Lisa Gardner - The Survivors Club

“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.