Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

Griffin looked at Meg. She merely shrugged. “My parents don't let me answer the phone or get the mail.”

“The point is,” Jillian spoke up, pulling attention back to her, “you're barking up the wrong tree, Sergeant. So someone blew away Eddie Como. We don't care who did it. And we don't need to know who did it. Frankly, we are damn grateful that he's dead.”

DETECTIVE FITZPATRICK AND SERGEANT GRIFFIN STUCK around the restaurant for another five minutes. They thrust, Jillian parried. They punched, she counterpunched. The two cops grew frustrated. Jillian didn't much care. She'd been telling Meg and Carol the truth. They didn't have to say anything or go anywhere. As of this moment, they were still merely Eddie Como's victims. They might as well enjoy that advantage while it lasted.

One year ago, when Jillian had first thought up the Survivors Club, she'd had no illusions about the road ahead. She'd woken up that morning with the crushing realization that Trisha was still dead and she was still not. She'd lain there, terrified of each noise in her own home, painfully aware of just how physically weak and inadequate she was, and then she'd gotten mad again. No-she'd gotten furious. She didn't want more police questions. She didn't want DA's walking through her hospital room, cops grilling her about what she had done and said the night her little sister was viciously raped and murdered. She didn't want to get out of bed knowing that the man was still out there. He had killed Trish. He had attacked two other women. And the police hadn't done a damn thing about it.

Jillian had gotten out of bed then. And she had picked up the phone.

Perhaps Meg and Carol had joined the group looking for comfort. Maybe, these days, it even was a source of comfort. But Jillian wasn't ready for soft things yet. First and foremost, she had needed action for Trish, for herself, for all of them. She had formed this group, then honed this group to be their sword.

“We are not the Victims Club,” she had told them at their inaugural meeting. “We are the Survivors Club, and while we may have lost control once, we aren't ever going to lose control again. These attacks are our attacks. That rapist is our rapist. And we're going after him. The three of us are going to use the press, we're going to use the attorney general's office, we're going to use the police and we're going to find the man who did this to us. And then we're going to teach him what it means to have messed with us. I promise you that. From the bottom of my heart, I promise you we will get this man and we will make him pay.”

And in a matter of three short weeks, they watched the police lead Eddie Como away. What Providence detectives hadn't been able to do for nearly two months, the Survivors Club had accomplished in half that time.

Detective Fitzpatrick and Sergeant Griffin left. A waitress came by. Her look was both curious and sympathetic.

“More chai?”

They shook their heads.

“Stay as long as you'd like, girls. Oh, and don't fret the bill. After everything you've been through, this is on the house.”

The waitress bustled away. Jillian looked at Carol and Meg. No one seemed to know what to do next.

“Free breakfast,” Carol murmured at last. “Who said being raped didn't have its advantages?”

“We didn't get free breakfast for being raped,” Jillian countered. “We received free breakfast for killing Eddie Como. Quick, let's run to Federal Hill. There's no telling how much free food we can get there.”

Federal Hill was Providence 's Italian section, famous for its restaurants, pastry shops and Mafia connections. Maybe they could get toasted by various mob bosses or receive free cannolis from made men. It was a thought.

Meg spun her now empty mug between her hands. She looked up at Carol, then Jillian. Then she shocked them both, probably even herself, by speaking of serious matters first.

“Maybe you should've told them,” she said to Jillian. “You know, about the disk.”

“Why? Eddie has contacted us before without the police doing anything about it.”

“But this time was different.”

“‘Sticks and stones may break my bones,' ” Jillian quoted, “‘but words will never hurt me.' ”

“He sent the tape to your house .” Carol now, clearly agreeing with Meg. Carol hated the fact that Eddie Como could access their private residences. As she had told Detective Fitzpatrick six months ago, when the first phone call had come, it was like letting a murderer return to the scene of the crime. Eddie had been charged with three counts of first-degree sexual assault, one count of manslaughter and one count of assault with the intent to commit first-degree sexual assault. After all that, how was it that he still had the freedom to make phone calls and send mail? Eddie Como might have been the one behind bars, but most of the time, they agreed, they were the ones who felt as if they were in prison.

“He's contacted all of us at our homes,” Jillian said. “Face it-he likes to play games. He likes trying to mess with our minds. This was just his latest effort.”

“But he threatened to kill you,” Meg argued. “Detective Fitzpatrick told us he could do something if Eddie became threatening. And that video file”-Meg shuddered delicately-“that was definitely threatening.”

The computer disk had been sent to Jillian's house on Friday. The return address had been Jillian's business-yes, Eddie was very smart in his own way. So she'd opened the manila envelope, thoughtlessly popped in the disk, figuring it was from Roger or Claire, and then… Then Eddie Como's face had been staring back at her from her own computer screen. And as she fumbled for the eject button or the mouse, or the escape button, or for God's sake, some kind of button, he had begun to speak.

“You fucking bitch,” Eddie Como told her as she sat in her own home, ten feet away from her ailing mother, fifteen feet away from her mother's live-in assistant, two feet away from a photo of Trisha, smiling and happy and still so full of life. “You fucking bitch, you've ruined my life. You've ruined my kid's life, my mother's life and my girlfriend's life. Why? Because I'm a spic? Or just because I'm a man? It doesn't matter anymore. I'm gonna get you, even if it takes me the rest of my life. I'm gonna get you even if it's from beyond the grave.”

Jillian had gotten the disk out then. She had flung it back into the manila envelope and quickly resealed it, as if it were a poisonous spider that might try to escape. Then she'd sat there a long time, breathing too hard, shaking like a leaf, and in all honesty, very near tears.

Jillian hated being near tears. Crying never helped. Crying never changed the world. Crying certainly didn't fend off the likes of Eddie Como.

“If I was going to contact Detective Fitzpatrick, I would have done it Friday night,” she told the group now. “I didn't. So there you go.”

“You should've told him,” Carol said, voice still disapproving. Carol was very good at disapproving. “Maybe he could've done something.”

Jillian rolled her eyes. “It was after eight by the time I opened the envelope. Detective Fitzpatrick was already gone for the day. And… and it seemed juvenile at the time. A last-minute scare tactic by Eddie with the trial about to start on Monday. Besides, he's sent this thing out, he's probably already waiting for the police to come or the prison guards to come, or someone to come and give him a bad time. Then he could sit back and amuse himself with how much he rattled my cage. But if I say nothing… Then he spends all weekend waiting. Wondering. Not knowing. I liked that.”

“Punishing him with silence,” Meg said softly. “It's not half bad.”