by R. G. Belsky
“Mountainboro, New Hampshire.”
“Why?”
“To follow the trail of the six dead children.”
“I thought that’s what you just did.”
“Yes, I followed the trail around the country.”
“So then why go to New Hampshire?”
“Because that’s where the trail leads me.”
“But the kids are all dead. What are you going to find out in New Hampshire?”
“I won’t know that until I get there.”
Faron seemed dubious.
“When I’m finished there, I’m going to go to Boston.”
“What’s in Boston?”
“Patrick Devlin, Lucy’s father.”
“I thought he refused to talk to you.”
“He did.”
“So why go there?”
“Maybe I can get him to change his mind. I knew him pretty well fifteen years ago when I was covering the Lucy story. Just like I knew Anne Devlin. Meeting face-to-face is always better than trying to convince someone to talk over the telephone. That’s right out of the Journalism 101 manual, Jack. You know that as well as I do.”
Faron shook his head. He still didn’t like it, but I knew I had enough clout to convince him. I was the news editor, and he had entrusted me to run the Channel 10 newsroom. In the end, he had to give me the power to pursue this story the way I wanted to do it. Not that he was happy about it though.
“Why can’t you just put the story you have about the six families on the air and be done with it? Everything always has to be so complicated with you.”
“Simple is not necessarily a good thing.”
“If this were Cassie or Janelle, this story would be on the air already.”
“My point exactly.”
* * *
I spent the rest of the day being a news director again.
I had one big problem already. The breaking news story of the day was a subway crash in Brooklyn. One person had been killed and more than two dozen injured when a rush-hour train smashed into the back of another train at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. Cassie O’Neal had been assigned to cover the story. Now I knew there was no way that Cassie would ever be able to pronounce Schermerhorn correctly on a live feed. My solution was for her to simply stand under the Hoyt-Schermerhorn sign in the station and say dramatically: “This subway station looked like any other subway station in the city this morning, until tragedy struck at 8:02 a.m.…”
The other issue of the day was a feud between Steve Stratton, our sports anchor, and Wendy Jeffers, who did the weather. Wendy had closed her report the night before by saying that an impending rainstorm was probably going to wipe out the New York Yankees game in the Bronx in a few hours. Stratton had planned to lead his sports segment with an update on the weather conditions for the game. Since it was being rained out, he had nothing else to say about it. So, there was this moment of the most dreaded thing in TV news … dead air. Afterward, the two of them got into a shouting match about encroaching on each other’s territory. Territorial boundaries are a big thing in TV news. I told Wendy she should avoid sports and the next time just say that the rain was going to make a mess out of the commuter rush hour. I told Stratton that he should find some sports news that didn’t involve meteorological updates. It was a Solomon-like decision, and they both went away happy. At least for that day.
The lead story on the newscast was going to be a feature on “Flirting in the Office: The Hot New Way to Find Romance.” It just seemed more interesting than the subway crash. We interviewed men and women who’d found love where they worked. Amazingly enough, all the people we talked to were young, good-looking, and sexy. There was also a feature on finding the right suntan lotion for the beach, the best ice cream cones in town, and some celebrity stuff. For the actual news, we had the subway crash and we did an update on the Senate race and some other political stuff.
* * *
That night at home, as I packed for the trip to New Hampshire, I took out the scrapbook of all the Lucy Devlin stories I’d done.
I paged through them like I’d done so many times before. The first big story about Lucy’s disappearance; the long ordeal of Anne and Patrick Devlin as they waited, hoped, and prayed for some word about Lucy; the city’s obsession over the fate of the missing adorable little eleven-year-old girl; and finally, the article that the New York Tribune had run about me winning the Pulitzer for my coverage of the Lucy Devlin story.
There was a picture of me standing in the Tribune newsroom holding the Pulitzer certificate with the editor, Bill Paulson, and the paper’s managing editor, Ted Whitby. Paulson and Whitby were dead now. So was the Tribune.
Me, I was still around chasing the same damn story.
Somehow Lucy Devlin had come full circle and found me again after all these years.
CHAPTER 25
THE POLICE CHIEF of Mountainboro, New Hampshire, was a man named Oscar Robles. He’d been the police chief there for twenty-five years, and he was the first law enforcement official on the scene when the six bodies had been found.
I interviewed Robles in his office. I’d brought along my best video guy at Channel 10, Scott Haussman, to shoot this and any other interviews I did in New Hampshire. Haussman was a whiz with a camera and also with the pre-broadcast production and editing—a video geek who could work magic with the stuff we put on the air. But even he was going to have a problem with Robles. The guy was old, cranky, impatient, and clearly did not want to spend much time talking with me.
“I’m a busy man today,” Robles said. “I’ve got to go on patrol by myself, because my one deputy—who’s part-time at that—called in sick. And the only police car we have has a dirty carburetor, which means I need to get it serviced at the filling station. I don’t really have a lot of time to discuss something that happened years ago.”
