Authors: Alafair Burke
T
hey looked up at the Langstons’ high-rise.
“You ready to do this?” Ellie checked her watch. It was almost three o’clock. Hopefully Ramona wouldn’t be coming straight home from school.
They had manufactured a reason to call George at the office, so they knew he was at work. They had just watched Adrienne enter the building alone. The gun registered to George Langston was tucked away safely in a property room in East Hampton.
“All right. Let’s see what we can get.”
A
drienne met them at the apartment door, still in yoga pants with a thin ring of perspiration around the V-neck of her pink T-shirt. She held a glass of water in one hand.
“Sorry for my appearance, Detectives. I just got done with a workout.”
She led the way into the living room. When they had first arrived here eleven days earlier, Ellie thought she’d had a perfect read on the family. George the uptight lawyer. Adrienne the breath of fresh air who made the house a home.
Sometimes more than one truth defined a family.
“How are you holding up?” Ellie asked.
“I’m making it through. I got a call from Detective Howard this morning from Long Island. The district attorney’s office there has officially closed the investigation. I’m still waking up in the middle of the night thinking about that back window crashing and him walking into our house, but—well, at least the official part of the matter is over.”
Ellie searched Adrienne’s face for any sign of the woman who had orchestrated that event with such calculation. She had to have broken the window herself before Grisco arrived. She’d given him the address, perhaps even directions to the house. Staged the signs of a struggle. Planted a knife in his hand.
Now they were the ones setting her up. The phone call from Howard was intended to make her feel safe. All Ellie saw in Adrienne’s expression was the security of a woman who believed she’d gotten away with it. Ellie hoped that same arrogance would keep her talking.
“Unfortunately, we probably won’t be able to say the same about the David Bolt case for several months. The DA’s office assumes he’ll opt for a trial, so we’re still trying to shore up some of the loose ends.”
“Well, I want to help however I can. I hope you realize that I would have told you about George’s terrible role in settling that lawsuit against David if I’d had
any
idea it was related to Julia’s death. I’m still having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he knew about those threats on my website. He was so worried about our marriage, but it never once dawned on me to leave. Now, frankly, I’m not sure we’re going to make it past this.”
“That’s actually why we’re here, Adrienne—about those comments on your website. The first one, as you know, came from Julia’s laptop, and we believe David Bolt typed it. Then we had several other comments posted at public computers around the Upper West Side and down near the Village. We now know that those were located near Bolt’s office and residence, respectively. But the final post—the one mentioning your name—was created on a computer in the lobby of a hotel just eight blocks from here.”
“With all due respect, Detective, you already asked me about that last week.”
“That was before we had this.” Rogan slid a printout with six photographs, including Adrienne’s, onto the coffee table. “We showed this photo montage to some of the hotel employees yesterday afternoon. See those initials at the bottom of your picture? That means the concierge identified you as a woman he saw in the lobby last Wednesday.”
It was a bluff, but Adrienne didn’t need to know that.
“Obviously there’s some mistake. I use the Internet here at home. Maybe this person just recognized me from the neighborhood.”
“We thought that might be the case,” Ellie said. “But then we learned more about James Grisco. We know about your past, Adrienne. You didn’t grow up in Chico. You grew up in Buffalo, New York, and your boyfriend there was James Grisco. He killed your stepfather, Wayne Cooper, the man who raped you.”
She held her composure for multiple seconds, but then her lower lip began to tremble. Ellie wondered whether it was out of fear that the world she had so carefully constructed was about to crumble, or if this woman was really just that good.
“I—I didn’t even recognize him that night. When Detective Howard told me the name of the man who broke into our house, I just froze. Maybe I should have said something right then and there, but I panicked. Before I knew what I was doing, I said I didn’t know who he was. David must have found out about my past. He must have hired Grisco just to add another layer to the madness.”
“But, see, that’s the thing. We haven’t been able to find any connection at all between David Bolt and James Grisco, let alone evidence that Bolt hired Grisco. But we did find out about that phone call you made to the prison up in Buffalo, right after Bolt posted the second threat on your website.” Ellie set a single page of the Langstons’ phone records on the table. “You assumed Grisco had found you after all these years. You thought he was the one harassing you online, but, Adrienne, you were actually the one who brought him back into your life. He might never have found you if you hadn’t made that phone call.”
