was a person of interest. Both McMahons had lied to police about the nature of the party on Saturday night and whether any of their guests knew the children were home. Other inconsistencies in the McMahons’ statements had been highlighted by Tony in his own notes. He wrote:
Their daughter is missing yet they both lied about the orgy. Neither admitted, until confronted with evidence and witness statements, that they hosted a sex party for ten invited guests, but a total of fifteen people had access to the home that evening. Originally, Mr. McMahon said that it was a neighborhood BBQ, stating as much to both responding officers, the local media, and in his initial statement to the FBI. Mrs. McMahon said she thought her daughter was trying to get back at her because of an earlier argument, but the longer Rachel was missing, the more distraught she became.
The press had gone after the parents after it was leaked that they were swingers. A new article penned by Rosemary Weber appeared every morning, each one putting a more unsavory and sensational twist on their lives. Nothing was held back. How much was true and how much exaggeration Lucy couldn’t tell, but Tony’s notes showed deep contempt because of the delay in information coming from the parents. Ultimately, however, their obstructions couldn’t have saved Rachel from her fate, because evidence proved she’d been dead within hours after her abduction.
Hard physical evidence had led police to Benjamin John Kreig. Kreig had been stalking Mrs. McMahon after he’d attended one of their sex parties a year before. Two weeks before Rachel’s disappearance, he’d confronted Mrs. McMahon about hooking up again, and she said it disturbed her. She told her husband, but neither McMahon had seen him at the party. Two witnesses said he’d been there-they both saw him in the family room, which was adjacent to the staircase that led to Rachel’s bedroom-but no one else saw him.
Police rightfully questioned why it took evidence of his guilt to prompt Mrs. McMahon’s memory of the conversation.
But what was the most heartbreaking for Lucy to read was the statement of Peter McMahon, the nine-year- old brother of the victim. Tony, who had a degree in child psychology, interviewed him. The first part of the interview was Peter recounting what he and Rachel did until she left the attic playroom just before ten the evening she was kidnapped. Tony noted that Peter McMahon’s statement was consistent in all the key facts.
Supervisory Special Agent Tony Presidio, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newark Field Office
Annette K. Frederick, Washington Department of Social and Health Services
Peter James McMahon, brother of Rachel McMahon, 9
TP: You told the police officer who came to your house that you went to your sister’s room in the middle of the night. Why?
PETER: Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night I go to Rachel’s room.
TP: Not your mom and dad?
PETER: (unresponsive)
AF: Nothing you say here is going to get you into any trouble. I promise you, Peter, you did nothing wrong.
PETER: Rachel always lets me sleep on her floor if I have a nightmare.
TP: Do you have a lot of nightmares?
PETER: Sometimes. Sometimes I just wake up because I have to pee, but I don’t like my room because the branches from the tree next door scratch my window in the wind. Rachel’s room doesn’t have any trees outside.
TP: You fell asleep in the attic?
PETER: Dad made it a real room, and we have a TV and video games and beanbag chairs.
TP: Sounds like a great place to hang out.
PETER: I guess. The rain was really loud, though. That’s what woke me up.
TP: And you went to Rachel’s room?
PETER: She wasn’t there. I thought she went to Jessie’s house and didn’t tell me.
TP: Why did you think that?
PETER: Because Rachel wanted to spend the night there, but Jessie was grounded.
TP: Does Rachel sneak out of the house a lot?
PETER: (unresponsive)
TP: Rachel isn’t in any trouble. I promise you, cross my heart, I won’t get Rachel in trouble. It’s important we have all the facts so we can find her.
PETER: She did it a couple times. But she always came back before Mom and Dad woke up. So I went to her bed to wait for her.
TP: When you walked into the room, what did you feel?
PETER: I don’t know.
TP: Was the room warm? Cold? Was her bed warm?
PETER: Oh. She left her window open a little. I closed it because her room was freezing.
TP: Is that how she sneaks out? Through the window?
PETER: No-she uses the back door.
TP: You thought she was at her friend Jessie’s house. You didn’t go to your mom and dad?
PETER: (unresponsive)
TP: Peter, why didn’t you go to your parents?
PETER: I did, in the morning, when she didn’t come back.
TP: But not to their room.
PETER: I didn’t want to bother them. In case they had someone spend the night.
TP: Has that happened before?
PETER: Yeah.
Lucy’s heart went out to the boy Peter McMahon had been, but her instincts told her this boy was now twenty-four and had had a tragedy heaped onto his dysfunctional upbringing. There had been no signs of physical abuse, but emotional abuse and neglect could be just as powerful a negative force in a child’s life.
Tony had a lot of private notes on the McMahon case. It wasn’t unusual for agents to keep a second set of private files. They often only contained copies of the official records, but many of the investigators wrote down their personal observations. Technically, anything written down while investigating a crime should be part of the record, but Lucy knew that wasn’t always the case.
Lucy now understood why Tony had been melancholy thinking about the boy. He had no one to protect him while all this was going on, no one to shield him from the evil in his life. Violence was part of society, but society tried to protect the young and innocent from the results. And when that failed, hope seemed to be lost.
Lucy sat at her computer and quickly input all the pertinent information about Peter McMahon. Tony had included everything in the file except Peter’s Social Security number, but Lucy didn’t need that. She had his parents-Aaron and Pilar McMahon-his date of birth, and where he was born. Logically, Tony would have either contacted friends of his involved in the case or used the FBI database, and maybe that’s how he found out that the father was in Seattle and the mother had remarried and was living in Texas. Both far away from New Jersey.
Tony had scribbled a note that Margaret Gray had died ten years ago at the age of seventy-nine, and Tony had said that he thought Peter had gone to live with the grandmother in Florida. What had happened to him after? Lucy quickly learned that Pilar’s maiden name was Gray, so Margaret was Peter McMahon’s maternal grandmother. Further checking confirmed the information.
There was nothing on Peter McMahon that she could find in New Jersey or Florida.
Seven years ago, after Lucy’s all-too-public ordeal, she’d considered changing her name. But more than exposure, she feared losing her sense of identity. She could have easily slipped into a made-up life in an effort to forget who she was and what had happened. But changing her name would have been a Band-Aid, and she would never forget what had happened.
Over the years, she’d encountered many victims who had opted to clean the slate with a new identity. Sometimes it was merely changing their first name or going back to their maiden name after an abusive relationship. What if the parents or grandmother wanted to give Peter a clean slate? To help him forget what had happened?
She shivered and didn’t know why. Except-a child of nine would always remember. She would never forget her nephew Justin. They’d been together nearly every day for years, because her mother babysat him while his
