“Any chance he’s the doorman who handed them the package?”
“Park Avenue address? I don’t think they hire murderers as doormen.”
“Grisco has a murder conviction?”
“Served fifteen years. Got out two months ago.”
“Cool. Anything else?”
“I’m just the print guy. You guys figure out what it all means. And bring the cookies.”
“Will do, Double-M. This Friday at the latest. I promise.” She ended the call before he could argue about the timing. “If George Langston is Adrienne’s ‘secret admirer,’ we may have found the guy who can help us prove it.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Their lieutenant had her head tilted back in her chair, a bottle of Visine trembling over one fluttering eye. “Fucking LASIK. You’re the one who convinced me to do this, Rogan. What about you, Hatcher? Contacts?”
“Some days, but I can go without.”
“Another reason to hate the both of you. Now, how many times are you going to change your minds about this one case?”
“You can’t hold the Casey Heinz bump in the road against us,” Hatcher said. “That was all Bill Whitmire. We said from the beginning that his guy Earl Gundley was bad news.”
Ellie’s remark wasn’t quite a told-you-so, but the groan that came out of Tucker’s throat was a sign she recalled vouching for the former cop.
“Pretty damn big bump in the road. So tell me again what you’ve got on George Langston.”
Ellie gave Tucker a quick update on Langston’s investment property up in Pound Ridge and the photograph of Julia. “We thought all along Julia was probably seeing someone she didn’t want her friends to know about, even Ramona. We also knew she had a thing for men who were inaccessible. And men who were older. If the man was George Langston, that would certainly explain why Julia never told Ramona. And it would also explain why Julia might have posted threatening comments on Adrienne’s blog.”
“And what do you know about George Langston?”
“A family law attorney phoned the Langston house two days ago, which means George might be looking into a divorce. And he had multiple motives to kill Julia-she may have been close to telling Adrienne or Ramona about the affair, or she could have discovered that something wasn’t so kosher about George and his representation of Jason Moffit’s parents. It looks like he sidled into the Moffits’ good graces to convince them to sell out quick in their lawsuit against his friend David Bolt. He shuts them up, and Bolt continues business as usual.”
“That’s a lot of mights and maybes,” Tucker said. “And why would Langston take a case where he had such an obvious conflict of interest? He could lose his license.”
“We’ve seen people do worse out of friendship. Or maybe Bolt paid him to help keep it quiet. From what we can tell, Langston isn’t making nearly as much money as he used to draw from the firm, but there’s been no change in the lifestyle: same school for Ramona, same luxury apartment, same vacation house in East Hampton.”
“We’re just asking for a couple days more to see these leads through,” Rogan said. “No additional staff. Just the two of us.”
“You two are always scheming, working the brass. ‘No additional resources. Only a couple of days.’ But here’s the thing. You two have been all over the place since this case started. Now you think you’ve finally got a theory, but Adrienne Langston is still being threatened. Where does this James Grisco guy fit into the picture?”
“Minimal information on him as of now,” Ellie said. “A DUI and a burg in the early nineties, then arrested in ’95 for murder at the age of twenty-three in Buffalo. Victim was a forty-nine-year-old white male, an insurance agent named Wayne Cooper. The state alleged Grisco lay in wait before stabbing him to death. Agreed to life in prison to avoid the death penalty, but got out four months ago after testifying against a cellmate.”
“Is there a parole officer?”
“I called him this morning,” Rogan said. “The PO had no clue the guy was in the city. Grisco’s been clean as far as he knows. He’s got a New York State driver’s license that puts him in Buffalo, but his fingerprints are on a hand-delivered box here in Manhattan. Until we’ve got something better, our best guess is that Grisco’s in the local area and Langston slipped him a few bucks to dump the package in front of their apartment building.”
“Be nice to get that nailed down.”
They both nodded, because that’s all they could do. There was still so much they didn’t know.
“And if George Langston is your man, why is he sending a shoe box full of maggots to his wife?”
“The threats started after Adrienne signed her book deal,” Ellie said. “She might be all about opening up and not having secrets, but maybe he doesn’t share that point of view. We need to know exactly how he feels about her blog and her book. Now that Adrienne’s actually scared, we’re hoping that fear might motivate her to open up to us a little more.”
“Right. Because she’s really going to like you when you tactfully broach the subject of her husband possibly banging their kid’s best friend.”
“I know,” Ellie said. “We’ve got some serious sucking up to do. I can apologize very profusely when necessary.”
“Funny. I’ve never noticed.” Tucker looked at the notes she’d been jotting down. “All right, keep working it. Talk to Adrienne first. See just how much her husband knows about this book and how he felt about it.”
“Adrienne’s at their house in East Hampton. You want us to wait until tomorrow?” It was already four o’clock. Driving out there today would mean serious overtime.
“You finally have a suspect that feels right to you. I know the two of you. Just go. And bring me back a lobster roll. And tomorrow you try to find that James Grisco person. If he can give you the connection between Langston and that shoe box, you might actually have something.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Ellie 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?”
