Never Tell

by Alafair Burke

  An attempted murder charge also seemed strong. As much as Bolt insisted that the incident on the terrace was a shoving match between longtime friends, both Rogan and Ellie could back up George’s testimony that the man was trying to throw said friend from a thirteenth-floor balcony.

  But on the actual Julia Whitmire murder charge, they still had work to do.

  “Maybe the sound technician can cut through some of that background noise,” Max offered.

  The recording of George’s conversation with Bolt became choppy once they had stepped out onto the terrace. According to George, Bolt did confess to killing Julia. They’d begun an affair three months earlier. Bolt said Julia was the one to pursue him, but they’d never know the truth—not that it mattered, given her age. The weekend Julia had died, Bolt’s wife had taken the children to London for a three-day weekend, leaving him free to spend time with Julia. Tipsy from two martinis, he had used Julia’s laptop to post the first threat on Adrienne’s website.

  He hadn’t heard her heading back to the bed. She asked him what he was doing. He knew from the look on her face that she’d seen him typing that comment. He tried chalking it up to professional research, but he could tell she wasn’t buying it.

  Listening to the recording of their conversation, George had been able to fill in the blanks. Julia confronted me. I didn’t know what to do. She could tell I was lying. She was furious. Then she started asking me about my research. It came out of nowhere. She’d obviously gone through my files. She threatened to tell. She threatened to call my wife. I didn’t plan it. I just snapped.

  But then George had asked Bolt about the suicide note. What did you do, David? Tell her you wanted her to try out a new exercise you had for your clients? That’s pretty damned planned.

  That’s when their voices had gotten louder. George calling Bolt a liar. Bolt saying he was trying to protect his family. George saying that the police were involved—the truth would be coming out. And then Bolt trying to push George off the terrace.

  George’s testimony, bolstered by a choppy recording, might not be enough for trial, but it was still early in the game. Like Max said, the recording might get cleaned up. They would pore over Bolt’s office, home, and car, searching for physical evidence to shore up the affair between him and Julia. They’d offer evidence of Julia’s habit of snooping to suggest she’d learned what Bolt was up to. They’d be comparing Bolt’s fingerprints and DNA against samples taken from Julia’s bedroom.

  A week ago, she never would have believed it: Katherine Whitmire had been right. Her daughter had been murdered.

  It wouldn’t be a lock, but eventually they’d have a decent circumstantial case to prove Bolt was her killer.

  Then there was also Grisco’s attack on Adrienne Langston. If Bolt had hired Grisco, he was guilty of attempted murder. They might even be able to hold him responsible for Grisco’s death since he set the fatal confrontation into motion.

  But even in George Langston’s enhanced version of the recorded conversation, Bolt never admitted to any connection to Grisco.

  Ellie rewound the file, now uploaded on the computer, and listened for the umpteenth time.

  First Langston’s voice: What I agreed to about Adrienne was wrong. But sending someone after her? Trying to hurt my child’s mother? That’s not acceptable. Not in any universe.

  Then Bolt: I swear—on Nate and Charlotte’s lives—I did not have anything to do with that.

  She hit stop, then listened again.

  “You can play it a hundred more times and nothing’s going to change,” Rogan said. “Not the first time a guy who’s guilty as sin swears innocence on his children’s lives.”

  “I’d feel a lot better about this if we had something—anything—connecting Bolt to Grisco.”

  The civilian’s aide known as Doogie was backing his way toward them with a stack of Redweld files looped together with rubber bands. “This just came for you two, Detectives. It’s from the Buffalo Police Department’s records archives?”

  She had requested the reports from Grisco’s homicide case when they had first identified his fingerprints on the shoe box left at the Langstons’ apartment building. She snapped the thick rubber bands from the files. One was from the court system, documenting Grisco’s case from arraignment forward. She handed that one to Max, then split the police records in half, between Rogan and herself.

  “Damn. Buffalo was still typing in triplicate in 1995?” Rogan said. “What exactly are we looking for here?”

