Below the Fold

by R. G. Belsky

  What I did instead probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. But when Lucy disappeared that day on her way to school, I covered the story myself. Without telling anyone about my own connection as Lucy’s biological mother.

  Then last year—on the fifteenth anniversary of the Lucy Devlin’s disappearance—the case exploded all over again.

  Anne Devlin came to me with an email that had been sent to her by an anonymous tipster who claimed he’d seen Lucy at a motorcycle gang gathering in New Hampshire just several days after she went missing. And the exploration of that claim led me to Elliott Grayson—who had been a motorcycle gang member—and was then running for the Senate.

  As I got closer and closer to determining his role in Lucy’s abduction, he used his influence to discover that I was Lucy’s biological mother. That’s when he revealed to me that Lucy was still alive. He told me he’d share all the details about Lucy and tell me where she was now once the election was over. That’s when I agreed not to run my story about him or tell anyone so he could win the Senate seat.

  I kept my word on this—and continue to do so—out of some kind of journalistic integrity or whatever.

  And now, even if I wanted to change my mind and tell anyone the truth, I would raise all sorts of questions about myself for sitting on the story for so many months.

  All I could do was depend on his integrity and honor that he would do the right thing and, at some point, fulfill his promise to tell me Lucy’s whereabouts.

  The fact that he refused to talk to me, take my calls, or communicate with me in any way seemed to be a pretty good indication that he wasn’t going to do the right thing here.

  He was, in effect, daring me to try to run the story because he knew I couldn’t do that now. If I did, I also would have to reveal the details about the secret deal I’d made with him before Election Day to bury the story in order to help him win his Senate seat. That would destroy my own career, maybe even more than his. And—most importantly of all—I would lose any chance that he might someday reveal to me the truth about where to find Lucy, even if he wasn’t prepared to do it now.

  Of course, Grayson could also be lying to me about Lucy being alive.

  But he was betting that I would not do anything to ruin my chance—no matter how slim—to find out the truth about my daughter.

  And he was right about that.

  I looked at the contact information again that Janet had given me for Todd Schacter, the computer hacking wizard, and sent him another message saying I needed to talk with him.

  He’d never replied to my first message.

  But the email hadn’t been kicked back as undeliverable—and Janet assured me this was his most recent contact address—so I assumed it got through to him.

  I’d just keep barraging him with more requests until he finally relented and talked to me. Just like I did with Emily Lehrman and Scott Manning and all the other people I’ve dealt with as a reporter in the past. Sooner or later, I would hear from Schacter. Even if it was a no. And, if that happened, then I’d try to figure out something else to do next.

  I looked down again at the picture of eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin on the front page of the Tribune from the long-ago article that I wrote the day she disappeared.

  She would be in her late twenties by now, if she really was alive. Maybe married. Maybe with children of her own. Or maybe she really was dead and my search for her was fruitless.

  One way or another, I had to know.

  CHAPTER 22

  I PUT MAGGIE on the Dora Gayle assignment the next morning. Trying to find some connection—no matter how unlikely—between Dora Gayle and the other people on the Grace Mancuso list. I knew Maggie would be thorough in combing through the homeless woman’s past, and she was. She sent reporters again to the park where Dora had lived, the bar and coffee shop where she hung out and panhandled, the bank where she died in the ATM vestibule, and to the neighborhood in Greenwich Village where Dora Gayle grew up a long time ago.

  That’s when we finally hit pay dirt.

  We found someone in Greenwich Village that remembered a lot about the Gayle family. It wasn’t easy. Most of her neighbors back then were either dead or moved away. But this old couple lived right next door to her and her parents. Said they’d hear the drunken screams from Dora’s parents drinking at night; watched Dora somehow grow up in that situation and eventually head off to college.

  They told us they sometimes let young Dora stay there at night when the screaming and drunken behavior of her parents got to be too bad. Dora was such a beautiful and smart girl, they said, and they felt sorry for her having to grow up in that house.

  Even after she stopped living at the house to go to NYU, Dora would often come back to visit them instead of her own parents right next door.

  The two of them almost became like foster parents to Dora for a while until they lost touch with her later when she disappeared into the descent that eventually wound up with her living on the street as a homeless bag lady.

  Dora wrote a lot in those days when they knew her as a young woman, the couple recalled—poetry, journals, and even a diary. She gave them some of these writings to read while she was in college. Most of it had been lost or thrown away over the years since then, but—with prodding from Maggie and her team of reporters—the couple managed to find a few samples.

  I read through them now. Much of it was very dark. Gloomy lyrics of despair from songs by people like Leonard Cohen and the same kind of thing from a number of poets—most notably Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide at the age of thirty. Plath was her favorite poet, Dora wrote in one of the journals she kept while at NYU, and then she quoted from a poem that Plath wrote while she herself was in college. The poem was called “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” and Dora’s favorite line was: “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”

  But then we found a few remaining pages of a diary from Dora Gayle that were totally different in tone—these were written by a woman full of life and hope and love.

