The Survivors Club

Chapter 23

THE WAVES ROLLED INTO THE BEACH, GENTLE TODAY, peaking low with a cap of frothy foam, then fading back into the dark depths of the ocean. The sandpipers rushed into the retreating wake of low tide, searching frantically for anything good to eat. Slow day on the beach this early in May. Another dark green wave descended upon the sand, and the small white birds took flight.

Jillian continued watching the water long after she heard the car pull up, the engine turn off, the door open, then close. Footsteps in the sand. The thought reminded her of the religious poem she'd read as a child. She smiled, and the pain cut her to the bone.

She had never been good at belief. Never been one for faith. Too many nights alone as a child maybe. Too many promises broken by her mother, until she internalized, somewhere way down deep, that the only one she could depend upon was herself. Yet she had flirted with religion, talked about it with friends, found herself attending the occasional Christmas mass. She loved the sound of a choir singing. She took comfort, during the endless gray days of winter, from going to a cathedral warmed by hundreds of bodies, standing side by side in communal worship.

Trisha had joined a Congregational church when she was in high school. She'd gotten quite into things. Faith in a higher power fit her rosy outlook on life. Conducting good works suited her bubbly nature. Jillian had attended services with her several times, and even she had been struck by the glow that filled her sister's face during prayer. Faith recharged Trisha. Made her somehow even bigger, larger, more Trisha than she had been before.

Until the night she had truly needed God… or Jillian… or even a big, strong policeman intent on doing his job.

If there was a God, and He hadn't seen fit to save Trish, then should Jillian really feel so guilty? Or maybe there was a God, and He had turned to Jillian as His instrument, and by not being up to the task, she had failed Him and her sister both. So many thoughts she could torture herself with in the middle of the night. Or even during bright spring days in May, standing in the warm caress of the sun and watching the ocean break against the shore.

Oh God, Sylvia Blaire. That poor, poor girl. What had they done?

“Jillian.”

She didn't turn around. She didn't need to, to know who it was. “Bring your thumbscrews this time?”

“Actually, we're always armed with thumbscrews. Department policy. But I'm a good old Catholic boy-I wouldn't dream of using thumbscrews on a priest.”

She stiffened, then finally turned. Sergeant Griffin stood in the sand outside the deck railing. His cheeks were dark and shadowed, the line of his jaw impressively square, his eyes impressively bright. Even ten feet away, she could feel the impact of his presence. The broad shoulders, muscular arms, bulging chest. No different than any other state policeman, she thought resentfully. It was as if the department had a mold, and churned out one well-chiseled officer after another. She'd never been one for brawn anyway. She considered the size of a man's muscles directly inverse to the power of his brain.

“You should've just told me,” he said now, his voice quiet but firm.

“Why? I'd already said the money had nothing to do with Eddie's death. If you weren't prepared to believe that, why should I have expected you to believe an even bigger fairy tale?”

“It's not a fairy tale.”

She shrugged. “Close enough. I gave the money to Father Rondell in cash, took no receipt, ensured there were no witnesses, and made anonymity the primary condition of the donation. If you want evidence of where the money went, I have none to give you.”

“A priest's word is pretty good evidence.”

“Yes, but he wasn't supposed to tell you.”

Griffin smiled. “I confess, all good Catholic faith aside, I kind of tricked him.”

“You tricked a priest?”

“Well, it was for a good cause. I was proving a woman's innocence.”

Jillian snorted. “Let's not get carried away.”

“Actually, I can't take all the credit. Fitz told me to go talk to Father Rondell. So I approached him, saying that I needed confirmation that you had donated money to help Eddie Como's son. Immediately, he was quite gushing about your twenty-thousand-dollar generosity. It seems that Eddie, Jr., has a guardian angel.”

“It's not his fault what his father did. He wasn't even born.”

“Tawnya doesn't know?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Not even the Survivors Club?”

“Not even the Survivors Club.”

“Why, Jillian?”

“I don't know,” she said honestly. “I just… Trish was gone. Carol's a mess. Meg has lost her past. And I… well, I have my own issues, don't I? Last year when the police finally arrested Eddie, I expected to feel better. Vindicated, satisfied, something. But I didn't. Because Trish was still gone, and Carol's still a mess and Meg still has no memory, and now we're seeing pictures of Eddie's pregnant girlfriend and all I can think is here's another victim. A baby who will grow up without his father. One more destroyed life. It seemed too much.” She shook her head. “I needed… I just needed something good to come out of all of this. I needed to feel that someone would escape Eddie's mistakes. And God knows we never will.”

