The One Who Got Away (12 page)

‘Yes. I think I can tell you that,' she said, visibly relieved, ‘if you could just wait for a moment …'

She picked up the phone on her desk and spoke into it. ‘Carlos? Can you bring the USB? Yes, that one. Yes, please. Also, some coffee? Three cups. Thank you.'

She hung up and turned back to me. ‘I can tell you this: on their last night on the ship, your sister and David attended the Captain's Dinner in the main dining hall. The Captain's Dinner is a special event – a gala evening, formal attire – and by all accounts, it's the highlight of the cruise.'

I had seen photographs of the Captain's Dinner on the
Silver Lining
website. It was black tie for men, and to-the-floor for women, with tiaras if you had them.

‘According to the statement David has given to the
Federales
here – that's the Federal police – it was a lovely evening,' said Gail, moving her spectacles to better study the notes on her desk. ‘There was dancing by candlelight. There was a string quartet. The evening ended around midnight, but David and Loren went back to their cabin early. They hadn't danced. Loren had eaten almost none of her meal. By David's account, he opened a bottle of French champagne from the minibar for Loren – at Loren's request – not because they felt like celebrating but because she was upset and wanted more to drink. They had one of the better cabins – a suite, or a stateroom – and they sat out on the balcony and talked about problems they were having in their marriage. At some point, David coaxed Loren into bed and I guess he must have fallen asleep … and when he woke, Loren was gone.'

‘So he pushed her off the balcony,' said Dad indignantly. ‘Can't you see that?'

‘No,' said Gail, shaking her head, ‘no, definitely not, because we do have another sighting of Loren. It's hours after the dinner, but she is not on her balcony. She is in the corridor outside her stateroom … and David is not with her.'

As Dad and I were processing this, Gail's assistant, Carlos, came into the room and served coffee.

‘Here, let me show you something,' she said, before picking up her laptop and moving out from behind her side of the desk.

She put the laptop down so it was facing Dad and inserted a USB. He remained seated. I stood up and looked over Dad's shoulder. The image on the screen was grainy, but I only had
to look for a half-second to recognise Loren. She was walking away from the camera, getting smaller and smaller as she made her way towards the end of the long corridor outside her room. She was wearing jeans, and she had the four fingers of each hand tucked into her back pockets, palms out.

‘That's Loren,' said Dad.

‘That is exactly how she walks,' I said.

Gail touched the arrow keys to keep the tape rolling. ‘You'll see that she turns left at the end of the corridor here and, unfortunately, that's where the tape ends.'

‘What do you mean?' I said. ‘Where does the footage go from there?'

‘The next camera is around the next corner, but Loren is not on it,' said Gail. ‘They have looked at the film a million times but there's no sign. So all we can say for certain is, Loren went down this corridor, which comes out on the deck, and that's where we lose her.'

Dad started hitting the keys to bring the image of Loren back again. ‘But what, she just disappears?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Gail, ‘but there's a black spot right there. The cameras don't cover every inch of the ship. They couldn't possibly.'

‘So she went out onto the deck and …'

‘And from there we don't know,' said Gail.

‘But what's the time stamp on that?' said Dad. ‘It must have a time stamp.'

‘You're right. It does. The first sighting of Loren is here, at 3.46 am,' said Gail, replaying the footage, while pointing at the square-shaped numbers in the top right corner, ‘and the last sighting of her, at the end of the same corridor, is at 3.47 am. So it has taken her less than a minute to walk that hall.'

‘But she can't just disappear,' I said, ‘she must go somewhere.'

‘She must,' agreed Gail, ‘but at this stage, that's the last sighting we have. The ship's management are going over all the footage from all the other cameras on the ship, from 3.46 am. So far, nothing.'

‘What, nowhere?' said Dad.

‘Nowhere. But we do see David.'

‘I bet we do!' cried Dad.

‘David stayed in the cabin until 4.50 am,' said Gail.

‘How do we know that?' I demanded.

‘The ship uses the same key-card system they have at hotels,' said Gail, ‘like swipe keys. So we can see David and Loren go into their cabin well before midnight …'

At this point, she went back a few frames on her laptop to footage that showed David in a tuxedo, guiding Loren, in a stunning halter-neck, through their cabin door.

‘And here Loren comes out,' she said, showing the Loren-in-the-corridor footage again. ‘And then there is no movement on that door until David comes out, shortly before five am.'

