Allison Brennan - Stalked

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.

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 suspiciously. “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.”