The Survivors Club

Chapter 26

JILLIAN ARRIVED FIRST. SHE FORCEFULLY SHOVED HER WAY through the pack of reporters clogging the hospital parking lot, then bustled through the emergency room doors.

“Goddamn vultures!” she cried as the electronic doors finally slid shut, but not before some earnest reporter shouted out, “Ms. Hayes, have you ever thought of committing suicide?”

Meg and her family were shortly behind Jillian. A uniformed officer had located their vehicle outside Vinnie Pesaturo's home and passed along the news. Arriving in the hospital parking lot, Vinnie shouted, “Outta my way, you rat bastards,” and the reporters, recognizing an armed man when they saw one, let the family through.

The moment they were inside the ER, Meg homed in on Jillian. “Where is she? Is she okay? What have you heard?”

“I don't know. We need a doctor. There. You in the white coat. What can you tell us about Carol Rosen?”

“Jillian! Over here. Jillian!”

Jillian and Meg turned in time to see Toppi waving at them from the other side of the waiting room. Next to her sat Jillian's mother. Next to Olivia, sat Sergeant Griffin.

“Why is your mother here?” Meg asked.

“Is that really the Olivia Hayes?” her father breathed.

“I'm going to kill Sergeant Griffin,” Jillian said.

They rushed across the emergency room, where Toppi rose to meet them. “How is she? Is she going to be all right?” Jillian's hands were shaking. She didn't even realize it until Toppi reached out and clasped them in her own.

“We don't know yet.”

“Oh God-”

“Her husband is talking to one of the doctors now. Maybe he'll know something soon.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like she overdosed on sleeping pills. Maybe some alcohol as well.”

“Oh no.” Meg now. She had started to cry. “I didn't realize… I mean, I knew she was upset, but I didn't think…”

“No one could know,” Jillian said, but the words were automatic, lacking genuine conviction. They were Carol's friends; they'd seen her just this morning. Maybe they should have known. Meg's mother put an arm around her daughter's shoulders.

“And where was the husband during all this?” Uncle Vinnie boomed.

Toppi shrugged and looked at Griffin. He said simply, “Out.”

“Figures,” Uncle Vinnie snorted.

“I can't take this,” Jillian said. “I'm going to find a doctor.”

She headed for the receptionist's desk, and wasn't surprised when Griffin followed.

“How could you?” she railed at him the moment they were out of earshot of the others. Her hands were still shaking. She felt sick to the bottom of her stomach with worry for Carol.

“How could I what?”

“Get my mom involved in all of this!”

“Oh don't you start!” Toppi had just caught up with them, and she barreled into the conversation fiercely. “Look at her! Glance over your shoulder and just look at her!”

Jillian thinned her lips mutinously, but did as she was told. Her mom now had Meg's father and uncle literally at her feet. The two men were talking animatedly. Her mother was smiling.

“She looks pretty good to me,” Griffin said.

Jillian stabbed his overpumped chest with her finger. “You are not allowed to speak.” Then she turned back on Toppi. “She's fragile-”

“She's fine.”

“EMTs put her on oxygen just last night!”

“She had a shock.”

“And finding Carol on the floor of her home wasn't shocking?”

“Probably, but I imagine it was still worse for Carol.”

“Oh!” Jillian was so mad she yanked on her gathered hair. “I don't want her involved!”

“Too late. She's your mother. She's involved.”

“She'll just worry more.”

Toppi snorted. “She was already worried. This finally gave her something to do.”

“Toppi!”

“Jillian!” Toppi mocked. “Look, I'm being serious now. When Sergeant Griffin called, I asked your mom what she wanted to do. She didn't hesitate for a second. Carol is your friend. Libby was delighted to help her in any way we could. And it's a damn good thing, too.” Toppi's voice finally quieted. “I know she wasn't around much when you were a child, Jillian. But you're not a child anymore. You grew up. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe she did, too?”

Toppi walked back to the group, where Meg was now leaning her head against her mother's shoulder and Libby was flipping rapidly through her picture book to the apparent delight of Tom and Uncle Vinnie. Jillian turned back to Griffin. “Don't say it,” she warned.

“Haven't muttered a word.”

“She's wrong, you know. Toppi's the one who doesn't get it. I know my mom has changed. But I've never had a father, and I no longer have a sister. Libby… She's all I have left.”

At the receptionist's desk, no one would help her. She wasn't family, and in the eyes of medical protocol being a fellow rape victim didn't count. They knew who Jillian was, of course. The nurse in charge was even kind. And then for the first time, Jillian realized the full implication of where they were. Women amp; Infants. One of Providence's best hospitals and where each one of them had been at least once before… On those nights, that night, the night.