I put my face as close to the laptop as I could. The images were grainy but there's no question it was David.

‘He says he's coming out to look for Loren,' said Gail, ‘and he goes the same way. He disappears at the end of the hallway. So technically, he has followed Loren but he's a good hour behind her, and we very quickly see him again. Here he is on the lower pool deck, something like two minutes later. Here we see him rushing into the dining hall. He speaks to crew members there. “Has anyone seen Loren?” You can see him gesturing. The crew are shaking their heads, no, and now we see David again, agitated, asking the crew to raise the alarm.'

‘Well, isn't that convenient,' said Dad, indignant. ‘He's seen her on that first deck, pushed her off and then he goes and makes like he doesn't know what happened.'

I stepped in. ‘There is no footage at all from that deck? But have the police – the
Federales
– interviewed any other passengers? Maybe somebody heard something? Or saw something? An argument? Because what is David saying: that she's fallen, or that it must be suicide, or what? Because that's ridiculous. Loren has young girls. Twins. Never, never, never would she leave them. Never. And if it's suicide, where's the note?'

‘Well,' said Gail, sighing, ‘there were something like three hundred people on the ship, including crew. This was to be their last night. People had gone from the Captain's Dinner to the disco. The casino was full. We've got a lot of people who have had a lot to drink, wandering around, heading to bed, even after Loren was out of her cabin. So far nobody saw her. And no, there was no note.'

I weighed up in my mind whether to tell Gail what I knew. It would mean breaking bad news in a shocking way to Dad. But it had to be done …

‘Something you won't know, and David won't have told you: he had been having an affair, and Loren found out about it. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know?' I said.

Dad looked thunderstruck. ‘David's been having an affair!?'

‘I'm sorry, Dad. I was going to tell you. It's all in her journal. But surely it's relevant?'

‘He'd been having an affair with who?' said Dad.

Gail looked uncomfortable. ‘Ah, yes, David did tell me that. He told the police that. I think it explains a lot about what happened, don't you?'

‘That sounds to me like a motive to throw my daughter off the ship,' shouted Dad.

‘Except that David did not leave the cabin with Loren. And we do not lose sight of him on the footage.'

‘But you haven't found a note, have you?' I asked. ‘A suicide note? Surely Loren would leave a note.'

‘No, we haven't found a note. Although I did a quick internet search before you came. This year alone, six people have gone missing from cruise ships and in only two cases did people leave a note. And it's not just cruise ships. Very often in these situations, people don't leave notes.'

‘No. Stop,' I said. ‘Did you not hear what I was saying? David was having an affair. Loren has two children. Her girls are everything to her. Not in a million years would she leave them. I cannot believe that you are simply accepting what David is saying. His story reeks to high heaven.'

Gail closed her laptop. Her expression suggested that she did not necessarily disagree with me, and that she was resigned to the idea that nothing she could say would satisfy me. She carried the computer around to her side of the desk.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I know how hard this must be to accept.'

‘Yes, but it's not only the affair that's a problem,' I said. ‘Did David tell you that his business was going under? Did David tell you that this trip was all about trying to prevent Loren from divorcing him?'

‘What's all this?' said Dad.

‘I'm sorry, Dad,' I said, exasperated. ‘I was going to fill you in. I went to Loren's house yesterday. I found a journal she had written over the last few weeks. He was having an affair but there's more: David's business was in trouble. This trip was all
about one last chance to try to patch things up. Loren was trying so hard. Really trying. You can tell from what she wrote, her heart was broken but she didn't want to give in. She didn't want to hurt her girls. But probably over the course of the five days on the ship, the reality must have dawned on her. Her husband was a liar and a cheat. She could take the girls and get out. And maybe that's what she finally told him she was going to do.'

Dad looked stunned. Maybe he wasn't all that surprised by the cheating – that would surprise nobody – but the idea that David's business was in trouble was astounding.

‘Are you kidding me?' he said. ‘David gets around town like a Rockefeller.'

‘Please,' said Gail, putting up her hands for quiet. ‘Some of what you're saying, David did in fact tell us. And I am not necessarily without sympathy for your position, but right at this moment … This matter is not under our jurisdiction and this is out of our hands.'

