Never Tell (23 page)
Authors: Alafair Burke
E
llie emerged from Tucker’s office to find Max sitting at her desk.
“Hey, you.”
“You got a second?”
She didn’t. Not really. But Rogan, overhearing, said, “I gotta get some stuff from the locker room. We can head out in ten.”
They walked together onto Twenty-first Street, neither of them speaking until they were away from the crowd of cops on a smoke break outside the precinct station house.
“Sorry to just show up at work like this.”
“You never have to apologize.”
“I did a lot of thinking last night.” She had called him to see if he was coming over. For the first time since they’d gotten together, he hadn’t returned her call. “I didn’t get any sleep. I’m totally exhausted. And I can’t do it again tonight.”
“Okay. What can I do?” He was really scaring her.
“I wanted to make sure I saw you in person. We need to talk. I was upset with you for having made a decision that affected both of us, but now I’ve made one, too.”
She knew it would come to this. It had been a week since they’d both realized they were picturing different futures together. They’d been pretending to have moved past the issue, but of course they hadn’t. How could they? “Please don’t do this, Max. Not like this.”
“Will you just listen?”
She knew somehow she would find a way to blow it. He was breaking up with her. On the sidewalk. At work. Before she had to get in a car with Rogan for a three-hour drive.
“I—can we just talk about it later?”
“Did you not hear me before? I left work because I couldn’t get anything done. I need to say this now.”
“Please—” She hated the pleading sound in her own voice.
“I love you, Ellie.”
“I love you, too.” Unlike his statement, hers didn’t have the sound of a “but” at the end.
“We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. One day at a time. Never knowing where we’re sleeping or when we’ll see each other. We’ve been dating a year and you’ve never even met my parents. Or my friends, for that matter.”
“I’ve met your friends,” she protested.
“No, you’ve run into a few of my friends at work. It’s not the same. We have a lot of fun, Ellie, and we talk shop really well together, but this isn’t a real relationship. I know we have the potential for more, but I need to know you’re going to be there.”
“Of course I’m here. And of course it’s real.” It was the most real relationship she’d ever had.
“I want us to live together.”
This was not what she was expecting. She felt a lump build in her throat from relief.
“We practically live together now.”
He shook his head. “No, we spend practically every night together. That’s not the same. I want us to share a home. To share a life. To plan around each other. To take vacations together.”
“When was the last time either of us had a vacation?”
He shared the brief smile. “Fine. I want us to plan a vacation that we’ll take five years from now. I want us to take each other into consideration, no matter what.”
“I consider you. I always have, ever since we met.”
“Will you please stop disagreeing with everything I say? Maybe I made a mistake wording it like I’m fixing a problem. My point is that I love you, I want us to be together, and I was so pumped to tell you that I bailed on a unit meeting so I could get up here and talk to you right now. Just say yes and I’ll leave here satisfied.”
She’d thought about living together. Of course she had. And on those previous occasions, she had run through all of the logistical questions: Where would they live? Was either of their apartments large enough to accommodate both of them? If they got a new place, how would they split the bills? Could she really bring herself to walk away from a rent-controlled apartment?
Max had obviously analyzed the same considerations. “We’ll get a bigger place. If we combine our rents, we could even get a two-bedroom. And Jess can sublet your apartment in the meantime—just in case.”
Jess had held his current job longer than any previous work, but he still wasn’t up to carrying a lease on his own. “Then I need to talk to him to see—”
“Those are all just details, Ellie. Say you want it to happen, and I’ll know it’s going to happen.” He pushed her hair back behind her ear and stroked her cheek. “You’re looking for reasons to say no.”
He had it wrong. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to unpack moving boxes with him and argue about how to arrange the furniture. She wanted to wake up with him every morning.
And it wasn’t the logistics of leases and square footage and rent control that kept her from leaping at the invitation, one she’d been hoping for at some level for months. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t ignore the real reason he was asking her for this now.
“Do you really think we should move in together when you know we ultimately are going to want different things? It’ll just make things that much harder on both of us down the road when you—”
“We don’t need to decide that now. It’s taking it to the next step. We’ll make bigger decisions later—together.”
She saw Rogan standing in front of the precinct, watching them, keys in hand.
“But I told you, that one big decision has already been made. You’re asking me to change.”
Ellie had lived with a boyfriend once. He had wanted her to change, too. He couldn’t understand why she had to keep working as a cop when he was offering her the life of an investment banker’s wife. When she realized she had to leave, she had nowhere to go. She was stuck under his roof, still sleeping in his bed, still sleeping with him, until one of Jess’s friends decided to move to Nashville and Ellie scored her apartment.
“You’ve told me before about every guy you’ve ever dated wanting you to change. I don’t want you
ever
to change, at least not for me, not for anyone but yourself. But I know you, Ellie. You may not believe me, but I know there’s room for evolution in your life. That is not the same as asking you to change. I’m asking you to make room for some flexibility. To let yourself
not
make final decisions. To make room for another person in your life. To open up your mind to the possibility that life is a constant process of getting to know yourself, and that sometimes you get to know yourself better when you’re not so
alone
.”