She turned away, no longer so steady on her feet. Of all the strange bonds… And then she suddenly realized that she couldn't lose Carol. She just couldn't. Carol had to survive and then it would be Jillian, Carol and Meg again, sitting in the back room of some restaurant, and arguing or laughing, or being petty or being genuine, but certainly helping one another cope.

She had started the Survivors Club with so much purpose, but maybe at the end of the day, the group had worked even better than Jillian had thought. Because standing here now, she couldn't imagine not seeing Carol. She couldn't imagine even a week going by without it being her, Carol and Meg.

“Sit,” Griffin said quietly. “Wait.”

“I can't sit. I don't know how to wait. That's my whole problem.” Her fingers had closed around his sleeve. She didn't know when that had happened. “Oh God, I just want to know that Carol is all right.”

A door on the left suddenly swung open; Dan Rosen walked through. His features were ashen. His dark hair stood up in a rumpled mess on top of his head, while his left arm stood out prominently in a white sling. He wore a tan jacket with a gold tie, as if he'd once been on his way to work. Now he didn't seem to know where he was.

Jillian took one look at his face and felt the world tilt again beneath her feet. “Oh no…”

“Mr. Rosen,” Griffin said quietly.

“Huh. What?”

“Dan?” Jillian whispered more urgently.

He finally seemed to register their presence. “Oh. Hello, Jillian.”

“Is she? Please, Dan?”

“They're pumping her stomach. Treating her… an activated charcoal slurry, I think the doctor said. She took all her Ambien. Booze, too. Not good, not good at all. Ambien plus booze equals a coma, that's what the doctor said.” Dan looked at Griffin shakily. “He said… he said if you hadn't gotten to her so soon, she'd probably be dead.”

“She's been drinking?”

“I guess. And her throat…” His fingers touched his own. “Her esophagus is… aggravated. I think that's how the doctor said it. And her back teeth show signs of erosion. From bile, he told me. When she makes herself sick.”

It took Jillian a moment. “Bulimia?”

“He thinks. So my wife, it appears, spends her free time eating too much and maybe drinking too much and then making herself sick. Over and over again. I swear I didn't know.” He looked at them, still dazed. “Jillian, did you know?”

“I didn't know.”

“You should've, though.” Meg had come over while they were speaking. Now she had her hands placed authoritatively on her jean-clad hips while she regarded Dan with an imperious stare. “We were her friends, but we only saw her once or twice a week. You lived with her. How could you not know what she was doing?”

“I've been… working.”

“Meg,” Jillian tried. She was too late.

“Working?” Meg said. “Or playing with your girlfriend?”

“What?” Dan's head popped up. “What?”

“Oh don't play innocent with us.” Meg was on a roll now, and everyone, including Sergeant Griffin, was watching with great interest. “Carol told us all about it. Your pathetic excuses of late-night meetings and overburdened workload. She called your office, you know. She knew you weren't really there. That night she was raped-she knew what you were really doing.”

“Carol thinks I'm sleeping with another woman?” Dan asked in a strangled voice.

“Oh come on-”

“I'm not. I swear I'm not. I wouldn't do that to Carol. My God, I love my wife!”

“You're never home!” Meg cried.

“I know.”

“You're never at work!”

“I know.”

“Then where the hell are you?”

Dan didn't answer. He simply looked stricken. And then another voice spoke up from across the hushed waiting room.

“Foxwoods,” Uncle Vinnie announced. “Danny boy's not a cheater. He's a gambler. And if you don't mind me saying, he's a really bad one, too.”

Next to Jillian, Dan Rosen nodded his head miserably. “I love my wife,” he said again. Then he turned away and slammed his one good hand into the wall.

“You're going to have to tell me everything,” Griffin said to Dan ten minutes later. He had commandeered an empty exam room in an attempt at privacy. Of course, Jillian, Meg and the rest of their entourage had immediately followed him and Dan into the room, and were now looking at them both as if they had every right to be there. Griffin considered kicking them out but figured what the hell. Vinnie Pesaturo obviously had relevant information, and Jillian and Meg seemed to be the interrogative equivalent of brass knuckles. All they had to do was look at Dan, and he gave up the store.

“I never meant to hurt Carol,” Dan started off weakly.

“You know, Dan, she did shoot you.”

“That was an accident! I should've announced myself the minute I got home. It was late… She gets nervous after dark.” His lips twisted. “After what happened to her that night, can you really blame her?”

“Yes, that night. Let's talk about that night.” Griffin took out his Norelco Pocket Memo, turned on the minirecorder and got serious. “You told the police you were working late.”

Dan hung his head.

“I gather you told your wife the same?”

“Yes.”

“But you weren't really at work?”