* * *

When Dad and I left Gail's office he was in a white-hot rage. Gail insisted on putting us back into the embassy car, saying: ‘I don't want you walking. You're upset. Let my driver take you to your hotel.'

‘But we're not going straight to our hotel,' said Dad angrily. ‘We're going to see the ship. I'm going to look that ship over. I want to speak to the captain. I want to speak to the crew. I'm not having this. My daughter jumped? There is just no way.'

‘And I'll support you for as long as you're here,' Gail said gently, ‘because that's my job, to support you and every other American citizen who needs my assistance. If you feel the need
to visit the ship, my driver will take you. I can introduce you to the staff of the
Silver Lining
. They have an office down by the port. I am absolutely happy to do that for you.'

‘We can manage on our own,' said Dad.

His tone was gruff. I could hardly fault him for that. On some level, he understood Gail's predicament. She was in no position to investigate. It was probably more than her remit to even sit down and talk to David in any detail, let alone Dad and me. Still, Dad wanted to know: had anyone checked David's phone? What about Loren's? Was there such a thing as a forensic team in Mexico and, if so, had they been into the cabin? Were there any signs of a disturbance? What about other passengers? What insights could they provide?

‘He's obviously done it,' said Dad.

I didn't disagree with him.

‘And it's so obvious that there's something they're not telling us.'

I didn't disagree with that, either. I mean, how could I?

 

‘Exclusive tonight on
Up Close with
Liz Moss
: Liz sits down with David
Wynne-Estes. Don't miss it.'

Tweet posted by Fox9

 

H
ands up who has read
To Kill a Mockingbird
? Who remembers Atticus saying never ask a question when you don't already know the answer? Every barrister I know has that memorised, but reporters treat those words as gospel, too.

Don't go into an interview without knowing most of the story. Go in ready to catch him off guard, and not the other way around.

Long before I met him, I had an idea what David Wynne-Estes was going to say in our televised interview. He wanted to sit there under the hot lights and deny blame for anything and everything that went wrong in his marriage.

He wasn't to blame even for the adultery, because of course, men never are.

My interview with David took place in David's home town, Bienveneda. I'm a New Yorker and I hadn't previously been out that way. Bienveneda is pure California, with blue sky and Dr Seuss palm trees. And the High Side is big homes behind stone walls, guys in convertibles, and hot moms in white jeans, carrying small dogs.

It is not my cup of tea.

For the record, my network, Fox9, didn't pay for the interview. Given the size of the story at the time, we probably
would have paid, but – despite being in what he was telling everyone was a poor position, financially – it seemed that David was not after money.

He was in damage control.

To give you a sense of the timeline, David had returned from Mexico and was living with his angelic blonde twins in the big house on Mountain View Road. Loren's family – her stepsister, Molly Franklin, and her father, Danny Franklin – had also returned from Mexico to their homes on the Low Side of Bienveneda, and the tension between the two camps was palpable.

‘I've always admired you,' he said to me, by way of greeting. Was I meant to be flattered? Maybe, but I've heard it a lot. I've been doing
Up Close with Liz Moss
TV interviews for, what, twenty-seven years? Good Lord. It's a long time, and I've probably seen it all. Celebrities, sports stars, people triumphing over adversity, and plenty of people like David: flash rats caught up in horrendous crimes – think O.J. Simpson – trying to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.

Terms were hammered out not with David directly but with two consultants from Sally & Sons (often spelled Sally $ Sons, with a dollar sign, because they charge like wounded bulls). Sally & Sons are crisis-management specialists. For a fee, they will help anyone manage their reputation online and in the traditional media. Their advice for David, who can't have been as broke as he was claiming, was to get on the front foot. He had been trying a different tactic – say nothing to nobody – but then Molly had released extracts from Loren's journal to the public, via the
RealNews
website, and bang. The story exploded, and why wouldn't it? Releasing those extracts was such a good idea. Hardly anyone watches live TV anymore, so these big interviews
are risky, but the journal extracts sent a million people – probably more – to the
RealNews
website, which is great for revenue. The demand was so intense, their server crashed. As their rivals, we couldn't have been more thrilled. That it crashed, I mean. For a while there – twenty-four hours – everyone wanted the journal extracts but nobody could read them. How
RealNews
managed to underestimate demand quite so catastrophically, I can't say. Demand was always going to be huge. This was a wife's private diary, detailing her husband's affair. People are obsessed with that stuff.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was one of the people trying to get on the site. I had been following the story in the news, and I'd seen countless photographs of Loren on her wedding day, or out on the tennis court, bouncing around in new white shoes and a ponytail, or making Play-Doh models with her cute kids in the amazing kitchen of their dazzling house. To my mind, Loren came across really well in her journal. She was driven and spirited. She believed in her marriage. Her bad luck was to fall hopelessly in love with somebody like David Wynne-Estes.

