Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

“But you're sure it's the same guy?”

“Ten latex strips,” Fitz said. “One DNA sample. Oh yeah, it was Eddie again.”

“And where was the husband through all this?”

“Dan Rosen works as an attorney, corporate stuff. He just opened his own practice a few years ago and keeps long hours. He didn't get home until after midnight, which was when he discovered his wife tied to their bed. We called in uniforms, we tried a canvass, but once again we had no description and once again we had no luck.”

Griffin frowned. “Wait a minute. The first victim has a roommate who just happens to work that night, second victim has a husband who also happens to work late. Does this mean what I think it means?”

“We think he watched the victims beforehand,” Fitz agreed. “He targeted them at the blood drives, then he spent some time doing his homework, hence the lapse of time between when he first saw them and when he attacked. Now, this theory works well when we look at Meg and Trish, who were blood donors. We get in trouble with Carol Rosen, however, because she didn't actually participate in any blood drives. In her case, we think she was a last-minute substitute. A pretty brunette college student who fits Eddie's ‘type' lived just one block away. She'd donated blood during the campus drive, and she remembers someone ringing the buzzer of her apartment that night. She wasn't expecting anyone, though, so she refused to open the door. Good news for her. Not so good for Carol.”

“That doesn't explain the husband being gone,” Griffin pressed.

“Hey, you think I have all the answers to life? Maybe in the course of watching the brunette, Eddie also noticed that Carol Rosen pretty much lived alone. Maybe he simply saw Carol's open bedroom window, conveniently located above the wraparound porch, and decided to go for it. He was hungry. He'd psyched himself up for a big meal and then lo and behold, he'd been denied service. Besides, Eddie was capable of lifting two hundred pounds. Climbing onto a porch overhang was probably nothing to him. And if the woman's husband was also at home… Eddie probably figured he could handle it. After all, it's late at night, and he's got a little bit of adrenaline firing through his veins…”

“Which he then took out on Mrs. Rosen. So maybe Como was very unhappy at having to change plans. Or maybe he was building to something more.”

“Maybe.” Fitz slanted Griffin a look. “Jillian Hayes was also beaten very badly. Not her sister, but then again, Jillian interrupted that party. I don't know. It seemed to me after Carol Rosen's attack that we had a sexual predator with a rapidly escalating penchant for violence. And I thought… I thought if we didn't catch the guy soon, we'd end up with someone dead. Unfortunately, that day came before even I expected. Eddie Como attacked Trisha Hayes just two weeks later. The guy took hardly any time off at all.”

Griffin nodded grimly. “Too bad.”

“Yeah,” the Providence detective said gruffly. “Too bad.”

“So how did you finally determine the perpetrator was Eddie Como?”

“Process of elimination. Once we homed in on the blood-donor angle, we got a list of names from the Rhode Island Blood Center of who worked the relevant blood drives. Lucky for us, the majority of phlebotomists are female. So once we focused on the males we were looking at only ten suspects. Then we started pushing.” Fitz rattled off on his fingers. “One, Eddie had access to two of the victims' home addresses, plus plenty of latex tourniquets. Two, while Eddie's not the biggest guy you'll ever meet, he's shockingly strong. Used to be a champion wrestler in high school and still likes to work out with weights. Eddie is… was… five eight and one hundred fifty pounds, but he could bench-press over two hundred. Let's face it, that's someone with some muscle. Of course, once we got a DNA sample from him, that cinched it.”

“How'd you get the sample?”

“We asked.”

Griffin stared at him. “You asked, and he just gave it to you? No lawyering up? No pleading the fifth? No claiming illegal search and seizure?”

From behind the steering wheel, Fitz smiled. It was a predator's smile. “Let me tell you something else about the rapes that very few people know. Eddie thought he was smart. In fact, Eddie thought he was so smart that in fact he was dumb, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. See, Eddie had a book on forensics. Apparently, he'd bought it on-line and thought it made him a bit of an expert. He was pretty good at a lot of it. Three rapes later, we had no hair, no fiber, no fingerprints. Not even tool marks. We think he used social engineering, because in none of the attacks did we find any evidence of breaking and entering. So okay, the kid did all right. But he made one mistake.”

“No condom?”

“No condom. He thought he had a better idea. Berkely and Johnson's Disposable Douche with Country Flowers.”

“What?”

“Yeah, exactly. See, Eddie had been following the Motyka case-we found newspaper articles of that trial in his apartment. Do you remember the Motyka case?”

Griffin had to think about it. “Tiverton, right? Some handyman who had been doing work on a woman's house broke back in, raped her, murdered her, then put her body in a bathtub.”

“Yeah. During the trial, the prosecutor argued that Motyka thought immersing the body in water would wash away the semen. Of course it didn't, they matched the sample to him, and now he's spending the rest of his life behind bars. Because semen goes up in the body. Because you need more than simple bathwater to wash it out.”

“Something like a douche,” Griffin filled in.

“That's what Eddie believed. But he wasn't thinking straight. Sure, a douche can wash out a lot of the semen, but it's just rinsing it onto the sheet. And when we process a rape case, we don't just collect samples from the victim, we also collect samples from the sheet. A couple of lab tests later…”

“So Como thinks he's come up with the perfect way of beating DNA, hence he's not worried about providing a sample, but oops, he's not so good after all.”

Fitz nodded. “There you have it.”

“That's not a bad plan,” Griffin said honestly. “He have any priors?”

“Nope.”

“History of violence with girlfriends?”

“Nope. In fact, his girlfriend was going to be the primary witness for the defense. She claims Eddie's really a kindhearted, sensitive guy who wouldn't hurt a flea, plus she was with him the nights there were attacks.”

“He had an alibi?” Griffin asked with surprise.

Fitz rolled his eyes. “No, he had a pregnant girlfriend who wasn't interested in the father of her child ending up behind bars. Trust me, we looked into it. We never found another witness who could corroborate seeing Eddie at home those nights. Plus, we still had the DNA. If Eddie was really watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, then how did his DNA end up at not one, or two, but three crime scenes?”

Griffin bobbed his head from side to side. Fitz had a point. “So the big break came when you made the connection with the blood drives?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Griffin narrowed his eyes. Okay, now he had it. “And this club, the Survivors Club, they helped you with that.”

“Jillian Hayes knew her sister had donated two weeks before the attack. She mentioned it because of the latex strips. We went back to check, and sure enough, good ol' amnesiac Meg had also donated one month prior to being raped. That was the first link we had between the victims. And yeah, everything finally fell into place after that.”

Fitz pulled the car over and parked next to the curb. “We're here,” he said.

Griffin looked out the window. They had arrived at the rue de l'espoir, a chic little café on Hope Street. Cindy had liked rue de l'espoir. Griffin, on the other hand, preferred its next-door neighbor, Big Alice's, which served the city's best ice cream.