The Survivors Club (28 page)

And then he was thinking back to Monday afternoon and his conversation with Fitz:
“So why did Eddie, who left behind no hair, no fiber, and no fingerprints, leave behind ten latex strips? Why did he on the one hand, learn how to cover his tracks, and then on the other hand, leave you a virtual calling card?”

Fitz had angrily declared that the Providence police had
not
framed Eddie Como. Now, Griffin finally, horribly, had an idea who had.

Games. Games didn’t sound like Eddie’s style. But Griffin knew another man, a young man with an even younger face, who loved to play games. Who also sent notes and made phone calls, except they never declared his innocence. A man who had spent two days now claiming insider knowledge and had even graciously sent Griffin a note welcoming him to the case.

And then Griffin was back to thinking about that stupid DNA, the
only
evidence that had pointed at Eddie Como. DNA that was supposed to have been washed away by Berkely and Johnson’s Disposable Douche with Country Flowers . . . Except . . . What’s the worst thing a detective could do? Make an assumption. And what was the major assumption they had all made? That the douche had been used in an attempt to
remove
DNA from the scene. Son of a bitch.

The final pieces started clicking into place and for a moment . . . For a moment, Griffin was so mad, he couldn’t speak.

“What’s going on?” Waters was asking on the other end of the phone.

“Who? Who?” Fitz was saying beside him.

“What day was the first reported rape?” Griffin asked harshly. “When was Meg Pesaturo attacked?”

“Eleven April, last year,” Fitz replied. “Why? What do you know?”

April eleventh. Five months after David Price’s November arrest. Five months after Griffin’s little meltdown. It seemed impossible. And yet . . .

“He’s playing us.”

“What do you want to do?” Mike asked on the other end of the line.

“Who? What?” Fitz was still parroting wildly.

“The guy who saw this coming.” Griffin closed his eyes. “The guy who somehow knows more about this case than we do.”

“Who saw this coming?” Fitz pleaded.

“David,” Griffin said quietly. “My good old sexual-sadist neighbor, David Price.”

CHAPTER 31

Price

G
RIFFIN WAS DIALING HIS CELL PHONE, NAVIGATING HIS
way furiously through tiny Providence streets to the I-95 on-ramp while Fitz clutched the dashboard and continued cursing colorfully under his breath. Jillian answered the phone, and Griffin immediately started talking.

“Jillian, I need you to tell me something and I need you to be honest.”

“Griffin? Good morning to you, too—”

“I know you’re angry with the police,” he interrupted steadily. “I know you think we failed your sister and I know you haven’t had a lot of incentive to cooperate with us. But I need your help now. I need you to tell me if you ever met a man named David Price. And don’t lie, Jillian. This is deadly serious.”

Silence. He gripped the wheel tighter, wondering what that silence meant, and wishing that his stomach wasn’t beginning to turn queasily while the ringing picked up in his ears. Breathe deep, release. Eighteen months of hard work. Don’t lose sight of the ball now.

“The name sounds familiar,” Jillian said finally. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t he your neighbor? Griffin, what is this about?”

“Did your sister ever mention his name?”

“No, not at all.”

“Ever get any correspondence? Maybe something in the mail?”

“No. Wait a minute.” There was a muffled clunk as she moved the receiver from her ear. Then he heard her voice shout out, “Toppi. Have you ever received anything from someone named David Price? Check with Mom.” Another muffled thunk, then Jillian was back on the line. “They both say no. Griffin, you arrested him, right? You sent him to jail . . . a long time ago. Why are you asking about him now?”

Griffin ignored her question, and instead asked one of his own. “What are your plans for the day?”

“I told Mom I would take her to see Trish. Griffin—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“I want you to stay close to home. Or better yet. Load up Toppi and your mom and take them to the Narragansett house. I’ll arrange for a pair of uniforms to meet you there.”

“Did he get out of jail?” Jillian asked quietly.

“No.”

“But you’re targeting him. Is he involved in all this? Did David Price somehow hurt my sister?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Any word on Carol?”

“I was just about to call the hospital.”

“I should send uniforms there as well,” he muttered out loud, then wished he hadn’t.

Jillian’s voice grew even more somber on the other end of the line. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something bad.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Griffin told her. “And Jillian. Be careful.”

He flipped shut his phone. Mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. Or maybe because he did know what he wanted to say, and now was not the time or place, especially with Fitz sitting red-faced and haggard beside him.

He took the on-ramp for 95 South, headed for the ACI and simultaneously tossed his cell phone to Fitz. “You’re up.”

Fitz dialed the Pesaturo residence. Thirty seconds later, they both heard Meg’s mother pick up the phone.

“Detective Fitzpatrick here,” Fitz said roughly, then cleared his throat. “I, uh, I need to speak to Miss Pesaturo, please.”

