Stalked lk-5

by Allison Brennan

  “If you’d talked to Lucy, you’d think the same thing. If this guy’s harassing her-”

  “You’ll stay out of it,” Patrick said. “Don’t make waves, not now.”

  It irritated Sean that Patrick thought he’d jeopardize Lucy’s career. “I’m doing what she asked. She can use the information as she sees fit.”

  Patrick hadn’t been happy when Sean first started dating his sister, but Sean supposed if he had a younger sister he’d be protective as well. Patrick seemed to have adjusted over the last few months, which was a relief, since they’d been friends long before Sean fell in love with Lucy.

  Sean continued, “I think she talked to Kate, and whatever happened, Lucy is now more concerned. She didn’t give me the details, but there’s something weird going on. I trust her instincts.”

  “So if Lucy knows his history, she can profile him and adjust the way she interacts.”

  Sean nodded. “That’s how Lucy would handle it.”

  “Maybe it’s you he has the problem with,” Patrick teased. “From your old days.”

  Any other time, Sean would have laughed-it was common knowledge that he’d been a gifted hacker and now was hired to test Internet security for companies and governments. But he was worried about one crime no one was supposed to know about-yet at least one person did. Five more months and the statute of limitations would be up, and then Sean could breathe easier.

  “Didn’t know you were so touchy,” Patrick said.

  “You might be right, but it might not be me, specifically. Remember how Noah Armstrong hated me because of RCK?”

  Patrick glanced at him with mock surprise. “You mean he likes you now?”

  Sean glared at Patrick. Special Agent Noah Armstrong wasn’t Sean’s favorite person. Whether Noah admitted it or not, it was obvious he was infatuated with Lucy, and that irritated Sean. But they had called a truce, and Sean respected Noah. “Regarding Laughlin,” Sean continued, “he could very well have a problem with Lucy because of another Kincaid. No military service, but I can go a little deeper. The sooner I find the connection the better for Lucy. Information is power.”

  “Good thing, it keeps our bills paid. If you need my help, let me know.” Patrick waved at an attractive tall and lanky blonde who smiled as she approached them. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Brandy. We’re playing racquetball.”

  “Brandy Dale?”

  “Yep.” Patrick had been seeing the daughter of one of their former clients, but Sean hadn’t met Brandy yet.

  “We should go out this weekend, the four of us.”

  Patrick shook his head. “It’s not going to last.”

  “You know that?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately I do. I’ll tell you later.” Patrick smiled and met Brandy halfway. He kissed her warmly; then they walked toward the racquetball courts.

  Very strange. And it threw a wrench in Sean’s life-he’d been counting on Patrick disappearing this weekend so he and Lucy could have some much-needed alone time. But Sean couldn’t worry about his partner’s love life or this weekend.

  Sean finished his basic workout, then ran three miles on the treadmill and considered what Patrick had said about why Laughlin might have an issue with Lucy. By the time he got home an hour later, he had an idea based on the fact that Lucy didn’t want to talk to Kate. There must be history between Laughlin and Kate, and it would have to go back to Kate’s rookie years in the FBI, long before she’d met the Kincaid family. It was a good place to start.

  After his shower, Sean pulled Laughlin’s credit reports for the last fifteen years so he could piece together his life in the Bureau. The records provided enough of a skeleton of Rich Laughlin’s financial history to give Sean more paths to follow.

  After graduating from Northwestern, Laughlin worked fifteen months at the Chicago accounting firm of Glade and Marsh. They specialized in corporate audits. No surprise that the FBI would recruit from there. How did Laughlin come across their radar? Work on a case that turned criminal? Testify in court? Sean made a note.

  Laughlin did his time at the Academy but maintained a Chicago residence for several years, even though he never moved back to the Windy City. Why? Had he planned to return? Have a roommate? A lover? There was no record of any marriage in Illinois, Missouri, or Michigan. He finally sold the condo four years after he left.

