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Even as she had the thought, it occurred to her that this very confusion might be at the heart of it all—in theory, if he’d already divulged his most closely guarded secret, why would anyone think to probe deeper?
But if he was using the Shay confession as camouflage, that meant he was hiding a bigger secret than admitting he hadn’t killed his most well-known victim.
That seemed impossible.
“This is all just bullshit,” Pierce said. “Why are you lying about Shay?”
“What if I told you it was to get a stay?” Conrad asked.
It was Kilkenny who answered. “That’s not the reason.”
He said it quietly and with such certainty that the room dropped silent for a moment.
Conrad’s eyes flicked to Kilkenny and then back to Raisa. It was only in that moment that she realized how little he’d looked at Kilkenny. If his primary motive for this stunt was to engage Kilkenny in one last confrontation, wouldn’t Conrad be focused on him? Instead, he’d been talking mostly with Raisa, without any attempt to draw Kilkenny into the conversation.
“Believe me or not, I didn’t kill Shay,” Conrad finally said.
Something about that struck Raisa, and she parsed each word to figure out why.
Ms. Tashibi. Agent Susanto.He was formal in how he addressed them.
He lingered over Shay’s name with a familiarity she found disturbing. Serial killers became attached to their victims, of course, but this seemed slightly different. He said her name like he was talking about a friend.
“You were framed,” Pierce said flatly. “You and all your neighbors on death row, you guys are innocent, you swear.”
Conrad sighed. “Not innocent. But not guilty of killing Shay.”
“Why come out with the truth now?” Raisa asked. “Isabel said she figured this all out five years ago.”
“Did she now?” Conrad lifted a shoulder. “I suppose I have a flair for the dramatic. And like I said, I wanted to set the record straight before I’m murdered myself.”
Pierce’s mouth pressed into a straight line of displeasure at the framing of that. Raisa agreed with Conrad in theory—capital punishment had always struck her as hypocritical and barbaric. But as she looked into Conrad’s empty eyes while he made sure they knew just how many girls he’d killed, she could admit that, for her, there were exceptions to be made.
“Who killed her if you didn’t?” Raisa asked.
“You think I’m going to do your whole job for you?” Conrad asked, amused. “I’ve already told you more than you deserve to know.”
“But then you won’t know,” Raisa said.
His mouth pursed, not wanting to bite. But he couldn’t resist. “Know what?”
“If we ever catch her killer.” Human curiosity was a dangerous and beautiful thing. It was why people binged television shows and stayed up until 3:00 a.m. reading a page-turner, the words blurring beneath their eyes. Everyone felt that driving need toknow.
But Conrad just smiled. “Oh, I already know. You won’t.”
Raisa sat back at that. A part of her believed him when he said he wanted to set the record straight. She’d been studying his file. He was a control freak. It would have been torture for him to die without ever knowing what Kate or Isabel would do with his story. And if he agreed to an interview, he could stipulate that he needed to see the final version of the documentary before he died.
There was something else she couldn’t put her finger on layered beneath all that, though.
She couldn’t help but think he was acting the magician right now, showing them enough to make it believable, utilizing misdirectionto conceal his tricks, and knowing that it didn’t really matter if they bought it as long as he could control where they were looking.
“Was Isabel the first person to realize you hadn’t killed Shay?” Raisa asked, trying to sidestep her way toward whatever had set the itch to the back of her neck.
“I’m guessing Shay was the first one to realize that.”
Pierce straightened out of his casual stance at that, shifting so he loomed over Conrad. “Keep her name out of your mouth.”
Conrad peered up at Pierce through indolent, hooded eyes. “Or you’ll ... what? Kill me?”