Stalked

by Allison Brennan

  The Newark office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working in close conjunction with the Newark Police Department, devoted all available agents to interview witnesses, process evidence, and search for Rachel. Media Information Officer Special Agent Dominic Theissen stated, “We are deeply saddened at the discovery of Rachel McMahon’s body late this afternoon. An autopsy and thorough investigation will be completed to ensure that justice will be swift.”

  The McMahons were unavailable for comment.

  The FBI confirmed that there is no connection between Rachel McMahon’s disappearance and that of Camille Todd, a twelve-year-old girl who went missing from Newark the previous week.

  On the surface, the case appeared straightforward—an eleven-year-old girl had been kidnapped from her bedroom late on a Saturday night. The time of her disappearance was a bit sketchy. No one had seen her between 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m. Her brother told police they’d been playing games in their playroom until 10:00 p.m. when she went to her room to call her best friend. He fell asleep and woke up at 3:00 a.m. The house was quiet, he went to her room, and she wasn’t in her bed. Her friend told police, and phone records confirmed, that they’d spoken for nearly an hour, hanging up at 11:03 p.m. Rachel wanted to go over to her friend’s house that night, but the mother had forbidden it. For the first day of the investigation, local police falsely believed that Rachel had either run away or left to visit her friend. The search focused on the four blocks between the McMahon home and the Miller home.

  Because of the age of the missing girl, the FBI was called more as a formality in case there was foul play. In his personal notes, Tony had written:

  The local PD covered their ass by calling us, but they didn’t seriously consider her disappearance a kidnapping until they interviewed the neighbors and learned about the party the night before.

  An attached newspaper article printed the day before Rachel’s body was found illustrated that this wasn’t a typical neighborhood get-together.

  A neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was at the McMahons’ party Saturday night.

  “We’re swingers. It’s all safe; we have rules; nothing bad has ever happened.” The neighbor, who is also married, said he’d never seen the McMahon children at the parties and assumed they were staying with relatives. “We’re consenting adults.”

  The closing of one of the earlier articles, before Rachel’s body was found, seemed important to Lucy, so she wrote it down in her notebook.

  Search parties have been looking for eleven-year-old Rachel for the past twenty-four hours. Notably missing from the search is her father, Aaron McMahon, who has been interviewed by both local police and the FBI regarding his daughter’s kidnapping.

  What made that interesting was that the next day the newspaper reported that the mother, Pilar McMahon, was a person of interest. Both McMahons had lied to police about the nature of the party on Saturday night and whether any of their guests knew the children were home. Other inconsistencies in the McMahons’ statements had been highlighted by Tony in his own notes. He wrote:

  Their daughter is missing yet they both lied about the orgy. Neither admitted, until confronted with evidence and witness statements, that they hosted a sex party for ten invited guests, but a total of fifteen people had access to the home that evening. Originally, Mr. McMahon said that it was a neighborhood BBQ, stating as much to both responding officers, the local media, and in his initial statement to the FBI. Mrs. McMahon said she thought her daughter was trying to get back at her because of an earlier argument, but the longer Rachel was missing, the more distraught she became.

  The press had gone after the parents after it was leaked that they were swingers. A new article penned by Rosemary Weber appeared every morning, each one putting a more unsavory and sensational twist on their lives. Nothing was held back. How much was true and how much exaggeration Lucy couldn’t tell, but Tony’s notes showed deep contempt because of the delay in information coming from the parents. Ultimately, however, their obstructions couldn’t have saved Rachel from her fate, because evidence proved she’d been dead within hours after her abduction.

  Hard physical evidence had led police to Benjamin John Kreig. Kreig had been stalking Mrs. McMahon after he’d attended one of their sex parties a year before. Two weeks before Rachel’s disappearance, he’d confronted Mrs. McMahon about hooking up again, and she said it disturbed her. She told her husband, but neither McMahon had seen him at the party. Two witnesses said he’d been there—they both saw him in the family room, which was adjacent to the staircase that led to Rachel’s bedroom—but no one else saw him.

  Police rightfully questioned why it took evidence of his guilt to prompt Mrs. McMahon’s memory of the conversation.

  But what was the most heartbreaking for Lucy to read was the statement of Peter McMahon, the nine-year-old brother of the victim. Tony, who had a degree in child psychology, interviewed him. The first part of the interview was Peter recounting what he and Rachel did until she left the attic playroom just before ten the evening she was kidnapped. Tony noted that Peter McMahon’s statement was consistent in all the key facts.

  Supervisory Special Agent Tony Presidio, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newark Field Office

  Annette K. Frederick, Washington Department of Social and Health Services

  Peter James McMahon, brother of Rachel McMahon, 9

  TP: You told the police officer who came to your house that you went to your sister’s room in the middle of the night. Why?

  PETER: Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night I go to Rachel’s room.

  TP: Not your mom and dad?

  PETER: (unresponsive)

  AF: Nothing you say here is going to get you into any trouble. I promise you, Peter, you did nothing wrong.

  PETER: Rachel always lets me sleep on her floor if I have a nightmare.

