by R. G. Belsky
There was a rapid-fire progression of video clips and headlines from the past—more pictures of Lucy, the scene from the Devlins’ town house, police press conferences, etcetera.
While this was happening, Brett and Dani brought the viewers up to date on the latest information about the mysterious e-mail and Anne Devlin’s battle with cancer.
BRETT: And now, for an exclusive interview with Lucy Devlin’s mother, here’s our Clare Carlson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on this story when Lucy first disappeared.
There was a cut to me interviewing Anne Devlin:
ME: Mrs. Devlin, you were recently diagnosed with lung cancer …
ANNE DEVLIN: Yes. The doctor told me I have only a few months to live. That’s why I’m here now.
ME: Explain what you mean by that.
ANNE DEVLIN: I’m not afraid to die. We are all put on this earth for a purpose, and then we all die. I just need to accomplish my purpose before I go. I believe my purpose was to be Lucy’s mother. I need to find out the answers to what happened to her before I die.
ME: Do you think she’s still alive?
ANNE DEVLIN: Yes, I do.
ME: Mrs. Devlin, unfortunately, statistics show that abducted children who are not found within seventy-two hours are generally slain. Even the police speculate that whoever took Lucy probably killed her soon after the kidnapping. Why do you still hold out hope after all this time?
ANNE DEVLIN: A mother knows. I feel her out there. She’s still waiting for me. Somewhere.
She then told the story about the mysterious e-mail she’d gotten and the report of Lucy being seen on the back of motorcycles with members of the Warlock Warriors and other gangs in New Hampshire all those years ago.
ME: Mrs. Devlin, if you could give a message—a plea—to whoever abducted Lucy, what would you say? He or she might be watching this show right now. What would you tell them?
ANNE DEVLIN: (looking directly at the camera). I don’t know why you did this. Or why you did it to my daughter. What you’ve done to me is the worst crime imaginable. Children are murdered, but this was worse. The uncertainty, the never knowing. I wake up every morning and the first thing I think about is Lucy. Where is she? Is she all right? Is she unhappy? If you had killed me, it would have been so much easier. This is like slow death for me. But I don’t care about why you did it now. I just want my daughter back. I want to love my daughter again before I die. I want to look in her eyes, stroke her hair, and hold her close to me. If you have a shred of humanity in you, tell me where she is. Please. Please …
She broke down in tears at that point.
It was powerful stuff. So powerful that Brett Wolff and Dani Blaine sat there in stunned silence for a few seconds after they came back on the screen.
“Thank you for that report, Clare,” Dani finally said. “The hearts and prayers of all New Yorkers are with you, Mrs. Devlin.”
* * *
Jack Faron came to see me in my office after the show.
“Nice job, Clare,” Faron said. “I knew you could do it.”
“Yeah, you never doubted me for a second, huh?”
“I’ve always been in your corner.”
He sat down in front of my desk.
“Let’s talk about the next piece on Lucy Devlin,” Faron said.
“What next piece?”
“Well, there are some things in Anne Devlin’s story we can check out.”
I nodded. I’d been thinking the same thing.
“The motorcycle convention in New Hampshire, for instance,” he said.
“Yeah, I checked. There’s still a Warlock Warriors chapter here in the city. The guy who’s the head of it has been around for a long time. His name is Sandy Marston. Maybe Marston knows something about what happened at that convention back then.”
“So assign a reporter to talk to him.”
“I’ll go myself.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me, Jack. I’m going to keep reporting on this story.”
“But I thought this was going to be just a onetime thing for you because the Devlin woman asked for you to do the interview.”
“I thought that, too. But Anne Devlin really got to me with that emotional appearance and the story about the long-ago biker convention. All my old reporting instincts kicked in. If there is more to this whole thing still out there, then I want to be the one to break it. Old habits die hard, I guess.”
But, even as I was telling all this to Faron, there was a part of me thinking how maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. That I should just give the Lucy Devlin story to Brett and Dani and Cassie and Janelle and the rest of them to do from here on. Sure, this story had been a big part of my career—and my life—in the past. It had made me successful and famous. But maybe it was best to just leave the past alone.
Of course, I didn’t seek out the story this time. It found me. There was nothing I could do about that. But deep down I wondered if this was true. Did the Lucy Devlin story just fall into my lap again by chance after all these years?
Or were Lucy and I always fated to be together?
CHAPTER 7
THE HEADQUARTERS OF the Warlock Warriors was in Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side of Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen was once a tough, gritty neighborhood, but it had become much more gentrified and trendy in recent times. The Warlock Warriors were still there, though, a remnant from the area’s more violent past. When you went past the place, you always saw the motorcycles lined up in front and maybe some of the members hanging out on them.
The neighborhood residents pretty much kept their distance and the police did, too. Every once in a while, the cops would go in to bust someone on a warrant or quiet things down if they got out of hand. But mostly everyone simply looked the other way and let the Warlock Warriors go about their business. Whatever that was.