  After he graduated from the Academy, he’d been assigned to the L.A. field office and took up residence in the San Fernando Valley. Two years later his credit profile shifted east, first D.C. for a short time, then Alexandria, Virginia. Sean did a quick property search and learned Richard Douglas Laughlin had owned a town house in Alexandria and still owned it.

  That’s when Sean’s instincts began to twitch.

  Sean would bet the bank that Laughlin had worked out of the D.C. regional office before Detroit. There was a slight chance he may have been assigned to national headquarters, but since he only had a few years with the Bureau at the time, Sean gave odds to the field office. Which meant that Laughlin could have worked with Kate.

  Sean quickly mapped out a time line. Kate had been in the Washington, D.C., field office twelve years ago-if they overlapped, it would have been only for a few months.

  Laughlin had transferred to Detroit five years ago but still owned his town house. Sean did a reverse search and learned that Laughlin leased it to a married couple. A few clicks later, Sean found the current resident: Clark Mitchell, a doctor at GWU, and his wife, Lydia, an analyst for the FBI.

  Maybe it wasn’t about Lucy but all about Kate.

  Sean needed to dig a little deeper, but he couldn’t call Kate or Hans Vigo. Noah hadn’t been in the D.C. office five years ago. The only thing Sean could do was find out exactly when Laughlin moved to D.C. and determine if Kate was there at the same time. And if she was, Sean would give the information to Lucy and she could decide how to use it.

  It was nearly noon when his computer e-mailed him a report. It wasn’t about Rich Laughlin but Peter McMahon. Sean almost forgot he’d started a deep background when Lucy woke him up at almost two in the morning.

  Every McMahon it spat out at him wasn’t the Peter McMahon Lucy was looking for. Sean did find a Peter Gray who had attended college in New Jersey, but there was no record of graduation or transfer.

  Dropout? The name was common enough that tracking the right one, with no address or Social Security number, would be difficult.

  But Sean loved a challenge.

  CHAPTER TEN

  New York City

  Suzanne hadn’t met SSA Tony Presidio before, but she certainly knew him by reputation. Though he was no longer with the Behavioral Science Unit, he was greatly respected within the Bureau and often consulted on cases outside of his field office. He wasn’t a large man, an inch shorter than her five foot nine and trim.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to come to New York.” She led him through the maze of cubicles and hallways of the New York regional FBI office.

  “I’m hoping I can help.”

  Suzanne opened the door to a small conference room. She tossed her stack of papers on the table and motioned for Tony to sit. “We have a mutual friend, I heard. Lucy Kincaid.”

  He smiled. “One of my students. She’s one of the reasons I’m here. She’s concerned about her name being in the victim’s files.”

  Suzanne slid over a thin folder. “This is all Weber had on Lucy, but as you can see, she planned on digging around.”

  Tony opened the file and skimmed it. “Weber wanted to play up the FBI’s use of civilian consultants. I found out last night from national headquarters that she filed an FOIA for Lucy’s FBI file.”

  “They wouldn’t have given it.”

  “No. She’s an agent; basic information would have been released-hometown, college, training-nothing else. But the information is out there; it’s just a matter of who talks.”

  Suzanne eyed him sus
piciously. “You’re not suggesting that Lucy had anything to do with the murder?”

  “You ran her when you learned her name was in the file.”

  Suzanne nodded. “I ran everybody, but I didn’t believe she had anything to do with it.”

  “You ran her boyfriend as well.”

  “Doesn’t mean I think he did it, either. Just covering all bases.”

  Tony raised an eyebrow. “I assumed they passed.”

  “Rogan was in Sacramento; Lucy was at Quantico. I wouldn’t say it was impossible that one or both of them could have come here, killed her, and covered their tracks, but that’s a lot of travel, hacking, falsifying documents, and convincing more than one person to lie.”

  Tony laughed. “Good to know they’re cleared.”

