led two lives, one as the loving fiancé, and the other as a sexual deviant. And maybe Sexual Deviant Eddie had some friends to whom he liked to brag.”

  “Drinking buddies?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who knew all the details of what he did, including the douche?”

  “That’s the thought.”

  “Another interesting thought,” Morelli concurred. “But why just a drinking buddy? Why not an actual accomplice? We’ve seen rape duos before.”

  Griffin shrugged. “Only one semen type was ever recovered from the vics. Plus, Carol and Jillian only reported seeing one man.”

  Morelli was silent for a moment. “What if the second person was more of a passive partner? Maybe a lookout?”

  Griffin pursed his lips. “Oh,” he said. “Ooooooh.”

  “I’m good, aren’t I, Sergeant?” she said knowingly.

  “You’re good,” he agreed. “The times! That would explain the times. See, it would appear that the first vic, Meg Pesaturo, was a quick in and out. Like the rapist was afraid of being discovered. But he spent a lot of time with Carol, who was always considered a last-minute substitute. Why wasn’t he worried about someone coming home? And it would appear that the rapist had been in Trisha Hayes’s apartment for a while, too. He’d already completed the rape before Jillian arrived, but he hadn’t left yet. And even though in theory Jillian walked in on him, he was aware she was coming. He hid and jumped her from behind. Now, part of his lingering at the Rosen and Hayes crime scenes probably had to do with his escalating appetite for violence. He needed more and more to get the same thrill. But maybe he also had a lookout, or gained one as he went along. Someone whose job was to give him the security to stay as long as he liked. Except in Trisha Hayes’s case, when someone did unexpectedly appear, it was a basement apartment with only one point of entry/exit. So he couldn’t bolt without being spotted. His better move was to ambush her instead, which he then prepared to do.”

  “And now this accomplice is no longer just a lookout?” Morelli said.

  “That could be. Huh, that might explain the incident last night at the Hayes residence. Someone spray-painted ‘Eddie Como lives’ across a bank of windows. Maybe that’s what this guy thinks he’s doing. Carrying on the tradition of Eddie Como.”

  “But this person would also have reason to kill Como, correct? Both to protect what he’d done in the past and what he was thinking of doing in the future.”

  “Yeah, maybe. When Fitz brought it up this morning, I thought he was pushing the limits. But then again . . .”

  “It assumes a shift in behavior.” Morelli was thinking out loud. “Perpetrator number two was willing to be just a lookout, and now has graduated to actually committing sexual assault—and murder.”

  “A graduating level of involvement is not uncommon in sex crimes, though,” Griffin added. “Most rapists start with bondage fantasies, then commit lower-level acts of violence against women—battery, assault—before moving to rape. In this case, we have a perpetrator who’s definitely interested in rape. He’s hanging out with a rapist, taking some role in the crimes. To have his first solo incident involve a high level of violence, homicide . . .” Griffin scowled. “That doesn’t fit the pattern as well, but there could be mitigating circumstances. If Sylvia Blaire was attacked by Como’s partner, the guy had gone a whole year without doing anything. Maybe the tension had built too high. He saw a potential victim. He went nuts.”

  Lieutenant Morelli was silent. He could tell she had to think about it, too. “It’s worth pursuing,” she said at last. “So I can tell Lieutenant Johnson that you’re searching for associates of Eddie Como as possible suspects in our murder case?”

  “You can say that.”

  “I think I will say that. Providence has enough problems without feeling as if they’re at war with us, too.”

  “Providence has problems,” Griffin agreed.

  “Speaking of which . . .”

  He knew what was coming next. His grip tightened on the phone, but at least he kept his breathing steady.

  “Sergeant, have you spoken with Corporal Charpentier at the ACI?”

  “Not yet. I’ve heard of the issue, though.”

  “No one here is taking him seriously,” she said quietly.

  “I appreciate that.”

  “On the other hand . . .”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “This case is growing hot,” Morelli said evenly. “It’s getting a life of its own. You know what happens when a case gets a life of its own.”

  “I’m on top of it.”

  “Speed, Sergeant. We need to close this one. Quick. Before the public gets more frightened. Before Tawnya Clemente’s lawyer gains more ammunition. And before the press realizes there is a man in the ACI who claims to have information relevant to the case. You understand?”

  Griffin closed his eyes. He understood perfectly.

  He was pulling into his driveway now. Waters’s blue Taurus was already parked to one side, the detective sitting behind the wheel.

  “I gotta go,” Griffin said.

  “First thing in the morning—”

  “I’ll have a report on your desk.”

  “Damn right, you will. And in the meantime?”

  “I’ll put detectives on the rape-crisis organizations and others on the Cranston bars.”

  “Good luck, Sergeant.”

