The Survivors Club

by Lisa Gardner

  Griffin wagged a finger at her playfully. Maybe his charm was returning, because she grudgingly opened the door.

  “If you pigs are here about the lawsuit,” Tawnya said, “go fuck a goat. My lawyer says I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  “Colorful,” Griffin observed to Fitz.

  “I got more. Keep talking and you’ll hear them all.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Como.” Fitz eased into the kitchen behind Griffin, keeping the state detective’s larger bulk between him and Tawnya. Mrs. Como stood in front of the stove again. Today’s culinary adventure seemed to be simmering black beans. The wafting odors of garlic gave the kitchen a homey touch. Not that the bleaching baby diapers had been lacking.

  Eddie, Jr., was awake this time, nestled in a baby carrier on top of the kitchen table. He studied Griffin with big brown eyes, then stuck a multicolored teething ring into his mouth and drooled away. Griffin tucked his hands in his pockets before he did something stupid like tickle the baby’s pudgy cheeks. He was supposed to be big bad detective here. Clock was ticking, ticking, ticking. Man, babies were cute.

  “Maybe we should talk in the family room,” Fitz said and jerked his head toward Eddie, Jr.

  “I don’t got nothin’ to say to you,” Tawnya said.

  “Let’s go into the family room,” Fitz repeated, more firmly. Tawnya scowled at him, but went.

  The minute they were out of the kitchen, Fitz opened fire. “We know what you did, Tawnya. Come clean now, before another girl dies, and maybe we can still work something out. Eddie, Jr., has already lost one parent. You want him to grow up completely orphaned?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Fifty million dollars. For that kind of money, people sell out their own mothers, let alone some boyfriend who’s knocked you up but still not walked you down the aisle.”

  “Are you talking about my lawsuit? Because I’m not talking about my lawsuit. My lawyer told me I don’t have to tell you pigs one damn thing. You killed my Eddie. Now it’s your turn to pay!”

  “There won’t be any lawsuit, Tawnya,” Griffin spoke up quietly.

  “Not one red cent,” Fitz emphasized, “not once the public knows what you really did to Eddie.”

  Tawnya was good. Real good. She looked at them first in bewilderment, then drew herself up for battle. She bared her teeth. She flashed those long hot-pink nails. “Get out of my house.”

  “You need to listen to us, Tawnya. Work with us now, and you can still salvage something for Eddie, Jr.”

  “Miserable, fucking, shit-eating, donkey-humping, flea-repelling, toad-hopping jackasses. Get out of my house!”

  Fitz and Griffin didn’t move a muscle. Fitz glanced at Griffin. “You’re right, the language is very colorful.”

  “Goes with the nails.”

  “Think she’ll attack soon?”

  “That’d be nice. Then we can arrest her now, and she’ll never see the light of day.”

  “Too bad for Eddie, Jr.”

  Griffin shrugged. “You know what they say. You can’t pick your parents.”

  Tawnya foamed at the mouth. Griffin promptly went in for the kill.

  “You have thirty seconds to start talking,” he told her, his voice low and intense. “We know you framed your boyfriend. We know you’re an accomplice to four rapes and two murders. You come clean right this moment, and Eddie, Jr., still has a chance at having a mother. You jerk us around one more second, however, and we’re arresting you. We’ll shackle you in front of your kid. We’ll drag you out of this house and you’ll never see your baby again. Thirty seconds, Tawnya. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven . . .”

  Tawnya wasn’t into negotiating. She growled once, then launched herself at Griffin’s massive form. He grabbed her raking hands, slipped his foot behind hers, and neatly face-planted her onto the worn shag carpet. Fitz produced the cuffs. They didn’t have time for fooling around. They hauled her, spitting and sputtering, back onto her feet and were preparing to march her out the door when Mrs. Como stepped into the room, dried her hands on a kitchen towel and uttered a single word.

  “Stop,” the old woman said.

  Some instincts ran deep: they froze. Griffin recovered first. “Mrs. Como,” he said firmly, “we have reason to believe that Tawnya helped frame your son for rape—”

  “I did not!” Tawnya screeched. She started squirming again, then kicked out at Fitz, who deftly stepped aside.