“So you set up a trust fund for Eddie's child.”

She shrugged. “I asked Detective Fitzpatrick for the name of someone close to the Como family. He gave me Father Rondell's name. Father Rondell took care of things from there.”

“But you kept it secret.”

“I didn't know if Miss Clemente would accept the money if she knew where it came from.”

“And why not tell Meg and Carol?”

“I didn't think they'd like it. Besides, it's not really their business, is it? It's my money. My decision.”

Griffin smiled. “You like to do that. Be a group player as long as it suits you, but revert back to an individual the minute it cramps your style.”

She just looked at him. “How did you know I was here?”

“Brilliant detective work, of course.”

She snorted again. He raised his right hand. “Scout's honor. Finding you is my biggest accomplishment today. Well, other than tracing your money, but Fitz is the one who connected those dots. After talking to the priest, however, I wanted to confirm the transaction with you. Being of sound mind, however, I figured you wouldn't magically take my call. So I figured I needed to see you in person. And then I started thinking, if I were Jillian Hayes, where would I be today of all days, with the press hot on my heels? I figured you wouldn't go to work, because you wouldn't want to turn your business into a media circus. Then I figured for the same reason, you couldn't go home-it would just bring the press down on your family. Then I confess, I made a wrong turn and tried your sister's gravesite. For the record, three reporters already had it staked out.”

Jillian looked at him curiously. “I did try there first. After spotting the reporters, however, I turned away.”

“Exactly.” He nodded. “Then it occurred to me. Like any good Rhode Islander, you're bound to have a beach house. So I did a search of Narragansett property records. Nothing in your name. Then I tried your mother's. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“I see your point. Positively brilliant detective work. So who killed Sylvia Blaire?”

Griffin promptly grimaced. “Touché.”

“I'm not trying to be cruel. At least not yet.”

“Are you beginning to doubt Eddie's guilt, Jillian?”

“I don't know.”

“That's the same as a yes. May I?” He gestured to the three steps leading up to the deck. She hesitated. Nodding would invite him in. He'd take a seat, become part of her last hideaway, and she had such little privacy left. Maybe he'd even sit close to her. Maybe she'd feel the heat of his body again, find herself staring at those arms.

When her legs had given out last night… When he had caught her in his arms, and shielded her from her neighbors' voyeuristic stares… She remembered the warmth of him then. The feel of his arm, so easily supporting her weight. The steadiness of his gaze as he waited for her to pull herself together once more.

And she hated herself for thinking these things.

Jillian moved to the opposite side of the deck from the stairs. She was still in her navy blue suit from this morning, and it was difficult to negotiate the deck boards in heels. She took a seat on a built-in wooden bench. Then, finally, she nodded.

“It's nice here,” Sergeant Griffin commented, climbing aboard. “Great view.”

“My mother bought it twenty years ago, before Narragansett became, well, Narragansett.” She gestured her hand to the oversized homes that now bordered the property. Not beach houses anymore, but beach castles.

“Never thought of expanding?”

“If we built out, we'd lose the beach. If we built up, we'd block the view for the house across the street. And what would we gain? A bigger kitchen, a more luxurious bedroom? My mother didn't buy this place for the kitchen or bedroom. She bought it for the beach and the ocean view.”

“You have an amazingly practical perspective on things.”

“I grew up with a lounge singer, remember? Nothing teaches you to respect practicality more than growing up on the New York club circuit.”

“Different hotel every night?”

“Close enough.” She tilted her head to the side. “And you?”

“Rhode Islander. All my life. Good Irish stock. My mother makes the best corned beef and cabbage and my father can drink a man three times his size under the table. You haven't lived until you've been to one of our family gatherings.”

“Large family?”

“Three brothers. Two of them are state marshals, actually. We've probably been policing for as long as there have been cops. If you think about it, it's a natural fit for Irishmen. No one knows how to get into trouble better than we do. Ergo, we're perfect for penetrating the criminal mind.” He smiled wolfishly.

Jillian felt something move in her chest. She gripped the edge of the wooden bench more tightly, then looked away.

“Jillian, you said that in the voice lineup, you and Carol could narrow it down to two men. What was it about the two?”

“I don't understand.”

