The Last Scoop

by R. G. Belsky

  I’d have to talk to Faron about this when I got back to the office. At some point, we might have to reconsider our decision to work with the FBI—and go with the story we had. But I’d worry about that later.

  “Does anyone have anything else to add?” Wharton asked, looking around at everyone else in the room while at the same time managing to avoid eye contact with me.

  “What about the Russell Danziger angle?” I asked.

  “Russell Danziger?” an agent said. “The political powerhouse? What’s he got to do with this?”

  I looked over at Manning. He hesitated for a moment, or so I thought, but then nodded and joined in. “Clare uncovered a possible link between Russell Danziger and one of the murders on the list. Nothing specific yet. But she—well, we both—feel it deserves further examination.”

  “Which murder?” someone asked.

  “Becky Bluso.”

  The other agent chuckled. “The only murder that doesn’t have any connection to any of the others. Beautiful. Just what you’d expect from a dumb-ass reporter, looking for something at the one murder we don’t really care about.”

  I ignored the “dumb-ass reporter” remark and simply recounted everything I’d found out about Danziger and the library money, plus his curiosity about the Bluso case when he was in Eckersville. I also told them about his military background and how he’d moved around the country over the years, as we believed The Wanderer did.

  “Are you saying that these military assignments matched up with locations of all these murders?” someone asked.

  “Not exactly, but …”

  “What does any of this even mean then? Lots of people move around the country. Lots of people donate money to worthwhile causes like building a library. So what?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” I said. “But I want to find out.”

  Wharton had not made any comment yet. But he was glaring at me again so I could tell he was unhappy. I knew Manning had briefed him about all this before the meeting. The fact that he hadn’t mentioned it meant he didn’t take it seriously. Or maybe he didn’t want to ruffle any feathers with someone as powerful and politically connected as Danziger. In any case, I knew I wasn’t going to get any support from him.

  “I don’t want to waste any of our valuable time or resources on a wild goose chase like this,” Wharton said. “So, the man donates money to build a library in a town where one of the murders took place—and asked some questions about it while he was there. Why should I even care about that?”

  I decided I’d been polite for long enough.

  “You should care,” I said. “Because your whole vaunted FBI investigative team here has turned up jack squat so far. There’s nothing you told me here today that I didn’t already know about this story. A story, by the way, you wouldn’t even know about except for me. So far, there’s only been one person we know about with any possible link to any of the murders. That’s Russell Danziger. If the FBI chooses not to pursue this information about Danziger I’ve provided, I will do that for my TV station. You can either work with me on this or watch it on the Channel 10 News.”

  That was a bluff. I didn’t have any information about Danziger I could put on the air at this point. Only suspicions and unanswered questions. But I figured the threat of my doing it would get their attention. I was right.

  I looked over at Manning, who looked as if he wished he could hide under the conference table. Everyone in the room, especially Wharton, seemed shocked at my outburst. This was the ultimate fear for them. A goddamned reporter in the midst of their mass murder case going rogue—taking it public—in the middle of their investigation.

  “Okay, we’ll look at Russell Danziger,” Wharton finally said. “Make some checks, find out a bit more about him.”

  “That isn’t going to be easy,” one of the agents said. “No one knows much about this guy.”

  “Then we need to talk to someone who does know something about Danziger,” Wharton said.

  He looked around the room.

  “Does anyone here have a contact who actually knows Russell Danziger very well?”

  “I think I do,” I said.

  CHAPTER 41

  I MET TERRI Hartwell for dinner at the Union Square Cafe on the East Side of Manhattan. I’d told her that I wanted to talk more about her job offer. I figured that was the best way to get access to her in a hurry. It worked. She called right back with a dinner confirmation for that evening.

  The Union Square Cafe used to be right off Union Square. Now, like most things in Manhattan, it had moved to a new location. But it was still one of the highest-rated and highest-priced restaurants in New York City. Hartwell said she was paying. So I guessed I still rated pretty high with her.

  I figured I should make some small talk before bringing up the name of Russell Danziger.

  We discussed a lot of things. Her campaign plans for mayor. I asked her more questions about the job offer and did my best to pretend I was seriously considering it. The status of the criminal case against Enright and Morelli and the others. It was a good conversation. We both drank wine while we talked, making the conversation even better. I realized—just as I had that first day in her office—that I liked Terri Hartwell. She seemed to like me, too.

  At one point—after a fair amount of wine—we began to talk about personal stuff. She talked about her husband, his job in the pharmaceutical industry, and their two children. She asked me if I was married. I said I had been, several times. But not at the moment.

  “Any children?” she asked.

  “No,” I lied, thinking about Lucy.

  “Do you think you might ever get married again?”

  “I’d certainly consider it if the right man came along.”

  “Any likely candidates?”