  “Tawnya is a good girl,” Mrs. Como said.

  “Good girl, my ass!” Fitz sputtered, still dodging.

  “Good girls have done far worse for fifty million dollars,” Griffin reminded her tightly, and tugged Tawnya away from Fitz.

  “Tawnya no do lawsuit,” Mrs. Como said. “I do lawsuit. I want money. For my grandson.”

  “The lawsuit was your idea?”

  “Sí.”

  “But Tawnya was the one on TV,” Fitz spoke up.

  “I no like TV.”

  Fitz and Griffin exchanged troubled looks. They pulled back from Tawnya, but only slightly. She, of course, took the opportunity to spit at both of them. “I would never do anything to harm Eddie! I loved Eddie, you stupid, miserable—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Fitz interrupted, holding up his hand and glancing at his watch. “We got the picture.”

  “My son was framed?” Mrs. Como asked from the doorway. “My Eddie no do bad things?”

  Griffin looked at Fitz’s watch, too. Nearly twelve-thirty now. Shit. “Mrs. Como, are you aware that another girl was attacked last night?”

  Mrs. Como nodded.

  “We got DNA tests back from that victim, Mrs. Como. They match samples taken from Eddie.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Tawnya burst out. “Eddie’s dead. What, you pigs are so desperate you’re going after corpses now? Not even dead Latinos are safe from you. Miserable, fucking—”

  This time Griffin held up a hand. He studied Tawnya’s red, outraged face. He looked at Mrs. Como, and her much-harder-to-read expression. Something was wrong here, he could feel it in his bones.

  And that damn clock was still ticking, ticking, ticking.

  “Tawnya,” he said, “are you aware that when detectives searched Eddie’s and your apartment last year, they found all sorts of books on forensics and police procedure? Some clippings, too, right, Detective? News articles from another rape case that had happened in Rhode Island.”

  “I told the police, that stuff wasn’t Eddie’s!”

  “Whose was it?”

  “I don’t know! A box came in the mail to Eddie. The note said it was from a friend. He didn’t know what that meant so he stuck it in a closet. He figured someone would call about it later or something. I told that to the detectives. I told them.”

  “When did you get the box?”

  “I don’t know. A long time ago. Last year. Before . . .” She frowned. “Before the bad things started happening. I don’t understand. How can you think Eddie killed that woman last night? Eddie’s dead.”

  “Did the box have a return address?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t open it. It came to Eddie.”

  Griffin glanced at Fitz. “No,” the detective told him. “It was just an old cardboard box with a mailing label on it. Frankly, it looked to us like he’d used the box for storage of the materials. When we found it, it was shoved in the back of a coat closet.”

  “’Cause it wasn’t his stuff!” Tawnya cried again. “Eddie didn’t know why it had come in the mail!”

  “Have you ever heard the name David Price?” Griffin asked Tawnya.

  “Who?”

  “Did Eddie ever mention the name David Price?”

  “Who the fuck’s David Price?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Candy Man?”

  “The pervert who hurt all those little kids,” she said immediately. “Now there’s a dude who deserves to have his little weenie whacked off—or the electric chair!”

  G
riffin studied her again. Her brown eyes were clear, earnest. If she was lying, she was very, very good.

  “Tawnya, did Eddie have another girlfriend?”

  She instantly erupted again. “Eddie loved me! Why is that so hard to believe? Eddie loved me and I loved Eddie, and we were gonna be all right. He had a good job, you know, and after Eddie, Jr., was born I was gonna go to beauty school. And then, and then . . . Ah, fuck you all!”

  Her shoulders sagged, the first tear slid down her cheek and she immediately turned away. Crocodile tears? Or the saddest display Griffin had ever seen? He’d been lied to so much lately, it was getting hard to tell. But he had the suspicion he was getting a lesson in irony here. In this case, the victims and their families had lied—with the best of intentions, of course—while the prime suspect and his family may have been telling the truth.

  “Tawnya,” Griffin said quietly, “we’re running out of time here. I need you to tell me the truth, I need to hear it now.”

