Never Tell

by Alafair Burke

  The current offer was twenty years. Adrienne would barely be fifty when she got out. She could still see Ramona get married. She could be a grandmother to whatever children Ramona might eventually have.

  Max’s cell phone rattled against the bar top. He excused himself to take the call on the sidewalk on Eighth Street.

  The bar manager, Dennis, reappeared once she was alone. “It’s a dumb man who puts a phone call above his girlfriend.”

  “You know us. When duty calls—”

  “I do indeed, and as a taxpayer I suppose I should thank you.” He refilled Max’s glass. She held up her half-full rocks glass to show she was still working on the first round. “Watch yourself there. That’s how the power balance gets off in a relationship. You’ve got to match him one for one.”

  “Half a Johnnie Walker’s good for at least one glass of his wussy red wine.”

  She checked her e-mail on her BlackBerry as she continued to sip. Most of it was junk, but she opened a message from Detective Marci Howard with the Suffolk Police Department.

  Hatcher, Last I heard, you two were all set on what you needed from us re Langston shooting in East Hampton. Saw husband (George) coming out of records department today. Checked to make sure no interference with current investigation.

  Like a lot of cops, Howard apparently saw no need to use complete sentences in e-mails.

  Records clerk told me Langston asked for copies of docs re 2001 accident investigation—fatal on Egypt Lane near Hook Pond involving Gabriella Langston (which is same name on Langston gun registration; first wife etc.). Know you two are sticklers for every last detail (ha ha) so thought I’d give you a heads up. Hope the case goes on the side of justice. Still sounds like a clean shoot to me FWIW.

  Great. Even a cop took one look at the rich pretty white lady versus the scumbag ex-con and gave Adrienne a pass.

  Ellie hit the reply button on her e-mail system and pecked off a response:

  Thanks for keeping us in the loop. To prove that I am in fact the most obsessive-compulsive person you’ve ever met, can you please ask your records department to fax us a copy of the reports George Langston requested? You never know . . . Don’t forget. We owe you. Thx!

  Max looked happy when he returned to the bar. “I was about to say ‘another round to celebrate,’ but I see Dennis already got here.”

  “What are we celebrating now?”

  “That was Adrienne Langston’s defense attorney. She’s taking the deal. As is.”

  “You’re kidding? Just like that? I thought she said she wouldn’t take anything other than Man Two.”

  “The attorney was surprised too. She said it was all George’s doing. Plus, they’re in a rush. Adrienne will enter her plea tomorrow at nine a.m., straight into sentencing. So let’s drink to George.”

  Ellie still had her phone in her hand.

  “Sorry, babe. I hate to tell you this, but I’ve got work to do tonight.”

  His disappointment was obvious. “Come on. I thought we were finally both out early for once. I was sort of looking forward to talking about the new place. What to keep, what to get rid of. It’ll be fun.”

  She knew it should sound fun. It didn’t. “I really need to work. You stay here and chill with the other regulars. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. Take you to Bed Bath and Beyond to look at shower curtains with all the other ladies.”

  He feigned a stabbing motion to the gut. “Fine, I deserved that. I’m soft.” He gave her a kiss on the lips, and she waved goodbye to Dennis on her way out.

  From the sidewalk on Eighth Street, she pulled up Marci Howard’s phone number from her call log, then plugged one ear with her fingertip to block out the sound of a passing bus. “Hey, there, it’s Ellie Hatcher. Did you happen to get the e-mail I just sent you?”

  “Didn’t surprise me at all. You’re definitely thorough. We’ll get those records to you this week.”

  “Don’t kill me, but I actually need them tonight—as in, right now.”

  They were still missing something.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Ellie waited in the hallway outside of Judge John DeWitt Gregory’s courtroom until they spotted George Langston exiting the elevator. He was flanked by Ramona on one side and his wife’s defense attorney on the other.

  Behind them came Casey Heinz, walking alongside Katherine Whitmire. Katherine’s pending divorce against Bill was all over the tabloids, but from what Ellie heard, Katherine’s higher priority had been getting Casey moved into the top floor of her townhouse and enrolled in classes at Hunter College. Apparently she had found a way to try to make up for her and her husband’s previous failures.

  Ellie intercepted George before he made it to the courtroom. “Mr. Langston, I’d like to have a quick word with you, alone, before your wife’s case is called, if that’s all right with you.”

  Adrienne’s attorney was a straight shooter named Bernadette Connor. A gorgeous Asian woman with a French first name and an Irish last name, she had also gone on three dates with Max four years ago, a fact Ellie tried very hard to forget whenever her name came up.

  “No way. You can talk to George after Adrienne’s plea is entered.”

  “I need to talk to him now,” Ellie said.

  “Then you can talk to him with me present.”

  “You represent Adrienne, not George.”

  “Then we’ll call George’s attorney.”

  “Mr. Langston,” Ellie repeated, “I need to talk to you. I think you’ll want to have this conversation with me privately, but if you want to call counsel of your choosing, that is of course your prerogative.”

  “No. I’m fine. Thank you, Bernadette.”

