The Survivors Club (5 page)

She needed to get moving if she was going to be at the rue de l’espoir by eight.

Twenty minutes later, clad in jeans and a T-shirt, her long, damp brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face freshly scrubbed, she went galloping downstairs. By now her father had probably left for work, which made it easier for her, easier for him. One year later, he couldn’t look at her without seeing a rape victim. And Meg couldn’t look at him without seeing him look at her as someone who had been raped.

Her mother was easier. She had cried, she had raged and she had been so damn happy the day the police had arrested Eddie Como. But she was also happy to have Meg home again, plus she had her hands full with Molly, and there were so many things to be done. Life was busy. Life went on. She also probably understood better than Meg’s father that women were stronger than they looked.

Now, Meg threw her arms around her mother’s trim, efficient form and squeezed her good.

“I gotta meet Carol and Jillian downtown,” she said, kissing her mom on the cheek. This was the kind of thing she could tell her mother. Her father didn’t approve of the Survivors Club meetings. Why should his little girl sit around with two older women talking about rape? For God’s sake, what was the world coming to?

Meg didn’t mind the discussions. Frankly, she had been a little surprised and a little pleased that Jillian had invited her to join. After all, Meg didn’t know anything. She hadn’t turned militant like Jillian. She hadn’t gone half-crazed like Carol. Meg was still Meg. She talked about her family, about the people she was learning to love all over again, while Jillian coolly discussed topics such as victims’ rights and Carol railed against the injustices of a world created by men.

“Pancakes?” her mom asked hopefully.

“Meg!” Molly screamed. “Good morning, Meg!” Molly was a morning person.

Meg let go of her mother and crossed the kitchen to plant four wet kisses on Molly’s syrup-smeared face. “Molly! Good morning, Molly!” Meg wailed back.

Her five-year-old sister, her parents’ little midlife oops, but a happy oops, giggled at her. “Are you going to eat pancakes?”

“Nah, I’m going to drink chai.”

“No chai. Eat pancakes with me.”

“Can’t, got a hot date. But I’ll see you this afternoon.”

She kissed Molly’s syrupy cheek again, then tickled the little girl until she squealed and squirmed in her chair.

“You’re leaving already?” her mother asked from the stove.

“Sorry, I’m running late. I’m supposed to be at rue de l’espoir by eight.”

“You’ll call.” Meaning if Meg heard anything from the courthouse, from Ned D’Amato.

“I’ll call.”

Her mom finally stepped away from the stove in the tiny kitchen. She held the flipper in one hand, wore an oven mitt on the other. She looked at Meg for a long time.

“I love you,” her mother said abruptly.

“I love you, too.”

“You’ll call me?”

“I’ll call you.”

“All right then.” Meg’s mother nodded, returned to the stove and dished out a fresh plate of pancakes in a kitchen where there was no one left to feed.

Meg headed out the door. The sun was bright, the morning cool but already warming with the promise of heat. A beautiful day, but that didn’t mean anything. After all, one year ago, it had been a beautiful night.

Meg climbed into her little brown Nissan, parked on the street. She tried not to notice the expired parking sticker for Providence College still stuck on her window. Her father no longer felt college was safe enough for his little girl. If he had his way, she would never go back.

And Meg? What did Meg want? She was the lucky one. Everyone told her that. Detective Fitzpatrick, Ned D’Amato, Carol, even Jillian. Sure she had been raped, but that had been it. No broken bones, no scars, no burial plots. She had been the College Hill Rapist’s first victim and after her, he’d definitely done worse.

Meg started the engine of her car. Meg drove down the street. Meg felt once more the eyes that followed her so often these days. Meg did not turn around.

But she shivered.

It had been four months now. She didn’t know what was going on. But one thing was clear. Somehow, someway, sweet lucky Meg was no longer alone.

CHAPTER 6

Maureen

I
N DOWNTOWN
P
ROVIDENCE,
G
RIFFIN AND
W
ATERS WALKED
together out of the courtyard. Griffin thought he should say something.