“Detective Fitzpatrick!” Meg’s mother said warmly. “How are you this morning?”

Fitz kept his tone gruff. “Mrs. Pesaturo, I need to speak with Meg.”

Laurie Pesaturo faltered. From the driver’s seat, Griffin could hear the confusion in her staticky voice as she asked Fitz to wait one moment. It was several more minutes, however, before she was back on the line. “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “Meg seems to have stepped out.”

“She’s not home?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Do you know where she is?”

An even stiffer reply. “Not at the moment.”

Fitz cut to the chase. “Mrs. Pesaturo, have you ever heard the name David Price?”

A pause. “Detective, what is this about?”

“Please, just answer the question, ma’am. Do you know, or have you ever known, a man named David Price?”

“No.”

“Meg has never mentioned his name?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Has he ever sent anything to your home? Perhaps called?”

“If he had done that,” Laurie Pesaturo said crisply, “then I would know the name, wouldn’t I? Now I’m asking
you
again, Detective. What is this about?”

“I would like you to find Meg, Mrs. Pesaturo. I’d like you to keep her close to home today. In fact, it might not be a bad time for your husband to take a day off, spend the afternoon with his family. Perhaps you could all pay Uncle Vinnie a visit, something like that.”

“Detective . . .”

“It’s just a precaution,” Fitz added quietly.

Another pause. And then, “All right, Detective. Thank you for calling. Will you call again?”

“I hope to touch base again this afternoon, ma’am.”

“Thank you, we would appreciate that.”

“Find Meg,” Fitz repeated, and then they were turning into the vast facility that comprised the ACI.

Griffin found the red-brick admin building that housed the prison’s Special Investigation Unit as well as the state police’s ACI unit. He turned the car into a parking space, cut the ignition. He no longer looked at Fitz. He was focusing on the growing tension in his shoulders, that steadily building ringing in his ears. Breathe deep, release. Breathe deep, release.

“Hey, Griffin baby, you think this is bad? Let me tell you about your
wife . . .”

Fitz got out of the car. After another moment, Griffin followed suit.

The ACI “campus” spreads out over four hundred acres of land. With brick towers and barbed-wire fence visible from the freeway, the facility is actually half a dozen buildings nestled among half a dozen other government institutions. Nearly four thousand inmates reside in the ACI at any given time, and they generate enough internal and external complaints to employ six ACI special investigators and two state detectives full time. The special investigators are the first responders, handling all inmate-to-inmate complaints. In situations, however, where there are criminal charges—serious assault, murder for hire, drug trafficking, etc.—the state police are brought in to lead the inquiry.

In between these cases, the state detectives spend their time receiving calls from various inmates looking to flip on various other inmates in return for various considerations. The detectives get plenty of calls. Very few of them, though, ever lead to anything.

That’s what Griffin had been hoping for when he’d first learned of David Price’s outreach. Now Griffin wasn’t so sure anymore.

Corporal Charpentier met Griffin and Fitz in the lobby of the admin building, then led them down the one flight of stairs to the state’s basement office. Griffin immediately wrinkled his nose at the stale air, while Fitz actually recoiled.

“I know, I know,” Charpentier said. “In theory, the building is now asbestos-free. As the people actually inhaling, however . . .” He let the rest of the thought trail off. Griffin and Fitz got the picture. They were also both getting a headache.

Charpentier came to the end of the hall, opened the door and led them into a tiny office. Two desks were set up face-to-face, topped with computer terminals, manila folders and a variety of paperwork. The remainder of the cramped space was taken up by two desk chairs and a wall of gunmetal-gray filing cabinets. No cheery office plants here. Just cream-painted cinder-block walls, gray industrial carpet and dim yellow lights. Police officers led such glamorous lives.

“They’re bringing him down to the rear hall,” Charpentier said, taking a seat and gesturing for them to do the same. “They need another ten minutes.”

“All right,” Griffin said. He didn’t sit. He didn’t want anyone to see that his body was beginning to twitch.

“Personally, I don’t think he knows jack shit,” Charpentier added, then gave Griffin an appraising look.

“How is he adapting?” Griffin asked.

“Better than you’d think.” Charpentier leaned back, shrugged. “He’s young, he’s small, he’s a convicted pedophile. Frankly, he’s got jail ‘bitch’ written all over him. But I don’t know. I heard this story from one of the corrections officers. Six guys surrounded David Price in the prison showers. Were going to give him a little prison indoctrination, show him the way this place works for small, flabby-muscled baby-killers. Then David started talking. And talking and talking and talking. The guards were running to the scene, of course, expecting to find carnage, and . . . And David Price was now surrounded by six laughing guys, not hitting him, not pummeling him, but slapping him merrily on the back. Basically, in three minutes or less, he’d turned them into six gigantic, brand-new friends.” Charpentier shook his head. “I don’t get it myself, but in another year, he’ll be running the place, the world’s smallest prison warlord.”