Rogan laid yet another sheet of paper on the coffee table, this one her bank statement with the transaction at issue highlighted in yellow. “A ninety-nine-hundred-dollar withdrawal from an account in your name, right before Grisco paid cash to a landlord in Queens.”
“I’ve never had my own money before. I took out some cash to splurge.”
“So you have receipts for whatever purchases you might have made?” Ellie asked.
“No, I mean—it was just an extra facial or massage here and there. It all adds up.”
“That’s a lot of spa time,” Rogan said. “We think it was Grisco who found out how quickly the expenses add up. He went away a long time ago, and at a young age. He probably thought ten grand was a lot of money, but before he knew it, he was broke again. Did he come back for more? Blackmailers usually do.”
When the shoe box full of maggots showed up at the Langstons’ building, Adrienne had been the one to insist that her precinct check it for fingerprints. Their theory was that her initial ten thousand dollars bought her that Adidas shoe box, filled with whatever incriminating documents Grisco was blackmailing her with. She then used the weathered box to set him up for stalking her, setting the stage for the shooting in East Hampton.
“What Jimmy Grisco did back then was insane. Wayne said he’d kill me if I ever told anyone. It took all of my strength to tell my mother, and instead of believing me, she called me a jealous bitch. I went to Jimmy because I had nowhere else to go. I told him what my stepfather was doing to me. I had no idea he’d go after him. I’ll admit it: part of me was glad, but I had nothing to do with it.”
“And then Grisco showed up in New York City after his release.”
“I know how it looks, and that’s why I didn’t say anything. But I’m telling you: David Bolt is the one who did this. What could Grisco have even blackmailed me with? My husband already knew about my past. Maybe he didn’t know the details, but he knows everything that matters. I’m the high school dropout who married up, and all his friends know it. Who cares?”
“Grisco obviously thought you cared. Why would he have come to New York?”
“You know, I just can’t win with you people. Fine, believe what you want, but I’m done trying to explain myself to you.”
Rogan rose from his place on the sofa and waited for Ellie to do the same. They had known going in that this woman wouldn’t break easily. She had been lying to them from the very beginning. A few more threads of fiction would be no trouble for her to spin.
But they had also known going in that they wouldn’t be leaving empty-handed. They let her lead the way from the living room. She saw Rogan reach for his cuffs once Adrienne had entered the narrow hallway heading to the front door.
“Adrienne Langston, also known as Adrienne Mitchell and Adrienne Cooper, you are under arrest for the murder of James Grisco.” As Ellie read Adrienne her rights, Rogan handcuffed her arms behind her back. It had taken some negotiating, but Max had persuaded the Suffolk County district attorney that any plan Adrienne had to kill Grisco would have originated in Manhattan, giving the New York County DA’s office concurrent jurisdiction. The arrest warrant had been signed just that morning.
Ellie had reached the final sentence of the Miranda recitation when she heard keys in the front door.
She placed her hand on her Glock, then relaxed it when she saw Ramona in the doorway, Casey standing behind her. The girl’s face initially brightened, until she realized the full implications of what she was seeing.
“Mom? Mom! What are you doing? Let her go.”
“It’s okay, Ramona. It’s okay. It’s okay. Just call your father.”
Ramona ran to her mother, pulling at her T-shirt as Rogan and Ellie marched Adrienne past Ramona and toward the front door. Ellie held out an arm to create distance, but Ramona reached around her, grabbing again at Adrienne’s T-shirt. Casey did his best to pull Ramona away, but she punched her fists against his forearm.
Even in her handcuffs, Adrienne tried arching toward her stepdaughter. “Please. Please just let me hug her. She’s scared.”
Ramona kept screaming, “Mom,” and “Don’t take her,” over and over again.
As they pulled Adrienne into the elevator, Ellie looked back at the apartment door. Ramona’s arms were outstretched toward her mother, but she was letting Casey hold her back now.
She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the resemblance earlier. The yearbook picture from 1995 back in Buffalo looked nothing like Adrienne Langston. It had been nearly twenty years. Appearances change. The woman next to her in handcuffs had lost all of that teenage angst and awkwardness.
And yet the picture should have been familiar. It didn’t look like Adrienne, but it looked a hell of a lot like Ramona.
When they had found the phone number of a family law attorney in the Langstons’ caller ID, they had assumed George was considering a divorce. Now Ellie understood that the client hadn’t been George, but Adrienne. The representation wasn’t new, but began sixteen years ago. And the subject matter wasn’t divorce, but adoption.
