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Story: The Truth You Told

The reassurance came out through gritted teeth, like he was convincing himself, and she grimaced at his back.
In the technical sense, it was true. But she was the reason Kilkenny had brought emergency backup to that clearing three months ago. She was the reason Isabel was facing trial instead of rotting in the ground.
It was a little bit her fault.
Kilkenny waved Raisa into his living room and then reemerged a minute later with two beers in hand.
Even after what had to have been a long, rough day, Kilkenny looked effortlessly perfect in his expensively tailored suit, polished tan shoes, and slim tie that still sat snug against his throat.
Raisa simply sprawled on the sofa in an undignified lump, the stress of everything catching up to her, but he lowered himself gracefully into a beautiful midcentury modern recliner as if he were the model paid to sell it.
She eyed him, trying to get a read on what he was thinking. The problem was, Raisa didn’t even know whereshestood on this.
Isabel had been convincing. But she was a charismatic con artist; of course she was convincing. Why would Raisa believe anything that came out of her mouth?
Because the idiolects didn’t match.
As much as Raisa liked to think of her work as an art, it came down to statistics and probability at the end of the day. Science didn’t lie. The letters, the discrepancies, and the patterns—she was almost a hundred percent certain there was a second author.
She nearly giggled at the phrase, a little delirious probably. Would they have their own version of a grassy knoll as well?
Maybe they even had their own Zapruder film in the form of Kate Tashibi’s miniseries. Would seeing the actual interview help them assess whether Conrad was lying? Kilkenny had hunted him for five years, but after he’d caught the killer, he’d famously turned down any and all chances to talk to Conrad. Did Kilkenny actually know him well enough to tell if he was lying?
Raisa realized then that she hadn’t filled him in on her visit with Isabel yet. She did so, including her own analysis, which backed up what Isabel had said.
“Is there any chance he could have faked the idiolect?” he asked.
“It’s possible,” she said. “But why do that? No one ever talked about his writing style before. And then to go back to his old voice for the subsequent letters? That doesn’t make sense.”
He sighed in what sounded like agreement.
“There are other possibilities,” Raisa offered. “Someone else wrote the letters for him, for example. Or ... something I can’t think of right now because my brain is a bit mushy at the moment.”
“Yeah,” Kilkenny said. He knew how to hedge just like she did. But he could tell beneath thosepossibilitiesher science and expertise were screaming one thing.
Conrad hadn’t killed Shay.
“By the time Shay was taken, the public knew everything about the Alphabet Man,” Kilkenny said. “There were articles every day. The media pored over every detail. His body-disposal methods. The tattoos. How long the victims were held for, the fact that they were taken in broad daylight. If someone wanted to fake it, they could do a decent job just by reading the newspaper.”
“What did you keep back?” There was always something—a little detail that could mean the difference between deciding if someone who confessed was the real killer or not. It was standard operating procedure.
“The tattoo ink Conrad used was dark gray, not black,” Kilkenny said, meeting her eyes. “Shay’s was dark gray.”
Well. That wasn’t nothing.
Raisa chewed on her lip. “That would have been difficult to find out, huh?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m wrong,” Raisa said, and held a hand up when Kilkenny went to immediately defend her to herself. “What if this is just all ... Conrad trying to get into your head again? Some just-graduatedfilmmaker isn’t necessarily going to be able to judge the veracity of the interview if a psychopath known for being charming sells the story well enough.”
“Kate Tashibi.” Kilkenny slid her a look. “Did she contact you?”
“Yeah,” Raisa admitted. “She tracked me down in person, actually.”
His brows shot up. “Ballsy.”
“Stalker-y,” Raisa countered, and he tipped his head in agreement. “You?”