  I’d drunk enough wine by now that I was probably a bit more candid than I might have been otherwise. And I’d been thinking a lot anyway about my relationship with Gary Weddle. It was good. But I also still found myself fantasizing about Scott Manning and the time we’d spent together. I told her about this and said I was a bit confused about my feelings.

  “I mean I like the new guy. He’s a great guy. Everything about him and me being together makes sense. But I still can’t forget about the other one who doesn’t make sense for me at all. Crazy, huh? I guess you can’t relate to something like that because you’ve been happily married for so long.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Hartwell said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We all have an unrequited love in our life, Clare. A guy that makes no sense for us. On any level. But somehow, we can’t forget about him. I love my husband, but I knew someone like that, too.”

  I suddenly wondered if she might be talking about Russell Danziger.

  I asked her if Danziger had been the other man in her life.

  “Oh, my God, no!” She laughed. “Russell is certainly not the love of my life. I don’t think he’s the love of anyone’s life. He’s a very unusual man when it comes to his personal—or sexual, in this case—stuff. He’s never been married, never even been with anyone as far as I know.”

  “Is he gay?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s anything. I’ve never heard him even talk about sex or personal relationships. He’s an intense man. Focused completely on his work, which he excels at. In terms of his personal life, I always figured he was a bit like Ed Koch used to be when he was mayor. Lots of people said he was kind of asexual. I guess that’s the best way I’d describe Russell Danziger.”

  I wondered how the idea of him being asexual—or at least not showing any interest in sex—squared with the idea of him being The Wanderer. The Wanderer never had sex with any of his victims, which seemed unusual. And I knew that there had been serial killers who got a sexual thrill simply from the killing of women. Son of Sam didn’t have sex with his victims. Zodiac didn’t either. Ted Bundy preferred to have his sex with his women victims’ corpses after they were d
ead. Maybe Danziger had repressed sexual urges like this that came out only through murder. This was all speculation at the moment. But Russell Danziger sure did seem like a man who had a lot of secrets.

  “Russell had a very difficult childhood,” Hartwell said when I pressed her more about him. “I think he had to repress his emotions to survive that. Which is probably why he still does that today. You don’t get any emotion or real human feeling from Russell. At least, I’ve rarely seen it. And I know him as well as anyone.”

  I remembered reading how his mother had died when he was young. I asked her if that’s what she meant by a difficult childhood.

  “It wasn’t just that she died,” Hartwell said. “She shot herself in the bedroom. Used one of her husband’s service revolvers. He was on duty at the base at the time. Russell was there alone with his mother. He heard the shot, ran into the bedroom, and found her lying dead in a pool of blood on the bed. He was a little five-year-old boy. He didn’t know what to do. So he hugged her. He stayed in that room with her like that until someone found them hours later. Can you imagine what that must have been like for a five-year-old?”

  That explained a lot about why Russell Danziger grew up as emotionally screwed up as he was. But was he emotionally screwed up enough to become a serial killer?

  “Any idea why the mother killed herself?” I asked.

  “Russell’s father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Russell’s father, Joseph Danziger, was a control freak, a perfectionist who ran his family with an iron fist like they were part of the military. He punished the mother, beat her badly, if he found a speck of dust in the house after she cleaned; monitored her every move; and made her life a living hell if she disobeyed him in any way. Maybe now a woman like that would have more options to escape an abusive, controlling husband. But she only knew one way out, and she took it.

  “Russell hardly ever talks about any of this, as you might expect. You won’t find it in any articles or biographical material about him. But he did talk to me about it one time. It was the only time I ever saw him let his guard down and show any emotion. He said that his own life with his father became even more difficult after his mother died. He was terrified of his father. That’s why he went into the military, he said, because that’s what his father wanted him to do. His father retired from the Army in 2002, died a year later in 2003. That was the same year Russell resigned his commission as a colonel and went into private business. I always felt that was more than a coincidence.”

  All of this—the mother’s suicide, the emotional trauma he’d gone through as a little boy, the abusiveness of the father—painted a picture of a man who was looking better and better to me as a potential serial killer. Like many children who had been the target of abuse, I wondered if he took that rage and resentment out on others in the same way now. I knew Danziger was abusive and controlling to people he worked with. But how far did the demons buried deep inside him go? Did those demons extend to killing women as some sort of emotional release for him? That might sound crazy, but it was demons just as crazy that drove Ted Bundy and Son of Sam and other serial killers.

  “It sounds like you’re as close to Danziger as anyone,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, but that’s not saying much. There’s not a lot of people in Danziger’s life you could call friends. He’s all business.”

  “Why you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “No, I never did. Hey, I’m glad to have him on my side. He’s a helluva political operator.”

  But was he secretly a serial killer, too?

  “Can I meet Danziger?” I asked her.

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious about him.”

  “Russell doesn’t meet with members of the media.”