“Why those two men? What made you focus on them?”

“They… they sounded alike.”

Griffin leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. His blue eyes were intent now. Dark, penetrating. She found herself shivering, though she didn't know why. “Think back, Jillian. Take a deep breath, open up your mind. You're in the viewing room. The mirror is blacked out, but one by one, men are stepping forward and speaking into a microphone. You are listening to their voices. One strikes close to home. Then another. Why those two voices?”

Jillian cocked her head to the side. She thought she understood now. So she closed her eyes, she tilted her face up to the warmth of the sun and she allowed her mind to go back, to that dark, claustrophobic room, where she stood with just a defense attorney and Detective Fitzpatrick, dreading hearing that voice again and knowing that she must. Two voices. Two low, resonant voices sounding strangely flat as they delivered the scripted line “I'm gonna fuck you good.”

“They were both low pitched. Deep voices.”

“Good.”

“They… Accent.” Her eyes popped open. “It's the way they said fuck. Not fuck, but more like foik. You know, that thick Rhode Island accent.”

“Cranston,” Griffin said quietly.

She nodded. “Yes. They had more of a Cranston accent.”

“Como grew up in Cranston.”

“So it's consistent.” She was pleased.

“Jillian, lots of men grew up in Cranston. And most of them do butcher the English language, even by Rhode Island standards. We still can't arrest them for it.”

“But… Well, there's still the DNA.”

“Yeah,” Griffin said. “There's still the DNA. What did D'Amato tell you about it?”

She shrugged. “That it was conclusive. He'd sent it out to a lab in Virginia and they confirmed that the samples taken from the crime scenes matched Eddie Como's sample by something like one in three hundred million times the population of the entire earth. I gather it's rare to have that conclusive a match. He was excited.”

“He told you this. All three of you?”

Jillian brought up her chin. “Yes.”

“And that convinced all three of you, the Survivors Club, that Como was the College Hill Rapist?”

“Sergeant, it convinced D'Amato and Detective Fitzpatrick that Eddie was the College Hill Rapist. And if we'd been able to go to trial, I'm sure it would've convinced a jury that Eddie was the College Hill Rapist.”

“What about the Blockbuster kid?”

“What about him? Carol's never been sure about the time she was attacked. You'll have to forgive her, but while she was being brutally sodomized she didn't think to glance at a clock.”

“Jillian…” Griffin hesitated. He steepled his hands in front of him. He had long, lean fingers. Rough with calluses, probably from lifting weights. His knuckles were scuffed up, too, crisscrossed with old scars and fresh scratches. Boxing, she realized suddenly. He had a pugilist's hands. Strong. Capable. Violent. “Jillian, did they get a sample from your sister?”

Her gaze fell immediately. She had to swallow simply to get moisture back into her mouth. “Yes.”

“So he… before you came…”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I was late,” she said for no good reason. “I was supposed to be there an hour earlier, but I'd gotten too busy… Something silly at work. Then traffic was bad, and I couldn't find parking. So I'm driving around the city and my sister is being… I was late.”

Griffin didn't say anything, but then Jillian hadn't really expected a reply. What was there to say, after all? She was late, her sister was attacked. She couldn't find parking, her sister died. Running late shouldn't matter. Not being able to find parking in a congested city shouldn't cost someone her life. But sometimes, for reasons no one could explain, it did.

What silly mistake had Sylvia Blaire made last night? Waited too late to head home? Not paid enough attention to the bushes around her house? Or maybe the mistake had been earlier, falling in love with the wrong man or breaking up with the wrong man? Something that had probably seemed completely inconsequential at the time.

Which led her to wonder, of course, what mistakes the Survivors Club might have made with the best of intentions. Had they pressured the police too hard? Had they believed in Eddie's guilt too quickly? She honestly didn't know anymore, and this level of doubt was killing her. Trish was bad enough. She didn't know if she could stand any more blood on her conscience.

“You didn't see the man?” Griffin asked finally.

Jillian closed her eyes. “No,” she said tiredly. “As I've told Fitz, as I've told D'Amato… I didn't see anything that night. My sister had a basement apartment, the lights were turned out… He rushed me from behind.”

“But you remember his voice?”

“Yes.”

“You struggled with him?”

“Yes.”

“What did you feel? Did you grab his hands?”

“I tried to pull them away from my throat,” she said flatly.

“Were they covered with something?”

