CHAPTER TWELVE
New York City
Rob Banker was seventy and, aside from wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, looked surprisingly fit for being a smoker. He agreed to meet with Tony and Suzanne provided they talk outside where he could light up.
Suzanne hated cigarette smoke. She’d smoked through high school and college, quitting only when she entered the FBI Academy. Being around cigarettes, even after ten years, always made her crave just one. But one would quickly turn into a pack and she’d be back to her old habits.
“Rosie was a good egg,” Rob said. “If I was twenty years younger.” He took a long drag on his Marlboro.
“This conversation is off-the-record, Banker,” Suzanne said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re writing articles for the damn paper and I don’t want my questions getting in print.”
He grinned. “And I don’t want to be decked.”
Suzanne glared at the reporter. “I’ll bring you to the Bureau and you’ll miss your deadline.”
“Fine, off-the-record.” He exhaled, and let out the smoke in a long, angled puff.
“She had a meeting scheduled with you the night she died,” Suzanne said. She didn’t know for certain that it was Banker, but he’d either confirm or deny.
“She canceled on me. We were supposed to meet at nine thirty at Gilly’s, the bar where we usually meet.”
“Any specific reason for the meeting?”
He shrugged. “To talk. Rosemary doesn’t trust a lot of people, but she and I go way back, and she bounced ideas off me. She called Monday morning and said she wanted to talk about the book—”
“The book she’s writing about the Cinderella Strangler,” Tony said to confirm.
Rob grinned. “I coined the phrase.”
Suzanne glared at him. “The victims were suffocated.”
He shrugged, puffed on his cigarette a couple times, took his time to answer. “I said as much in every article. It’s what sticks. And it gave the story legs, helped get the word out to potential victims to watch out.”
Suzanne wanted to argue with him, but Tony asked, “Did she tell you why she was canceling?”
“Not really. I wish I’d asked her.” He seemed sincere.
“What did she say?”
“Only that she was checking out a lead on an informant.”
“Informant? Like a criminal informant?”
“No—she meant someone in law enforcement who was willing to talk off the record.”
“Don’t you call those people sources?”
“Usually, but Rosie had a sense of humor. She liked to call cops informants.”
“So she was meeting with a cop?”
“Not necessarily—could have been a secretary, a dispatcher, even a janitor, anyone who worked for NYPD, really. Or maybe, because the case was federal, someone in your own house.”
Suzanne doubted that, but Tony looked like he believed it. “Anything else?” Tony asked. “Did she have any sense that she was being followed, that she could be in danger?”
“Not that she told me. But I only talked to her a couple times a month. Her sister would probably know more.”
They’d already asked Bridget Weber the same question. Suzanne said, “What about threatening letters?”
“Nothing she shared with me,” he said. “I assume you’ve talked to her new assistant.”
Suzanne nodded but didn’t give the reporter any other details. She gave Rob her card. “Let me know if anything comes up.”
“I’d like to run a quote from you for the article I’m writing on the investigation.”
“I suppose ‘no comment’ isn’t good enough.”
“Nope.” He put out the stub of his cigarette in a can that was just for the smokers.
“I don’t have authorization to talk to you.”
“Can you confirm a couple things?”
She growled, “Depends.”
“I’ll make it easy. ‘A source at the Bureau confirmed…’”
“Still depends.”
“DeLucca has the case.”
“Yes.”
“She was robbed.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t think it was a robbery. You think it was related to the book she’s writing.”
“No comment.”
“Come on, Suzanne; give me something.”
“I’m not playing Clue with you.”
Tony said, “I’ll give you something, but you need to word it the way I tell you.”
Suzanne didn’t like Tony stepping in without consulting her, even though he did have seniority.
“Sure,” Rob said. He took out his notepad.
“Write: ‘A source high up in the Bureau said Weber’s killer took her jewelry and purse in an effort to mislead police as to the motive for the murder. According to an FBI profiler, the murder was personal and the victim knew her killer. The jewelry is probably at the bottom of Flushing Bay, the source said.’”
“Okay, okay,” Rob said, writing frantically. “And is it related to the Cinderella Strangler case? A relative of one of the victims?”
“Where the hell did you get that stupid idea?” Suzanne said, her temper exploding. Where do reporters come up with this shit?
Tony said, “Rob, listen to me—don’t say anything else. Just that the police know it was staged to look like a robbery.”
“Okay, off-the-record, was it someone related to this book she was writing?”
“No,” Tony said. “It wasn’t.”
That threw Rob for a loop. “Then who?”
“If your story tomorrow leads to us identifying the killer,” Tony said, “I’ll make sure our media officer talks to you first.”
Rob was skeptical but seemed to trust Tony.
“I’ll hold you to that, Agent Presidio.”
Suzanne and Tony left and she said, “Why’d you play his game?”
“I wasn’t playing his game. The killer wants us to think it was a robbery. If he knows we know it wasn’t, he’ll get rid of the ring in an attempt to prove it was. Tomorrow, after the paper comes out.”
Suzanne snapped her fingers. “And because we have a description of the ring out to all the jewelers and pawnshops, we may get a call.”
“Hopefully a call while the guy we want is still in the building, or at least caught on tape.”
“Okay, you win that round. But I still don’t like reporters.”
Suzanne drove Tony back to Rosemary Weber’s house. Her sister was home, and after introductions she allowed Tony to go through Rosemary’s office again, even though the police had been over it yesterday.
“What do you hope to find?” Suzanne asked. She still wasn’t sure why Tony had wanted to come here.
“I can’t imagine that Weber put all her notes in the manuscript archives.”
“Isn’t that the purpose? To archive all stages of the book, from notes to rough draft to final draft and every copy in between?” At least that’s what Suzanne had always thought.
“Yes, but she was a reporter first. She would have notepads and thoughts that wouldn’t make it into the file.”
“If they’re old, wouldn’t she throw them away?”
Tony closed the last file cabinet. “They’re definitely not here.” He went back to the kitchen where Bridget was making coffee. “Ms. Weber, where did your sister store her old reporter notebooks?”
“The attic. A firetrap, I always told her.” She sighed heavily. “Do you need them?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“If it’ll help, please. Though I doubt you’ll be able to read her odd shorthand.” She pointed to the staircase. “Turn right at the top; the door leads to the attic. The light switch is on the left.”
Suzanne followed Tony up two flights of narrow stairs. She looked around the attic, which was piled high with clear plastic forty-gallon bins holding hundreds of long, narrow reporter steno pads.
“Holy shit,” Suzanne said. “Please tell me I don’t have to read all these.” She opened a box and flipped through one of the pads. “It’s in a foreign language.”
Tony took the 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.”