  She continued to shuffle through the pages. “The more we know about Grisco, the better. Why did he come to the city? How would he have crossed paths with David Bolt? Maybe something indicating he was subject to post-supervision psychiatric counseling?”

  “Nothing yet,” Max said. “Looks like he was indicted for murder. The state filed an intent to seek the death penalty, back when New York had one. He then pled guilty to murder, mandatory life in prison. No appeal. Pretty thin file. Whatever happened in plea negotiations isn’t in the record.”

  “So far I’m looking at property receipts and lab tests,” Rogan said.

  “I’ve got the original incident report.” She gave them a quick summary as she read. “Like the parole officer told us, the vic was a forty-nine-year-old insurance agent named Wayne Cooper. Looks like Grisco waited outside Cooper’s office and then stabbed him in the parking lot—twice in the stomach, then once in the chest. No witnesses to the actual stabbing, but Grisco took off in such a hurry that another driver wrote down his plate as he sped away.”

  “Lying in wait would make it premeditated,” Rogan said.

  She flipped to another report. “Search of Grisco’s car, a 1988 Pontiac Firebird. No weapon found, but blood on the passenger seat.”

  Rogan held up a page from his file. “I got that. DNA came back to the victim. Sounds like a lock and load.”

  She continued rifling through the pages, looking for evidence of a psychiatric evaluation. She ran the math in her head. Nearly seventeen years since the murder. Fifteen years since the plea. David Bolt would have been a psychiatrist already. Maybe he took patients in western New York as part of his early training.

  “Okay, here’s the report from Grisco’s interrogation: Mirandized. Waiver followed by an initial denial. Said the blood on the passenger seat was from a buddy cutting himself in a fall on some gravel at a tailgate party. They bluffed with the DNA results even though the labs weren’t back yet. Yada, yada, yada. Okay, here we go. Grisco then admits to being at the office building parking lot. He said he only went there to confront Cooper after learning that Cooper had sexually assaulted Grisco’s girlfriend. Cooper attacked him first. Grisco said he was only defending himself. The detective noted no injuries on Grisco to support the claim of lethal defensive force.”

  “Did the girlfriend back him up?” Rogan asked.

  She flipped to the next page and read verbatim from the report: “Grisco declined to name the alleged victim of Cooper’s sexual attack, i.e., Grisco’s own girlfriend. Grisco claimed he did not want to get her in trouble. When I pointed out that there was nothing against the law about being a rape victim, he suddenly said that she had nothing to do with his acts and would now be getting a fresh start in light of Cooper’s death. I asked him then if that (i.e., giving his girlfriend a fresh start) is why he killed Cooper. He then stated, ‘I told you it was self-defense.’ I then pointed out that all evidence suggested that Cooper was a happily married family man, i.e., with no propensity for sexual violence. He then said, ‘I want to talk to a lawyer now.’ End of interview.”

  “I.e.,” Rogan said in an exaggerated staccato, “Grisco realized his story sounded completely bogus.”

  She kept shuffling through the reports, but the investigation appeared to come to an abrupt halt. No indication that the police had looked for Cooper’s alleged rape victim. No evidence that Grisco underwent a mental health evaluation. No explanation for why, fifteen years later, Grisco had come to New
York, or how he might have crossed paths with David Bolt.

  Max slid Grisco’s court file across the table toward Ellie. “Pretty cut-and-dry plea deal to avoid the death penalty. Only reason he got out was he witnessed his cellmate stick a shiv in another prisoner last year. He cut a deal with the state.”

  “Still seems lazy,” Ellie said. “If Grisco’s motive for killing Cooper wasn’t revenge, then why did he do it? It doesn’t sound like the Buffalo police could find any reason Grisco would go after some ho-hum, middle-aged insurance agent. If it were us, we would have at least looked for a connection. At least find out who Grisco was dating. I wouldn’t clear the case without finding the girl. If the girl doesn’t exist, then Grisco’s entire story is a lie, and he’s a cold-blooded murderer. No pleas allowed.”