  Ellie led the way into the vacant jury room she’d scored from Benny the Bailiff. (Never underestimate the value of finding time to talk Mets games with the courthouse staff.)

  She waited until they were alone and the door closed to speak. “I got a call from Marci Howard yesterday from out in Suffolk County.”

  No reaction.

  “She told me you had requested the incident reports involving Gabriella’s car accident.”

  “You can’t do a thing without all of government knowing about it these days?”

  “Why would you want to see those reports after all these years?”

  “It’s funny how the mind works. I loved that woman like—well, the way you maybe get to love only one person your entire life. When we finally got Ramona, it was the happiest day either of us had ever experienced. And then the phone call about the accident was the worst. It’s not like I ever stopped thinking about her, but I’d finally gotten to the point where I didn’t always think about her. Now I find out that Adrienne is actually Ramona’s mother, only to be losing her now to prison for trying to protect our family? I don’t know—it had me thinking about losing Gabriella, too.”

  “It’s a very touching story. I suspect it’s even partially true.”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  “But it’s not the whole truth, is it? If you don’t want to lose Adrienne to prison, why were you the one to help talk her into this plea?”

  “It’s better than a maximum sentence, isn’t it? I saw the discovery. I know the evidence against her. Neither one of us wants to put Ramona through a trial.”

  “It’s always been about Ramona, hasn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, looking at the jury room door. Ellie knew he was thinking about the clock’s minute hand working its way toward 9:00 a.m.

  “Don’t worry about the time, George. It always takes the deputies forever to transfer prisoners into the courtrooms. We’ve got a good half hour before the judge takes the bench. I mean that it’s always been about Ramona, for both you and Adrienne. Ramona was the reason Adrienne found a way to get close to you and your family. Her devotion to your child was probably the reason you married again, even though you were still in love with Gabriella.”

  “Adrienne and I came to love each other. We�
��re a family now.”

  “You’re a family, but only because of the bond you share with your daughter. And that daughter is the reason you convinced Adrienne to take this deal. You don’t want Ramona to know the rest of the story.”

  “There’s nothing else to tell, Detective. Like I said, we just don’t want to put her through the trauma and publicity of a trial.”

  “Adrienne’s attorney told the ADA you spent all of Monday studying the case against your wife. The very next morning, you drove out to East Hampton to get copies of Gabriella’s accident reports. That same night, you suddenly convinced Adrienne to take a deal she practically laughed at for the last two weeks.”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation. Please. I know you think I’m a terrible person, and I have given you every reason to believe that. But I swear—I have been trying to do everything in my power to make it right. This plea agreement is what’s right.”

  “I followed the same paper trail you did, George. The Suffolk County Police faxed me those same accident reports last night.”

  “Please don’t do this. It’s not right. There’s no need.”

  “The police always suspected a drunk driver in the hit-and-run that killed Gabriella. She was walking home from the stables in East Hampton, just like she usually did after she rode. Based on the tire treads and paint transfer to a light pole, they suspected one of four Pontiac models, red in color. You probably hadn’t thought about that detail for fifteen years. You asked for the accident reports to confirm what you suspected when you saw your wife’s file.”

  His lips were pressed together, and he was shaking his head violently, as if somehow he could will her to stop talking.

  “The Buffalo Police searched James Grisco’s car in 1995 after someone turned in his license plate number from the scene of Wayne Cooper’s murder. Grisco drove a red 1988 Pontiac Firebird. He gave Adrienne that car when he went to prison. He wanted her to have a fresh start.”

  “There were a lot of Pontiacs on the road back then.”

  “But not that many, George. And the gun at your beach house? You told the police that you bought it after Gabriella said she saw someone watching the house. That was right before she died, wasn’t it?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “This is what I do. I clear cases. I answer questions even after people stop asking them. This one’s not hard to figure out, George. You can probably find the family Adrienne nannied for with one quick phone call. They might just remember her red Firebird suddenly being damaged. And if not, eventually that car got sold or totaled or sent to a junkyard, and a record got entered with the DMV. This is a question that can be answered. But you, a meticulous, cautious lawyer, said nothing. You confronted Adrienne, didn’t you? That’s how you convinced her to take this deal today.”

  “Not all questions need to be answered. Some resolutions are good enough.”

  “And what makes this good, George? You know in your heart what she did. She stalked Gabby. She followed her from the stables. She accelerated her car into the love of your life, left her to die on the side of the road, and then pretended to care about you, just so she could get another shot at the daughter she’d abandoned.”

  “Adrienne didn’t abandon Ramona. Did it ever dawn on you how much she had to love that child to do what she did? She was sixteen years old. She couldn’t have even known who the father was—Wayne Cooper the rapist or James Grisco the killer. She could have gotten rid of the baby, but she carried her to term. Now, what she has done since then”—his words were coming slower now—“is absolutely unforgivable. But punishing her isn’t the only interest at stake here, Detective.”

  “You’re worried about Ramona.”

