Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

“I remember who you are,” Jillian said abruptly. She turned around.

Immediately, Griffin 's stomach tensed. He forced himself to remain leaning casually against Jillian's car, arms folded over his chest, hands hidden beneath his elbows where she couldn't see his fingers clench. “And who am I?” he asked lightly.

“You led the case. Against that pedophile in Cranston. The Candy Man? Young children kept disappearing, month after month after month. And you were on the nightly news talking about how you were going to find them all. I guess you did, in the end. In your neighbor's dirt basement.”

Griffin forced his hands to open, relax. Breathe deep, count to ten.

“Your wife was dying,” Jillian said softly. Her voice had changed, not so hard anymore, maybe even sympathetic. Perversely, he found that worse. “Your wife was sick, that's right. I think she had even died-”

“The cancer got her quick.”

“And still kids were disappearing and there got to be a bit of a hubbub about whether you were paying enough attention to the case-”

“I did nothing but work that goddamn case. It was all I had left.”

“And then”-her eyes were locked on his-“then the police finally found all those poor missing kids. Buried in the basement right next door to your home. The Candy Man was your next-door neighbor.”

“It took eleven months, but I caught him.”

“You were the one who figured out that it was him?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn't you see it sooner? Were you distracted because your wife died?”

“Maybe. Mostly I think it was because he was my friend.”

“Oh.” Jillian stopped, blinked her eyes. “I hadn't heard that.”

“It wasn't relevant to the case.”

“You arrested him?”

“Yes.” After he tried to rip him from limb to limb. Down in that basement, with the acrid smell of lime and the deeper stench of death. Down in that basement, with those poor, poor kids. Down in that dark, dark basement, from which he'd been clawing his way back up ever since.

“I learned something that day,” Griffin said abruptly.

“Not to have friends?”

He had to smile at that. “Maybe. But that's not true. I'll tell you something, Jillian. I'll tell you something about only a dozen other people officially know. For everyone else, it's merely a rumor.”

She hesitated, chewed her lower lip, then worried the gold medallion hanging around her neck. He understood her dilemma. Accepting a confidence was like accepting a gift. If she took it, they wouldn't be strangers anymore. Maybe they'd even have a bit of a bond. And he doubted that right now, for a variety of reasons, Jillian Hayes wanted to bond with a cop.

Her curiosity won out. “What?” she asked.

“When I figured out it was David Price, my friend, my neighbor, it was bad. But when I went down to that basement, when I saw what he'd done to those kids, it was even worse. I went a little nuts that day. I went after David, and if I could've gotten my hands on him, I would've killed him. I would've ripped off his head with my bare hands, I would've pummeled him into a bleeding mass of bruised flesh. And I would've felt good about it. I didn't though. Two other detectives got in my way. They took his beating, and they did it because they were professionals who didn't want that son of a bitch to get off on charges of police brutality, and they did it because they were my friends and they understood. It's because of them he's now in prison for the rest of his life. And it's because of them that I still have a job. One friend betrayed me. But two other friends saved me. When all is said and done, it's still very good to have friends.”

Jillian didn't say anything. Whether she knew it or not, she was leaning forward slightly, a strange look on her face. Yearning, maybe? Had she trusted anyone since the day her sister died? Even the Survivors Club, did she really trust them?

“But that's not the lesson I learned that day,” he said.

“It's not?”

“No. What I really learned is that it's arrogant to be certain of anything. The world is a complex place and only idiots or assholes think they know it all.”

Jillian recoiled just as a back door opened and Carol Rosen came walking out of the restaurant into the parking lot.

“Jillian, there you are-” Carol spotted Griffin and suddenly drew up short. Her gaze dashed between the two of them, standing alone together in the parking lot, and it was clear she didn't like what she saw.

“Yes?” Jillian belatedly turned around to face Carol. Her movements were jerky.

“Ummm, Meg… We, uh… Can I see you inside for a moment?”

“I don't know.” Jillian still seemed distracted, but she recovered her bearings quickly, turning back to Griffin. “Are you done accusing me of murder, Sergeant?”

“For now.”

“Well then”-she gave him a thin smile-“I think I'll be on my way.”

She headed back to Carol, chin up, shoulders square. But then at the last minute, halfway through the restaurant's back door, she turned again.

“You're wrong, Sergeant,” she called out to him.

“About Eddie?”

“About the world. You have to be certain of some things. Otherwise you'd go crazy.”

It was Griffin 's turn to smile. “I wouldn't be so sure of that,” he said lightly as she disappeared through the doorway. “I wouldn't be so sure of that at all.”

GRIFFIN SWUNG BY HIS HOUSE A LITTLE AFTER 4:30. AT the rate things were going, the workday was going to stretch deep into night. Not the ideal first day back for a man who'd gone bonkers just eighteen months ago, but what could you do? As he'd told Fitz, back was back.

Besides, he was increasingly intrigued by this case. Puzzled, confused, fascinated. In other words, in that perverse sort of way homicide detectives had, he was enjoying himself immensely.

Griffin parked outside the little waterfront shack he'd recently purchased in North Kingstown, and went inside to prepare the working homicide detective's Big Case Kit. In other words, a duffel bag containing two fresh shirts, two ties and lots of clean underwear. You could never have too much clean underwear. Oh yeah, he also added a toothbrush and an electric razor-never as good as a blade, but handy in a pinch.

He stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water as he idly went through his mail. Bill, bill, grocery store flyer. Ooooh, oranges for ninety-nine cents a pound. God bless the USA.

He got to the last item, a plain white envelope, and then his heart accelerated in spite of himself. To: Good Neighbor Griffin. At Griffin 's new address. From: Your Buddy Dave. No return address.

David Price never could stand being bored.

Little psychopathic shit.

David had written many times before, mostly to the old house in Cranston, where Griffin had stayed for nearly a year after the Big Boom. He probably should have put it up for sale immediately after he took his medical leave, but who was going to buy the home next to the home where the Candy Man had brutally murdered ten kids? Who was going to buy the home of the dumb fuck detective who'd lived twenty feet away and never suspected a thing?

David Price, who used to pop over and mow their lawn when Griffin and Cindy got too busy. Small, boyish David Price, who looked seventeen even though he was twenty-eight, who could barely lift a forty-pound bag of potting soil but was hell on wheels with electrical wires. Easygoing, neighborly David Price, who helped Griffin lay the pipes for his irrigation system one summer, who liked to come over for barbecued hamburgers and beer, who fixed the light over the sink when the buzzing threatened to drive Cindy mad, who had no family of his own and over the course of three years somehow became part of theirs.