  Ellie began reorganizing the Grisco files when she noticed a stack of envelopes addressed to Rogan from various banks. She tossed them in his direction. “Bank statements at work? If Shannon and Danes get a glimpse, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  He starting ripping the envelopes open as she wrapped a rubber band around the file folders. “These are the requests we sent out for the Langstons’ bank records.”

  “Guess we don’t need those anymore. Too bad we don’t have Bolt’s yet.”

  He was flipping through the pages he’d removed from the envelopes. “Hold up a second. When did Grisco rent that apartment out in Queens?”

  “The landlord said he looked at the place last Thursday. Agreed to rent it the same day.” It had been exactly one week. Grisco could have been in the city long before that, but so far they had traced him only to the Queens apartment.

  “All cash. First, last, plus deposit, a total of thirty-six hundred dollars. I got a cash withdrawal here of nine thousand, nine hundred dollars that very morning.”

  Any cash transaction of ten thousand dollars or more got reported to the federal government, making any transaction slightly less than ten thousand dollars a little suspicious.

  “No way, Rogan. We put the fear of God into George Langston. No way did he hire Grisco. Maybe they’re paying a housekeeper under the table or something.”

  “Except the withdrawal’s not out of the Langstons’ joint account. You better take a look at this.”

  She looked at the bank statement, then passed it to Max. They were all seeing the same thing. They were all drawing the same inference.

  “Let’s pull the Langstons’ phone records,” she said. “What else have we been missing?”

  PART V

  James Grisco

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Janet Martin stared out her Flatiron office window, as if the answers to life’s mysteries might be lying in Madison Square Park. “I hope you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Martin said. “Adrienne might just be the real deal. A true survivor giving voice to the damage of her past, strong enough to protect herself in the present. Her story will help a lot of women out there.”

  They had first heard about Adrienne’s book contract from Katherine Whitmire. When Adrienne confirmed the deal, the only fact that concerned them at the time were the threats on her website.

  But what they’d learned in the last twenty hours had changed everything. As a result, they needed to know more about the contents of the book.

  Fortunately, Martin had mentioned during Ellie’s first run-in with the editor that the publisher fact-checked all of its memoirs. Now Ellie and Rogan were back at Waterton Press, hoping finally to nail down how Adrienne Langston’s blog connected to the events of the last two weeks.

  “This would be a lot easier if you’d just tell us what you know.”

  Martin smiled. “If I’m mistaken about Adrienne, I’ll apologize later, but for now, maybe I don’t want to make your life easy. The documents are all there. You can let yourself out when you’re finished.”

  Because Waterton Press had conducted its fact-checking through its legal department, the publisher insisted that any observations, opinions, or summaries were protected by the attorney work-product privilege. Max had finally persuaded Waterton’s lawyers to turn over the raw information they had collected in the course of the fact-checking process, but Martin would not be answering any questions or otherwise cooperating with their investigation.

  They knew Adrienne had been consumed with preserving her anonymity during the publishing process. But they were hoping that the publisher’s actual records revealed the truth about Adrienne Langston’s past.

  Maybe if Adrienne hadn’t landed a book deal, they would never have suspected a connection between her and James Grisco. But when they sent all the major banks a request for information on accounts held by George and Adrienne Langston, they found the account she had opened in her own name using her initial advance from Waterton Press. They saw the $9,900 cash withdrawal she made on the very same morning Grisco paid cash for his apartment in Queens. Now they needed stronger evidence of the link they suspected.

  It was a single entry in the Langstons’ telephone records that had gotten their attention. An outgoing call to the 716 area code, in western New York State. It was the previous Monday morning, just five minutes after David Bolt posted the second threat on Adrienne Whitmire’s blog. The call was to the central administrative number for the Wende Correctional Facility, just outside Buffalo.

  Martin had left them a tidy Redweld binder labeled “Adrienne Whitmire’s Second Acts” on the office conference table. Ellie opened it and removed several manila file folders.

