The Survivors Club (26 page)

“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

D
ETECTIVE
M
IKE
W
ATERS 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 place,” 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 H
₂
O 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

N
IGHTFALL.
M
EG 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.

“No!” Molly was shocked.

“Pooh doesn’t have any shoes,” Meg pointed out reasonably.

Her little sister rolled her eyes. “Pooh is a bear. Bears don’t wear shoes,
everyone
knows that.”

“Bears wear capes?”

“Yes, pink capes ’cause pink is Barbie’s favorite color and her husband has to know that her favorite color is pink.”

Purple, Meg thought idly. The color of royalty. His favorite color. Who was he? How did she know that?

“I’m worried . . .” Her mother’s voice was rising down the hallway.

“Now, honey—”

“No! Don’t honey me! For God’s sake, Tom. The doctors told us her memory would come back shortly. Trauma-induced amnesia isn’t supposed to last this long or be this complete. But she doesn’t seem to remember anything.
Anything
. What if she’s doing worse than we thought?”

“Come on, Laurie. You’ve seen her. She’s happy. So what if she doesn’t remember anything. Hell, maybe we’re all better off that she forgot.”

“Or maybe she hated her life that much. You ever think of that, Tom? Maybe what we
did . . . Oh my God, maybe we scarred her that badly!”

“Shoes!”
Molly squealed. She triumphantly dumped out her box of Barbie clothes and fished out a pair of bright red platform heels that had probably come with Barbie’s flower child outfit or a killer pair of jeans. Now Molly took Barbie out of Meg’s hands and used the shoes to finish up Barbie’s hot-pink wedding ensemble. Outfits that would not be appearing in a Mattel commercial anytime soon, Meg decided. But Molly was very pleased.

“It’s time for the wedding,” Molly said with a big smile. “Dum-dum-de-dum, dum-dum-de-dum . . .”

“I’ll marry you.”

“No . . . no . . .”

“It’s them, isn’t it? Well, fuck them! I’ll take you away. I’ll make you happy. Come on, Meg, sweet Meg, my precious little Meg . . .”

“I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared. I won’t let anyone hurt you, Meg. Not anyone. Ever.”

“I’m scared,” her mother was saying. “What if one day it suddenly comes back to her? Bang. Just like that. What if she’s not ready?”

“The docs said if she did remember, then she’d be ready.”

“Oh please, the doctors also said there was no reason for her to have forgotten this much. Face it, Tom, they don’t know anything. It’s amnesia. A brain thing, a mental thing. They’re making this up as they go along.”

“Laurie, honey, what do you want?”

“I want her to be happy! I want her to be safe. Oh Tom, what if
we
were the ones who had come home today to find Meg passed out from an overdose of sleeping pills? If the trauma of being so viciously raped is too much for a grown woman, what do you think it must be doing to Meg?”

“Meg?” Molly asked.

Meg blinked her eyes. Her sister’s pink-painted room came back into focus. She was sitting once more on the floor. Her little sister was beside her, peering up at her anxiously.

“Meg doesn’t feel good?” Molly asked. She was still clutching Barbie in her right hand.

“I’m, uh, I’m . . .” Meg touched her cheek. Her face was covered in sweat. Her skin had grown cold and clammy. “Just a little headache, I guess.” She smiled at her sister weakly, trying to get her bearings back.

“Marry me.”

“I can’t—”

“Marry me.”

Her stomach rebelled. For a moment, she thought she might be sick. And then suddenly, in the back of her head:

“Fucking brat. Run home to your mommy and daddy. Go hide behind their narrow little minds and fucking suburban panacea. You don’t want my love? Then I take it back. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you . . .”

“Meg?”

“Just . . . a minute.”

And then again from down the hall. “I don’t want her to end up like Carol. I couldn’t stand it if she ended up like Carol. Oh Tom, what if we’ve failed her?”

“M-M-Meg?”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you . . .”

“The doctors still aren’t sure Carol’s even going to make it. Meg’s honestly grown close to the woman. What if she dies, Tom? What will happen then? My God, what will happen then!”

Meg bolted off the floor. She stumbled out of Molly’s room.

“M-M-Meg?”

She careened down the hall.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

“What if Carol dies, what if Carol dies . . .”

Meg got the toilet seat up. She leaned over . . .

Nothing. She’d never eaten lunch. She’d forgotten about dinner. Her stomach rolled and rolled and rolled, but there was nothing present to throw up. She moved over to the sink. Turned on the cold water. Stuck her head under the faucet and let the icy flow shock the distant images from her brain.

Minutes passed. Long, cool minutes while the water sluiced over her sweaty skin and dampened all the voices in her head. Cool, cool water bringing blessed nothingness back to her brain.

When she finally looked up, her parents were standing in the doorway. Her father appeared his usual stoic self. Her mother, on the other hand, had one arm wrapped tightly around her stomach, while her right hand fidgeted with the gold heart dangling around her neck.

“Meg honey?” her mother asked.

Meg straightened. Strange voices, faint rumblings returned to the back of her mind. Like faraway scenes, threatening to come closer, closer, closer.

Meg found a towel and used it to methodically blot her face.

“You okay, sweetheart?” her father asked.

“Just a little queasy. All that time in the hospital, you know.” She offered a faint smile.

“I’m sure Carol will be all right,” her mother said briskly. Her right hand was now furiously twisting the dangling gold heart.

“Sure.” Meg turned off the faucet. Rehung the towel. Ran a comb through her long brown hair.

“If there’s anything you need . . .” her father tried.

“I’m fine, Daddy.”

“We love you, sweetheart.” Her mother this time.

“I love you, too.”

