Allison Brennan - Stalked

But I still, sometimes, wonder.

Though I no longer answered to “Peter,” I was glad my name wasn’t in the article. I wasn’t even mentioned.

The article ended with:

Rosemary Weber was researching her next book, about the Cinderella Strangler who suffocated young women at underground parties during a four-month stretch in New York City last winter. Police had no comment as to whether her murder had anything to do with her research.

I remembered the dead reporter. Not as a person, but as words. Her newspaper articles were talked about by everyone. Even though Grams had done her best to protect me, Weber’s byline was everywhere. But it was the book that hurt the most. She told the world that I had been the one who exposed my parents as lying to police. I didn’t care that people knew, but she made me out to be brave, when I felt smaller than a speck of dust. She printed a picture of me at Rachel’s funeral-alone. Grams had been standing right next to me, but the angle of the picture had cut her out, giving Weber an iconic image that still haunted me.

Alone.

Suddenly I didn’t want the newspaper in my house. As if just its presence would bring back despair and fear. As if the paper could somehow transmit my location to the woman I’d been hiding from for years.

I left my apartment, walked to the alley, and threw the newspaper into a garbage can.

I didn’t feel any better.

Something had changed. Maybe I had. Reality invaded my home, reminding me that I didn’t exist. That Gray Manning was a work of fiction.

I went back to my apartment and waited for the other shoe to drop.

New York City

Kip Todd lived in a small studio loft in SoHo. Suzanne met Joe DeLucca and two uniformed NYPD officers outside the building. “No doorman, manager gave me a key,” Joe said. He ordered the uniforms to split and take front and rear entrances. “Second floor.”

They took the stairs up. Joe knocked on the door. “NYPD, open up.”

Nothing. No response, no sound of movement.

Joe glanced at Suzanne. “Ready?”

She nodded.

He put the key in. “It’s nice working with you on a case.” He grinned. “We should do it more often.”

“Just watch my ass,” she said, then moaned when he laughed. “You know what I meant.

“FBI and NYPD,” Suzanne said. “Kip Todd, we’re coming in.”

They cautiously entered the one-room apartment, guns drawn. Joe checked the closet and bathroom while Suzanne looked in the cabinets in the small kitchen space. The bed was a futon. There weren’t many places to hide, and Kip wasn’t in any of them.

They holstered their weapons and looked around. The studio was L shaped, with two walls of windows. Small, but with new hardwood floors, a modern kitchen, and a bathroom not much bigger than an airport stall.

Kip Todd didn’t have much stuff-a futon, end table, kitchen table with two chairs, and desk. The place was tidy, even the desk, though it was obvious someone had cleaned up and cleared out quickly. The printer was still there, with a cord that had connected to a missing computer. Phone cable for the Internet. A cell phone charger had been left behind.

Suzanne e-mailed her boss and asked for a warrant to track Kip Todd through his cell phone GPS. “It’ll take a couple hours, but we’ll get it,” she told Joe.

Joe pulled on gloves and was going through Kip Todd’s desk drawers. “He didn’t grab everything,” he said.

He pulled out a scrapbook. Every page was well designed, with care in picture placement. The first few pages were pictures of Kip Todd and his two older sisters, according to the labels.

“According to the information Noah Armstrong sent,” Suzanne said, “Kip and Camille were eleven months apart.”

After a half-dozen pages, newspaper articles and police reports replaced the photos. The headlines told the story.

TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL ABDUCTED FROM PARK

SEARCH PARTIES STILL LOOKING FOR TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL MISSING SINCE SUNDAY

POLICE SAY THE RACHEL MCMAHON KIDNAPPING IS UNCONNECTED TO GIRL MISSING SINCE SUNDAY

The early newspaper articles were carefully clipped and preserved in the book. Passages had been underlined. Other than articles about Rachel McMahon that mentioned Camille Todd’s disappearance, there were no other articles about McMahon or her family.

A year after Camille’s disappearance, Todd had pasted in another article.

BODY FOUND IN WASHINGTON PARK RESERVE MAY BE MISSING GIRL

As the articles told the story of Camille Todd’s body being found and identified, someone had blacked out paragraphs. Suzanne did a quick search on her smartphone for one of the articles and found out that all the paragraphs that had been blacked out related to comparisons between Camille Todd and Rachel McMahon. In fact, as the journalistic story continued, more and more dealt with rehashing Rachel’s murder and less about Camille’s disappearance.

According to the police reports, there was never a viable suspect in Camille’s abduction and murder. However, the autopsy indicated that she’d been dead only two weeks before her body was discovered.

Joe was disgusted. “What guy keeps the autopsy report of his sister? There’s pictures-wait, these are evidence photos.”

“He could have stolen them.” Suzanne turned the page. The last page in the scrapbook was really two pages, torn from a copy of Rosemary Weber’s book Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets.

Suzanne’s blood ran cold.

One week before Rachel was kidnapped from her bedroom while her parents swapped sex partners, another young girl was abducted. Camille Todd, twelve, was playing at a neighborhood park on a cold but sunny Sunday afternoon when she went to the public bathroom. No one saw her alive again.

Officer Robert Stokes of Newark was the first responder to both 911 calls. “We immediately ruled out any connection between Rachel and Camille. Camille was taken from a public park in broad daylight, and Rachel was taken in the middle of night from her bedroom.” Stokes was proven correct in his analysis after Rachel’s killer was identified as Benjamin John Kreig. Kreig had an airtight alibi for Camille’s disappearance.

“The first seventy-two hours are the most critical in any stranger abduction,” FBI Media Information Officer Dominic Theissen said. “Camille had been missing for a week when Rachel was abducted. We always hope that these victims are found alive, but after a week the chances are less than one percent. We focused our resources where we felt they would do the most good.”

Unfortunately, both girls met tragic ends. Rachel’s body was found six days after she was raped and murdered; Camille Todd was found nearly a year later.

“Theissen and Stokes were involved in both investigations,” Suzanne said. “What are the chances that Tony Presidio was as well?”

“Look at this,” Joe said. He pulled out a second scrapbook. This book was thicker and a complete mess.

“Shit,” Suzanne mumbled when she opened it. “It’s everything about Rachel McMahon and her family.”

“There are pictures of her brother from what? Junior high? High school?”

“That’s when it starts.” She turned pages and watched as Peter McMahon grew up. There were handwritten notes about where he lived and his routine.

“Todd has been following him for a long time.”

“It makes no fucking sense.”

“I’m not a shrink, but maybe Todd felt a kinship with Peter because they both lost their sisters to violence.”

“I don’t think it’s kinship. I think this guy is crazy.”

“We met him. He’s not crazy. Methodical and obsessed, maybe.”