“Tell me about the Eddie Como case.” Okay, he probably should have said something more personal than that.

Waters shrugged. “I don’t know much. Providence handled the case.”

“Give me the headlines.”

“Four women were attacked, one was killed. The first was a student at Providence College, Meg Pesaturo. Guess her family is connected, though that’s news to me. The next victim, the Rosen woman, lives in one of those big, historical homes near Brown, which you can believe got the whole East Side screaming for better police protection. The third attack was at Brown, another college student, except the woman’s sister walked in during the rape. He beat up the older sister pretty badly, and the younger wound up dead. Anaphylactic reaction to latex, something like that.”

“The guy was wearing gloves?”

“Yeah, plus he tied them up with latex tourniquets. You know, the kind they use in the hospital when they’re drawing blood. That’s how the Providence police caught him in the end. Turns out the victims had donated blood at a campus blood drive prior to the attack. Police did a little digging . . . Eddie Como was a phlebotomist with the Rhode Island Blood Center. Theory is he used the blood drives to identify potential targets, then looked up their home addresses in the blood donor database.”

Griffin waved his head from side to side, working out a kink in his neck. “Circumstantial case?”

“No, they had DNA. Perfect match, all three victims. Como’s the guy.”

“Going to get buried at trial?”

Waters nodded vigorously. “Going to get
buried
at trial.”

“Interesting. So on the one hand, Eddie’s probably going away for life. On the other hand, according to the state marshals, three women still wanted him dead.”

“You haven’t seen the crime-scene photos,” Waters said. And then they arrived in front of the press.

“Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant!” The roar went up, followed by an immediate hail of questions.

“Is Eddie Como dead?”

“What about the state marshals?”

“Are there other fatalities?”

“What about the explosion? Was that a car bomb?”

“Who’s going to be leading the case? Providence? State? When will we get a briefing, when will we get a briefing?”

Griffin held up his hand. Bulbs immediately flashed. He grimaced, suffered a spasm of bad memory, then got it under control.

“Okay. This is the deal. We’re not answering any of your questions.”

Collective groan.

“We’re here to ask you our questions.”

A fresh pique of interest.

“I know, I know,” Griffin said dryly, “we’re excited about it, too. In case any of you haven’t noticed, you’re all witnesses to a shooting.”

“It’s Eddie Como, isn’t it? Someone killed the College Hill Rapist!”

The rest of the reporters started in again, kids turned loose in the candy store. “When do we get a briefing? When do we get a briefing?”

“Who’s going to handle the case?”

“What can you tell us about the explosion?”

“Has anyone interviewed the women yet? What do the victims have to say?”

Griffin sighed. Reasoning with the press was such a waste of breath. But in this job, you had to do what you had to do. He and Waters squared their shoulders, shoved aside two of the blue police barricades and waded bravely into the fray. Four microphones promptly appeared in front of Griffin’s face. He pushed them back, homed in on one reporter in particular, and stabbed at the man with his finger.

“You. You and your cameraman can start. Over here.”

He and Waters pulled the two away from the group. The pair weren’t very happy, but then Waters and Griffin didn’t much care. Griffin made the reporter review his notes, while Waters had the cameraman play back his tape. At the last minute, they were rewarded with a grainy image of the back of a man running across the courthouse roof. The focus was all wrong, though. The cameraman had been zoomed in on a close-up shot of his reporter talking in front of the courtyard. When he yanked up the camera after hearing the gunfire, the shooter was too far away to yield a good image.

“He was wearing all black,” the reporter provided. “With something on his head. Maybe a stocking. You know, like bank robbers do in the movies.”

Griffin grunted. Waters noted the names and news affiliate for the twosome, then they moved on. Their second subjects were even better. This cameraman liked gunshots so well, he dropped his five-thousand-dollar piece of hardware onto the lawn.

“I don’t do well with loud noises,” he said sheepishly.

“For God’s sake, Gus,” his reporter snapped, “what happens if they send us to Afghanistan?”