I stood in front of the building now. I hadn’t brought a TV crew with me; I figured that might scare away anyone who wanted to talk to us. So, it was just me. I figured they weren’t likely to chain up a woman to their motorcycles or sell someone into sexual slavery during broad daylight in the middle of Manhattan. At least I hoped that was true.
I walked up to the front door and pressed the buzzer. A burly guy opened the door. He had long curly blond hair and he was wearing a pair of tight jeans and had a t-shirt that said: “Warlocks Do It Better!”
“I’m looking for Sandy Marston,” I said.
“Does he know you’re coming?”
“No.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Clare Carlson. I’m with Channel 10 News.”
“Why do you want to see Sandy?”
“It’s about a story we’re working on.”
He said he’d see if Marston wanted to meet with me. When he was gone, I checked out the place. It wasn’t that bad. I kind of expected motorcycles in the hall, chains hanging from the ceiling, and maybe a body or two lying around. Instead, it was amazingly sedate and normal-looking. All it needed was soft music and some magazines, and I could have been in a doctor’s waiting room.
This illusion of normalcy, however, was quickly shattered when a woman walked into the room. She was big. Big tall, like more than six feet. And big all over, too. Zaftig couldn’t even begin to describe her. She was about my age, but that seemed to be the only similarity. She was wearing tight black leather pants, black motorcycle boots, and a black leather vest. Her hair was green with a pink stripe through it. It hung all the way down to her waist.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she asked me.
I went through my spiel again.
“My name is Clare Carlson. I’m with Channel 10 News and …”
“Are you chasing around after my man?”
“Would your man by any chance be Sandy Marston?” I asked.
“Damn straight! And I don’t know why he’d be messing around with a skinny ass bitch like you.”
Skinny ass?
�
��I can assure you there is nothing untoward going on between Mr. Marston and myself,” I said. “I’m simply here in my capacity as TV news journalist. There’s no reason for you to be upset.”
“I’m going to kick your skinny ass out of here in about two seconds unless you tell me why you really came,” she said to me now.
That was the second time she had called me skinny ass. There were many occasions where I might have taken that as a compliment. Somehow, I didn’t think she meant it that way now.
“Well, well, we seem to be a little short on sisterly love here,” a voice said, and I saw a man come into the room.
He introduced himself as Sandy Marston. Marston was in his fifties, with long brown hair wrapped in a bandanna. He was wearing jeans and motorcycle boots, too, but a flowered shirt. He looked like more of a refugee from a Grateful Dead concert than a guy in a motorcycle gang. He whispered something in the woman’s ear. She glared at me one more time and then left.
“That’s Big Lou,” he said. “Big Lou’s very protective of me. So what can I do for you?”
I told him the story about Anne Devlin. About the mysterious e-mail she’d received. About the missing girl at the bikers’ convention. About the Warlock Warriors and about the other gang member she supposedly left with. About the mysterious man named Elliott.
“Let me get this straight,” he said when I was finished. “You got an anonymous tip about an event that happened nearly fifteen years ago that might or might not involve the girl you’re looking for. And that’s it? That’s all you’ve got? That’s your whole story?”
“I always try to maintain a positive outlook,” I told him.
“Well, first off, I wasn’t even at that convention.”
“Why not?”
“I was otherwise engaged.”
“Doing what?”
“I was in jail.”
“Oh.”
“I stabbed a guy in the stomach that year. He almost died. The cops picked me up and I never made bail. I got convicted of manslaughter and was serving time.”
“I’m sure it was probably just an innocent misunderstanding,” I said.
“You know, that’s the same thing I told them at the time.”
“Would anyone else here have been at the convention?”
“We have a lot of turnover.” He sighed. “People come and go all the time. Only a few of us, like me, stay in it for the long haul.”
I nodded. This didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but I had a few more questions for him.
“Did you know anyone named Elliott?”
“Elliott?”
“The guy from another gang that the e-mail said took the little girl with him on his bike.”
He laughed. “You don’t find too many guys named Elliott in motorcycle gangs.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not the kind of name you want in my business,” Marston said. “Christ, if your name is Elliott, you sure don’t tell anybody that. You change it or you get yourself a tough-sounding nickname. Elliott just sounds a little prissy, a little fancy, a little … well, you know, unmanly.”
I wondered if I should point out to him that Sandy was a girl’s name. I decided not to. I wasn’t too afraid of Sandy Marston. But he might sic Big Lou back on me.
“How about a Patrick Devlin?” I asked. “Did you ever know him?”
Marston shook his head no.
We talked for another ten minutes or so. But he just kept saying he didn’t know anything. That he wasn’t at the convention. That he didn’t know anything about any missing girl.
I wasn’t too disappointed. I pretty much knew going in that this was going to turn out to be a dead end. That chasing this elusive new lead in the Lucy Devlin case was going to be even more hopeless than I had feared. What the hell … Lucy was probably long dead. And, even if she wasn’t, I probably wasn’t going to find anything out about her in this place.
Except for two things.
First, Marston had never actually answered my question about whether he remembered anyone named Elliott in the motorcycle gang world. He changed the subject, and he talked about the name. But he didn’t say whether or not he ever knew an Elliott. It was a very clever ploy, one I’d used myself on more than one occasion. Not exactly the truth, not exactly a lie. More like a non-denial denial.