O
nce they had their car’s latest occupant secured in the backseat, Ellie latched her own seat belt up front and made a phone call she was eager for Adrienne to overhear.
“Double M, it’s Ellie Hatcher. You get those cookies I dropped off?” She had delivered Michael Ma’s nutter-butters as promised. She didn’t want to lose her best contact in the crime lab.
“Just polished off the last one an hour ago.”
“I’ll whip you up a new batch if you can do me one more favor. Look for evidence collection on Julia Whitmire. You’ll see a DNA swab for a known acquaintance named Ramona Langston.”
In the rearview mirror, Ellie could see Adrienne looking out the window, pretending not to listen as Park Avenue sailed by.
“What do you need me to compare it against?”
“I’ll have a sample to you within an hour. But I’m not looking for a match. I need you to tell me if I’ve found the girl’s biological mother.”
And then Ellie saw it—a crack in Adrienne Langston’s confident veneer. It was the tiniest movement, somewhere between a blink and a flinch. But it was there.
She knew why James Grisco had been buying coffee across the street from Ramona’s school. And she knew why Adrienne had killed him.
Four Weeks Later
O
ne killer down, one to go.”
Max held up his glass of red wine and clinked it against Ellie’s Johnnie Walker Black. David Bolt had just entered a plea of guilty to the murder of Julia Whitmire. He wouldn’t be sentenced for another week, but the agreement called for a minimum of thirty years in prison.
In the end, it was his clever attempt to leave behind a suicide note that sealed the case against him. Julia had pressed down on the paper so hard as she was writing the letter that she’d left indentations on the next page in the pad. They found that sheet of paper, now filled with Bolt’s own handwriting, in his notes about the Equivan drug trial.
They were celebrating the closure of at least part of this investigation at their usual after-work spot, the bar at Otto. It was only 5:30 on a Tuesday, so they could actually speak to each other without yelling.
“And to our apartment,” Ellie said, adding in a second clink.
“You mean
sort of
our apartment.” Max had signed a lease for a large one-bedroom just off Union Square Park. She wasn’t ready to walk away from her rent-controlled apartment, but Jess seemed to think he could take over the rent for now. She’d be moving her things into Max’s new place next week.
Their
new place. She’d have to get used to calling it that.
In theory, the decision should have been one of those joyous moments in a relationship, like the wedding-proposal stories people never tire of repeating. But they both knew the dubious origins of the arrangement. His quasi-ultimatum. His insistence that there was a difference between asking her to change and asking her to
get to know herself
more. Her desire to prove to him that she was trying. His anger at her refusal to relinquish her legal right to occupy another space without him.
Their first shared address had been the result of nights of fighting, not one of those great stories they’d be sharing with friends.
They both took a sip to commemorate the second toast, but she quickly changed the subject. “Anything else we can do on Adrienne Langston’s charges?”
If there was an A-level felony for lying, they’d have Adrienne dead to rights. The DNA tests confirmed that Ramona Langston was the biological daughter of Adrienne Langston and the late James Grisco. Records subpoenaed from Michael Wiles’s law office confirmed that in January 1996, Adrienne Mitchell placed a newborn baby girl in a closed, private adoption. According to the adoption documents, Adrienne had claimed not to know the identity of the biological father.
Within two years, Adrienne was living in New York City, working as a nanny for a family that lived two floors down from the Langstons. Even Adrienne now admitted that the job was no coincidence. She was in no position to raise a child on her own, but she could at least watch the baby she’d given up grow with her new parents. After Gabriella’s car accident, the entire building was abuzz about poor George and his little girl. It was only natural that she volunteered to step in. The way Adrienne told the story, the fact that she, George, and Ramona became a family was nothing but a happy Hollywood ending.
Until, of course, James Grisco resurfaced and threatened to ruin it all.
“I still can’t believe Ramona showed up at your apartment.”
It had been two days earlier. Ellie and Jess were leaving the building for a run, and there was Ramona, sitting on the front stoop.
Ellie took another sip of her whisky, recalling the ugliness of the interaction. Somehow the tale Adrienne had spun sounded better coming from a sad sixteen-year-old girl. Grisco the blackmailer. Grisco who came back for more when the ten grand ran out. Grisco who broke into the house in East Hampton to attack Adrienne after she refused to pay him any more money.
“I swear,” Max said, “if Adrienne sent her kid to beg on her behalf, I should be entitled to tack another couple of years onto the sentence.”