“He’s good with people,” Griffin said.

Charpentier nodded, then slowly leaned forward. His gaze went from Griffin to Fitz to Griffin again. “You want to hear something wild? Assaults in maximum have doubled since David was assigned there. I was just looking at the stats again this morning. Code Blue nearly every day for the last nine months. It’s been open season over there. And the only new variable I can see is a man who could still buy his clothes from Garanimals.”

“You think he’s responsible,” Fitz said bluntly.

Charpentier shrugged. “We can’t prove anything. The guys always have their reasons for why they did what they did. But . . . David talks a lot. All the time. He’s like some frigging politician, working the yard, passing notes along the cell block. And the next thing you know, we’ll have trouble. A lot of trouble. Guys ending up in the infirmary impaled with sharp metal objects kind of trouble. I don’t know what the hell Price says or does, but there’s something scary about him.”

“He’s very good with people,” Griffin said again.

“Let me tell you about your wife . . .”

The corporal’s phone rang. He picked it up. “All right. They’re ready for us.”

ACI’s maximum-security building, aka Old Max, is a singularly impressive building. Built in 1878 from thick gray stone, the three-story structure is dominated by a gigantic white-painted center dome. In the old days, a light would burn in that dome, green light if everything was okay, red light if something was wrong. The folks in Providence would then send a horse and buggy to check things out.

The prison also boasts one of the oldest working mechanical systems in the nation. Most prisons are electronic these days. Push a button to buzz open cell door A or cell block B. Old Max still has working levers for operating the thick steel doors. The inmates probably don’t appreciate these things, but it lights a fire under the history buffs.

Mostly, Old Max has sheer charisma. The thick stone walls look like prison walls. The heavy, steel-constructed six-by-eight cells, stacked three tiers high and thirty-three cells long, look like prison cells. The black-painted steel doors, groaning open in front of you, snapping shut behind you, sound like prison doors. The steady assault of odors—sweat, urine, fresh paint, ammonia, BO—smell like prison odors. And the rest of the sounds—men shouting, TVs blaring, metal clinking, radios crackling, water running, men pissing—sound like prison sounds.

Tens of thousands of men have passed through these gates in the past hundred years. Rapists, murderers, drug lords, Mafiosi, thieves. If these walls could talk, it wouldn’t be words at all. It would be screams.

Griffin and Fitz signed in at the reception area. Civilians were required to pass through a metal detector. As members of law enforcement, however, they got to skip that honor, and they and Corporal Charpentier were immediately buzzed through a pair of gates into the main control area. Security was still tight. They had to wait for the gate to close behind them. Then a corrections officer who sat in an enclosed booth gestured for Griffin and Fitz to drop their badges into a metal swivel tray. The officer rotated the tray around to him, inspected the IDs, nodded once, dropped in two red visitor’s passes and swiveled the tray back around.

Only after Griffin and Fitz had fastened the visitor’s passes to their shirts did the white-painted steel gate in front of them slowly slide back and allow them to proceed into the bullpen. There they stood again, waiting for the gate to close behind them before a new set of gates opened in front of them. Then they had finally, officially arrived into the rear hall of Old Max.

Half a dozen guards sat around the red-tiled, white-painted space. Directly to the left was the door leading to the left wing of cells. Ahead of that was the lieutenant’s office, where two corrections officers were monitoring the bank of security cameras. Straight ahead was the corridor leading to the cafeteria. And to the right was a visiting room, used by corrections officers for official business. Today, David Price sat shackled inside. Two other corrections officers sat outside. They looked up at Griffin, nodded once, then made a big show of looking away.

Did they think he was going to attack the kid again? Was this their way of saying that if he did, they didn’t care? It sounded like Price had been keeping the whole facility hopping, whether the officers could prove anything or not. Even in maximum, inmates got a good eight hours a day outside their cell—eating, working, seeing visitors, hanging in the yard, etc. In other words, plenty of opportunities to mingle with other inmates and plenty of time to cause trouble.

This place really was too good for Price.

Corporal Charpentier opened the door. Griffin and Fitz followed him in.

Sitting in a tan prison-issued jumpsuit, David Price didn’t look like much. He never had, really. At five eight, one hundred and fifty pounds, he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Light brown hair, deep brown eyes, a softly rounded face that made him look seventeen when he was really closer to thirty-two. He wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t ugly. A nice young man, that’s how women would classify him.

Maybe that’s even what Cindy had said, that first day he’d stopped by:
“Hey, Griffin, come meet our new neighbor, David Price. So what’s a nice young kid like you doing living in a place like this?”