By contrast, David seemed an absolute monster. He had refused to be interviewed by
RealNews
, and they punished him by including lots of clips of him running to his car with a hoodie over his head.

Plenty of people seemed to agree with me. The public – on Facebook and via the TV chat shows – were calling for David's scalp. He had to do something.

We – meaning the team at Fox9 – immediately got in touch, offering to tell his side of the story.

The deal we negotiated was for an hour-long interview, but we wanted something for our website, too, so we would also
get David to write his version of what had gone wrong in his marriage, to post immediately after the interview went to air.

Fox9 doesn't have a studio in Bienveneda, so we had to make do with some rooms at the Bonsall, where David and Loren spent their wedding night. The Bonsall is your classic Californian hotel: flamingo-pink walls and cabanas by the pool. We asked the management to remove all the furniture except for a couple of overstuffed armchairs in front of a fireplace.

I sat in my armchair with a clipboard on my lap. I had my face tilted towards the light, and a makeup girl with a tool belt stuffed with blush brushes and cans of hairspray was giving me a last-minute touch-up when David walked into the room.

I watched as he stepped carefully over the cables strewn across the floor and settled into his armchair.

The sound girl immediately stepped between us, to pin a miniature mic to his lapel, and by the time she was finished adjusting his levels, she was smitten.

No, I can't explain how, but David has that effect on people. He's undeniably handsome, but there is also something of a little-boy-lost thing going on that women, in particular, find irresistible.

My job is not to get suckered by anyone's charisma. If I didn't get suckered by Bill Clinton, I wasn't going to get suckered by David Wynne-Estes (although, having interviewed them both, I'd say David might even give the old dog a run for his money).

So there I was, sitting opposite David, going over the questions I intended to ask. Remember, it wasn't for me to decide whether or not he was guilty, or even of what. That was for viewers to decide.

For all his natural confidence, David seemed nervous, although I suppose that's normal when you're on TV for maybe
the first time. He had turned up groomed like a stallion and in a suit so beautiful that even our network chief was seen peering into the TV monitor to get a closer look. To my critical eye, the suit was slightly too big for David, but don't be fooled. That may well have been deliberate. Sally & Sons is not above putting a dodgy client into an extra-large suit to make him appear smaller and more vulnerable, like a little boy in a big-sized chair.

Plenty has been said about David's eyes. Are they really that blue, or does he wear coloured contact lenses? Having looked into them over an extended period, I would say that David's eyes really are blue, but the effect is amplified by the tan and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

My best guess is that David's tactic in our interview would be to throw himself upon the mercy of our mostly female audience. Yes, he'd been a bad husband and a lousy partner. Yes, he was a cad, but he was not a killer.

Would the audience buy it? I was dying to find out.

I called out to our director. ‘Are we good?' I said.

‘Ten seconds,' she replied.

I looked up at David and smiled. ‘You good?'

He leaned forward and said: ‘Be brutal with me.'

I'm confident it didn't show, but that set me back slightly in my chair. Be brutal? Who says that?

‘I mean it. Ask me anything,' David said. ‘I have nothing to hide.'

I looked over at the cameraman. He gave me the thumbs up to reassure me that we were recording. I kept my expression neutral and began.

‘Alright,' I said, ‘then I guess we'll start with your affair.'

* * *

‘Your wife kept a journal.'

‘No, she did not.'

Remember what I said about not asking a question if you don't already know the answer? Perfect example right there. Not that we couldn't edit it out, but getting a flat denial like that to something can throw you. His wife didn't keep a journal? The whole world had read extracts from Loren's journal on the
RealNews
website.

‘I'm sorry, you're saying your wife didn't keep a journal?' I said.

‘That's right,' said David, ‘my wife – Loren – did not keep a journal.'

