Wednesday evening a headline made me stop for the first time in the three years I’d been living in Brooklyn.
REPORTER AND AUTHOR ROSEMARY WEBER MURDERED
I stared for a long minute, long enough for the cashier to get antsy and tell me how much the paper cost.
I handed him the money and took the paper. I didn’t read it on the subway-I wanted to read it in private.
I teach third grade at one of those schools people want to forget exist. Schools where kids don’t have enough to eat, where parents forget they have responsibilities, where most of the kids only have one parent, or grandparent, to care. Schools where survival is as important as breathing. But the eight-and nine-year-olds I teach still had hope. And my job, as much as making sure they could read and had basic math skills, was to maintain their hope for one more year. Maybe I could do it so well because I remembered third grade better than any other year in school. While some kids forgot the time evil touched them, I lived with it every day. Vibrant and alive.
I knew when one of my students was being abused.
I knew when one of my students didn’t have dinner or breakfast.
I knew when one of my students had seen darkness like I had.
And even amidst all that, I gave them hope. Like Grams saved me, I tried to save them.
In my three years, I’ve had ninety-eight students. I remember all their names, from Abraham to Zachary, Anne to Zoey. Nine of them are dead. Six dropped out of school before sixth grade. Twelve moved on to other schools, most because they were removed from violent homes and put in the system. And one is in juvenile hall for murder. He was eleven when he killed his neighbor for no reason he ever shared with me.
But I knew the reason. He’d lost all hope.
I took the Times home with me, to my small one-bedroom in a pre-war Bay Ridge building. I’d lived in the apartment since moving to New York, and I didn’t plan on moving anytime soon. I was close to the water and even had a view of the bridge from one window. Bay Ridge was quiet and a good place to relax after spending the day teaching in East Brooklyn.
Somehow, bringing the paper across my threshold saddened me. As if I’d lost something or violated the sanctity of my home. My appetite was gone as well. I opened a can of diet soda and laid the paper on the table.
I stared at it for several minutes while sipping my drink until, resigned, I sat down and read the story.
I read the article, penned by a reporter named Robert Banker, twice. I might have memorized it, because some sentences kept repeating in my head.
Former Newark reporter and true crime author Rosemary Weber was stabbed to death Tuesday night at Citi Field while the Mets played to victory.
The police had no clues, no leads, and were investigating her murder with the FBI.
Ms. Weber is the author of three true crime books but is best known for her number one bestseller, Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets, which detailed the tragic rape, kidnapping, and murder of eleven-year-old Rachel McMahon and exposed her parents to charges of emotional abuse and neglect.
And because no newspaper could refrain from repeating the drama that had been my life for the first nine years, Banker brought up my parents’ lifestyle:
Aaron and Pilar McMahon had been swingers, putting on elaborate sex parties for friends and neighbors while their two children played upstairs. It was one of their “friends” who killed their daughter, but their lies to police stymied the investigation for days.
I often wondered what would have happened differently had my parents told the truth that morning.
I often wondered if I could have saved Rachel if I’d called 911 at three in the morning when I found she wasn’t in her bed. Intellectually, I knew she died early that morning and even if I had called and if my parents hadn’t lied Rachel would have still died before Benjamin John Kreig was found.
I had to believe that, or I would have killed myself.
Grams told me, before she died, that Rachel had been killed shortly after her abduction and nothing I could have done would have changed that outcome. She knew I harbored deep guilt and anger over what had happened that night and the subsequent days. I believed Grams, because I had to or go insane.
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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
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.