Dan didn't look up. Vinnie smacked his arm. “For God's sake,” the bookie said. “Stop being such a whiner and stand up for your wife.”

Dan shot the bookie a look, but seemed to get ahold of himself. “I, uh, I was at the Foxwoods casino.”

“You lied to the police?”

“Yes.”

“You do that a lot?”

“I was embarrassed! It was bad enough to be gone when my wife needed me. But then, to have to admit that I was sitting at a blackjack table while she was being viciously assaulted…” He groaned. “My God, what kind of husband does a thing like that?”

Griffin let the question hang, which was answer enough. “So you lied to the police, and you lied to your wife. All to cover up one night at the gaming tables. Do you gamble a lot, Mr. Rosen?”

“I don't know. Is four, five days a week a lot? Is liquidating my business a lot? Is second-mortgaging my home?” Dan's face gained some color. He looked at Griffin hotly, as if daring him to state the obvious.

“You tell me,” Griffin said quietly.

That quickly, Dan folded again. His shoulders slumped. His chin sank against his chest. “I think… I think I have a gambling problem.” And then, “Oh God, Carol is going to kill me!”

“How long has this been going on?”

“I don't know. Three years, maybe. I went to Foxwoods one night with some friends. Business associates, really. And I… I had a really good night. Seriously.” Dan's features perked up again. “I quit the blackjack tables ahead ten thousand dollars. And back then, ten thousand dollars… Wow. I was just about to open my own law firm, and God knows the house needed some kind of something. Ten thousand bucks helped out. Felt good. Easy money.”

“Uh huh,” Griffin said knowingly.

Dan smiled thinly. “Exactly. So I opened my own law practice, except instead of taking with me five loyal clients, I only took three. Money was tighter than I thought, and things got off slower than I thought, and health care cost more than I thought…”

“You started taking on debt.”

“I didn't want to tell Carol. We'd talked about me starting my own practice so many times. She wasn't as sure. That house, those mortgage payments, my God. But it was my dream. I had to have my own practice. Trust me, I told her. Trust me. So she did.”

“But you got behind in payments. And then you…?”

“I remembered Foxwoods. Ten thousand bucks. Easy money, right? I'm a smart man, I've read all the books on blackjack, memorized the odds tables. Hey, it's not like betting on horses. That's pure luck. Now blackjack, that takes strategy.”

“Hence all the blackjack millionaires out there,” Griffin observed dryly.

“I've won,” Dan said immediately. His face held that flush again. “Hey, I've won a lot!”

“How much are you down, Mr. Rosen?”

The lawyer faltered. He didn't seem able to meet anyone's eye. After several moments, when the silence ran long, Vinnie raised his arm to smack the man again. Griffin waved the bookie off.

“Mr. Rosen?”

“I owed eighty thousand dollars,” Dan said gruffly. He ran his right hand through his hair, leaving the brown strands standing up on end. “Only twenty now. I, uh, I liquidated my brokerage account. Otherwise, they weren't going to give me any more money. And then… Well, then I wouldn't have any chance of getting ahead, would I?”

“Who's they, Mr. Rosen?”

“Why don't you ask Mr. Pesaturo?” Dan said bitterly.

Griffin looked at Vinnie.

“Not with that tape on,” Vinnie said.

“I'm working on a murder here-”

“Not with that tape on.”

Griffin sighed, shut off the Pocket Memo. “Let's hear it.”

“I might be aware of Mr. Rosen's predicament.”

“You think?”

“Hey, man needed money, and I happen to know people who don't mind loaning a few bucks every now and then.”

“Percentage?”

“Well, you know how it is in banking. The interest rate on the loan is dependent upon the level of risk. Look at him.” Vinnie shot Dan Rosen a disparaging glance. “Eighty grand down at jack? He's high risk.”

“You're charging him a hundred percent?”

“Fifty. We're not completely unsympathetic.”

“Wait a minute.” Jillian raised a hand, finally interjecting herself into the conversation. “You mean to tell me that you-”

“My associates,” Vinnie amended.

“Fine, your associates are loaning Dan money for his gambling habit with an interest rate of fifty percent?”

Vinnie nodded. She turned to Dan. “And you are taking the money at that rate?”

“One good day,” he said immediately. “That's all you need. One good day, and the loan is repaid and I can get the credit cards down, maybe even make an extra payment on the mortgage. One good day.”

“Oh God,” Jillian said. “Poor Carol.”

Dan deflated again. Griffin turned the recorder back on. “Is it correct to say, Mr. Rosen, that you used the sixty thousand dollars you liquidated from your brokerage account to repay loan sharks?”

Dan nodded. Griffin gave him a look. “Yes,” Dan said belatedly into the minirecorder.

