So was Ellie. According to Bolt, the diagnostic tests were intended to weed out the fakers.
“And how about you? Did you fake the test, too?”
He stared at the table, lips pressed together nervously.
“It’s okay, Casey. We’re not interested in putting you through anything else. We need to know what’s going on with the study.”
“I told Brandon I was faking it, but at the last minute I decided not to. I’ve been told my whole life that I’m not normal. That the way I think of myself is unnatural and a sign that something is wrong with me. I figured here was a chance to get a real diagnosis from a legitimate doctor. I was pretty surprised when he said I fit the qualifications for the research.”
“Could you tell any difference in how you felt once you started the program?”
“Yeah, at first. But then, I don’t know. I started to feel kind of
… flat. Like, when all of that stuff went down with Gundley and the way those guys treated me- terrified me-it was like I didn’t really care what happened. Like I was outside of my own body or something. I mean, in some ways I’ve lived outside of my body my whole life, but this was different. I was just so… yeah, flat is the best word to describe it. Like I just didn’t feel anything.”
“And that was a recent change?” Rogan clarified. “You said the drugs were helpful at the beginning?”
“I didn’t really mean the drugs. It was more having a trained person to talk to. I got sent to quacks back in Iowa, and I could never really tell them what it was like-you know, to feel like I’m supposed to be different from the way I was born. Dr. Bolt didn’t seem to judge me. He was actually trying to help me deal with my own self-doubt and guilt. I think he has a lot of young patients. He’s all about separating yourself from your parents-being honest about who they are and how they treated you, but then letting go of it.”
It was all getting a little touchy-feely for Rogan. “But what you’re saying is that the drugs might have been causing you to feel depressed?”
“Yeah, I mean, I’ve wondered about that. I stopped taking them, even though they say you’re not supposed to go cold turkey. But I miss talking to Dr. Bolt. He’s pretty smart. Like, he had me do this exercise where I wrote a letter to my parents. Not that they talk to me anymore. They said I could come back once I was willing to be Cassandra again. But he had me pretend that I could open up to them. He had me write down all of the things I was never able to say to them. Even though you don’t mail the letter-no one even reads it-there’s something about the process of putting it on paper: the rage, the fury, the scribbling, the crossing out.”
Wasn’t that what Adrienne had said about her blog? That writing about the abuse she’d suffered was a way to purge herself of the past?
When Ellie had undergone department-mandated therapy after an officer-involved shooting, the counselor had asked her to do the same thing. In her case, the letter had been to a woman killed by the man Ellie eventually shot to death. If it was a common therapy tactic, writing must bring a form of enlightenment to some, but Ellie hadn’t seen the point. Sure, she had experienced the rage and the fury and the scribbling and the crossing out that Casey described, but she hadn’t let any of it go. She still woke up thinking about that dead girl. And she still had nightmares about her father.
And then Ellie pictured herself writing that fake letter. The pad of paper from the therapist’s office. The crossed-out words.
She knew why Julia Whitmire had written that suicide note to her parents.
“You ready for that ride uptown?” she asked. It was about time she and Rogan had a heart-to-heart with George Langston.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The storage room?” Rogan pushed the top of an encrusted mop away from his face. “This was the best we could do?”
They hadn’t been able to contact the photographer who leased the office next door, so this tiny janitorial storage closet was the only other space for them to camp out near Dr. David Bolt’s office. Given the circumstances, they needed to be close.
“Shh.” She pressed the headphones closer to her ears. It had taken George Langston only a day to strike an agreement with the district attorney’s office. He would come clean about his part in the Equivan drug-testing scheme. He would testify against Bolt. He would also set up a meeting and wear a wire. All he got in exchange was a promise of sentencing consideration. It was a lousy deal, but the man was seriously pissed. What had started as a favor to a friend had turned into an attack on his wife.
She heard George’s voice through her headphones. Rogan nodded to indicate his audio was also working.
“Sue’s gone?” George asked. Sue was the receptionist.
“You were the one who said you didn’t want anyone to see you here. I canceled three sessions for this. What’s with all the James Bond action?”
“My wife. Don’t tell me you didn’t get my messages yesterday. A man followed her out to East Hampton. He tried to kill her.”
“And it sounds like she did a good job defending herself. Shouldn’t you be with her?”
“This has gotten totally out of control.”
“What is your deal, George?”
“It was supposed to be comments on a website. A few words to scare her-to make everything right again. That’s all I agreed to.”
“And I swear, that’s all it’s been.”