  In the diary, she talked about finding her Prince Charming. A wonderful man who would take her away from everything bad and they would be happy forever after. “I am Cinderella,” she wrote at one point, “and he has put the slipper on my foot. I love him so much.”

  Cinderella. That’s where it came from. Why she thought she was Cinderella still waiting for her Prince Charming. She’d found him once—albeit briefly—when they were young. And she kept hoping he’d come back for her right to the very end.

  And I was sad all over again that her life—which once seemed so bright and promising—ended this tragically. Not just on the night of her murder. But long before that when it all began slipping away from her.

  I thought too about the strange juxtaposition of the Cinderella fairy tale that she clung to and the dark, depressing outlook on life she got from Sylvia Plath, Leonard Cohen, and the other people she seemed drawn to in her college life.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so strange.

  Maybe we all cling to that dream of the fairy-tale ending where we live happily ever after no matter how many evil stepmothers and stepsisters and other people try to bring us down along the way.

  I never imagined I could have truly related to a sad, homeless woman like Dora Gayle when this story started.

  But I did.

  I felt like I understood her in a way too.

  I read some more of the handful of pages we had from her diary:

  The man I love told me today he has to go away for a while.

  But he promised me he will be back.

  “What’s going to happen to us until then?” I asked.

  “It’s only for a year.”

  “A year is a long time.”

  “It’ll go by quickly.”

  “Then you’ll come back to me?”

  “Of course, I will.”

  “And then we’ll be together forever…”

  “Yes, forever and ever.”

  He kissed me then. I loved w
hen he kissed me.

  “Will you see other girls while you’re away?” I asked.

  “C’mon…”

  “I’m serious.”

  “There’s no one for me but you.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t you know that by now?”

  It was the answer I’d been hoping for.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “At the end of the month.”

  “Promise me you’ll spend every minute you can with me before that?”

  “I promise.”

  “I love you,” I said, looking into his beautiful eyes and wondering how I was going to spend an entire year without him.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  “I just want to make love to you for the rest of my life.”

  Then he kissed me again.

  My Prince Charming.

  The love of my life.

  And I knew I would wait for him as long as it took.

  That’s all there really was from the diary. The other pages must have been lost or thrown away a long time ago. But it intrigued me enough to go looking for more about her time at NYU. Who was the man she was so in love with back then? If I could find that out—even after all this time—maybe he could fill in some of the missing pieces about Dora Gayle.

  I learned from NYU that they didn’t have yearbooks from that long ago online. But they did keep old print copies of the yearbooks somewhere in the library archives. I took a subway down to the NYU Library on Washington Square and told the woman behind the front desk what I was looking for. It took a while, but she finally came back with an NYU yearbook from Dora Gayle’s senior year.

  I found four mentions of her in it. One was the same picture she’d posed for that we used in the first story on air we ran. Another was a picture of her—looking just as beautiful—from something called the Poetry Club. And there was also one of her with a group of other students posing at the fountain in the middle of Washington Square Park next to the NYU campus—looking very happy and full of youthful enthusiasm about the future that lay ahead of her.

  But it was the last item about Dora Gayle in the yearbook where I found what I was looking for.

  There was a page toward the back where seniors were asked about their favorite memories from their college years. Dora Gayle’s read: “Reading poetry to my boyfriend, Billy, who is graduating from Princeton and on his way to Oxford. I’m already counting the days until he comes back.”

  Billy?

  Could that be Bill Atwood? Atwood graduated from Princeton. And then went on to study at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

  I remembered that now from the research I’d done on him.

  Could Bill Atwood really have been Dora Gayle’s boyfriend back then at NYU when she was young and beautiful?

  And, if he was, why did he lie about it?

  CHAPTER 23

  I DIDN’T HAVE enough to put this on the air.

  Sure, there was circumstantial evidence that Bill Atwood had apparently dated Dora Gayle—as unlikely as that sounded now—when they were both in college. But I needed more confirmation. Dora Gayle was dead and couldn’t tell me anything. The only person who knew the truth was Bill Atwood. That meant I had to confront Atwood—just like I had about Grace Mancuso, but this time with more evidence—and get him to admit the long-ago relationship with Dora Gayle.

  How did I do that?

  Well, I could go to his office again, flash some leg and my come-hither smile and hope he succumbed to my charms. Or I could call him and pretend I knew even more than I did in hopes of getting him to admit to something. But I decided instead that my best option was to confront him with the Dora Gayle questions in a public setting.

