Lucy - 05 - Stalked

by Allison Brennan

  “This conversation is off-the-record, Banker,” Suzanne said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re writing articles for the damn paper and I don’t want my questions getting in print.”

  He grinned. “And I don’t want to be decked.”

  Suzanne glared at the reporter. “I’ll bring you to the Bureau and you’ll miss your deadline.”

  “Fine, off-the-record.” He exhaled, and let out the smoke in a long, angled puff.

  “She had a meeting scheduled with you the night she died,” Suzanne said. She didn’t know for certain that it was Banker, but he’d either confirm or deny.

  “She canceled on me. We were supposed to meet at nine thirty at Gilly’s, the bar where we usually meet.”

  “Any specific reason for the meeting?”

  He shrugged. “To talk. Rosemary doesn’t trust a lot of people, but she and I go way back, and she bounced ideas off me. She called Monday morning and said she wanted to talk about the book—”

  “The book she’s writing about the Cinderella Strangler,” Tony said to confirm.

  Rob grinned. “I coined the phrase.”

  Suzanne glared at him. “The victims were suffocated.”

  He shrugged, puffed on his cigarette a couple times, took his time to answer. “I said as much in every article. It’s what sticks. And it gave the story legs, helped get the word out to potential victims to watch out.”

  Suzanne wanted to argue with him, but Tony asked, “Did she tell you why she was canceling?”

  “Not really. I wish I’d asked her.” He seemed sincere.

  “What did she say?”

  “Only that she was checking out a lead on an informant.”

  “Informant? Like a criminal informant?”

  “No—she meant someone in law enforcement who was willing to talk off the record.”

  “Don’t you call those people sources?”

  “Usually, but Rosie had a sense of humor. She liked to call cops informants.”

  “So she was meeting with a cop?”

  “Not necessarily—could have been a secretary, a dispatcher, even a janitor, anyone who worked for NYPD, really. Or maybe, because the case was federal, someone in your own house.”

  Suzanne doubted that, but Tony looked like he believed it. “Anything else?” Tony asked. “Did she have any sense that she was being followed, that she could be in danger?”

  “Not that she told me. But I only talked to her a couple times a month. Her sister would probably know more.”

  They’d already asked Bridget Weber the same question. Suzanne said, “What about threatening letters?”

  “Nothing she shared with me,” he said. “I assume you’ve talked to her new assistant.”

  Suzanne nodded but didn’t give the reporter any other details. She gave Rob her card. “Let me know if anything comes up.”

  “I’d like to run a quote from you for the article I’m writing on the investigation.”

  “I suppose ‘no comment’ isn’t good enough.”

  “Nope.” He put out the stub of his cigarette in a can that was just for the smokers.

  “I don’t have authorization to talk to you.”

  “Can you confirm a couple things?”

  She growled, “Depends.”

  “I’ll make it easy. ‘A source at the Bureau confirmed…’”

  “Still depends.”

  “DeLucca has the case.”

  “Yes.”

  “She was robbed.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t think it was a robbery. You think it was related to the book she’s writing.”

  “No comment.”

  “Come on, Suzanne; give me something.”

  “I’m not playing Clue with you.”

  Tony said, “I’ll give you something, but you need to word it the way I tell you.”

  Suzanne didn’t like Tony stepping in without consulting her, even though he did have seniority.

  “Sure,” Rob said. He took out his notepad.

  “Write: ‘A source high up in the Bureau said Weber’s killer took her jewelry and purse in an effort to mislead police as to the motive for the murder. According to an FBI profiler, the murder was personal and the victim knew her killer. The jewelry is probably at the bottom of Flushing Bay, the source said.’”

  “Okay, okay,” Rob said, writing frantically. “And is it related to the Cinderella Strangler case? A relative of one of the victims?”

  “Where the hell did you get that stupid idea?” Suzanne said, her temper exploding. Where do reporters come up with this shit?

  Tony said, “Rob, listen to me—don’t say anything else. Just that the police know it was staged to look like a robbery.”

  “Okay, off-the-record, was it someone related to this book she was writing?”

  “No,” Tony said. “It wasn’t.”

  That threw Rob for a loop. “Then who?”

  “If your story tomorrow leads to us identifying the killer,” Tony said, “I’ll make sure our media officer talks to you first.”

  Rob was skeptical but seemed to trust Tony.

  “I’ll hold you to that, Agent Presidio.”

  Suzanne and Tony left and she said, “Why’d you play his game?”

  “I wasn’t playing his game. The killer wants us to think it was a robbery. If he knows we know it wasn’t, he’ll get rid of the ring in an attempt to prove it was. Tomorrow, after the paper comes out.”

  Suzanne snapped her fingers. “And because we have a description of the ring out to all the jewelers and pawnshops, we may get a call.”

  “Hopefully a call while the guy we want is still in the building, or at least caught on tape.”

  “Okay, you win that round. But I still don’t like reporters.”

  Suzanne drove Tony back to Rosemary Weber’s house. Her sister was home, and after introductions she allowed Tony to go through Rosemary’s office again, even though the police had been over it yesterday.