She’d heard him say all this that first night, when they were fighting. Not everything was black-and-white. Maybe so, but most things were.
Rogan was staring at his shoes now, jiggling the keys.
“Damn it. Rogan’s waiting. We’ve got to find Adrienne Langston.”
“You can’t say yes before you leave?”
“Not like that, Max. I want to, but I want it to be real. I want us
both
to feel right about it.”
“Okay, I get it. The offer still stands.”
“We’ll figure it out, okay? I promise. I love you.”
He nodded, but didn’t respond as she turned to walk away.
F
or the sixth time in a mile, Rogan hit the dashboard lights to cut through a snarl of traffic on Highway 27.
“What is it about white people and the Hamptons?”
To call 27 a highway this far east was misleading. The state should relabel it Gridlock 27. Parking Lot 27. Fancy Car Show 27. Come Memorial Day, this two-lane road that connected Southampton to Watermill to Bridgehampton to East Hampton to Amagansett to Montauk would be a knot of Porsches, Range Rovers, and Jaguars filled with beautiful people bouncing between the beach, gourmet restaurants, and designer boutiques. Cars were at least moving this time of year, but at a crawl.
“And what’s up with you?” he said. “You been staring out that window the whole ride. This got something to do with that pop-in from Donovan?”
She didn’t want to talk about Max to anyone else. It would feel like a betrayal. “I think you’d fit right in here with your black BMW and fancy Joseph Abboud suits.”
“Hate to break it to you, but Abboud’s not fancy. This here’s Valentino.”
“See what I mean? Wait. Turn right up here.” They had decided not to call ahead. Sometimes a witness’s startled face said more than her words. They wanted to see Adrienne’s expression when they showed her the photograph of Julia at the country house. They wanted to watch as they asked her about a phone call to their home from a family law attorney. They needed to be there in person as they raised the possibility that her husband had been sleeping with a girl she’d treated like a daughter.
Sometimes their work was cruel.
Ellie continued to navigate. As they passed the turnoff for the Maidstone Golf Club, they saw water ahead. “This is it. The last turn. Take a right. The Langston house should be on the left.”
As soon as Rogan made the turn, she saw the overhead lights of an East Hampton Town Police patrol car to her right. At first it was just the one car near the intersection, but further down, she caught sight of at least one more East Hampton marked car, a Suffolk County Police car, two unmarked fleet cars, and an ambulance.
A uniformed officer next to the first car held up a hand to stop them. She rolled down her window, and Rogan leaned over to speak.
“What’s up, guy?” The question was code, the kind of easy line retired cops gave during a traffic stop. To call an officer
guy
meant you were on the job.
Ellie found that badges worked just as well as macho code words. She wiggled hers near the open window.
“Home intruder,” the officer explained. “Smashed a back window out with a rock to gain entry. Good thing the resident was armed. Turns out you can be a pretty crappy shot as long as you’ve got six bullets.”
“Was this at the Langston house, by any chance?” Ellie asked. She rattled off the address.
“How’d you know? The poor lady’s terrified, but she got lucky. Suffolk County homicide detectives are here. They pulled a wallet off the intruder. I hear the guy did a dime and a half upstate. Murder. Was supposed to be life in prison but he got out early. Shoulda stayed inside, I guess. Good guys, one. Bad guys, zero.”
Life sentence for murder. Served fifteen. It all sounded too familiar. “The bad guy didn’t happen to be named James Grisco?”
“Yeah, that’s the name I heard. Seriously, how do you know all this?”
R
ogan was on his third cup of coffee since they’d arrived at the East Hampton police station. It was two in the morning, and everyone was exhausted. “I’m surprised she hasn’t lawyered up.” He drained the rest of his cup.
They were watching Adrienne Langston and Suffolk County Homicide Detective Marci Howard through a one-way interrogation room window.
“She doesn’t need a lawyer if it’s justified,” Ellie said.
“That’s how poor people think. Rich folks from Manhattan call a lawyer every time they sign their name on a piece of paper.”
“So far she’s doing just fine on her own.”
Detective Howard was reluctant to involve them at first, insisting that the shooting had occurred in her jurisdiction. But when she realized that they had a head start on the background, she had at least permitted them to stick around and observe. She’d even stopped a few times to give them updates in a voice that hinted of a southern upbringing.
Everything they had learned indicated that James Grisco had arrived at the house with the intention of harming Adrienne. A rock was found inside the back kitchen window, surrounded by broken glass. Signs of the resulting struggle ran from the kitchen, through the dining room, to the adjacent study, where Adrienne had gone for the gun in her husband’s bottom desk drawer. The legally registered .38 had been purchased nearly twelve years earlier when George’s first wife complained that she thought she saw someone watching their house. Adrienne had fired all six rounds, managing to clip Grisco first in the shoulder and then deliver a fatal shot to the head. A knife was found next to his body.