“Yes. They felt rubbery, like he was wearing latex gloves, and that made me think of Trish… worry about Trish.”

“What about his face. Did you go after his face, try to scratch him? Maybe he had a beard, mustache, facial hair?”

She had to think about it. “Nooooo. I don't remember hitting his face. But he laughed. He spoke. He didn't sound muffled. So I would say he didn't have anything over his head.”

“Did you hit him?”

“I, uh, I got him between the legs. With my hands. I had knit my fingers together, you know, as they teach you in self-defense.”

“Was he dressed?”

“Yes. He had clothes, shoes. I guess he'd already done that much.”

“What was he wearing? You said you hit him between the legs, what did the material feel like?”

“Cotton,” she said immediately. “When I hit him, the material was soft. Cotton, not denim. Khakis, maybe some kind of Dockers?”

“And higher?”

“I hit his ribs… Soft again. Cottony. A button. A button-down shirt, I guess.” She nodded firmly, her head coming back up. “That would make sense, right? For that neighborhood. When he walked away he would be nicely dressed, a typical student in khakis and a button-down shirt.”

“Like Eddie Como was fond of wearing?”

“Exactly.” She nodded her head vigorously.

He nodded, too, though his motion was more thoughtful than hers. After a moment, he twisted around on the bench, looked out onto the water. Sun was high now. The beach quiet, the sound of the water peaceful. Just them and the sandpipers, still trolling the wet sand for food.

“Must be a great place to come on weekends, recover from the demands of owning your own business,” he said presently.

“I think so.”

“Does your mom still come?”

“She likes to sit on the deck. It's a nice adventure for her and Toppi, once the weather gets hot.”

He looked at her sideways. “And Trisha?”

She kept her voice neutral. “She liked it, too.”

“Tell me about her, Jillian. Tell me one story of her, in this place.”

“Why?”

“Because memories are good. Even when they hurt.”

She didn't say anything right away, couldn't think of anything, in all honesty. And that panicked her a little. It had only been a year. May twenty-fourth of last year. Surely Trisha couldn't fade away that quickly. Surely she couldn't have lost that much. But then she got her pulse to slow, her breathing to steady. She looked out at those slowly undulating waves, and it wasn't that hard after all.

“Trisha was mischievous, energetic. She would crash through the waves like an oversized puppy, then roll on the beach until her entire body was covered in sand. Then she would run over to me or Mom and threaten us with bear hugs.”

“And what did you do?”

She smiled. “Made faces, of course. Trisha could tell you. I'm not into water or gritty sand. I take my beach experience on oversized towels with an oversized umbrella and a good paperback novel. That's what made it so funny.”

She turned to him finally, looked him in the eye. “Tell me about your wife. If memories are so good, even when they hurt, then tell me about her.”

“Her name was Cindy, she was beautiful, and I loved her.”

“How did you meet?”

“Hiking up in the White Mountains. We were both members of the Appalachian Mountain Club. She was twenty-seven. I was thirty. She beat me going up Mount Washington, but I beat her coming down.”

“What did she do?”

“She was an electrical engineer.”

“Really?” Jillian looked back at him in surprise. Somehow, she had pictured this phantom wife as someone… less brainy, she supposed. Maybe a blonde, the perfect foil for Griffin's dark good looks.

“She worked for a firm in Wakefield,” Griffin said. “Plus she liked to tinker on the side. In fact, she'd just come up with a new type of EKG before she got sick. Got the patent and everything. Cindy S. Griffin, granted a patent for protection under U.S. copyright laws. I still have the certificate hanging on the wall.”

“She was very good?”

“Cindy sold the rights to her invention for three million dollars,” Griffin said matter-of-factly. “She was very good.”

Jillian stared at him. She honestly couldn't think of anything to say. “You don't… you don't have to work.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“Three million dollars…”

“There are lots of reasons to work. You have money, Jillian. You still work.”

“My mother has money. That's different. I want, need, my own.”

Griffin smiled at her. “And my wife made money,” he said gently. “Maybe I also want, need, my own. Besides”-his tone changed-“I gave it all away.”

“You gave it all away?”

“Yeah, shortly after the Big Boom. Let me tell you, if going postal on a suspected pedophile doesn't convince people that you're nuts, giving away millions of dollars certainly does.”

“You gave it all away.” She was still working on this thought. Trying to come to terms with a police detective who must make, what, fifty thousand a year, giving away three million dollars. Well, okay, one point five million after taxes.