  “What do you hope to find?” Suzanne asked. She still wasn’t sure why Tony had wanted to come here.

  “I can’t imagine that Weber put all her notes in the manuscript archives.”

  “Isn’t that the purpose? To archive all stages of the book, from notes to rough draft to final draft and every copy in between?” At least that’s what Suzanne had always thought.

  “Yes, but she was a reporter first. She would have notepads and thoughts that wouldn’t make it into the file.”

  “If they’re old, wouldn’t she throw them away?”

  Tony closed the last file cabinet. “They’re definitely not here.” He went back to the kitchen where Bridget was making coffee. “Ms. Weber, where did your sister store her old reporter notebooks?”

  “The attic. A firetrap, I always told her.” She sighed heavily. “Do you need them?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “If it’ll help, please. Though I doubt you’ll be able to read her odd shorthand.” She pointed to the staircase. “Turn right at the top; the door leads to the attic. The light switch is on the left.”

  Suzanne followed Tony up two flights of narrow stairs. She looked around the attic, which was piled high with clear plastic forty-gallon bins holding hundreds of long, narrow reporter steno pads.

  “Holy shit,” Suzanne said. “Please tell me I don’t have to read all these.” She opened a box and flipped through one of the pads. “It’s in a foreign language.”

  Tony took the pad from her and laughed. “Shorthand. There are people at the Bureau who can decipher these.” He scanned the boxes. “All labeled, which is a plus.”

  “I assume you want the year when her first book came out, the notes from the file that was missing at the library.”

  “The year before the book came out would most likely have the notes from her research,” Tony said. “That, and the year Rachel McMahon disappeared, up through Kreig’s trial.”

  “Why wait years to k
ill her?” Suzanne asked as she looked at the dates on the bins. Each box covered six months of notes from Weber’s reporter days.

  “Opportunity, a stressor, a change in the killer’s status—for example, if he recently got out of prison. But one thing is clear to me, above all else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Her killer stalked her for weeks, if not months or even years. He knew her routines; he knew her friends; he knew what was important to her and under what circumstances she would meet someone alone. She was a risk taker by nature—just look at the types of crimes she reported and who she spoke with. She didn’t feel threatened because she always felt that she was on the side of truth. Here—I found the years we’re looking for. Help me with these.”

  Suzanne moved some of the boxes and Tony pulled out four. “We’ll start here.”

  “This is going to take a shitload of time,” she said.

  “You sound skeptical.”

  She was. “It seems like a long shot.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the information Rob Banker is going to leak for us will yield a suspect. But we can’t count on it. The fact that the McMahon files are gone from the archives tells me that the killer doesn’t want those found, because something inside points to him.”

  “Or he’s misleading us,” Suzanne said. “Sending us in a completely different direction.”

  “I never used to be a fan of joint task forces,” Tony admitted. “But they have one key benefit. It’s much easier to run investigations in different directions when you have multiple agencies focusing on what they do best. Let your friend Joe DeLucca handle that investigation, and I’ll work on the background. And you do what you do best.”

  At this point, Suzanne didn’t think she was needed.

  “What is it?” Tony asked.

  “You’ve taken over my case.” That sounded ridiculous. “I mean, you’re probably right, you have the experience, but you’re leading.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll do this part. This will help me come up with a profile that you can work with. You are tenacious, Suzanne. You know who’s lying and you get answers. I have no doubt that you’ll find who did this through smart police work. And the best way to do it is gain the advantage by understanding the psychology of the killer.”

  “And do you have anything yet?”

  “If I’m right, the killer is patient, meticulous, and driven by a higher purpose. Rosemary Weber was not his first victim, nor will she be his last.” Tony picked up two of the boxes and motioned for Suzanne to pick up the others. “I want to brief the analyst who will be going through these about what to look for; then I have a flight to catch. Something has been bugging me, and I’m hoping after Lucy and I go through my notes I’ll figure it out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  FBI Academy

  Lucy wanted to shower after she finished reading Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets. Tony had said that the facts were accurate, but it disgusted her how Weber sensationalized every aspect of the investigation, from digging into the investigators’ private lives to vilifying the parents and martyring young Peter McMahon. A collection of color pictures in the center of the book showed family portraits, pictures from the orgies taken by guests, investigators, and the trial. One particularly gut-wrenching picture showed the young Peter McMahon at his sister’s grave site, tears on his face, holding a stuffed dog.

  Peter would have been fourteen when this book came out, a difficult age for anyone, but that year he’d also lost his grandmother. Even if he’d changed his name to Peter Gray and didn’t live in the same state, he might not have been able to escape his past. And even if no one knew who he was, he did. In his heart, he knew that he was that crying child, that his family had been deeply flawed, and that his sister had been raped and murdered.

  There was no way of knowing if Peter had gotten help as a child, if he grew up with any semblance of normality, or if he had become twisted and vengeful over the years. She sent Sean an e-mail, hoping he had some news for her about Peter. Sean responded immediately.