It was only that morning when they’d watched George Langston sob in an interrogation room. You have to understand, he said through the tears, it didn’t seem so terrible at first.
It was only one lawsuit. One screwed-up kid, Jason Moffit, had killed himself during a drug trial. A fluke. A statistical anomaly. But Jason Moffit had been taking Equivan, and the parents were telling anyone who would listen that the experimental drug combination had caused their son to inject himself with enough heroin to kill four junkies.
It was the kind of story that would send the drug companies running and accountability boards ordering the research team to start over from scratch-a larger sample size, a longer study, years of delays. Bolt swore that to interrupt the research would hurt an entire generation of kids who desperately needed better treatment options.
Less selflessly, any kind of investigation could destroy Bolt’s career. To get the manufacturers of Equilibrium and Flovan to fund the research, he had practically guaranteed them a successful trial. He had forecast the likely profits once the two drugs were prescribed together. There were documents. Even a PowerPoint presentation. The drug companies would throw him under the bus. Bolt would lose everything.
And so George had agreed to help him. After Bolt assured him Moffit was a statistical anomaly, George helped make the Moffits’ lawsuit go away, complete with a confidentiality clause and no report to the Food and Drug Administration.
Meanwhile, Bolt went about ensuring his study produced the promised results. He started taking a few kids who didn’t meet the criteria for the clinical trial. Despite the protocol of “blind” testing, he placed these kids in the active drug group, overstating their initial clinical symptoms. Because these kids had never been bipolar to begin with, their “results” would show improvement as they continued the medication.
But then Adrienne had seen that tiny little article about the lawsuit in the New York Post after the parents had called a reporter without notifying him. How can you sue David? she’d asked. He and Anne are two of our best friends. As he recounted the conversation in the interrogation room, he nearly choked on his words. “I’ve always been a terrible liar. Ironic, isn’t it? I told her what I’d done. I didn’t want her to think I’d do that to our friends. I compromised everything I believe in, just to help David.”
And then Adrienne started to change. Those unexplained periods at her computer became longer and more frequent. She pulled away from him in bed at night. And then he heard the same rumors as Katherine Whitmire about his wife’s book deal. He snuck into her e-mail and learned the truth: a six-hundred-thousa
nd-dollar advance that she never bothered to mention to him. He had always known on some level that she’d married him not for love but for station and security. That’s why they had a prenup. That’s why he had never wanted her to legally adopt Ramona. He needed to know she couldn’t leave.
Now she had a measure of autonomy, and he was losing her.
Maybe if he hadn’t told his best friend, nothing would have come of it. Book deals fall apart. Women learn to forgive. But then David Bolt came up with a plan. If Adrienne was too afraid to publish the book, she would have to stay with George. And if she stayed with George, there would be no messy divorce where she threatened to reveal what she knew about Equivan.
Like George said, It was supposed to be comments on a website. A few words to scare her-to make everything right again. Now, in Bolt’s office, George was trying to get the man who took it beyond words to admit the true extent of his wrongdoing.
“Drop the act, David. I should have known you were lying when the police said one of those posts came from Julia’s laptop. The girl you’re screwing just happens to kill herself?”
“I told you: Julia was a very disturbed girl.”
“You don’t think I know that? She practically grew up in my home. What kind of man-a psychiatrist, no less-has sex with a teenage girl who’s so obviously troubled? What happened?” Suddenly they heard muffled sounds through the headphones. “Jesus, David, what the fuck!”
“Are you wearing a wire? Are you fucking recording me?”
Ellie had one hand on the closet doorknob, the other on her holstered Glock. This was it.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” George’s voice again. “What do you want? A strip search?”
“Sorry, man. This shit is-it’s, I don’t know what to do. It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Ellie let her hand drop from the gun. They had caught a break. Bolt must have stopped with a cursory search, expecting one of those wires strapped to his friend’s chest like in the movies. This particular audio transmitter was hidden in a fountain pen in Langston’s front jacket pocket.
“Don’t ask me to feel sorry for you. 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.”
“I swear-on Nate and Charlotte’s lives — I did not have anything to do with that.”
“Oh, come on, David. That doesn’t make any sense. You really expect me to believe that Julia killing herself and some murderer coming after my wife is all just a big coincidence?”
Ellie heard the sound of a sliding door, followed by the squeal of a siren and horns blasting below. Someone had opened the terrace door. Did Bolt still suspect a wire? Don’t go out there, she willed. She could barely hear them over the sound of the wind. She could read Rogan’s lips next to her. Idiot.
