Stalked (4 page)

As he spoke, his voice deepened and he held the edge of his desk, knuckles white, anger about the old case still evident.

Kidnapped from her bedroom.

In a low, emotion-filled voice, Tony said, “It was one of those cases that stay with you because it was senseless and so many lives were ruined.”

“Did you catch the killer?”

“Benjamin John Kreig. He's serving life without parole.” Tony rolled his shoulders and leaned back in his chair, purposefully relaxing. Lucy had often done the same thing. If she could relax her body, she could relax her mind.

But Lucy was focused on what Tony had said.

Kidnapped from her bedroom and murdered.

“Lucy?” Tony prodded.

“You know my nephew was killed when I was seven.”

By Tony's expression, he had known. Lucy didn't expect that her life was private, however much she tried to keep her past to herself. Just one more reminder that she'd never escape.

Lucy continued, “Justin was a few days younger than me, and sometimes I made him call me Aunt Lucy just to tease him. I was closer to him than my brothers and sisters, who were all older than me. My sister, Justin's mom, grieved so long, she couldn't stay in San Diego. She moved to Idaho and became a hermit for more than a decade. She called our mom once a week, but Mom was always so sad afterwards, because Nelia wasn't really living. Justin's murder changed all of us. Dillon, for example, changed his focus from sports medicine to forensic psychiatry. When I asked him why, he said he wanted to understand what happened to Justin.”

“Is that what drives you? Answers?”

“Maybe.”
No.

“Justice?”

Maybe.
“I can't sit by and let bad things happen.”

“If we can save one, we have succeeded.”

But there would always be evil in the world, and there would always be victims. “If it was just saving one person, I don't think I would be here,” Lucy said truthfully. “Putting killers and rapists in prison saves all their potential victims. It's not so much
justice
I crave as protecting innocents.”

Lucy asked, “Did you talk to Weber about your case?”

“No. She wrote most of the articles about the investigation and trial, and I didn't like how she sensationalized the tragedy. The parents deserved to be exposed, but they had lost their daughter, and they realized they were culpable.”

Her stomach turned at all the awful possibilities of parental involvement in the girl's death. “How so?”

“The McMahons were swingers. They had a party the night their daughter Rachel was killed. They lied about the nature of the party. The critical hours that Rachel was missing immediately after she was abducted were wasted because they misled first the responding officer, then the FBI. Their nine-year-old son was the one who finally told me about the party.”

Lucy frowned. “He knew what was going on?”

“Unfortunately. Once we confronted the parents and interviewed witnesses, we learned that Krieg hadn't been invited to the party but two guests saw him. At first he denied being there, so it was easy to bring him in for questioning. It took sixteen hours to break him, but he eventually led us to her body. Six days after he killed her.”

Lucy absorbed the information with both revulsion and interest. “And Weber wrote a book?”

“She focused on the sensational—the swinger parties, the history between Aaron and Pilar McMahon, the guests at the parties—and the worst was that, as far as I was concerned, she kept bringing it back to Rachel being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which was just asinine considering she was in her own bedroom in the middle of the night.”

Tony pounded his fist once on the desk, then looked at his clenched fingers and slowly stretched them. “I refused to help her after reading her articles,” he said, “but the FBI assigned a liaison, who worked with her to get her facts straight.”

“Do you think her murder has to do with one of her books?”

“More likely, whatever she's researching now.”

“You mean the Cinderella Strangler case.”

“Maybe. She might have been working on more than one. I'll find out. What specifically did she ask you?”

“She thought the whole case was ‘sexy'—her word, not mine. Teenage prostitutes being suffocated at underground raves, all connecting back to an online chat room. She wanted to drag the Barnetts through the dirt again, and they're just reclaiming their life.”

“Barnett?”

“A wealthy family in New York. They were the subject of the killer's obsession, and Weber said it made a good story. It wasn't a
story;
these were people's
lives.
Four girls died horrible deaths because of that psychopath. I wasn't about to help Weber with any of it.”

“I hear a but.”

“No buts, I would never have spoken to her.”

Tony looked at her pointedly. “But?”

“She asked me too many questions. I felt—she was digging around, trying to find out why I had been in New York, what my history was. And while much of my file is sealed, there's enough that's public.” She bit her lip.

“You were afraid she'd end up writing about you.”

Lucy took a deep breath and nodded. She had faced her past and survived, but exposing what had happened seven years ago to the public, in the media, would destroy the life she'd built.

“There are laws to protect you from that kind of disclosure.”

“I told her to go to Hell and hung up.”

Tony almost smiled, then grew serious. “Suzanne asked if I could come up to New York for a day or two, since I'm familiar with Weber's work. While I'm there, I'll dig around her files, see what I find. I don't think she had anything on your past, because Suzanne would have told you. But I'll make sure.”

“I appreciate that.”

Tony opened his bottom drawer, rummaged through some folders, and pulled one out. “Read this. It's the McMahon case, the one Weber wrote about in her first book. It'll give you all the background and information you need. It's my personal file, so it's not complete, but it includes my notes.”

“Those are probably enlightening.”

“I should have been more careful about what I wrote down. Notes can become part of the official record.”

She took the file.

Tony leaned back and looked over her head, contemplative. “I always wondered what happened to the boy, Peter McMahon. Rachel's brother.”

“You don't know?”

“The case was fifteen years ago. He's twenty-four now, a grown man. I know he went to live with his grandmother in Florida shortly after the murder. He was a brave kid, telling me what his parents were really doing at the party. Turned the case wide open.”

“Maybe I can track him down for you.”

“If it's not too much trouble. Find out where he's living, what he's doing with his life. Make sure he's okay.”

“Do you think he could be responsible for Rosemary Weber's murder?”