What were they doing? Saying so many words, but none of the ones that mattered. Lies. She had never realized it before, but sometimes love produced lies. Big lies. Whopping lies. Gigantic lies, all packaged prettily and offered up with the best of intentions. Protection through falsehood. That’s right—a suburban panacea.

Her parents were still standing in the doorway. She was still standing at the sink. No one seemed to know what to do.

“I, uh, I have a wedding,” Meg said.

“A wedding?”

“Barbie and Pooh Bear. Didn’t you get the invite?”

“Oh, Molly’s marrying off Barbie again.” Her mother finally relaxed. Her hand stilled around her neck. “The hot-pink dress?”

“Absolutely.”

“Red platform shoes?”

“The kid’s got style.”

“Well, by all means.” Her mother moved to the side, gestured for Meg to pass. “We wouldn’t want to stand in the way of true love.”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

“Okay then.” Meg pasted the smile back on her face. She made it down the hall, where Molly sat uncertainly in the middle of her room, still clutching Barbie on her lap.

“Let’s have that wedding!” Meg said with forced cheerfulness.

Molly looked up at her and positively beamed.

Hours later, the Pesaturo family went to sleep. One by one, the tiny rooms of the tiny home went dark. Meg turned off her own light. But she didn’t go to bed. She went to her window. She stood in front of her window.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

She stared at the night outside her window, and she wondered at the darkness waiting for her there.

Those rich chocolate eyes. That gentle lover’s kiss.

“David,” she whispered, then licked her lips and tried out the name once more. “David. Oh no. David Price.”

At midnight, Jillian finally left the hospital. Carol had yet to regain consciousness. Her stomach had been pumped, her body purged. Now she lay peacefully beneath stark white hospital sheets, her long golden hair a halo around her head as a heart monitor beeped in rhythm to her pulse and a respirator pumped air into her lungs.

Coma, the doctors said. She had ingested nearly 125 mg of Ambien, or twelve times the recommended dose. Combined with the alcohol, it had shut down her system to the point where she responded only to painful stimuli. The doctors would test her again in the morning, see if she began to pull out once the levels of sleeping pills and alcohol in her bloodstream came down. In other words, they would poke and prod at her poor, peaceful body. See if they could inflict enough pain to jar her back to life.

Dan remained in the room. He had pulled up a chair next to Carol, where he had finally fallen asleep with his head on the edge of her bed, his hand cradling her wrist. From outside the ICU door, Jillian had watched a nurse drape a blanket around his shoulders. Then Jillian had turned to go.

The night was cold, a sharp slap against Jillian’s cheeks. She still wore her suit from this morning, no coat, no scarf. She hunched her shoulders beneath the tailored blue jacket and shivered as she walked. The parking lot was nearly empty this time of night. Certainly no reporters anymore. In the news world, Carol’s suicide attempt was already old. Been there, done that. As of six this evening, the hot story had become Tawnya Clemente’s lawsuit against the city.

God, Jillian was tired.

At her car, she went through the drill. Peered through the windows at the backseat. Glanced at neighboring cars to make sure no one loitered. Unlocked her door with her left hand. Held her canister of pepper spray in her right. Preparedness was nine-tenths of the battle. If you don’t want to be a victim, then you can’t act like one.

She got straight into her Lexus, immediately locked all the doors, then finally started the engine. She glanced again at her backseat. Nothing but empty, shadowed space. Why did she have chills running up and down her spine?

She got her car in reverse, turned to back out and nearly screamed.

No. Eddie Como.
No.
It was all in her head, all in her head. The backseat was empty, the parking lot was empty. She turned back around, shoved her automatic in park and sat there shaking uncontrollably, the fear still rolling off her in waves.

Panic attack, she realized after a moment, trying to regain her breath. In the beginning, she’d had them all the time. It had been a bit since the last one, but then again, today had been a bad day. First Sylvia Blaire. Then Carol.

Oh God, Carol . . .

Jillian rested her head against the steering wheel, and suddenly started to cry. Second time for her in one day. Had to be a new record. She couldn’t stop, though. The sobs came up from the dark pit of her, angry and hard and desolate, until her stomach hurt and her shoulders ached and still she choked out rough, bitter tears. This is why she didn’t cry. Because there was nothing dainty or tragic about her grief. She cried like a trucker, and afterward she looked like a disaster, with red, blotchy cheeks and mascara-smeared eyes.

What if Sergeant Griffin saw her now? The thought made her want to weep again, though she didn’t know why.

She could call him. He would probably take her call, even though it was after midnight. He’d probably even let her go on and on about her sister and the ache that wouldn’t ease and the grief that knew no end. He would listen to those things. He seemed to be that kind of guy.

She didn’t pick up her cell phone, though. Maybe she wasn’t that kind of woman, the kind who still believed in Prince Charming. Or maybe she was, but Meg was right and she wasn’t ready to stop punishing herself for her sister’s death.

Or maybe it was all a bunch of psychobabble bullshit, and the bottom line was that she just wasn’t ready. She did still miss her sister. She did still ache. And she did hold too much in and she did suffer too much guilt. And now she was worried about Carol, and as always she was worried about her mother, and then there was this thing with another poor dead college student and who knew what was really going on out there in that pitch-black night?

Shit. Jillian put her car back in drive. She got out of the dark parking lot.

At home, outside lights fired up her home like a suburban landing strip. She’d had three new spotlights added first thing this morning and God knows her neighbors had probably put on sunglasses just to go to bed. Good for them. May that be the worst tragedy they ever had to face.

Jillian drove by the patrol car parked down the street. The two officers sitting inside nodded at her. She waved back. So Griffin had kept his word as well.