  “I told the truth!”

  “Tawnya, did you give someone a . . . sample, from Eddie? Maybe it seemed like you were supposed to, or it was a favor for a friend.”

  She stared at him in bewilderment. “A sample? You mean a sample? Are you fucking nuts? Who gives out a thing like that?”

  “Tawnya, Eddie’s semen ended up in a murder victim the day after he died. You tell me, how could that have happened?”

  And all of a sudden, she must have figured it out, because her eyes went wide. “Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, oh no, oh no . . .”

  “What, Tawnya? What is oh no? What did you and Eddie do?”

  Her face crumpled, her voice grew hollow. “We needed the money,” she whispered. “I was pregnant, and Eddie wanted to get me something special, you know. Plus, we had to start saving more . . .”

  Ah no. Griffin glanced at Fitz and saw from his face that he’d finally gotten it, too. It made so much sense, but who would’ve thought to ask the question? Who asks a question like that?

  “Eddie was in good health,” Tawnya was saying. “Gave blood every eight weeks so you know he didn’t have any diseases. And he’s nice-looking. They like guys who are nice-looking, you know.”

  “Who likes guys who are nice-looking?” Griffin prodded. She had to say it. And then she did.

  “The sperm bank. Eddie donated at the Pawtucket sperm bank. A couple of times. Right after I found out I was pregnant. They pay cash, you know.” Tawnya looked at them helplessly. “They pay cash.”

  Fitz and Griffin were out of the house and walking fast. Twelve forty-five P.M., starting to make progress but still running out of time.

  “We need a couple of uniforms,” Griffin said.

  “Someone to keep her under lock and key until we can verify her story,” Fitz agreed. They piled into Griffin’s car and he picked up the radio for the request.

  “Ever get the impression we’re dumb as skunks?” Fitz muttered.

  “I don’t know, how dumb are skunks?”

  Fitz finally unleashed a little, and whacked the dash with his hand. “Goddammit! Sergeant Napoleon nailed it this morning. ‘Sperm banks do it all the time.’ Why don’t we just get the full frontal lobotomy and be done with it!”

  “And miss having all this fun? Come on, clock’s ticking. Let’s talk it through.”

  “Eddie makes a donation at a sperm bank,” Fitz said as Griffin pulled away from the curb.

  “In theory, donors are anonymous.”

  “To the recipients. The sperm bank knows who they are, the sperm bank’s gotta clear them first. I don’t know, how much vetting do you do before you hand a guy a plastic cup and send him into a porn-filled room? Lucky bastard.”

  “Someone inside,” Griffin prodded.

  “Someone who would have access to the frozen samples.”

  “And Eddie’s name.”

  “David Price said the guy had met Eddie. Eddie probably didn’t remember him at all, but the guy had met him.”

  Griffin rolled out his neck, shrugged his shoulders. He hated to give weight to anything David Price had said, but they had to start somewhere. “Maybe he’s a technician, then. Someone who worked one of the days Eddie donated, made small talk with him. Maybe he noticed that Eddie was roughly his same size and build, and had that same Cranston accent. He decided here was a good candidate.”

  “So he was already in the market for a patsy,” Fitz said.

  “Meaning he had already met David Price.”

  “Meaning he’d probably been to prison. At least held in Intake on some kind of charge.”

  “He’s already in the system,” Griffin said slowly. “Isn’t that the key issue? He’s a sex offender, he knows he’s a sex offender, and even if he didn’t get found guilty, he at least got caught. So now he knows his prints and DNA are in the system, just as he knows he won’t stop, because sex offenders never stop. They just get more creative with their attacks.”

  “He knows when he gets out, if he gets out, it’s still only a matter of time.”

  “So he befriends David Price.”

  “Who must’ve thought that was funny as hell.”

  “Except then Price realizes maybe he can get something out of this, too. Someone on the outside, working for him. Someone he can someday cash in for a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “And then a partnership is born.”

  “So who do we have?” Griffin demanded. “Someone who’s at least been charged with a sex crime. Someone who’s been held at Intake during the same time Price was there, so that’s what, November through March. He’s gotten out and gotten a job at a sperm bank.”

