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
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
