The Survivors Club

Chapter 14

GRIFFIN SWUNG BY HIS HOUSE A LITTLE AFTER 4:30. AT the rate things were going, the workday was going to stretch deep into night. Not the ideal first day back for a man who'd gone bonkers just eighteen months ago, but what could you do? As he'd told Fitz, back was back.

Besides, he was increasingly intrigued by this case. Puzzled, confused, fascinated. In other words, in that perverse sort of way homicide detectives had, he was enjoying himself immensely.

Griffin parked outside the little waterfront shack he'd recently purchased in North Kingstown, and went inside to prepare the working homicide detective's Big Case Kit. In other words, a duffel bag containing two fresh shirts, two ties and lots of clean underwear. You could never have too much clean underwear. Oh yeah, he also added a toothbrush and an electric razor-never as good as a blade, but handy in a pinch.

He stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water as he idly went through his mail. Bill, bill, grocery store flyer. Ooooh, oranges for ninety-nine cents a pound. God bless the USA.

He got to the last item, a plain white envelope, and then his heart accelerated in spite of himself. To: Good Neighbor Griffin. At Griffin 's new address. From: Your Buddy Dave. No return address.

David Price never could stand being bored.

Little psychopathic shit.

David had written many times before, mostly to the old house in Cranston, where Griffin had stayed for nearly a year after the Big Boom. He probably should have put it up for sale immediately after he took his medical leave, but who was going to buy the home next to the home where the Candy Man had brutally murdered ten kids? Who was going to buy the home of the dumb fuck detective who'd lived twenty feet away and never suspected a thing?

David Price, who used to pop over and mow their lawn when Griffin and Cindy got too busy. Small, boyish David Price, who looked seventeen even though he was twenty-eight, who could barely lift a forty-pound bag of potting soil but was hell on wheels with electrical wires. Easygoing, neighborly David Price, who helped Griffin lay the pipes for his irrigation system one summer, who liked to come over for barbecued hamburgers and beer, who fixed the light over the sink when the buzzing threatened to drive Cindy mad, who had no family of his own and over the course of three years somehow became part of theirs.

When Cindy had first learned of her cancer, a mere two days after Griffin had landed the Candy Man case, she'd told David about the disease herself. Griffin had an important case, she'd explained. Griffin was going to be very busy. It was so reassuring to her then that David lived right next door.

David had cried that night. All of them had. In the small family room Cindy had painted butter yellow and decorated with pictures of birds in flight. And then David had held Cindy's hand and promised her he'd do whatever she needed. They were going to beat this thing! They were going to win!

Six months later, Cindy was dead.

And five months after that, Griffin was talking to a little girl who had managed to escape from a man who'd tried to pick her up on the school playground. The stranger had been there when Summer Marie Nicholas had first come out, playing on the swings, but when he'd offered to give her a push, she'd gotten nervous.

His pants were “too full,” she had said. The little girl had noticed that the man had an erection.

She had run straight back into the school, where she had found a janitor cleaning the gym. And he'd been wise enough to call the police. The man was gone from the playground by the time Griffin had arrived, of course, but seven-year-old Summer Marie had been brilliant.

She announced without hesitation that the man looked exactly the same as the boy in that big eighties movie Back to the Future. She liked that movie. That mad professor made her laugh so hard! Plus, when she was old enough to get a car, she wanted one just like that, with the funny doors.

Griffin had stared at little Summer Marie. And through the haze of depression and grief and exhaustion that had kept him half-functioning for months, he had a memory as clear as day: Cindy, Griffin and David sitting on the back porch the first time David had come over. Cindy laughing, saying, “Hey, Dave, anyone ever tell you that you look exactly like Michael J. Fox?”

David, an independent contractor with flexible hours. David, whose electrical jobs took him to different neighborhoods all over the state. David, whose small build, boyish face and easy smile would seem completely nonthreatening to a child. At least until it was much too late.

The girl's description earned them a search warrant. Two hours later Griffin was back in his own neighborhood, leading a small posse of detectives that included Mike Waters into David's home, while his next-door neighbor stood by silently, a strange smile fixed upon his face.

Fifteen minutes later, the first detective opened the door to the basement. The initial waft of odor was so overwhelmingly floral the detective had actually sneezed. And then they'd all caught the smell beneath the smell. The incredibly hard to conceal odor of death.

Down into that basement, with the hard-packed dirt floor and soundproofed ceiling. Down into that basement, with its three harshly glaring bare bulbs. Down into that basement, with a stained mattress and an old workbench covered in handcuffs, dildos and porn. Down in that basement with another corner where the dirt wasn't hard-packed at all. Where instead the dark, loamy soil undulated in ten tiny lime-topped waves.

Ten heartbreaking little white-flecked waves.

David had brought each child down here, down to the odor of death. And he had done unspeakable things to them while they had inhaled the stench of death. Had it made him even more excited?

Or had that come later, when he'd gone next door to mow a state police sergeant's lawn?

Griffin should've killed David Price that day. Most nights, when he awoke drenched in sweat and choking back screams, he still wished that he had. Sometimes when people did the right thing, it was still much too wrong. He'd spent eighteen months in therapy, when frankly, he probably could've cured himself that day with one properly landed punch.

Shrinks just didn't know shit about this job.

Now Griffin looked down at the envelope in his hand. He should throw it away, toss it in the bin like so much garbage. But he didn't. In all honesty, he'd come to consider these little notes the very best in home sanity tests. The state had its fitness-for-duty diagnostic; Griffin had this.

He opened the envelope. It was short by David's standards. Generally he included several pages about his life in maximum-security prison. The carpentry classes he was taking. His newfound love of yoga-good for the body and the mind. Rumors that the ACI might win a contract soon to have inmates make American flags and wouldn't that be a heck of a lotta fun? Oh, and by the way, here's a sketch of a rose to put on Cindy's grave. I still miss her, buddy.

In contrast, this letter contained only two lines. It read: Best wishes with the new case. It's going to be a good one.

Griffin 's blood went cold. He grabbed the envelope, flipped it over. Postmarked Saturday, the eighteenth of May. But that was before Griffin had gone back to work, before Eddie Como had been shot. How could David…? What did David…?

The ringing building in his ears. Heart starting to race, blood starting to pump, sweat bursting from pores.

Griffin took a shaky breath, counted to ten, closed his eyes, and in the next moment, the anxiety attack passed. His breathing calmed. His powers of reason returned.

David was simply fucking with him. He'd probably learned of Griffin 's first day back on the job the same way he'd learned Griffin 's new address. The power of the prison rumor mill, coupled with way too many big mouths on TV.

And when Griffin returned to work, of course he was assigned a new case. He was a detective, after all. That's what he did. To read any more than that into the note was like giving a psychic all the credit for predicting that “soon, your luck will change.”

David Price didn't deserve that kind of credit. And he certainly didn't deserve that kind of power.

Griffin stepped on the foot pedal of the kitchen's white trash bin. The lid popped open and he dropped David Price's letter into the pile of used Kleenexes and sticky eggshells.

“Fuck you, too,” he murmured. Then for good measure, he looked at his hands. Not a tremor in sight. Yeah, eighteen months later, he was doing just fine. Eighteen months later, he was fucking fabulous.

Griffin grabbed his Big Case Kit and hit the road.