  The first contained a printout of the entire “Second Acts” blog. They had read it all before. They had even known from Janet Martin that some of the personal details of Adrienne’s background would be changed to protect her anonymity. What they hadn’t suspected was that Adrienne may have already been changing biographical details her entire adult life.

  In the story she had been telling, she was raised by a single mother who waited tables in Chico, California. When her mom died, she dropped out of high school, came to New York City, and worked as a nanny before becoming Mrs. George Langston. In the story she was telling, her path would never have crossed James Grisco’s.

  But wipe away the geographical details, and another narrative emerged. In the story she was telling on her blog, she was a teenage victim, abused by a man brought into her home by her mother. She was a girl who dealt with that abuse by turning, in her words, to “an unacceptable ‘someone else’—at once too old and too immature.”

  And then there was James Grisco’s story, that of a twenty-three-year-old man with nothing but a DUI and a small-time burglary on his record who suddenly decides to lie in wait outside an insurance agent’s office and plunge a knife into him three times, later claiming that the victim had raped his girlfriend.

  The phone call from Adrienne Langston’s home to the Wende Correctional Facility connected the two stories.

  The second folder in Waterton Press’s file was labeled “Public Records.” A copy of the marriage license of George Langston and Adrienne Mitchell. A birth certificate, documenting the birth in 1980 of baby Adrienne to mother Carmen Watson and Henry Mitchell, unmarried. Ellie felt a rush of adrenaline as she flipped to the next record, a marriage license for Carmen Watson and her new husband in 1988. “We’ve got it, Rogan. We were right.”

  What was it that Grisco said when the Buffalo police had asked him about his girlfriend? She was getting a “fresh start.”

  Ellie reached for the final file, labeled “Newspaper Articles.” The headline on the first article read “Man Brutally Slain Outside Cheektowaga Office.” It detailed the stabbing of Wayne Cooper. A twenty-three-year-old suspect named James Grisco was in custody. The police had not yet established a connection between the two men or a motive for the killing. The victim was survived by his wife, Carmen, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Adrienne.

  She handed the article to Rogan. “Stepdaughter, actually,” she said. “There’s no adoption records here. That’s why she was going by Adrienne Mitchell when
she married George.”

  “But it looks like she was using Cooper’s name all through childhood.” He was flipping through a file of what appeared to be photocopies of pages from school yearbooks. Ellie looked at one of the photos.

  Where today’s Adrienne went for a natural look, with long, caramel-colored waves, the 1995 version had choppy, jet-black hair, charcoal eyeliner set against white-powdered skin, and an extra twenty pounds.

  The girl formerly known as Adrienne Cooper was almost unrecognizable.

  Almost.

  Janet Martin was waiting for them in the reception area. “I take it you found what you were looking for?”

  Ellie nodded. “We’re all set.”

  “You don’t have to look so happy, Detectives. There’s legal justice, and then there’s moral justice. Not everything is black-and-white.”

  “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Ellie said.

  “But here’s the thing, Detective. When most people say that, they’re asking you to see shades of gray. But some things can be black and white—right and wrong—all at the same time.”

  Ellie’s cell buzzed. She didn’t recognize the phone number, but it was from the 716 area code.

  “Hatcher.”

  “Detective Hatcher, this is ADA Jennifer Sugarman from the Erie County district attorney’s office in Buffalo, New York. I understand you’re handling the shooting of James Grisco back east there.”

  “That’s right.” Ellie remembered seeing Sugarman’s name on some of Grisco’s court papers. She would have been the prosecutor who cut the deal for Grisco’s early release in exchange for testimony against his cellmate.

  “I’m sorry to be late getting this information to you, but I just saw Grisco’s PO at a parole-violation hearing, and he told me about Grisco’s death.”

  Ellie was eager to catch up with Max to let him know they’d been right about Adrienne’s connection to Grisco. “What can I do for you, Miss Sugarman?”