“No,” Tony said, too quickly. He backtracked a bit. “I doubt it. The book about his sister came out ten years ago. Why now?”

“Because he was fourteen when the book came out and couldn't do anything about it?”

“There had to be another reason,” Tony said. “But maybe if you find him, we'll have the answers.”

Lucy wondered why Tony didn't use FBI resources to track down Peter McMahon, but before she could ask he said, “You should read Weber's books. Start with the book about the McMahon investigation and go from there. According to the FBI Media Office, they were vetted for accuracy.

“Now,” he continued, “you came down here because you wanted to talk to me about something.”

She'd almost forgotten about Laughlin. “It's not important.”

Tony didn't say anything, but his expression told her he expected her to talk.

“It really isn't important,” she repeated. “Rather junior high.”

“Try me.”

“I just have this sense that Agent Laughlin doesn't like me.” She smiled sheepishly. “See? Junior high.”

“If it was someone else, I might think that, but your instincts are usually good. Was it something specific, or a vague feeling?”

Lucy considered how to answer. “I suppose there was an undercurrent of veiled hostility from the beginning—which I dismissed because I was nervous.”

“Nervous about what?”

“Where do I start?” She shrugged. “You've read my file, I know all the instructors have, and the hoops I jumped through to get here.”

“Some people might wonder why you were willing to jump through the hoops, considering you have many career options. Is that what you're thinking?”

“What if someone thought I wanted this
too
much, and questioned why. I've thought the same thing. But if the last few months have taught me anything, I let my goals define me for too long. Had my application been denied, I'd have been disappointed, but I would have been okay. But people see what's on the surface.”

“You suspect he doesn't trust you.”

Lucy hadn't said that, but immediately she realized Tony was right. “He's been professional, but there's a different subtext when he's with others. Some of my friends have noticed it, too. I don't have the same feeling about the other field counselors.”

“Trust your instincts, Lucy. Continue to perform well and there's nothing he can do. Training is just as much a mind game as it is learning the rules and regs and working as a team. You'll be dealing with agents like Laughlin across all agencies. Consider this a test.”

It was the answer she'd expected, though she didn't like it. She was tired of being tested when she couldn't prepare, when she didn't even know
what
she was being tested
on.

“And,” Tony continued, “if he goes too far, let me know.” She opened her mouth to object but he raised his hand. “Only if it becomes serious. I think you'll be fine.”

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Lucy made herself a quick salad from the salad bar and grabbed a couple rolls before sitting down with her friends at what had become their table. Everyone was there except Lance Orozco and Alexis Sanchez.

Lucy looked at their empty plates. “Sorry—I got sidetracked.”

“The Golden Girl,” Carter Nix teased.

“Studying again?” Reva said. “Trying to graduate top of the class, no doubt.”

Was her drive that obvious? “Not studying,” she said. “Talking.”

“Any good gossip?” Reva leaned forward. “Why were you pulled out of PT?”

Lucy didn't want to talk about Rosemary Weber or the call from Suzanne. “I can't talk about it. But it has nothing to do with training,” she added quickly. They were all a bit paranoid about being under the microscope while on campus; she didn't want her friends to think she was doing anything behind their backs.

“Stop being so nosy, Penrose,” Eddie Acosta said. He and Carter were the only two in the class who had known each other before they joined the Academy. They'd been in Marine basic training together, served ten years in the military in separate divisions, and ended up at the same college through the GI Bill.

“Where'd Oz and Alexis go?” Lucy asked.

“Oz is playing video games in the lounge,” Jason Aragon said. Jason was a prosecutor from Los Angeles and the oldest of their group at thirty-five. He was also a reservist in the Coast Guard, which Lucy thought was fascinating, though he didn't talk much about himself. There were some whispers that he'd been in a gang in his youth, and he had a faded tat he didn't talk about, either.

“And Sanchez is talking to her daughter,” Carter said. He glanced at his watch. “Speaking of which, I need to call home in fifteen minutes, Shelley likes me to call before dinner to talk to the girls.” Carter was from Denver, married with two daughters. He talked to them every night.

As Carter bussed his tray, Eddie said, “Hey, I'll meet you in the computer lab at twenty-one hundred.”

Carter gave him a thumbs-up and left.

“Ready for the gun range tomorrow?” Margo asked. They were having a qualification pre-test. It wasn't counted toward their firearms score but was their first assessment since day two. Their instructor expected everyone to have improved their scores between the day two test and now.

“Firearms, no problem,” Lucy said between bites. “I'm not looking forward to the driving test Monday.”

“Driving?” Reva laughed. “One of the easiest tests, from what I heard.”

“I don't like driving,” Lucy confessed. She felt sheepish and wished she hadn't said anything.

“You're not tested on the course,” Eddie said. “Even if you screw up, as long as you have a driver's license and can steer a vehicle that's all that's required. Monday is simply defensive driving.”

Margo said, “Don't psych yourself out, you'll be fine.”

“I think it's about time to hit the books,” Eddie said. He left with Jason. That left Lucy with Margo and Reva.

Lucy found herself relaxing with her group. There were seven of them who had loosely banded together, and while others in her class of thirty-four sometimes ate with them or hung out after hours, the core seven gave Lucy a much-needed sense of friendship and belonging. It had been something she'd missed out on in college because of the rape.

“You don't have to wait for me to finish; I was late,” Lucy said.

“I don't mind,” Margo said. She eyed Lucy carefully. “Are you sure you're okay?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. And she was. After talking to Tony, she had put Laughlin in one compartment, Weber's murder in another, and her past safely locked away, for now. She looked forward to reading Tony's notes on the Rachel McMahon homicide, and maybe she could track down Rachel's brother and give Tony peace of mind. Lucy had no doubt that going through Rosemary Weber's files would be difficult, and she hoped to have good news for him when he returned in two days.