“We work for the UPN affiliate in the smallest state in the nation, Sally. When the fuck are we going to be sent to Afghanistan?”

“Did you at least look up?” Griffin intervened in this lovefest.

“Yeah,” Gus said. “Saw a person, running across the roof.”

“Person?” Waters pressed.

Gus shrugged. “All I could see was the back. Could be a man, could be a woman. In this day and age, who the hell knows?”

“Real observant, Gus, real observant.”

Griffin turned toward Sally. “And you?”

The hard-faced brunette gave Griffin an appraising stare. “I thought it was a man. Broad shoulders. Short, dark hair. Dressed in black coveralls, like the kind mechanics wear. Now then. You’re looking good after your little vacation, Griffin. A sergeant of Major Crimes, light caseload from being gone so long. Twenty to one they’re going to put you in charge of this baby. So why don’t you give me an interview? Five minutes on the record. My boss will clear it with your boss. What do you say?”

Waters was looking at him strangely. He probably hadn’t given any thought to who would be assigned as the primary case officer yet. The decision generally wasn’t made right away. Sally was correct, however. Griffin was a sergeant, he had lead case experience and at the moment he had a remarkably light caseload.

“I’m sure the detective commander will be giving a statement to all of the reporters shortly,” Griffin told Sally. Then he walked back to the crowd. “Next!”

It took him and Waters two hours to make it through the nest of reporters. In the end, they had a description of a white male who was between five and six feet tall, who might have brown hair, blond hair or black hair, who was either heavyset or rail-thin, who was wearing a ski mask, a Zorro-like mask, a stocking mask or nothing at all, and who may or may not bear a striking resemblance to James Gandolfini’s character on
The Sopranos
.

“That’s it, I think we can arrange for a lineup right now,” Waters said.

“Absolutely. And here I thought it would take all day to learn that nobody saw nothing. Instead it’s been what, two and a half hours?”

“The Boss will be pleased,” Waters agreed.

They both sighed heavily. They wandered away from the reporters, who had spotted the major arriving at the courtyard across the street, and were now resuming their manic cries for a briefing.

“What do you think?” Waters asked quietly, looking around to make sure no gung-ho reporter had spotted their break from the crowd. Acrid smoke from the car explosion still wafted through the air. It gave their voices a raspy edge.

“We’re pissing in the wind,” Griffin said. “Single head shot, so most likely the guy was a pro. Left everything on the rooftop, so most likely he knew the assault rifle, etc., was untraceable. I’m betting the minute he finished shooting, he stripped down to civilian threads and headed into the courthouse where he blended into the rest of the pedestrian traffic.”

“He simply strolled down the street to his getaway vehicle,” Waters filled in.

“Where he made an even bigger exit than he planned.”

“A description’s not going to help much, except down at the morgue,” Waters agreed.

“We’re still going to have to know who he is to confirm his occupation, then figure out who hired him.”

“I don’t know. Based on what we’ve heard, Uncle Vinnie’s looking better all the time. Has a grudge, has the connections to hire a gun. Seems to me that Tom was onto something. Or”—Waters’s voice grew more thoughtful—“the East Side wife obviously has money. Maybe she arranged for the hit. Or maybe all the women conspired together—I heard that they formed some kind of support group. Of course, I’m not sure why they’d kill the hired gun. Then again, once you’ve decided to kill one felon, what’s one more?”

Griffin merely grunted. He didn’t like to rush to conclusions when working a case. He flipped through his spiral notebook. “Hey, Mike, what happened to NBC?”

“I don’t know.
Seinfeld
ended,
ER
lost Clooney?”

“No, no, I mean, we haven’t interviewed anyone from WJAR. You really believe Channel Ten didn’t send a news team?”

Waters frowned. He looked around the memorial park. And then his eyes widened. “There, at the end of the block. Doesn’t that white van say News Team Ten?”

“Well, what do you know. Two reporters have actually left the herd and are holed up on their own. Now, why would two reporters run away from the pack?”

