Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

Without warning, Fitz flung the vehicle right. The Ford Taurus, technically the same vehicle Griffin drove but in Fitz's case considerably more abused, groaned in protest. Fitz ignored the creaking steering, shuddering shocks and his entire suspension system, gunning the engine as he shot up onto the curb, cut across the corner and landed hard on the cross street.

Griffin grabbed the dash for support, then glanced in the mirror. “Still got 'em.”

“That's what you think.” Fitz came to a narrow alleyway, jerked left, came to a parking lot, jerked right, then came back to a side street and shot left again. Impressive, Griffin thought. But then, like a great white shark, the van appeared again.

“Maureen, Maureen, Maureen,” Griffin murmured. “Feeling a little vindictive over the loss of your videotape?”

“I'm not leading any fuckin' reporter to my women,” Fitz growled. “No way, not on my watch.”

Griffin took that as a hint to grab the handle protruding from the roof. Good thing. Fitz hit the sirens, shot through a red light without the customary tap on the brake and about plowed into a garbage truck. Apparently not one to sweat near misses, he merely accelerated faster, rocketed through another red light, hung a left, sped four blocks, then hung a right before finally ducking into a parking space between two cars.

“That's gotta do it,” he said, breathing hard and fast. Both hands still gripped the wheel. He had a savage gleam in his eye.

For no reason at all, Griffin decided not to let go of the safety handle. “I don't see them anymore,” he commented.

“Keep looking.”

“Aye, aye, Kimosabe.”

“I hate reporters,” Fitz growled.

“Hey, isn't this People magazine?”

The magazine had slid out from underneath Griffin 's seat. Fitz reached over, snatched it off the floor and flung it into the back.

“I know, I know,” Griffin filled in for him. “You only buy it for the pictures.”

“Not the pictures,” Fitz said grumpily. “The crossword.”

They waited a few more minutes. When the news van still hadn't appeared, Fitz slowly pulled back into the street. Traffic was light here, the neighborhood quiet. In the good news department, they had left most of the madness of the downtown scene behind. In the bad news department, it would take them that much longer to get to their destination. Ah well. Quality time for bonding, Griffin was sure. He flexed his biceps, then rolled his neck.

“Now, where were we?” Fitz asked, finally relaxing at the wheel and picking up the threads of their earlier conversation.

“One amnesic victim, two others who couldn't see the rapist in the dark,” Griffin cued up. He turned toward Fitz curiously. “If you never had a physical description, how did you determine it was Como?”

“We didn't right away. You have to understand, this wasn't your typical investigation of a serial crime. Our first victim, Meg, was no help at all thanks to trauma-induced amnesia. She doesn't recall the attack, the day of the attack, or for that matter most of her life leading up to the attack-”

“Most of her life?” Griffin interrupted, baffled. “I thought trauma-induced amnesia was forgetting the trauma. How did she leap from blanking one bad night to blanking her whole entire life?”

Fitz shrugged. “How the hell do I know? Maybe Meg didn't like her whole life and this provided a good opportunity. Maybe her brain doesn't like to differentiate. Beats me. But her doctor swears her amnesia is legit, her parents say her amnesia is legit and she seems to think her amnesia is legit. God knows I've interviewed Meg about two dozen times over the last year and she hasn't slipped up yet. So if she's faking it, she's a damn good actress.”

“Huh,” Griffin said.

“Huh,” Fitz agreed. “Either way, Meg's condition made investigating the initial rape complaint difficult. We tried her roommate, Vickie, but all she knew was that when she came home at two A.M., Meg was mysteriously bound to her bed. Then we turned to trace evidence, which was equally unenlightening-no tool marks, no hair, no fiber, no fingerprints. In fact, at the end of attack number one, all we had was one confused college coed, one traumatized roommate, ten strips of latex and one DNA sample that yielded no hits in the sex-offenders database.”

“You follow up on the latex?”

“Of course I followed up on the latex. Only damn lead I had. I made the lab analyze chemical compositions, do brand comparisons, batch comparisons, look at the amount of latex powder used on each strip. Frankly, I learned way too fucking much about latex. And none of it did us any good. The way it's manufactured, there is no way to narrow down a batch or shipment number based on a handful of strips. Three weeks after the first attack, we had hit the wall. Case was dead, dead, and deader.”

“Oh yeah? What did Meg's Uncle Vinnie have to say about that?”

Fitz promptly laughed. “So you've heard about him. Uncle Vinnie's a funny guy. He came to my office one day. Wanted to know if I was holding back any information from the family. For example, I might already have a name in mind. And for instance, if I already had a name in mind, then he might have a name in mind, and his name might be able to take care of my name, without any taxpayer expense.”

“In his own way, Vinnie's a helpful guy.”

“Yeah,” Fitz agreed, then promptly sighed. “We probably need to pay Uncle Vinnie a visit. In all honesty, I didn't think of him as an advocate of sharpshooting. Rooftop snipers and courthouse assassinations attract a lot of attention, and I don't think Uncle Vinnie likes to attract attention. Personally, I was betting that someday, Eddie would enter the prison showers and suffer a little incident. You know, one involving someone else's prison shank and Eddie's liver. But hey, live and learn.”

“Live and learn,” Griffin agreed. He returned to the initial string of rapes, still trying to get a sense of that investigation and how they'd gone from one victim with amnesia to an arrest two months later. “Okay,” he said. “So after the first rape, you didn't have Eddie Como in mind. You didn't have anyone in mind.”

“After the first rape, we were chasing our tails. We went through the drill. Looked at past boyfriends, rattled the sex-offender tree-who had been recently released from the ACI, who might live in the area, etc., etc. Frankly, Meg didn't date much, and all the known perverts were doing other perversions at the time. Probably watching Sex and the City on HBO. None of them go out as much now that they have cable.”

“But then came the attack on the East Side.”

“Right. Four weeks after the Pesaturo rape came the attack on the East Side.”

“Quite a different neighborhood,” Griffin observed.

“It's also a college area,” Fitz said, but then shook his head. “Yeah, attack number two had some key differences. Carol Rosen's a forty-two-year-old housewife, not a college coed. She lives with her husband in an old Victorian house, which isn't exactly the same as a college apartment. Finally, and this is probably the most significant difference, the level of violence was way up. According to the sexual assault nurse, Meg Pesaturo suffered only vaginal penetration, with minor lacerations on her wrists, ankles and mouth from the tourniquets. No sign of beating, and more importantly, no bruising around her throat. With Meg, Eddie apparently got in, got it done and got out.

“Carol Rosen, on the other hand, suffered vaginal and anal penetration. She had bruises on her breasts and buttocks, multiple contusions on her face, multiple lacerations on the inside of her thighs, plus he started flirting with asphyxiation, squeezing her throat so hard he left bruises from his fingertips. He also tied her up so tightly that she still has scars on her wrists and ankles. On a relative scale of things, Meg was lucky. Carol was not.”