Griffin was regarding her steadily. She was surprised he was telling her all this. But then again, maybe she wasn't. He hadn't really needed to come to her home last night in person. He really didn't need to clarify her donation to Father Rondell face-to-face. Yet he kept showing up and she kept talking. They were probably both insane.

“When Cindy first signed the deal,” Griffin said, “first negotiated selling the rights, it was the most amazing thing. For five years she'd been working on this widget, and then, voilà, not only did she make it work, but she sold it for more money than we ever thought we'd have. It was amazing. Exciting. Wonderful. But then she got sick. One moment she was my vibrant, happy wife, and the next she was a doctor's diagnosis. Advanced pancreatic cancer. They gave her eight months. She only made it to six.”

“I'm sorry.”

“When Cindy had earned the money, I liked it.” He shrugged. “Hell, three million dollars, what's not to like? She took to shopping at Nordstrom, we started talking about a new home, maybe even a boat. It was kind of funny at the time. Surreal. We were two little kids who couldn't believe someone had given us all this loot. But then she got sick, and then she was gone. And the money… It became an albatross around my neck. Like maybe I'd made some unconscious deal with the devil. Gain a fortune. Lose my wife.”

“Guilt,” Jillian said softly.

“Yeah. You can't get anything by us Catholic boys. Probably a shame, too. Cindy wasn't like that. Up until the bitter end, she was thinking about me, trying to prepare me.” Griffin smiled again, but this time the smile was bittersweet. “She was the one who was dying, but she understood I had the tougher burden to bear.”

“You had to live after she was gone.”

“I would've traded places with her in a heartbeat,” Griffin said quietly. “I would've climbed gladly into that hospital bed. Taken the pain, taken the agonizing wasting away, suffered the death. I would've done… anything. But we don't get to choose which one of us dies and which one of us lives.”

Jillian nodded silently. She understood what he was saying. She'd have given her life to save Trish.

“So here we are,” she said at last. “I gave my money to a suspected rapist's son to assuage my guilt. And you gave yours to…?”

“American Cancer Society.”

“But of course.”

He smiled at her again. “But of course.”

“How long has Cindy been gone?”

“Two years.”

Her voice grew softer. “Do you still miss her?”

“All of the time.”

“I'm not doing a good job of getting over Trish.”

“It's supposed to hurt.”

“She wasn't just my sister. She was my child. I was supposed to protect her.”

“Look at me, Jillian. I can bench-press my own body weight, run a five-minute mile, shoot a high-powered rifle and take out pretty much any shithead in this state. But I couldn't save my own wife. I didn't save my own wife.”

“You can't fight cancer.”

Griffin shrugged. “What is someone like Eddie Como if not a disease?”

“I didn't stop him. I was late, so late. Then I was down in Trish's apartment, seeing her on the bed. And I knew… I knew what had happened, what he had done, but then he came at me. Knocked me to the floor, and I tried. I tried so hard. I thought if I could just break free, find the car keys, go after his eyes. I'm smart, I'm well-educated, I run my own business. What's the point of all that if I couldn't break free of him? What's the point if I couldn't save my sister?”

Griffin moved closer. His eyes were dark, so blue. She thought she could drown in those depths, but of course they both knew that she wouldn't. And then she thought that maybe he would touch her again, and she didn't know if that would be the nicest thing to happen to her, or the very worst.

“Jillian,” he said quietly. “Your sister loves you.”

Jillian put her head in her hands then. And still he didn't touch her. Of course he didn't touch her. For he was still a homicide detective and she was still a murder suspect and it was one thing to catch her as she was falling and quite another to cradle her against his chest. And then there was a new sound in the background. Another vehicle, bigger this time, more guttural, the sound made by a white news van. The press was finally as smart as Sergeant Griffin.

And Jillian cried. She wept for her sister. She wept for Sylvia Blaire. She wept for the grief it had taken her a full year to finally confront. She wept for those moments in the dark apartment, when she'd tried so hard and failed so smashingly. And then she wept for those days, not so long ago, when Trish had run happily along this beach. Days and days and days that would never come again.

And then she heard the guttural engine die. She heard the van door slide open, the sound of feet hitting her gravel drive. She raised her head. She wiped her tears. She prepared to fight the next war. And she thought…

Days and days and days that would never come again…