  I confirmed what you already knew or suspected. And it appears that while he never legally changed his name to Peter Gray, he used that name when he registered as a freshman at a Newark high school. He moved back in with his mother when his grandmother died, but ran away a year later. Pilar McMahon remarried and relocated to Houston, Texas. Aaron McMahon has lived in Seattle from one month after Kreig was convicted. That’s all I have now—still working on it.

  Lucy had a list of every person mentioned in the book and how they were portrayed. The parents, Aaron and Pilar McMahon, would likely be the most upset by what Weber had written. It would be easy enough for the authorities to find out if one or both of them were in New York when Weber was murdered.

  Still, why now, ten years after the book was published? Lucy had checked the publisher’s Web site and while the book was still in print, there was no new version or reissue.

  Weber had both condemned and commended the police investigation by being critical of how the local police first responded to the missing-person call, and because they did not immediately question the parents’ story when they found evidence of a party at the house, but she also highlighted the methodical police work that went into disproving the McMahons’ statements and gathering physical evidence from Rachel’s bedroom. Fifteen years ago, forensics had seen a surge in importance, and the FBI used all their available resources to help local police figure out what had happened. A rookie cop, Bob Stokes, had been the first to the scene after the 911 call, and Weber had written that his concerns about the McMahons had been “dismissed” by his superiors until the FBI arrived.

  Tony had been mentioned throughout the book because he was the lead agent, but he was never directly quoted. All FBI quotes were attributed to the media information officer, Dominic Theissen.

  It was obvious to Lucy, after reading Tony’s notes, the reports, and the book, that any delay in finding Rachel’s murderer was directly related to the misinformation the McMahons had given police in the first critical twenty-four hours. However, evidence later proved that none of that mattered—Rachel had been killed hours after she was taken from her bedroom, likely before anyone in the house woke up.

  Except Peter McMahon.

  If Peter knew the facts of the case, he knew that his sister was alive when he didn’t find her in her bedroom at three in the morning. But every way Lucy thought about how the investigation could have gone even if the police were notified at 3:00 a.m., she didn’t see how they would have figured out Benjamin Kreig had kidnapped her or where he was holding her until after he’d taken her to the woods and killed her.

  But did Peter know that? Did he harbor guilt because he didn’t wake up his parents when he couldn’t find his sister? She hoped not; that kind of psychological self-torment could severely damage anyone, especially a kid who had grown up as Peter McMahon had.

  There were other people who might have reason to hate Rosemary Weber. She’d named several of the people who had been at the McMahon house that night and exposed their sex lives for their friends and family to read. Benjamin Kreig was still in prison, and he had family who claimed to have distanced themselves from him, but what if they had been ostracized in their towns because of how Weber portrayed them? She’d written that Kreig’s mother was “demanding and critical of everything Kreig did” and his father was an “alcoholic, known to pick up prostitutes.” In fact, Weber revealed that Kreig’s father had hired a prostitute for his son’s eighteenth birthday when he learned his son was still a virgin.

  One dysfunctional family after another.

  Lucy thanked God that she’d had two parents who loved her and her brothers and sisters. The Kincaids weren’t perfect, but they were family in the truest sense. Her oldest brother, Jack, had been the closest to their dad, both Army, until something happened and the two didn’t speak for twenty years. Their relationship was still strained, but at least now they were talking. And after Justin
was killed when he and Lucy were seven, Lucy’s sister Nelia had stopped speaking to her. Though she’d come back to the family, Nelia still avoided Lucy for reasons Lucy didn’t understand. While her psychologist mind told her Nelia grieved for Justin and unconsciously wished Lucy had died instead of her own son, Lucy didn’t understand why even now Nelia couldn’t overcome the pain. Guilt for her feelings? Pain when she saw Lucy?

  What if that was how Peter had been treated? What if his parents looked at him and he thought they’d rather have had him die than their daughter? If his parents blamed him in some way, verbally or not, a young boy would pick up on unspoken accusations born from grief and guilt.

  It was hard to assess the parents based on what she’d read, instead of watching them at each point in the investigation, but it was clear that they’d stymied the investigation and then come clean. What if they turned that self-loathing against their son? Blaming him for not speaking out at three in the morning? Had he harbored that pain all these years? What was he like today?

  Lucy had always had the nagging feeling that if only she’d done something different, Justin would still be alive. She’d often spent the night with her nephew, or when his parents worked late he came over to her house. But that week, she’d been sick. She didn’t remember why, but she hadn’t gone to school for three days. She wanted Justin to come and play with her because she was bored, but Nelia said no, she didn’t want Justin getting sick.

  Lucy’s cell phone rang and she grabbed it. It was Tony. “I’m in my office,” he said. “Are you done?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right there.”

  She grabbed the McMahon file and left.

  Several new agents were in the downstairs lounge watching different baseball games on the two televisions—one showed a game with the San Diego Padres, Lucy’s home team.

  Carter and Eddie were studying in the corner, one eye on the game. Carter whistled. “Kincaid! I thought you were a diehard fan.”

  “I had work to do.”

  “So do we.” Carter held up his book.

  “It’s only the bottom of the fourth; I’ll be back before the seventh inning.”

  “You say that now.”