  TP: Do you have a lot of nightmares?

  PETER: Sometimes. Sometimes I just wake up because I have to pee, but I don’t like my room because the branches from the tree next door scratch my window in the wind. Rachel’s room doesn’t have any trees outside.

  TP: You fell asleep in the attic?

  PETER: Dad made it a real room, and we have a TV and video games and beanbag chairs.

  TP: Sounds like a great place to hang out.

  PETER: I guess. The rain was really loud, though. That’s what woke me up.

  TP: And you went to Rachel’s room?

  PETER: She wasn’t there. I thought she went to Jessie’s house and didn’t tell me.

  TP: Why did you think that?

  PETER: Because Rachel wanted to spend the night there, but Jessie was grounded.

  TP: Does Rachel sneak out of the house a lot?

  PETER: (unresponsive)

  TP: Rachel isn’t in any trouble. I promise you, cross my heart, I won’t get Rachel in trouble. It’s important we have all the facts so we can find her.

  PETER: She did it a couple times. But she always came back before Mom and Dad woke up. So I went to her bed to wait for her.

  TP: When you walked into the room, what did you feel?

  PETER: I don’t know.

  TP: Was the room warm? Cold? Was her bed warm?

  PETER: Oh. She left her window open a little. I closed it because her room was freezing.

  TP: Is that how she sneaks out? Through the window?

  PETER: No—she uses the back door.

  TP: You thought she was at her friend Jessie’s house. You didn’t go to your mom and dad?

  PETER: (unresponsive)

  TP: Peter, why didn’t you go to your parents?

  PETER: I did, in the morning, when she didn’t come back.

  TP: But not to their room.

  PETER: I didn’t want to bother them. In case they had someone spend the night.

  TP: Has that happened before?

  PETER: Yeah.

  Lucy’s heart went out to the boy Peter McMahon had been, but her instinc
ts told her this boy was now twenty-four and had had a tragedy heaped onto his dysfunctional upbringing. There had been no signs of physical abuse, but emotional abuse and neglect could be just as powerful a negative force in a child’s life.

  Tony had a lot of private notes on the McMahon case. It wasn’t unusual for agents to keep a second set of private files. They often only contained copies of the official records, but many of the investigators wrote down their personal observations. Technically, anything written down while investigating a crime should be part of the record, but Lucy knew that wasn’t always the case.

  Lucy now understood why Tony had been melancholy thinking about the boy. He had no one to protect him while all this was going on, no one to shield him from the evil in his life. Violence was part of society, but society tried to protect the young and innocent from the results. And when that failed, hope seemed to be lost.

  Lucy sat at her computer and quickly input all the pertinent information about Peter McMahon. Tony had included everything in the file except Peter’s Social Security number, but Lucy didn’t need that. She had his parents—Aaron and Pilar McMahon—his date of birth, and where he was born. Logically, Tony would have either contacted friends of his involved in the case or used the FBI database, and maybe that’s how he found out that the father was in Seattle and the mother had remarried and was living in Texas. Both far away from New Jersey.

  Tony had scribbled a note that Margaret Gray had died ten years ago at the age of seventy-nine, and Tony had said that he thought Peter had gone to live with the grandmother in Florida. What had happened to him after? Lucy quickly learned that Pilar’s maiden name was Gray, so Margaret was Peter McMahon’s maternal grandmother. Further checking confirmed the information.

  There was nothing on Peter McMahon that she could find in New Jersey or Florida.

  Seven years ago, after Lucy’s all-too-public ordeal, she’d considered changing her name. But more than exposure, she feared losing her sense of identity. She could have easily slipped into a made-up life in an effort to forget who she was and what had happened. But changing her name would have been a Band-Aid, and she would never forget what had happened.

  Over the years, she’d encountered many victims who had opted to clean the slate with a new identity. Sometimes it was merely changing their first name or going back to their maiden name after an abusive relationship. What if the parents or grandmother wanted to give Peter a clean slate? To help him forget what had happened?

  She shivered and didn’t know why. Except—a child of nine would always remember. She would never forget her nephew Justin. They’d been together nearly every day for years, because her mother babysat him while his mother worked. He and Lucy were more like twins than nephew and aunt. If Peter’s family wanted to suppress memories of his sister, in their effort to help or purge their own demons and grief, they may have changed his name. Maybe that’s why Tony could find nothing on him today.

  Lucy put all the notes aside and downloaded a copy of Rosemary Weber’s Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets, the book about the McMahon family and the tragedy that befell them. While Tony’s notes were good, Lucy needed more info about the case. She didn’t know if she could trust Weber’s writing on the matter, but if she doubted something, she could ask Tony.

  All this was a mere Band-Aid, Lucy thought as she picked up her cell phone and called Sean. A book, published when Peter was fourteen and living in Florida with his grandmother, wouldn’t tell Lucy where he was or what he was doing today.

  Sean answered, panic in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

  “Calls in the middle of the night are never good news.”

  Lucy glanced at her clock. One forty-five. “I am so sorry, Sean. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “So you weren’t dreaming of me and just had to call and hear my voice?” he said with mock offense.

