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She thought about the way he had sent her texts every few days as his own version of a wellness check over the past three months, how he’d compiled a list of therapists but didn’t nag her to go see one. How he’d met her at the courthouse door.
“I really don’t.” She exhaled before he could argue further, shifting the subject. “Okay, if you were approaching this case without any attachments to it, what would you think?”
“I would think horses and not zebras,” he said. “Conrad killed Shay and is lying about it for attention or some other reason we haven’t figured out yet.”
“And if he’s not?”
He shook his head, at a loss.
“Okay.” She tried to force herself to think of the problem sideways. What if Kilkenny wasn’t the reason Shay was killed? What if Conrad wasn’t? “You said she was tight with her family. Tell me about them.”
“A mixed bag,” Kilkenny said. “Her mother, Hillary, was narcissistic and emotionally abusive. She had full custody of Shay, though sometimes pawned her off with Beau and his father, Billy. Who was also abusive and an alcoholic.”
“Beau?” Raisa asked.
“Shay’s half brother,” Kilkenny clarified. “She had two siblings—that we knew of, at least. Beau was a couple years younger than her. They were incredibly close, and after Hillary left to places unknown, they became co-guardians of their sister, Max.”
“Who also had an abusive father?” Raisa guessed.
“Hillary knew how to pick ’em,” Kilkenny said, his lingering and warranted bitterness clear. “Max’s father was killed in a robbery gone wrong when she was eleven, and Shay took her in. Beau moved in to help, since both of them had somewhat erratic schedules.”
“What did Beau do?” Raisa asked.
“Nurse at the local hospital,” he said.
“What was he like?”
“Old soul,” Kilkenny said, without missing a beat. “Reliable. A little bit of a bastard, when it was warranted.”
“It must have been hard for them,” Raisa said. “Raising a kid. Especially when they hadn’t had the best childhood themselves.”
“Shay never complained,” he said. “Which didn’t mean it wasn’t difficult. Max was ...”
When he trailed off, Raisa bumped her knee against his. “What?”
“Challenging.”
“Preteen challenging or ...?” She let him fill in the blank, and he did.
“When I met them, Max was seeing a psychiatrist who specialized in violent children,” Kilkenny said.
“Oh-kay.” Raisa drew out the word, processing that. “Violent as in she could kill her sister and frame a serial killer while doing it?”
“No,” Kilkenny said, quickly. Maybe too quickly. “Nothing I ever saw indicated that she had a personality disorder that would lead to that kind of behavior.” He paused. “Although I didn’t spend much time with her. She might have been a very good actress.”
“There must have been an incident in her past that would have led to her seeing the psychiatrist in the first place,” Raisa said. He slid her a look, and her brain caught up with her mouth.
Robbery gone wrong. Abusive father. Dead father. “Ah.”
“Just rumors,” Kilkenny said. “Shay never confirmed it either way.”
Everyone was capable of killing. Not everyone was capable of murder.
“It would have been like long-term self-defense,” she mused.
“That’s likely why no one pursued anything,” Kilkenny said. “That, and there was no hard evidence beyond blood on her clothes. Which she said she got from feeling for a pulse. They weren’t about to waste too many resources trying to lock up an eleven-year-old girl over the death of an asshole who’d made her life hell.”
“How old was she when Shay was killed?”