  “I made you copies of all Weber’s files on the Cinderella Strangler case-who she talked to, who she met with, her ideas-but the research for her previous books is stored at Columbia University. Their manuscript preservation program, something like that. Detective DeLucca is tracking down the research assistant now.”

  “Good. I’ll take everything back with me to Quantico-if that’s all right with you.”

  “Less paperwork for me? You can have it.”

  “I went to the scene last night when I arrived, and concur with the detective’s report. Staged to look like a robbery. Do you have her phone records?”

  “Just calls-we’re getting a warrant for her text messages; it’s going to take a day or two. We also have e-mails. Nothing that indicates who she was meeting at Citi Field or why. Except”-Suzanne flipped through papers-“this note on her desk.”

  She gave him a copy of a sticky note that had a time written down.

  “‘Nine thirty-RB.’”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. It was the last thing she wrote on that pad of paper, but she didn’t take it with her. Maybe wrote it down when she was on the phone with someone, or got an e-mail, or as a reminder to herself. But she was killed close to nine thirty on Tuesday night.”

  “‘RB’-initials?”

  “Probably. We’re running the initials through her address book, e-mails, phone lists. We have eight possible IDs so far, but half of those are outside of the greater New York area. NYPD is interviewing the others.”

  “Can I see the list?”

  Suzanne pulled it up on her cell phone. “DeLucca e-mailed it to me this morning.”

  Tony looked. “Just names?”

  “For now.”

  “If she was meeting with someone, at night, even at a place she felt safe, it would be someone she’d worked with before or met before. Probably someone with information she wanted on the Cinderella Strangler.”

  Suzanne nodded. “That was our thought. You said you knew her?”

  “I was lead agent on the Rachel McMahon kidnapping in Newark. Weber was a reporter. We didn’t get along, but I didn’t have to deal with her directly-that’s why we have a media information officer.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Suzanne mumbled. She would never live down the one time she spoke to the press and earned her “Mad Dog” moniker. And, by Tony’s expression, he knew all about it.

  He said, “She was tenacious and liked scandal, always went for the most salacious details of any investigation she covered, but I never knew her to fabricate her stories, or lie about key facts.”

  “Did you read the book she wrote about your case?”

  “No. It came out five years after Rachel McMahon was murdered, and I didn’t want to relive that tragedy. Public Relations reviewed it and said there were no factual errors.”

  “You looked at the reports, you knew the victim, are you thinking any differently than DeLucca and me?”

  Tony took a moment to ponder, and Suzanne both appreciated his concentration and worried that she had missed something.

  “The killer wanted the police to think robbery, but because we know that Weber had a meeting scheduled with ‘RB’ I think it’s clear it wasn’t a random robbery. But I don’t think this ‘RB’ knew anything about it. It was a trap.”

  “There were no defensive wounds on the victim. Nothing to indicate a struggle or that she fought.”

  “Because either she knew her attacker, or he acted quickly. No discussion, no hesitation.”

  “Which holds with the preliminary coroner’s report.”

  “I saw that.” Tony flipped through his notes and read, “‘One six-inch thrust into the lungs and heart.’”

  “Some knowledge of anatomy.”

  “Perhaps. Or self-educated. The lack of hesitation tells me he planned on killing her, there was no other purpose of the meeting.”

  “He.”

  “Most likely a male. During my flight I went through the Cinderella Strangler case and Weber’s previous books and numerous newspaper articles. There are many potential suspects, but I can narrow it somewhat.”

  “I wasn’t a fan of psychology in investigations until I worked with Lucy six months ago.”

  Tony smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which looked sad and reflective. “You use psychology all the time. Most good cops do. Interviewing suspects, using what they say, what they don’t say, their body language, all as cues in how you question them. How hard you need to push. Assessing how reliable a witness might be. Knowing whether someone is lying. Most cops will say it’s experience, or their gut. It’s really psychology they learned simply by doing their job.”

  “So you can narrow it down?”

  “It is definitely someone who feels they or a loved one was damaged by what Rosemary Weber wrote.”