  She smiled. “It’s always nice to hear your voice.”

  “It would be better in person.”

  “I’m calling for another favor.”

  “You know, I’m going to start keeping a tally. All these favors are going to add up, and I’m going to cash them in for a real vacation.”

  “Real vacation? Maybe it would be safer for us to vacation at home.” They’d tried to go away together several times, and each one had ended in murder.

  “Superstitious?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just leave it to me. Tell me what you need.”

  She quickly explained why she was looking for Peter McMahon, and the loose connection to the Rosemary Weber homicide. “Can you find out—legally—if Peter McMahon changed his name?”

  “As an adult, easy. As a child? Possibly. Depends on the circumstances. If I can cut a couple corners, I can definitely get you the information.”

  “Let’s try this legally, okay?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  Sean laughed, and Lucy shut down her computer. It was late and she had to be up in four hours.

  “I’m going to bed,” Lucy said.

  Sean sighed. “Wish I were there, princess.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ten Years Ago

  Two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, Grams went into the hospital after coughing up blood. The doctor said she had pneumonia and needed to stay, and asked if I had any family. I told them my parents were dead and Grams was all I had. I think the nurses felt sorry for me, because they let me stay with her.

  I think I felt sorry for me, because I blamed Grams for getting sick. “I need you,” I told her. “You shouldn’t have been gardening in the rain.”

  Grams loved her garden. I helped her, sometimes, but I think she liked to be alone to pull weeds and turn the soil and plant her flowers. I helped carry pallets of flowers, mowed the lawn, and trimmed the bushes because the shears were too heavy for her. But Grams spent hours every day outside.

  It didn’t rain a lot in Florida, but whenever it did Grams got sick. Like now. Except now was worse because she was seventy-nine and had been slowly dying ever since Grandpa died when I was five.

  I knew she wouldn’t live until September, when she’d be eighty. The doctors wouldn’t say it, but they didn’t tell me she was coming home, either. They said things like “We’re doing everything we can” and “She’s strong,” and “Give it time.” Never that she was going to die, but never that she’d get better.

  It wasn’t fair! I needed her.

  “Read to me, Peter.” Grams had been in the hospital for three days. I thought she might come home today, but the doctors said no. She looked sick. She’d never looked sick until three days ago. Tired, maybe, but not sick.

  I picked up book 6 in the Chronicles of Narnia series. She’d bought me the books the first Christmas I lived with her, before my sister’s killer was put on trial. I read them because there was nothing else I could do—I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours a night, I couldn’t go to school without someone talking about Rachel or my parents. Even in Florida, people knew. Especially after that reporter published a book about it. Why would somebody do that? Write a book about Rachel’s murder and the bizarre life my parents lived. People whispered when they didn’t think I could hear, even the teachers. Grams got rid of her television, so at home I didn’t have to remember if I didn’t want to.

  But I’d never forget Rachel.

  Grams’s eyesight was poor, and a few months ago she asked me to read my favorite book to her. I don’t know if the Narnia stories were my favorites, but I knew Grams would like them. There was one more book after The Silver Chair, and I wanted to finish the series for her. Maybe if I read slowly enough, she’d get better.

  I read until she slept, and then I cried. I hated her for being sick, and I hated me for being mad at an old woman. I hated God for killing everyone I loved. My insides were black like an unswept chimney. Dark and full of ash. I didn’t
want to be here or anywhere. I wanted to die when Grams did.

  I was too big to curl up with Grams anymore, but I put the side railing down and put my head next to her thin arm. She smelled old and sweet—the sweet from the apricot shampoo she liked.

  Rachel walked into Grams’s room. I stared at her, because I didn’t believe she was there.

  I must have fallen asleep, because ghosts aren’t real.

  “You can’t come back,” I told her.

  “I know,” she said. She looked at Grams. “She’s going to die, Peter.”

  “No, she’s not.” I sounded nine again.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. She wasn’t real. She wasn’t here. She was dead, and I’d never see her again. When Grams died, I would be alone.

  “Are you going home?”

  “They moved.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  Grams, don’t die. Please don’t die.

  I woke up and of course Rachel wasn’t there. But Grams was, and she was petting my hair like I was her puppy. I cried again.

  “Shh,” she whispered. “You’re stronger than you think. Believe in yourself, Peter, like I believe in you.”

  “I don’t want you to die.” My voice cracked and broke like my heart.

  “We don’t have a choice when our Father calls us home. Go get the last book. Read it to me, Peter.”

  Five days later, an hour after I finished reading The Last Battle, Grams died.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

  Sean Rogan woke up early Thursday morning and walked eight blocks to the gym with his partner at RCK East, Patrick Kincaid.

  “Did you find anything on Laughlin?” Patrick asked.

  “So far, he appears clean and I haven’t found any connections between him and Lucy or with anyone in your family. But it’s taking forever to get what I need.”

  Patrick laughed. “You get pissy when you can’t break the rules.”

  “I don’t break the rules.” Much. “I bend them.”