Griffin turned to Vinnie. “And can you, Vincent Pesaturo, verify-through sources-that such a transaction took place?”

“Yeah. My sources, they say such a thing took place.”

“Vinnie Pesaturo, did you order a hit on Edward Como? Did you arrange for him to come to harm in any way?”

The questions came out of left field, but Vinnie didn't blink an eye. He bent lower, so his mouth was directly above the recorder. “No, I, Vincent Pesaturo, did not order a hit on Eddie Como. If I, Vincent Pesaturo, wanted that piece of garbage dead, I would've done it myself.”

“Or ordered a hit in prison,” Griffin muttered. Vinnie smiled, looked at the recorder and didn't say a word.

“Tom Pesaturo,” Griffin spoke up again. “Did you order a hit on your daughter's suspected rapist, Edward Como?”

Tom looked a bit more defensive. “Nah,” he said slowly. “I decided against it.”

“Tom!” his wife gasped.

“Daddy!” Meg seconded.

He shrugged. “Hey, I'm a father. After what that bastard did to my daughter, I'm allowed to think these things. But I didn't do anything.” He shrugged again. “I don't know. Sounded like the police had a good case. That DNA and all. And I figured… I figured the trial might be better for Meg. She could face down her accuser and all. I, uh, I read someplace that sometimes that's better for the victim, you know. Gives her some sense of power back, control. That kind of thing.”

“You read about rape victims?” Meg asked.

“Kinda. I saw this article… in Cosmo.”

“Cosmo?” Vinnie exclaimed.

Tom Pesaturo huffed his shoulders. “Hey, she's my daughter. I want what's best for her. 'Sides, there was a long line at checkout, and you know they got all those women's magazines just sitting right there, decorated up with half-naked cover models. Of course I started looking. And then, well, I saw the title for the article. And then I kind of opened up the magazine. And hey, it was a really long line and, and… It was a good thing to read.”

“You are a sweet man, Tommy Pesaturo,” Meg's mother said. She slipped her hand into her husband's and squeezed.

“Ah well,” he said. Everyone was looking at him now. He turned bright red.

A tapping sound came from the back of the room. Heads turned to Libby, who was staring at Griffin expectantly.

“Oh,” he said belatedly. “Um, Olivia Hayes, did you hire someone to kill or harm Edward Como?”

Olivia made a motion with her hand, which he took to mean no. She was using her left hand to flip through her picture book. Toppi came closer, leaning over her shoulder as Libby tapped on one picture, flipped several more pages, then tapped on two more pictures.

“She's pointing out Jillian, Carol and Meg,” Toppi said. She looked at Libby. “The Survivors Club?”

Libby tapped once, flipped through the book, tapped again.

“The number one,” Toppi said. “The Survivors Group, plus one?”

Single tap.

“That means yes,” Toppi translated for the group. She knelt down. “I don't know what that means, Libby. Do you mean the other victim? Sylvia Blaire?”

No response.

“Do you mean the Survivors Club should be four people?”

Libby frowned, then tapped once. This tap was clearly reluctant, however. The statement still wasn't quite right.

“Why four people?” Meg asked.

“It can't be an open-ended question,” Jillian spoke up. “She knows what she wants to say, but you have to help her find it by using yes or no questions.”

She was studying her mother now as well. It was hard to read the look on her face. Some compassion, some yearning, some resignation. Then Libby looked at her as well. The softening of her features was immediate and obvious. A mother looking at her daughter. A mother, looking at the only daughter she had left.

“Yes or no question,” Tom muttered.

“Four people, four people,” Vinnie was saying.

“A bigger Survivors Club,” Meg mused.

Then all of sudden, Jillian's eyes grew wide. “I know what she means. Oh my God, why didn't we think of it before?”

In her wheelchair, Libby leaned toward her daughter, waited for her daughter to speak the words from Libby's head.

“Sergeant Griffin asked all of us if we were involved in Eddie's death, because we're Eddie Como's victims. We have the best motive.”

Tap, tap, tap.

Jillian turned toward Griffin now. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dazed. “But what's the other major statistic in rape cases, Griffin? That rape is a largely unreported crime. That in fact, something like only one in every four rapes is ever brought to the attention of the police.”

Griffin closed his eyes. He understood now as well. “Ah, no.”

And in her wheelchair, Libby went tap, tap, tap.

“Ah, yes,” Jillian said softly. “Meg, Carol and I are the women who came forward, the women who called the police. But that doesn't mean we were the College Hill Rapist's only victims. It is quite feasible, it's very probable, that there's at least one other woman out there. Another woman, another family, and a whole host of other people who wanted Eddie Como dead.”