  “Unlimited access to porn,” Fitz muttered. “Where else would a sex offender go?”

  “Can’t be a technician, though,” Griffin countered. “They’d investigate someone like that, find out about his criminal past and get nervous.”

  “Someone lower level then, but with unlimited access. Has keys to the rooms with the freezers and doesn’t look suspicious moving about at strange hours.”

  They got it at the same time. “Janitor!” Fitz shouted.

  “Or cleaning crew,” Griffin said grimly. “Something like that.”

  He flipped open his phone and got Waters on the line.

  “Sorry, Griff—” Waters started.

  “We know who it is,” Griffin cut him off. “I mean, we know how it was done. We just need a name. Meet me at the Pawtucket sperm bank in ten minutes.”

  “Where?”

  “The sperm bank. Where the College Hill Rapist works.”

  “All right,” Waters said, but he didn’t sound as excited as Griffin thought he would. And then he finally heard the sounds coming from behind Waters in the busy bar. A woman’s voice talking. Maureen Haverill, introducing David Price to the general viewing public on the bar’s big- screen TV. One P.M. Griffin and Fitz had just run out of time.

  CHAPTER 36

  The Victims Club

  IT WAS DARK. MEG KEPT SQUINTING HER EYES, TRYING TO peer into the gloom. It didn’t do her any good. The dark was a thick, tangible presence, as smothering as any wool blanket, as pervasive as an endless sea.

  She twisted her body, straining against the ties that held her hands captive above her head. The latex bindings dug into her wrists cruelly. She felt a fresh trickle of moisture running down her arm and guessed that it was blood. At least she didn’t feel much pain anymore. Her hands had gone numb hours ago, her bound feet shortly thereafter. She still had a dull ache in her shoulder blades from the awkward position. She imagined that would be gone soon, as well. And then?

  She shifted her bound feet again. Tried to find leverage against the corner wall, as if she could climb her way up the vertical surface, slog her way through the ocean of black and burst out the top, gulping for air. Of course, she could do no such thing. She remained a captive twenty-year-old girl. Peering into the dark, inhaling the stomach-churning scent of latex, and feeling the blood drip down her arm.

  Sound. Sh
e shifted, trying to guess the direction of the noise. Footsteps. Above her. From the right? From the left? She never realized how much the darkness echoed before she had been tied up in this musty basement.

  Closer, definitely, closer. Humming now. The man, she thought, recoiling reflexively, then holding her breath.

  He had called her name in the mini-mart parking lot. She had stopped on instinct, even though she hadn’t recognized the car or the driver inside. Not recognizing someone was hardly new at this point, and mostly she remembered feeling faintly curious. Who was this stranger and what stories from her past would he know?

  Instead, he’d told her there’d been an accident. Molly needed her right away. While she was still absorbing that shock, he’d hustled her into the passenger’s side of his car. At the last moment, something inside her had balked. She’d seen him open the driver’s-side door, watched his body bend down to slide inside and something had stirred in the dark pit of her mind. Not a memory, per se. But an emotion. Fear, stark and raw and instantaneous. She’d grabbed for the door handle at the same time he’d hit the lock button and flashed his gun.

  She’d known him then. She’d stared at his face, and while the individual features still sparked no recognition, she had a clear image of a body laboring above hers in the dark. The grunting, the groaning, the endless noises to accompany her endless shame. How the ties, the horrible latex ties, kept her body exposed, vulnerable and there for his taking.

  And just when she thought it would never end, she could take no more, and her body would be ripped in half, he had finally collapsed on top of her, heavy with sweat.

  The man had laughed low in his throat. And then he’d murmured, “David said you liked it rough. Need a brother or sister for Molly, Meg? Or maybe I’ll just wait a few years and give little Molly a try instead.”

  She had started screaming then. But the gag smothered the sound, forced it back into her lungs, where it built and built and built. A scream without end.

  “David misses you, Meg. David wants you, Meg. You never should’ve turned him down. Now he’s sitting in prison, surrounded by beasts eager to learn your name. We all get out sometime and we all know where you live.”