  “Wrote. Past tense.”

  “Yes. I don’t think her killer has anything to do with the Cinderella Strangler book she was writing.”

  Suzanne wasn’t certain she believed that. “You’re going to have to do better.”

  “When we spoke yesterday, you said she’d just started researching the case. She was gathering files, hadn’t interviewed anyone, hadn’t spoken to the victim’s families. No one knew what angle she was taking, or how she planned on writing the book.”

  “I can guess. Others may have, too, and not liked it.”

  “But there’s nothing tangible.” Tony paused again, looked at his papers, but Suzanne didn’t think he was seeing anything. “I did a cursory assessment of the victims’ families and nothing popped up to indicate that any would resort to violence, especially before the book was written. If anything, they’d want to use Weber to immortalize their daughters, to show the world their girls are loved and greatly missed. But,” he continued, “after the fact, it could be a survivor or a family member who was upset with what was said, and wants to take it back. Or perhaps upset with how they were portrayed. Lucy is reading Weber’s three published books now to assess exactly that-anyone who was portrayed in an embarrassing manner.”

  “But not just her books. It could be an article or something else she wrote.”

  Tony nodded. “The problem with this theory is that I’d expect to see some sort of verbal or written threat to Weber before she was killed.”

  “Except that the killer was extremely careful-so far, we have no physical evidence linking the killer to the crime. No hair or fibers, no blood, no security footage.”

  “Well planned and premeditated. The killer doesn’t want to be caught.”

  “Most don’t.”

  “I wonder.…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” she prompted.

  “Was Weber his first victim, or were there more?”

  “But if it’s personal, would there be more?”

  “Possibly. I keep going back to the manner of death. The killer did not hesitate with the stiletto. Even the choice of weapon is interesting-why a stiletto knife and not a gun? A wider blade? It’s not as intimate as strangulation, but it’s far more intimate than a gun.”

  Suzanne’s phone vibrated. “It’s Detective DeLucca.” She answered. “What do you have?”

  “Just met with the facu
lty advisor for Weber’s research assistant. Up to interviewing the kid and grabbing all her research?”

  “When and where?”

  “Butler Library, twenty minutes.”

  “Thirty.” She hung up and turned to Tony. “Why don’t you join me?”

  It was just past noon when Suzanne and Tony met up with DeLucca outside of Butler Library at Columbia University. Suzanne introduced the two men.

  DeLucca said, “Weber brings on a research assistant for each project through the university’s grad program. Prof Duncan Cleveland is the faculty advisor for the program. It’s a win-win for the student-they get a stipend and college credit. Weber’s current assistant is Kip Todd, and Cleveland says he’ll be here. He has a small office on the sixth floor.”

  “What do we know about him?” she asked as they walked up the wide steps to the main entrance.

  “Grad student, got his undergrad in Buffalo in English Lit with a minor in communications. The victim picked him from nineteen applicants to be her assistant-according to Cleveland, she was demanding but fair, and liked to mentor.”

  “We should talk to her former assistants,” Tony said.

  DeLucca opened the heavy door and Suzanne stepped into the air-conditioned foyer. The cool air raised bumps on her skin. “I have the list. One is in the city; one has relocated. Kip Todd is her third.”

  “I thought she was working on her fourth book?” Suzanne asked.

  “She wrote the first book while she was working as a reporter in Newark. Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets.” DeLucca rolled his eyes.

  Tony said, “Unfortunately, I’m very familiar with that case.”

  “Suzi said you were one of the investigators.”

  Suzanne punched DeLucca in the arm. She hated when he called her Suzi in public.

  Tony stopped them and said quietly, “Have you identified the ‘RB’ Weber wrote she was meeting the night she was killed?”

  “I have uniforms checking them out right now.”

  Suzanne said, “Tony thinks it was a setup, that the killer used the meeting to get her alone.”

  “Seems too dumb,” DeLucca said. “Too easy to trace.”