But Ellie could tell that Ramona’s pleas came entirely from her own desire to believe the very best about the only mother she knew.
“You really think a jury will buy self-defense?” she asked.
“I’ve learned never to make predictions. Adrienne’s a proven liar, time and again. And the whole thing with the maggots shows just how far she was willing to go to cast herself in the role of victim. But at the end of the day, she’s a pretty, rich, white lady, and James Grisco was a convicted killer.”
“I hate jurors.”
“You’d rather have judges like Fred Knight make the call? I’m hoping the husband will talk some sense into her. The defense attorney told me George spent all of yesterday poring over the entire trial file. He’s a husband, but he’s also a lawyer. Hopefully he’ll see she should take the deal.” He downed the rest of his wine. “Fuck it. I’d rather try a good case and lose than budge another day with her.”
The current offer was twenty years. Adrienne would barely be fifty when she got out. She could still see Ramona get married. She could be a grandmother to whatever children Ramona might eventually have.
Max’s cell phone rattled against the bar top. He excused himself to take the call on the sidewalk on Eighth Street.
The bar manager, Dennis, reappeared once she was alone. “It’s a dumb man who puts a phone call above his girlfriend.”
“You know us. When duty calls—”
“I do indeed, and as a taxpayer I suppose I should thank you.” He refilled Max’s glass. She held up her half-full rocks glass to show she was still working on the first round. “Watch yourself there. That’s how the power balance gets off in a relationship. You’ve got to match him one for one.”
“Half a Johnnie Walker’s good for at least one glass of his wussy red wine.”
She checked her e-mail on her BlackBerry as she continued to sip. Most of it was junk, but she opened a message from Detective Marci Howard with the Suffolk Police Department.
Hatcher, Last I heard, you two were all set on what you needed from us re Langston shooting in East Hampton. Saw husband (George) coming out of records department today. Checked to make sure no interference with current investigation.
Like a lot of cops, Howard apparently saw no need to use complete sentences in e-mails.
Records clerk told me Langston asked for copies of docs re 2001 accident investigation—fatal on Egypt Lane near Hook Pond involving Gabriella Langston (which is same name on Langston gun registration; first wife etc.). Know you two are sticklers for every last detail (ha ha) so thought I’d give you a heads up. Hope the case goes on the side of justice. Still sounds like a clean shoot to me FWIW.
Great. Even a cop took one look at the rich pretty white lady versus the scumbag ex-con and gave Adrienne a pass.
Ellie hit the reply button on her e-mail system and pecked off a response:
Thanks for keeping us in the loop. To prove that I am in fact the most obsessive-compulsive person you’ve ever met, can you please ask your records department to fax us a copy of the reports George Langston requested? You never know . . . Don’t forget. We owe you. Thx!
Max looked happy when he returned to the bar. “I was about to say ‘another round to celebrate,’ but I see Dennis already got here.”
“What are we celebrating now?”
“That was Adrienne Langston’s defense attorney. She’s taking the deal. As is.”
“You’re kidding? Just like that? I thought she said she wouldn’t take anything other than Man Two.”
“The attorney was surprised too. She said it was all George’s doing. Plus, they’re in a rush. Adrienne will enter her plea tomorrow at nine a.m., straight into sentencing. So let’s drink to George.”
Ellie still had her phone in her hand.
“Sorry, babe. I hate to tell you this, but I’ve got work to do tonight.”
His disappointment was obvious. “Come on. I thought we were finally both out early for once. I was sort of looking forward to talking about the new place. What to keep, what to get rid of. It’ll be fun.”
She knew it should sound fun. It didn’t. “I really need to work. You stay here and chill with the other regulars. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. Take you to Bed Bath and Beyond to look at shower curtains with all the other ladies.”
He feigned a stabbing motion to the gut. “Fine, I deserved that. I’m soft.” He gave her a kiss on the lips, and she waved goodbye to Dennis on her way out.
From the sidewalk on Eighth Street, she pulled up Marci Howard’s phone number from her call log, then plugged one ear with her fingertip to block out the sound of a passing bus. “Hey, there, it’s Ellie Hatcher. Did you happen to get the e-mail I just sent you?”
“Didn’t surprise me at all. You’re definitely thorough. We’ll get those records to you this week.”
“Don’t kill me, but I actually need them tonight—as in, right now.”
They were still missing something.