  “Yeah.” Griffin flipped shut his phone, thought about Carol lying in the hospital and Price sitting behind bars. “Good luck.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Waters

  DETECTIVE MIKE WATERS GOT OUT OF HIS CAR ALREADY wearing a pair of gray sweats and a white T-shirt bearing the emblem of the Rhode Island State Police. He swung a dark blue gym bag over his shoulder, and waited for Griffin to unlock the front door. Both were parked in the driveway; Griffin had his weight set and boxing equipment set up in the single-bay garage.

  “Nice p
lace,” Mike said, eyeing the small, teetering white bungalow warily.

  Griffin smiled. “You see any places in the floor that look mushy, trust me. Don’t step there.”

  He opened the door and led the way in. He’d purchased the house six months ago, needing a fresh start and finding a new hobby. The home sat on prime real estate. North Kingstown. Waterfront access. On a clear day, he could sit on the back deck and see well past the Newport Bridge. Peaceful place. Lots of birds, a few gorgeous hundred-year-old beech trees. In other words, the house itself was an absolute shack. A real person—i.e., one with money—would’ve bulldozed the place and started over. After his generous donation to the American Cancer Society, however, Griffin didn’t have that kind of money. Besides, he liked to live dangerously.

  “I heard you were fixing it up.” Mike’s tone was more dubious now. He stepped over the threshold with a critical look at the water-stained hardwood floor, then the plaster ceiling that was literally peeling away in foot-long sheets.

  “Full-time for six months,” Griffin said.

  “No way.”

  “I started with wiring, then moved on to plumbing, then did the roof. Now I just have the kitchen, bathroom, the ceilings, the floors and three bedroom walls to go. Oh, and the back deck. Oh, I think something may have crawled in and died beneath the garage.”

  “So . . . sometime before the extinction of man?”

  “That’s my plan.” Griffin directed Mike into the tiny kitchen. The floor was a dirt-brown vinyl, straight out of the seventies. The stove was olive green, also from the seventies. The refrigerator, on the other hand, was a tiny, domed icebox circa 1950. He pulled on the metal lever-handle and gave a sigh of relief when the door actually opened. “Beer? Soda?”

  “Afterward.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Griffin disappeared into the first-story bedroom, changed into sweats himself, then led Mike to the garage. He had a nice free-weight system. Not from his brief days of money, either. No, he’d been carefully acquiring these pieces since he graduated from college. His first purchase, of course, had been the Everlast heavy bag hanging from a heavy-duty swivel and chain in one corner. Next to it was a twin pair of small, leather-covered speed bags with specially inserted rubber bladders for greater recoil. If you blinked at the wrong time, those things could knock you out—or give you one helluva black eye. Don’t ask Griffin how he knew.

  They headed to the boxing corner first. Mike had done some lightweight work in college. He looked too skinny for the sport, but what he lacked in bulk he made up in reach and speed. First time he and Griffin had squared off, he’d nailed Griffin four times before Griffin ever saw him coming. Of course, with an extra fifty pounds behind him, Griffin only had to land a single punch to end the sparring. They’d stuck to the bag after that. Pretty much.

  Waters unzipped his blue canvas tote. He took out an ump’s face guard, and matter-of-factly slipped it over his head.

  Griffin froze. He got the hint and wasn’t sure how to respond. He finally settled on a smile. “I’ll just batter the rest of you,” he warned and was secretly relieved when Mike smiled back.

  “I don’t think so,” Waters said. “I’ve been practicing. You know how much shit a guy gets when his best friend breaks his nose?”

  “Ahhh, they all figured out that you were slow?”

  “Slow? Hell, they left a Ronald McDonald nose in my locker. I even wore it one day just to make them feel guilty.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Nah. Next day they left me his shoes. Detectives have way too much time on their hands.”

  Mike stood. He left his face guard on, and positioned himself behind the heavy bag.

  “Any luck with the bar search?” Griffin asked.

  “Not yet. But I only made it to six joints. Ask me again tomorrow.”

  Griffin grunted and got on with it. He started slow. Warmed his muscles and thought that for the first time back with Mike it would be good to show a little control. But the day had been long, the case hard. He was thinking too much about Eddie Como and was he or was he not perpetrator number one and then was there or was there not a perpetrator number two. Then he thought of Carol, still no news. And then he thought of Jillian Hayes, the way her eyes turned molten gold when she was mad, the way her fingers had curled around his arm just an hour before.

  He pummeled the living shit out of the heavy bag. Even Waters was breathing hard when he was done. The detective didn’t say a word. He motioned with his head, and they changed places.

  Holding a bag for Mike wasn’t too difficult. He didn’t have the mass to hit that hard. But he liked to thoroughly work over the target; Griffin had watched him do it before. Turning the bag into a human proxy, then going after various points. Kidney, kidney, kidney, right uppercut. Stomach, stomach, stomach, left chin.