“It might be connected to another missing child case in New York City,” I said. “Lucy Devlin. I’m trying to find out as much as I can about these six here to see if there’s any possible link.”
Robles shrugged. “All we did up here was find the bodies,” he said. “The minute that happened, the feds moved in with a task force. It turned out they had a big missing children operation already going and this was the kind of thing they were looking for. Call the feds and talk to them. This is a dead end. Whatever you’re looking for isn’t here.”
“The crime scene’s still here,” I pointed out. “The place where the bodies were found.”
“It’s a shopping mall now.”
“A shopping mall?”
“Yes, that’s what they were getting ready to build when they found the bodies. After the graves were dug up and the investigation was over, they went back to work. Finished it a few years ago. It’s a helluva shopping mall. Thirty-six stores, a movie theater, lots of parking. It’s the biggest shopping mall in the area.”
“Let’s go see it.”
“What do you think you’re going to find there?”
“Hey, you never know …”
Robles told me what he could about the missing bodies. I think he did it because he realized that was the only way he was going to get rid of me.
“It was the biggest thing that ever happened around here,” he said. “Most of the crimes I deal with are disturbing the peace, speeding, one of the local kids who has too much to drink—that sort of thing. We never had a murder here, not in all the years I was on the job.
“When the call came in from the contracting company about finding a body, it was pretty hard to believe. I figured it was just going to be some animal bones. I kept thinking that way on the whole drive over. I mean, there were no reports of violence or anyone missing in the area. So, who could it be? I just figured I was going to find a dog or a coyote.
“Of course, it wasn’t an animal. The body was clearly human. Definitely a child. By the time I got there, they’d already found the second one. That’s when I knew this was really bad. I called in a bunch of people to help with
the digging. By that night, we’d found all six bodies. At that point, of course, we kept expecting more. Dug for days in the whole area around the site, but those six were all we ever found.
“I wasn’t prepared for anything like that. We didn’t have a crime lab or anything. So, I called the state police first. Then after that they called in the feds. Pretty soon a federal task force was here and they completely cordoned off the entire area. They handled it from there.”
“Do you remember the man heading up the federal task force?”
“A young guy. Very businesslike, very determined, very ambitious—that was my take on him.”
“His name was Elliott Grayson. He’s running for the US Senate now.”
“I figured he was going to wind up being somebody.”
“You don’t remember anything unusual at all?”
“How would I know? Like I told you before, the feds shut down the whole area as soon as they got there. They could have been having an orgy in there for all I know. I just backed off and did my job. I’m only a small-town cop. This was way beyond me. This guy Grayson you mentioned was the big shot.”
We talked for a while more, but the bottom line was he really didn’t have much. He’d been the first law enforcement officer on the scene. He’d been there when they dug up the bodies. He’d started the preliminary investigation. But then he’d been shunted aside by Grayson and the feds.
“Anything else at all you remember that might be significant?” I asked.
“Significant?”
“Out of the ordinary. Something that just didn’t seem right or make sense to you at the time.”
He thought about that for a second.
“Well, there was one thing. I don’t know if it’s what you’re talking about, but the bodies weren’t all together.”
“What do you mean?”
“We found five of the bodies in the same spot, almost on top of each other. The other one wasn’t as deep. It was near the top of the soil. That was the first one that was found. I don’t know what the feds made of it, but it only meant one thing to me.”
“That body was buried at a different time than the others.”
“Right.”
“Do you remember which child it was?”
“It was one of the girls. The one from Jersey, I think.”
Becky Gale.
Six children were found in a grave. All from different parts of the country and different backgrounds. None of them were from this area. But they all wound up buried in the same place. Only five of them were apparently buried at the same time. The sixth—Becky Gale—came later.
But what did it all mean?
* * *
Robles took me after that to see the shopping mall where the bodies had been found during the excavation for the mall’s construction. It had a Gap, a Banana Republic, a Home Depot, and lots of restaurants and snack bars. Looking at the place, it didn’t seem possible this had been the scene of a mass burial a few years before. I tried to imagine a killer digging the hole in the middle of it all. It seemed incongruous.
“Satisfied?” he asked me after we’d been walking around the mall for a little while. “I told you there was nothing here.”
I said there was one more place that I wanted to see. The site of the long-ago motorcycle convention where both the person who sent Anne Devlin the e-mail and Louise Carbone had claimed they’d seen a little girl that they thought was Lucy.
“Why?” he asked.
“It might have really been Lucy Devlin on the back of that motorcycle.”
“Lucy Devlin wasn’t in that grave. Her body was never found.”
“I still think it’s all connected somehow. The motorcycle convention. The six bodies. Lucy Devlin. Maybe a lot more missing children, too. Let’s go see where the motorcycle convention was held.”
“Not me. I gotta go back to work.”
Robles drove Haussman and me back to my motel where I’d left my rental car. Before heading back to the police station, he gave us directions to get to the farm fields where the motorcycle gathering had been held. He also gave me his phone number. He asked me if I had a cell phone. I said I did. He told me to call him if I got into any trouble.