“They have something.”

“No, no, Mike,
we
have something. Let’s get ’em.”

Sixty seconds later, Griffin rapped on the van’s sliding metal door. It didn’t magically open. He knocked louder. Immediately, the voices inside shut up.

“Come on, guys,” he called out. “This is Sergeant Griffin of the state police. Now open up, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your van down.”

Another long pause. Finally, a click, then the door slid meekly back. Perched inside, Maureen Haverill gave both detectives her best reporter’s smile.

“Griffin!” she said warmly. “I heard you were returning to the fold.”

Maureen Haverill had been working at the local NBC affiliate for five years. A petite blonde, she was perky enough for one of those national morning news shows and probably figured it was only a matter of time. At the moment, her blue eyes were particularly bright. She looked like an addict who’d just gotten a fix. Or a reporter who’d just landed a scoop. Her cameraman was out of sight. Probably frantically dubbing the tape. Damn.

“Both of you, out, now.” Griffin’s voice was harsh.

“Griffin—”

“Out!”

Maureen scowled. She made a big show of carefully maneuvering out of the van, the helpless blonde in a too-short, too-tight pale green skirt. She probably bought her cameraman another thirty seconds.

“So help me God, Maureen,” Griffin informed her, “you dub that tape and I will nail you for tampering with evidence.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Jimmy,” he called out. “You, too.
Now.
”

A big head of rumpled red hair reluctantly appeared. “We were just making some notes,” Jimmy said sulkily. “Can’t two reporters get a little work done?” The hulking redhead climbed out onto the sidewalk. He kept his eyes carefully averted. There was a fresh sheen of sweat glistening across his forehead.

“I want the tape,” Griffin said.

“What tape?” Maureen tried again.

“The tape you’re frantically copying for your lead story, which will probably be airing at any moment. It would be a shame, Maureen, if some junior reporter had to provide the vocals for the piece because you were detained behind bars.”

“You can’t arrest me! On what grounds?”

“Obstruction of justice.”

“Oh please. That’s horseshit and you know it.”

“It’s been eighteen months. My grasp of the law is a little rusty. I’ll arrest you first, then let the courts sort it out.”

Maureen started to look pissed. “Dammit, I have Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure!”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re standing next to a courthouse. I’ll stay with you. Detective Waters can run across the street and get a subpoena. Thirty minutes later not only will we still seize the tape, but I promise you that when we’re done, we’ll provide copies of the visual to every single news organization in this state. You understand? Every single one.”

“No way. That’s my scoop!”

“Yes way. That’s our evidence and once we seize it, we can do whatever we see fit.”

“Goddammit, Griffin! I liked you so much better before—” Maureen’s protest ended abruptly. She seemed to realize what she was about to say, then even she had the good grace to blush.

Griffin said nothing. He just stared at her. He’d gotten good at this stare over the last year. Sometimes, especially in the first few months after the Big Boom, he’d find himself standing in front of a mirror just staring like this. Like he was trying to look into his own eyes and get some sense of the man living there.

“I want the tape,” he repeated. “It’s evidence. And anything you do to it, including developing it or copying it, would be considered tampering with evidence. We got sixty state detectives crawling all over this one city block, Maureen, not to mention well over a hundred uniforms. Do you really think the attorney general is going to take kindly to hearing how some local reporter tampered with a potentially critical piece of evidence?”

Maureen gnawed her lower lip, looked a great deal less certain. “I want a deal,” she said abruptly.

“Why, Maureen, are you confessing to a crime?”

“We cooperate, hand over the tape—”

“You mean we seize it.”

“We
hand
it over. In return for some kind of consideration. An exclusive interview with the colonel.”

Griffin laughed.

“The major,” she amended.

Griffin laughed harder.

“The detective commander. Come on, Griffin. This is
exclusive
footage you’re taking from me. Best damn visual of my career. We deserve at least an interview. Plus, exclusive rights to the copy of the tape. No releasing it to the general population. If they didn’t look up, it’s their own fucking problem.”