Stalked - By Allison Brennan Page 0,59
He came to my apartment and started talking about how nothing we do matters if we can’t save the innocents. We argued, and he left, disappeared for two days. When Tony left for New York the other day, he canceled all his appointments. I thought he’d gone on a bender.”
“Did he?” Kate asked.
“Maybe—he had been drinking—and after Lucy told me he was digging into the McMahon file again and wanting to find Peter, the victim’s brother, I thought he was obsessed. But when we learned the files were missing in New York, and the file in his office, I think he really was on to something. Then I found a letter of resignation on his computer, dated a month ago, but I learned from Chief O’Neal that he turned in something different. I found the original on his computer.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He slid it across the table. Dillon and Kate read it together.
Kate said, “He was resigning?”
“The original letter was dated two months ago, but I spoke with Chief O’Neal and she said she never received that version. This letter was written three weeks ago, and she agreed to allow him to stay until the end of the year.”
“Why December 21?” Kate asked, “That seems arbitrary.”
Dillon gave Hans the note back. “It’s the day Lucy will graduate.”
Hans nodded. “He’s been working with Lucy on a variety of things, nothing active, but he asked her to look for Peter McMahon. Not in so many words, but Lucy ran with it, contacted Sean, and Sean and Patrick have been working on it. Now that file is missing, all of Rosemary Weber’s files on the case are missing, and someone took Lucy’s notes from her bedroom. And not only was Weber killed, but two cops are dead—Bob Stokes, the responding officer, and Tony.”
“Did the autopsy show anything suspicious?” Dillon asked.
“Not yet, but we’re running a full and detailed toxicology screen, and I sent his Scotch bottle and glass to the lab to be analyzed. They’re rushing the tests; I’ll have something by Monday morning, if not sooner.”
Kate stared at him, her blue eyes wide with shock. “You think there’s a traitor at Quantico.”
The blunt statement weighed heavily on Hans’s heart. He expected danger from the outside; danger from within tested his faith in the Bureau. Their hiring system had attempted to keep Lucy Kincaid out, yet right now she was one of the few whom Hans trusted with his life.
“I’m thinking we need to dig deeper,” he said solemnly. “And it needs to be off-the-books.”
He continued, “Patrick called me before I came here. He talked to Bob Stokes’s partner and learned that Stokes had been looking into the death of a retired FBI agent, Dominic Theissen, who died a week before Stokes’s heart attack.”
“Theissen was the media officer in Newark fifteen years ago,” Kate said. “The only one authorized to speak to the press.”
“I knew him well. He tried to rein in Weber, but once the McMahons’ lifestyle became public, there was no going back. He vetted the facts that were in her book. Apparently, they kept in touch over the years.”
“The facts were correct?” Dillon asked.
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t focus on the scandal.”
“How did Theissen die?” Kate asked.
“Subway accident. Almost two months ago. A fight broke out at a subway station in Queens, and in the scuffle he slipped and fell on the tracks. No one was arrested, the police ruled it an accident, but Bob Stokes had asked for the security footage.”
“Did he find anything?”
“Not that anyone knows,” Hans said.
“Why was a New Jersey city detective investigating a possible crime in New York? Did he have information he didn’t share with NYPD?”
“According to Stokes’s partner, he’d received an e-mail from Theissen two days before Theissen died. That’s all we know. Though he requested the tapes, we don’t know that he viewed them. Patrick talked to his widow and received permission to borrow Stokes’s personal computer. Something in that e-mail from Theissen had Stokes concerned, but he didn’t share what it was with his partner or his wife.”
Dillon said, “His death may not be connected at all.”
Hans shrugged. “Maybe, but Stokes was in New York the day before he died. Just like Tony.”
“And they both died of heart attacks?” Dillon asked.
Hans nodded, and Kate said, “You don’t think Tony’s death was natural.”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. He had no proof. “I have to look into it. There are too many