“Why do you think I might get into trouble?” I asked.
“Hey, you never know,” he said.
CHAPTER 26
THE SITE OF the motorcycle convention was about two miles outside of town. You had to drive down a remote road to get there, well off the main highway. Maybe that was the appeal of the place to the bikers. They didn’t have to worry about cops or anybody else butting into their business.
Haussman and I drove to the spot from Robles’ directions. When we got there, I stopped the car and got out. I stood there looking at the fields rolling off into the distance. There was a lake on the horizon. It was kind of beautiful, actually. Lucy Devlin might have stood on this same spot a long time ago. Haussman started shooting some stuff of the scene for B-roll copy to go along with the Robles interview about what might or might not have happened here.
While he was doing this, a pickup truck came down a dirt road from the direction of the lake. It stopped when it got to us. An old man leaned out the window.
“Are you people lost?” he asked.
“No, we’re fine.”
“What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? You sure don’t look like you’re from around here. And, if you’re tourists, this is a long way from any of the local attractions you probably really want to visit.”
“I just wanted to see this place,” I said. “I understand motorcycle guys used to hang out here.”
“Still do. This is a big hangout for bikers. Lots of them live up here. Then their friends come and it gets even worse. They hold these big gatherings here, but that’s only once a year or so. The real problem is the day-to-day stuff. All of them hang out at this bar called the Rusty Spike. Sometimes they cause trouble. We’ve all just gotten pretty used to it up here, I guess.”
“Where’s the Rusty Spike?” I asked.
“About another mile and a half down this road.” He pointed in the opposite direction from town.
* * *
Even if I hadn’t known the Rusty Spike was a biker bar, I think I might have figured it out when we got to the place. A half dozen motorcycles were parked outside. I pulled up in front and sat there with Haussman for a minute, trying to decide what to do. I thought about calling Robles at the number he’d left me and asking him to go inside with me. I mean he had a gun, in case things went badly. Of course, I did have Haussman with me. Scott was a terrific guy—smart, hardworking, an absolute whiz with video cameras, computers, and a lot of other technological stuff. Unfortunately, he was also five foot six, barely 155 pounds, wore big thick glasses, and had a high squeaky voice. I told him to bring his camera and we would try to interview some of the people inside. He didn’t look happy, but followed me inside.
It was early afternoon, and the only people in the Rusty Spike were the kind of people who hang out in a bar at that time of day. A couple of bikers were shooting pool in the back, another was playing a pinball machine against the wall, and one guy was nursing a beer at the bar. They all turned around and looked at me. One of the bikers shooting pool poked the other one, said something to him—and they both laughed uproariously. So did the guy at the pinball machine. The one sitting at the bar didn’t laugh at all. He just kept staring at me with these dead eyes that showed no emotion whatsoever. I was more worried about him than any of the others.
There was a big man working behind the bar. Haussman and I walked over to him and sat down at a stool, as far away from the guy at the other end as we could.
I decided to do what I needed to do and then get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I told the bartender how I was a TV journalist from New York, Haussman was my video guy, and we were working on a story here. He said his name was Dan Adcock and he owned the Rusty Spike. He also said he wouldn’t answer any of my
questions unless I bought something. I ordered an Amstel. Haussman asked for a Diet Coke. I kinda wished he’d ordered a bourbon or something to at least pretend he was a tough guy. But then I remembered he didn’t drink.
“Do you happen to remember—or remember hearing about—a motorcycle group convention that was held up here about fifteen years ago? A lot of cycle gangs from around the country would have attended …”
“Sure, they’re here every year.”
“They still meet?”
“About a mile down the road in that field by the lake. What’s so special about this one time?”
“There might have been a lost little girl there.”
“And you’re just looking for her now?”
“It’s a complicated story.”
He shrugged. I had a feeling he didn’t care whether it was complicated or not. He wasn’t that interested.
I took three pictures out of my purse. I showed him the first one.
“Did you ever see this guy up here?” I asked.
He glanced down at the picture of Sandy Marston and recognized him immediately.
“Sure, that’s Sandy. He used to come up here a lot.”
“Do you happen to know if he might have been at the motorcycle convention held here fifteen years ago?”
“I wouldn’t remember something like that. Like I told you, there’s bikers coming in and out of there all the time.”
I nodded and showed him the second picture. Elliott Grayson.
“Did you ever see him before?”
“He looks familiar.”
“From up here?”
“Nah, I think I saw him on TV. Isn’t he somebody famous?”
“He’s running for the US Senate.”
“Okay.”
“But he’s never been in this bar?”
“No.” He laughed. “He’s never been in this bar.”
I showed him the third picture now. This one was Patrick Devlin, the other person I now knew had once belonged to a motorcycle gang.
“Hey, that’s Patty,” he said.
“You know him?”
“Sure, he’s been here.”
