Alafair Burke - Never Tell

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.”