How great would it have been to have had a copy of Loren's journal on the side table next to me? I could have picked it up and waved it, saying: ‘Then what's this?' That would have been good TV but bad luck because extracts from Loren's journal had been published online and I didn't have a printout.

‘Well, then,' I said, ‘what have we all been reading?'

David moved slightly forward in his seat, the way Tom Cruise does when he's being interviewed. Like he wants to get closer to you. Like he wants you to understand. My producer had specifically asked David not to do that because it mucks with the camera angles, but it's a classic Sally & Sons tactic. It makes the talent appear honest and transparent. They're moving in your direction. They're giving themselves to you. In terms of body language, it's the polar opposite of sitting with your arms crossed.

‘Loren's journal isn't a journal in the sense of her writing her thoughts down at the end of every day,' said David. ‘What people have been reading, Loren wrote all in one burst over about three weeks.'

‘I see, and in your mind, that's not a journal?'

‘Of course it's not,' said David earnestly. ‘What people have been reading are basically notes – notes and thoughts – that Loren took down after I confessed to my affair.'

Again, classic Sally & Sons. David was throwing himself upon the mercy of the viewing audience by confessing the affair to them, with no prompting. No sallying. No dodging. But how truthful was he being?

After all, he hadn't confessed to his affair to Loren. He'd been caught out by a mom at Bienveneda Grammar, who had dobbed him in. Still, I let him continue.

‘Loren wrote those notes late at night during the most difficult time of her life. She was hurt and confused, and trying to make sense of things. Which makes the betrayal of Loren by her family that much worse.'

That threw me. What on earth was David on about?

‘Loren and I were at a turning point in our marriage. She was trying to decide whether she could stay with me. It would be a tough decision and she was trying to sort things out in her own mind. We had a marriage counsellor – Bette Busonne, who invented the Busonne Method – who was urging Loren to put her thoughts down on paper. And I remember Loren laughing – bitterly laughing – through her tears at that suggestion. This was when we were sitting in Bette's office, fairly soon after Loren found out about the affair. Loren was curled into her chair and Bette said: “Why are you laughing?” and Loren replied: “Because it's not going to take very long to write down how I feel. I feel like crap.”'

‘I'm not surprised,' I said evenly.

‘Right,' said David, ‘and Bette's advice was: “If you start writing things down, you might find that it helps you sort out your feelings and that will help you decide whether you want to
stay with David.” And that hit me like a hammer because my fear was that Loren would come down on the side of leaving me. So when Bette suggested that Loren go right back to the start of our relationship – right back to when we first met in New York City – and try to pinpoint when and why we fell in love and when things might have started to go off track, I was all for it. Because I thought, yes, that will help Loren see that my affair wasn't the problem. My affair was a symptom of problems we already had in our marriage. That things were rotten before I strayed.'

Oh, I see. Of course! We were already at the point where the affair wasn't his fault.

‘Bette said: “Write everything down, don't try to censor your thoughts. By the time you get to the end, you will have an answer as to whether you want to stay with your husband.” That's what Loren was doing, she was writing down her deepest, innermost thoughts for the purpose of figuring out whether she wanted to stay with me. That's not a journal. That is a sacred text and those words – those thoughts – they belonged to Loren exclusively. They were not for me to read, and I cannot imagine how Loren would feel knowing that her deepest, most private feelings have now been shared with the world and not by me, but by people who claim to love her.'

Did I mention that Sally & Sons charge a pretty penny? Now you can see why. That little speech, right at the start of our interview, was a masterpiece.

Playing it back in the privacy of the editing room a few days later, my producer said to me: ‘That gentle sound you hear? That's the women of America, moving in to comfort this guy.'

I wasn't so sure. The women of America don't approve of adultery.

I decided to hit David with a few questions about his tacky betrayal. ‘Well, for the sake of this interview, let's refer to Loren's private thoughts as her journal. You've read the extracts. We all have. So tell us, how did it feel, having to read just how badly you've hurt your wife?'

David didn't flinch. ‘I didn't need to read Loren's notes to know how much I'd hurt her. Loren was my wife. I knew her intimately. I only had to look at her to see how much pain she was in.'

Masterful. I pressed on: ‘And how did that make you feel?'

‘I wanted to do whatever I had to do to make things right,' said David. ‘I was responsible for Loren's hurt, and I was taking responsibility for that as we tried to repair our marriage.'