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 kill 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