  We had a show at Channel 10 called Heads-Up, where politicians and other public figures were interviewed one-on-one by the host, Josina Bell. The show had won numerous awards and gotten plenty of media acclaim, so a lot of people in the public eye wanted to be on it. I was betting that Bill Atwood—who people said still was eyeing a political comeback—would be one of them.

  Josina Bell was an attractive woman—like pretty much everyone else on TV these days—around forty years old. She was African-American, but also had some Hispanic heritage and spoke fluent Spanish—which did wonders for my staff diversity numbers. Josina had also publicly proclaimed herself as a lesbian who avidly supported LBGT causes. So that meant I had hit the trifecta with her—woman, African-American/Hispanic, and gay—as a minority hire. But the best part was Josina Bell was really smart and a really good interviewer. If there was anyone besides myself I’d trust to get Atwood to open up, it was Josina.

  I told her now what I wanted her to do.

  “In other words, you want me to ambush Atwood on the air in the hope you can get a sensational story out of it?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it an ambush.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “It’s more of … well, you’d be doing … I mean you’d just get him to say if he and Dora Gayle once …”

  I sighed.

  “Okay, it’s an ambush.”

  “I don’t do that kind of stuff, Clare. I’m not an ‘ambush’ journalist. I don’t go for cheap sensationalism. This is a serious news show. That’s why people watch us, and that’s the way I’ve always hosted it.”

  “I understand, Josina,” I said. “It was just a shot. But I can see why you wouldn’t want to do this.”

  “Oh, I’ll do it.”

  “But you said …”

  “I don’t like Atwood. He’s the worst kind of politician—claims to be a liberal who supports minority and women and gay causes, but then lives his life making a mockery of all those high-sounding principles. I know some of the things he’s done to women in the past. I don’t want to see him in political office again. So I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that never happens. Including this.”

  The show went according to plan.

  Josina started off by asking some softball questions about Atwood’s work at Benson College and the success he’d had there.

  He talked about improved curriculums, new construction initiatives to provide better facilities, and his efforts to create a more diverse student body by reaching out to low-income groups and neighborhood high schools. It was his set education speech, all very scripted. The same when she asked him if he had any future political aspirations. “I have been honored to serve the American people for many years in Washington,” he said. “If they want me to represent them again in any way, I, of course, would consider that an honor too. But I have a wonderful job at Benson College now. I just want to make the best contribution I can—in whatever way possible—to the people of this city, this state, and this country.”

  “President Atwood,” Josina said at one point, “you’ve been in the news recently when your name was found on a list of people at the crime scene of a murdered woman named Grace Mancuso. Can you tell us what you know about that?”

  Again, his answer was carefully scripted and innocuous.

  “I have no idea about that, Josina, and neither do the police. All I can say is my heart goes out to the family of the victim. And I know the NYPD—the finest police department in the world—will come up with some answers and hopefully capture the perpetrator of this tragic event.”

  “So you never met or heard of Grace Mancuso before her death?”

  “I did not.”

  “And you don’t know—or ever had any kind of a relationship with—any of the other names on that list that was found next to Mancuso’s body?”

  “Not really.”

  “Brendan Kaiser. Scott Manning. Emily Lehrman. Dora Gayle. Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Actually, you did know Dora Gayle, didn’t you?”

  Atwood looked confused, but then shook his head no.

  “Are you sure you didn’t know her? Know her quite well back at NYU when she was a student there in the eighties?”

  “What?”

&nb
sp; “President Atwood, weren’t you involved in a serious romantic relationship with Dora Gayle then?”

  The screen cut to a picture of Dora Gayle from her college yearbook. Looking young and beautiful, with the inscription from the yearbook where she’d written about her boyfriend, Billy, who went to Princeton and now was off to Oxford for a year.

  “You went to Princeton, right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And then on to Oxford?”

  “I did, but …”

  “And your first name is Bill.”

  Atwood definitely looked rattled now.

  “Are you sure you didn’t know Dora Gayle back then? Did you have a romantic relationship with her? And is that why this woman’s name might have appeared on this list along with yours?”

  “No!”

  “No? You never heard of Dora Gayle before this list?”

  “I-I …”

  “Is that what you’re claiming on the record as your answer?”

  “Well, I suppose I might have known her a long time ago.”

  “Did you, or didn’t you?”

  “I’m not sure …”

  Later, Atwood issued a formal statement through his office, which said:

  “After appearing on a television show today, I realized that I did know Dora Gayle—one of the other names on that list found at the Grace Mancuso crime scene—many years ago. And we did have a brief relationship while we were in college. I left soon after for England to pursue my studies at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. I simply had not recognized the woman who died here in the bank vestibule recently as the same person I knew back then. I have now contacted the police and given them this latest information. I hope this clears up the matter and answers any questions.”

  Well, not all of them.

  But I now had a connection between two of the people on the list.