  He looked at the door again. “Right now, my daughter believes that she had an adoptive mother who loved her as much as she possibly could before she died, and a biological mother who loved her so much that she found a way to be with her and then ultimately killed a man, just to protect her. If this thing goes to trial—”

  “She might find out the truth—that the only mother she has ever known may have killed the one she can barely remember, and all because of her.”

  “Please don’t do that to my daughter. She’s the one innocent person in this picture.”

  “It’s not right—”

  “You said this wasn’t a hard question to answer, and maybe you’re right in one sense. We can track down my old neighbors, or dig up some ancient DMV records. But Adrienne will never, ever admit to what you suspect she did.”

  “Not all defendants confess.”

  “You’re an experienced detective. You mean to tell me that’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt? How many other vehicles might have left a certain kind of red paint and tire tread as the car that may have—in the words of the accident reconstruction report—been involved in Gabriella’s death? And how many such vehicles were on New York’s roads in 2001? You’ve got just enough to mess with my daughter’s head, but you’ll never get a conviction.” He looked at his watch. “And maybe you’re wrong. Maybe Adrienne had nothing to do with Gabriella’s death. She killed James Grisco, but there was mitigation. Do you know what was in that shoe box when it originally showed up at our apartment? All of the letters she had written to him back in Buffalo when she was only fifteen years old.”

  “That’s not mitigation. That’s a bad case of puppy love. We assumed he was blackmailing her.”

  “No, he did worse than that. He still wanted her, or at least that version of her. She gave him money hoping he’d go away, but he didn’t. He said he had been watching her family. That if he couldn’t have her, maybe—I can’t even say the words, they’re so disgusting—maybe he’d try out that little Ramona instead. His own flesh and blood, not that he knew that. Adrienne wasn’t sleeping at all for two weeks. Julia had just died. This guy comes out of nowhere and starts talking about Ramona that way. She snapped.”

  Ellie remembered Adrienne talking about her mother’s failure to protect her. She could still hear Adrienne’s voice: I see my Ramona. If any man ever touched her like that, I’d kill him. “She didn’t snap. She lured him to your address in East Hampton and staged the entire scene to look like self-defense.”

  “Look, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t even know the woman I’m married to. Maybe she’s the coldhearted Lady Macbeth you’re describing. But maybe she’s a woman who has tried at every turn—however wrongheaded—to protect this life she’s created for us and for our daughter. Leave it alone, and a few minutes from now she’ll be a convicted murderer. She’ll be in prison for twenty years. When she gets out, she’ll have nothing. I plan on filing divorce papers while she’s in custody.”

  “She’ll still have Ramona.”

  “Maybe. That will be up to them. Or maybe Ramona will start taking another look at the facts when she’s older and come to some other conclusion for herself. Maybe she’ll even bring in a strong-willed detective like you. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, right?”

  “You know that’s not realistic—”

  “With all due respect, Detective, you don’t get to talk to me about being realistic. Trust me: I’m being a cold, hard pragmatist right now. My daughter’s entire universe—not just her external world, but her very sense of self—will be permanently and fundamentally altered if you go on poking at this. Maybe you don’t have children—I really don’t know—but what kids know about their parents affects how they see themselves. Ramona may think she’s all grown up, but she’s too young for this.”

  There was a knock on the door, followed by the bailiff’s round face in the open crack. “Time’s up, you two. Gregory’s taking the bench. You coming?”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  The squeak of Judge Gregory’s courtroom door earned them an annoyed scowl from the bench. George took a seat next to Ramona in the first spectator row behind the defense’s counsel table. From the prosecution’s table, Max gave her a pleased look of surprise before returning
his attention to the plea colloquy.

  “Did you sign this agreement and initial each page to show you read it?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Are you satisfied with your attorney’s representation?”

  “I am.”

  “Mr. Donovan, on behalf of the people, please summarize the terms of the plea agreement.”

  Even from her spot against the wall at the back of the courtroom, Ellie could see Ramona’s shoulders shake at the mention of the twenty-year sentence. Adrienne turned and gave her a sad smile. It will be okay, she mouthed. Ramona took her father’s hand. Casey placed a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  “Ms.—okay, I see a couple of names here. Legal name is Adrienne Langston, née Adrienne Miller. Also an alias of Adrienne Cooper. Got all that? All right, Ms. Langston, are those the terms of the plea agreement as you understand them?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Do you understand that under the plea agreement you give up your right to appeal both your conviction and any sentence?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  The words of a plea colloquy are scripted and mechanical, but the phrases replaying in Ellie’s head were scrambled and chaotic. How many other vehicles? Adrienne will never, ever admit . . . You’ll never get a conviction.

  “Do you understand that you have a right to be tried by a jury, and that by pleading guilty, you are giving up that right?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And at such a trial, you would be presumed innocent. The government would have to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You would have the right to be represented by a lawyer at that trial, and if necessary have the court appoint a lawyer. You would have the right to confront all witnesses and to call witnesses on your behalf. You would have the right to testify on your own behalf, or to remain silent. Do you understand all of these rights?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And do you understand that by pleading guilty, you are giving up all those rights?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”