They made out only bits and pieces. Julia… didn’t know what to… could tell… research… nowhere… my files… threatened.
It was hard to distinguish Bolt’s voice from Langston’s. They’d lost all track of the conversation. As minutes passed, Ellie and Rogan exchanged worried glances.
Their voices were getting louder. Liar… family… police
… coming out.
And then they heard Langston’s voice even louder now. “What? No!” There was more whooshing, but it wasn’t the sound of wind anymore. Physical contact with the audio transmitter. A loud crash.
She was moving already, Rogan right behind her. She yelled into her radio. “Go. In the office. Now. Now!”
Eight officers poured from the stairwell at the end of the hallway, but she and Rogan had a forty-yard head start. This is why they’d stayed close.
Bolt’s reception area was empty. They ran straight for his office door. Locked.
Rogan slammed his left shoulder hard and low against it like a linebacker. Nothing. They heard a yell inside.
Another low, hard hit, and the door gave way.
Bolt had backed Langston against the railing. Langston had only one foot in contact with the concrete, his weight beginning to tip over the terrace edge.
“David Bolt,” she yelled. “Police.”
He removed his hands from Langston’s jacket and held them high. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was an argument. That’s all. Right, George? Tell them.”
Bolt looked at Langston with a look of hope. It was a hope that came from certainty that weak-willed George Langston would do anything to cover his own ass.
“It’s over, David. It’s over.” Langston checked his blazer pocket for the pen-recorder. “You got all that, right?”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Four hours and seventeen minutes.
Some suspects blurt out the all-important words immediately. Usually these were repeat players, burnt too many times by their own instincts, finally following the advice they’d received previously from their court-appointed attorneys. Some suspects never did learn. They kept talking and talking and talking, hoping to eventually land on just the right version of the facts-some story that will get them sent home.
Dr. David Bolt lasted four hours and seventeen minutes. From handcuffs to transport to the 13th Precinct to his spot in a chair in the box with Ellie and Rogan, he was able to weather their questions. He feigned confusion or ignorance. He had the strength to sit in silence, his demeanor unfazed, while the minute hand ticked away. He gave them little in the way of evidence, conceding only that he had met Julia at a Casden alumni event. She had sought out his advice about bulimia, he said. He even admitted giving the girl a few samples of Adderall, but only after she assured him that her original prescription had recently lapsed and that she would follow up with her regular physician.
But through it all, he failed to take the one step that would put an end to their relentless interrogation.
Four hours and seventeen minutes passed before he finally said the magic words: I want a lawyer.
They were done, once and for all.
Max was waiting for them in the hallway outside the interrogation room.
Another ADA might have chastised them for their interrogation tactics. Prosecutors like to do that. If you turn on the charm, they believe pressure is called for. Go aggressive, and they say you get more bees with honey. But Max took one look at her exhausted face and said a single word: “Sorry.”
“We tried. Funny, we’ve been able to get lawyers to sink themselves. But apparently all that psychology training helps in the fortitude department. Bolt’s not budging.”
“I know a little something about dealing with people who won’t budge. It takes incredible patience.”
The comment wasn’t lost on her. It had been two days since he’d asked her to live with him, and she still hadn’t reached a decision. There hadn’t been time to talk or think about anything other than this case.
Once they were seated at their desks in the homicide squad, they ran through the strength of the evidence against Bolt. They had rock solid proof of the underlying plan to cover up the Moffits’ claim that Equivan had caused their son’s overdose. A search of Bolt’s computer revealed a PowerPoint presentation assuring the drug companies in advance that the tests would go well. Even their initial perusal of his drug trial records suggested that he was doctoring evidence to support that claim.
An attempted murder charge also seemed strong. As much as Bolt insisted that the incident on the terrace was a shoving match between longtime friends, both Rogan and Ellie could back up George’s testimony that the man was trying to throw said friend from a thirteenth-floor balcony.
But on the actual Julia Whitmire murder charge, they still had work to do.
“Maybe the sound technician can cut through some of that background noise,” Max offered.
The recording of George’s conversation with Bolt became choppy once they had stepped out onto the terrace. According to George, Bolt did confess to killing Julia. They’d begun an affair three months earlier. Bolt said Julia was the one to pursue him
, but they’d never know the truth-not that it mattered, given her age. The weekend Julia had died, Bolt’s wife had taken the children to London for a three-day weekend, leaving him free to spend time with Julia. Tipsy from two martinis, he had used Julia’s laptop to post the first threat on Adrienne’s website.
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.
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