Second, why didn’t Marston know Patrick Devlin? Anne Devlin said Patrick had been in the Warlock Warriors group when he was younger. Marston had been there most of his life. Wouldn’t he remember him? I mean, it wasn’t like they were this giant corporation with thousands of employees. These guys lived together, hung out together, drank together, and partied together. If Anne Devlin was telling the truth about her husband once being a member of the Warlock Warriors, and I had no reason to think she wasn’t, then Sandy Marston was hiding something.
Of course, I had absolutely no idea of what that might be.
“Sure wish I could be of more help.” Marston smiled.
He did promise to ask around for me to see if anyone else there remembered anything at all about that long-ago convention and seeing a little girl there.
I thanked him and gave him my business card.
“Call me if you find out anything,” I said.
On my way out, I kept hoping I’d run into Big Lou again. Because I’d thought of the perfect comeback. The next time she called me “skinny ass,” I was going to call her “fat ass.” It was so simple, so right. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it in the first place. But there was no sign of her anywhere.
Then I looked back at the gang headquarters and saw her staring at me through a second-floor window. I stared back. Both of us stayed that way for a long time, like two kids in a playground engaged in a stare-down. Then she was gone.
I had a feeling that my business with Big Lou wasn’t over.
That I’d run into her again at some point if I pursued this story.
I just didn’t realize how soon that would be.
CHAPTER 8
“THERE’S A WOMAN here to see you,” Maggie came into my office to tell me the next day.
“Who is she?”
“She said her name was Louise Carbone.”
“Never heard of her.”
“She said she met you yesterday at some motorcycle club headquarters. She said she’s been thinking about what you said. She said she has something to tell you.”
I looked out in the newsroom.
It was her, all right.
Big Lou.
She didn’t look quite as threatening as the last time I’d seen her. She’d changed from the leather pants, vest, and boots to jeans, a sweatshirt, and sandals. The green hair was still there, but she wore a baseball cap that covered up a lot of it. She didn’t even look quite as tall as our first encounter, which made me wonder if she might have been wearing lifts in those motorcycle boots. The truth is she seemed … well, almost normal.
Her demeanor was different, too. She didn’t threaten to kick my skinny ass or anything when she walked into my office. She just sat down on my couch. I was drinking a cup of coffee, and she asked me if she could have some, too. I went into the kitchen area, poured another cup, and brought it back to her. Then I sat down in a chair across from her.
“I saw that little girl,” she said. “The one you were talking to Sandy about.”
“You were at the motorcycle convention?”
She nodded. “I’d just joined up with the Warlock Warriors. I wasn’t with Sandy back then. I was this wide-eyed girl from the suburbs who thought it would be a great life to get on the back of some guy’s chopper and ride around the country.”
The way she said it sounded like maybe she didn’t think it was such a great life anymore.
“That day,” she said, sipping on the coffee, “I saw the young girl standing by herself next to one of the bikes. I thought she might be lost or in trouble or something, so I asked her if she was okay. She said she was waiting for someone. I asked her w
here she was from. She said New York City. She said she’d ridden up there on the back of a Harley. She was so little and so adorable that my heart went out to her. We talked for a while.”
“The biker chick with the heart of gold,” I said.
As soon as I did, I wished I hadn’t. No point in antagonizing her at this point. It didn’t seem to matter, though.
“Look, I know what you probably think of me,” she said. “But I didn’t spend my whole life hanging out with a motorcycle gang. My name really is Louise Carbone, and I’m from New Jersey. My mother still lives there, although I don’t see her very much. I was a wild kid, and I thought it would be exciting to ride with a motorcycle gang. Eventually, I moved on. I got married, I had a kid of my own—we even had a house in Lodi, New Jersey. Only it didn’t work out the way I wanted. I started drinking, doing some drugs, and that got me in trouble with the child welfare authorities. Eventually, they took away my daughter. She lives with her father now. I drifted back to New York, hung out here, and met Sandy. We’ve been together for a long time now. It’s like my family, Sandy and the gang. I know that may sound strange to you, but they’re the family I never had.”
I didn’t say anything sarcastic this time. Actually, what she said made a great deal of sense. I could relate to some of it. The truth was I was starting to like Big Lou.
“Anyway, I asked the little girl what her name was. She said it was Lucy. I asked her about her father and mother. She said they weren’t around. She said she was with her uncle Elliott.”
I nodded solemnly. It sounded good, but I still wasn’t sure what I had here. All I knew for sure was that some girl—whose name might or might not have been Lucy—was at a bikers’ convention a long time ago in New Hampshire, very soon after Lucy Devlin disappeared from New York City. There was no indication that the girl in New Hampshire was Lucy Devlin. That she was in any kind of trouble. She could have simply been a little girl with her uncle whose name was Elliott. Nothing more. There was also the very real possibility that both the e-mail and Big Lou’s story were bullshit, that they were simply telling people what they thought they wanted to hear for some unfathomable reason.