Through the glass, they watched as Adrienne walked Detective Howard through the lengthy story of her blog, the book deal, the harassing comments, the box delivered to her apartment, and now Grisco’s arrival to her home this evening.
“And you filed a police report when?”
“After the box showed up at my apartment. Until then, I figured words were only words and the police wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“And you have no idea who this James Grisco is? Or why he’d be wanting to hurt you?”
“No, I’ve never heard of him.”
Howard rapped her knuckles against the tabletop. “All right. I know you’re tired. Let’s see about getting you out of here pretty soon.”
When Howard emerged from the interrogation room, she seemed surprised to see them standing there. “You guys are still around?”
“Of course,” Ellie said. “We know tonight’s shooting is yours, but we think it could be related to our case in Manhattan.”
“The teenaged girl.”
“Correct.” They had given Howard an abbreviated version of the facts, but could tell she was having a hard time tracking all the moving pieces.
“Well, I’m about to call the riding ADA, but I think we’re about set here.”
“That’s it?”
“What else do you want, Detectives? I’ve got an upstanding citizen with a legal gun defending herself against a convicted killer whose fingerprints—as you told me—were found all over a box full of maggots left at her primary residence, and who now drives all the way out here to break into her other home while she’s alone. I mentioned the knife by his body, right? Just next to his right hand.”
“We think Grisco may have been sent here by Adrienne’s husband, George Langston.”
“I know. You already told me that, Detective. Here’s how I look at it. You’ve been dealing with this crowd for, what? A week? And all that business with the drug research and the online stalking and the girl in the bathtub all happened in Manhattan. As far as I know, James Grisco came out here one time only and got himself killed over it. I’m pretty damn sure I know exactly how and why that came to be. We’ll run the prints on the knife. Have our ballistics and blood experts look over the shooting for anything fishy. But until I learn different, I am treating Mrs. Langston in there like an innocent citizen. In fact, some might say she’s a hero. There may very well be more to the story, but unless you’re telling me that James Grisco’s death wasn’t justified, I’ll consider it to be your story and not mine.”
“But—”
Ellie felt Rogan’s arm on her bicep.
“Looks like your partner’s getting my drift, Detective Hatcher. Some of my colleagues would be trying to fight you for jurisdiction. They might’ve asked you to leave hours ago. What I’m telling you is that you’re now free to answer any remaining questions you have about what may have happened back in the city. I’m not in your way.”
They were interrupted by the sounds of a panicked voice beyond the interrogation rooms.
“My wife. Where’s my wife? Adrienne Langston? I need to see her. Adrienne? Adrienne? Is she okay?”
Detective Howard walked toward the sound of the voice. “Are you Mr. Langston? All right, sir. It’s okay. I’ve got your wife right back here. I think it’s about time we sent her home.”
As she led him to the interrogation room and opened the door, George Langston did not appear to notice their presence. He ran to his wife, fell to his knees, and wrapped his arms around her.
Howard let out a loud sigh. “Like I said, the rest is pretty much up to you, but if you want my two cents: that’s not the face of a man who sent James Grisco out here to kill his wife. He looks even more scared than his wife did fifteen minutes after she killed a man.”
The couple seemed oblivious to the three of them watching their reunion through the window. George’s sideways hug around his still-seated wife was awkward, but he managed to rock her like a baby anyway. It was Adrienne who finally pulled away, wiping tears from her husband’s face.
The first thing Adrienne said to him was, “Where’s Ramona?”
“I told her there was an emergency at work. I knew you’d want to be the one to explain this to her.” He held her tightly again.
If George Langston was faking concern for his wife, he was a hell of an actor.
“Careful on the drive back,” Howard said. “Nothing but drunks on the road this time of night.”
Ellie looked at her watch. It was nearly three in the morning, and they still had a long drive back to the city.
“And I’ve got a present for you before you leave. We found a 2004 Malibu on the street outside the Langstons’ house, registered to Grisco at the same address as his driver’s license. Looks like it’s a relative’s place. Nothing of interest in the vehicle, but we did find directions to the Langstons’ address. Follow those backwards, and you’ll probably find out where he was staying.”
“You’re not going to check it out?”
Howard looked at Rogan. “Will you please explain to her I’m doing you two a favor?”
Rogan gave her an exhausted smile. “Trust me. She appreciates it.”
“All right now. You let me know if you hear anything I need to care about. Otherwise, I’ll tell you when our ADA clears this bad boy. As it stands, I’m willing to bet a paycheck on it.”
The sun was coming up by the time Ellie made it back to her own bedroom. She had hoped to find Max waiting for her there. Instead, she fell asleep alone, telling herself she might have to get used to the solitude.