  “You asked me to come work for you. You said you wanted me to be a key part of your campaign team. I said I would consider it. Part of that is finding out more about the other people on your team. There’s no one more important to you than Russell Danziger. Everyone knows that. That’s why I want to meet him. Can you arrange it?”

  “That’s a pretty big ask.”

  “I know.”

  “If I got him to agree, it would have to be an off-the-record conversation. You wouldn’t be able to use any quotes.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Terri Hartwell said.

  CHAPTER 42

  IT HAD BEEN a while since I’d been to the house in Winchester, Virginia, where Lucy Devlin lived as Linda Nesbitt with her husband and young daughter. The regular trips had become too much for me—both in terms of time away from work and the emotional toll it took.

  At first, I thought she might be upset with me when I showed up at her door again after an absence of several weeks. But she greeted me warmly and led me into the living room, where she served coffee and pastries. It was almost as if she’d missed me. Although I realized that it could just be me fantasizing about a mother-daughter relationship that I’d never had.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” she said to me as we sat there. “Thinking about whether I should go public with my story. Let you put it on the air and tell the world everything. Maybe it could help some other people—especially children like I was—to avoid going through everything I had to go through.”

  I nodded as if I thought that was a good idea. Even though I knew it wasn’t. For me, anyway. Because if she did that—if the full story of Lucy Devlin ever came out—it could destroy my career because of the lies I had told and the journalistic transgressions I had committed.

  But I needed to maintain the illusion that I was this TV reporter still covering a story—the biggest story of my life so far—instead of revealing the truth that I was there as her mother, desperately searching for a way to maintain contact with the daughter I walked away from a long time ago.

  Why was I doing this charade? Part of it, I told myself, was so I could be around my daughter. But I also believed I needed to confront the guilt I felt over everything young Lucy Delvin had been forced to endure as a child.

  “You’ve been asking me a lot of questions about what I remember back then when I was a little girl living in New York City before my disappearance,” she said at one point. “Now I have a question for you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’ve never understood much about what happened when you covered my original story. How did you get all those scoops back then? How did you get such access to my mother and father during the search for me? How did you find out all that stuff when no other reporter could? Both when I first disappeared, and then again last year, when you did my story on TV. I mean, you won a Pulitzer Prize for it at the newspaper. Then you became a media star all over again with it on TV. That’s pretty impressive.”

  “Carlson’s the name, Pulitzers are my game.”

  She laughed. “You’re funny.”

  That made me feel good. I’d made my daughter laugh. That was a big step for me.

  “Seriously, how did you do it?”

  “A lot of it was just luck. Being in the right place at the right time. That’s what happened to me when you disappeared. I got lucky, I guess.”

  “No, I mean how exactly did you get so close to my family? The stories you did came from inside the house, while all other media were outside. You were close to my mother; you must have known her well. It sounded as if you knew my father, too, before everything with me even happened. But how? That’s the part I haven’t been able to figure out. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  She was right—it didn’t make a lot of sense. Unless you knew the real facts. That I didn’t just happen to know her father, Patrick Devlin. I’d been sleeping with him. I’d tracked Lucy down before she disappeared. Started an affair with Patrick Devlin after I discovered he was Lucy’s adoptive father as a bizarre effort to get close to Lucy. And afterward, when Lucy was suddenly gone
and presumed dead or kidnapped, I had continued to report the story like I was just another journalist—a story that made me a media star, won me a Pulitzer, and catapulted my career to where it was today. No, I couldn’t tell her the truth. The lie was better.

  “I’d interviewed your father a few weeks earlier for a story I was doing on the construction industry in New York City,” I said. “That’s how I knew him and got to know your mother, too. That’s all. Like I said, sometimes it’s all about being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.”

  At some point, her daughter, Audrey, came into the living room.

  My God, I thought to myself, this is my granddaughter!

  I’m sitting here right now with my daughter—and my granddaughter.

  It made me happy. But sad, too. Waves of guilt surged through me as I remembered all my actions that had brought me to this place and time.

  I’d met Audrey before on my visits. Not for long then. But this time was different. She seemed very interested in me. Almost as if she knew … well, that I was her grandmother. Of course, that was more fantasy stuff on my part. No way this little girl could be aware of who I really was.

  Unless there was some unspoken connection—some basic genetic instinct—that drew my granddaughter to me in the same way as I was drawn to her at that moment.

  I found myself hoping desperately that was somehow the case.

  Audrey was playing a video game on an iPad. Just like people said Lucy used to do when she was her age. She showed me the screen now and proudly pointed to her score.

  I am one of those adults who still like video games. I’ve played them for a long time—all the way back to Mario and Pac-Man and the classic games on Nintendo. This one was a modern update on one of those long-ago concepts. Building blocks of different colors you needed to complete a puzzle. Much more complicated and detailed and colorful than the games I remember, but the same concept when you stripped it down to the basics. I played along with Audrey for a while and showed her a few tricks on how to run up her score even higher than she already had.