  Griffin relaxed, let his body do the work on setting the bag, and allowed his mind to drift. It had been a while since he’d worked out with anyone else. Brought back a certain measure of comfort. The smell of chalk and sweat. The heat of bodies working hard. The silence of men who didn’t need to talk.

  Afterward, Griffin hit the weights while Mike amused himself with a jump rope. Then Griffin played with the speed bags while Mike used the weights. Then an hour had passed, neither one of them could move, so they grabbed two beers, a gallon of water and headed for the back deck.

  Sun was down. In the distance, the lights of the Newport Bridge twinkled like stars while the breeze came in off the water and covered their sweat-dampened skin with goose bumps. Mike dug out a sweatshirt. Griffin retrieved a fleece pullover.

  They still didn’t speak.

  Cell phone rang. Griffin went back inside to get his phone off his bed. It was the hospital calling. Carol Rosen had been moved to the ICU. Her stomach had been pumped, but she had yet to regain consciousness. The doctors wanted to keep a close eye on her.

  When he came back out, Waters had finished off the H2O and cracked open both beers. He held out the red-and-white can of Bud to Griffin as he took his seat.

  “I see you still only buy the best,” Mike said.

  “Absolutely.”

  They lapsed back into silence. Finally, ten, twenty, thirty minutes later, it didn’t really matter, Mike said, “You still miss her?”

  “Every day.”

  “I miss her, too.” Mike looked at him. “It was hard, you being out. It was as if I’d lost both of you.”

  Griffin didn’t say anything. He and Mike went back fifteen years now. Mike had been there for Griffin’s first promotion to detective. He’d been there when Griffin came back from a hiking trip raving about this woman he’d just met. He’d served as best man at Griffin and Cindy’s wedding, and then one bright spring afternoon, he’d been a pallbearer at her funeral. It was hard sometimes for Griffin to remember that the pain was not his alone.

  “David Price was a piece of shit,” Waters said abruptly. “And he hid it really well, not just from you. It’s over, though. He took enough. Don’t give him any more.”

  “I know.”

  “Good. She’d want you to be happy, Griffin. She never wanted less for you than you wanted for her.”

  “It wasn’t fair, you know,” Griffin said.

  “I know.”

  “That’s the hardest part. If I think about that . . .” He spun the can of beer in his hands. “If I focus on that, I start to go a little nuts again.”

  “Then don’t think about that.”

  Griffin sighed heavily. He went back to studying the dark depths of the ocean at night. “Yeah. Things happen as they happen. People who think they’re in control of life—they’re just not paying attention.”

  “Amen,” Waters said. He went back inside and fetched them both another can of beer.

  Later, Griffin said: “Did you follow up with Corporal Charpentier?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “David Price doesn’t know anything.”
/>   “You’re sure?”

  “Corporal Charpentier tracked down Como’s former roommate Jimmy Woods, the guy now serving time in Steel City. According to Woods, Eddie Como was a first-class whiner even behind bars. All he ever did was go on and on about how he was innocent, and this was all some horrible mistake.”

  “This is what Woods said?”

  “That’s what Woods said. Just for the sake of argument, Charpentier followed up with Price. Price said Woods was lying, but Charpentier wasn’t impressed. Charpentier even asked Price if he knew who had done Sylvia Blaire. You know what he said?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Eddie Como. And then he laughed.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The Survivors Club

  NIGHTFALL. MEG SAT ON THE FLOOR OF HER LITTLE sister’s room, ostensibly braiding the hair on her sister’s new Barbie doll, but really trying to pretend she didn’t notice the thick darkness gathering outside the second-story window—or the sound of her parents’ voices, arguing down the hall.

  “The pink dress,” five-year-old Molly announced. She’d been going through her shoebox of Barbie clothes for the past ten minutes, trying to pick the perfect outfit for Barbie’s upcoming wedding. Molly didn’t own Ken, so Barbie was going to marry Pooh Bear. Pooh seemed very excited about the whole thing. He was wearing a new pink cape for the occasion. Molly loved the color pink.

  Molly handed over the long, sequined dress, more appropriate for receiving an Oscar than, say, a wedding, but Meg dutifully tugged it up over the doll’s feet.

  “Maybe we should tell someone,” her mother was saying down the hall.

  “Absolutely not!” her father’s muffled voice replied.

  “What about Jillian—”

  “No.”

  “Sergeant Griffin?”

  “Dammit, Laurie, this is a family matter. We’ve made it this long, we’re not getting strangers involved now.”

  “Shoes,” Molly declared. She looked at Meg and promptly frowned. Matching shoes were hard to come by for the real people in this house, let alone the tiny plastic pairs that went with Barbie.

  “She could have a barefoot wedding,” Meg said.