Stalked - By Allison Brennan Page 0,23

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.”

“Meaning,” Tony said, “that the killer isn’t the RB she was supposed to meet.”

DeLucca considered his theory. “I can see that. But how would the meet be set up? Wouldn’t she recognize the voice? There were no e-mails on her hard drive, though I have techs going through deleted messages now.”

“Any of the RBs on your list affiliated with the Cinderella Strangler investigation?”

“Yes,” DeLucca said, pulling out his notepad. “Rob Banker. He was the lead reporter covering the investigation for the Times and according to Detective Panetta, he seemed to have inside information.”

“A leak from NYPD,” Suzanne said.

DeLucca shot her a nasty glance, but she didn’t care. He had called her “Suzi.”

“Wherever the information came from, he had it,” DeLucca said. “The other three don’t appear to have any direct involvement with that case.”

“A fellow reporter—I can see Weber meeting him in a parking lot,” Tony said.

“He lives in Queens—not far from Citi Field. But why would he set her up?”

“I don’t think he did—I think the killer used his name.”

“Too many what-ifs,” DeLucca said. He pulled out his phone. “I’ll check him out myself, as soon as we’re done here.”

He sent a message, then pocketed his phone. “We can’t find Weber’s phone, but she uses a digital planner that she backed up on her computer. The last back-up was two nights before she was murdered, and there was no scheduled meeting.”

“What was her last appointment?” Tony asked.

“The morgue,” DeLucca said. “She made a notation to pick up files. We checked with the staff, and she’d filed an FOIA for the official autopsy reports of all Cinderella Strangler victims.”

“I talked to Panetta this morning,” DeLucca continued, “and she’s been hounding him. He keeps sending her to you, Suz, since it became an FBI case when your SWAT team took out the suspect. She’d pulled the initial police reports of each Cinderella Strangler victim from the responding precinct.”

Tony said, “I’m going to talk to the librarian and ask them to pull the archived manuscripts and catch up with you.”

Suzanne and Joe went up to the sixth floor and asked for directions at the information desk to Cleveland’s grad student office. They found Kip Todd sitting at a table with several books open in front of him. He was twenty-six, attractive, blond. By the way his legs were folded under the table, he was at least six feet tall and rail thin. He glanced up when they entered, surprise in his eyes.

“Mr. Todd? Detective DeLucca, NYPD, and Special Agent Madeaux, FBI. We have a few questions about your employer.”

He blinked rapidly, then sighed. “I’m still in shock.” He closed his books after marking his place. “Professor Cleveland said you’d probably want to talk to me.”

Suzanne sat across from Kip while Joe stood. “You spent a lot of time with her. Whatever you know may be helpful in finding out who killed her,” Suzanne said.

“I really liked Rosemary. She was tough, but I learned so much.”

“You were her assistant for the book she was currently researching?”

“The Cinderella Strangler—” His eyes widened. “You’re Suzanne Madeaux. Oh, wow. Rosemary really wanted to talk to you. She said without you her