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After a minute of consideration, he tilted his head. “Maybe.”
“Tell me literally one thing about anyone at the airport yesterday,” Raisa challenged him, and when he remained silent, she laughed. “I’m not insulting you. You’re not unobservant, dude. You scan for danger and catalog your surroundings, but then you dump the information as useless. I’ve watched it happen—”
“This is pointless. So what if he knew her?” Pierce interrupted. “He probably started stalking her because of Kilkenny.”
“Why would you assume that?” Raisa asked. “Why can’t it have been the other way around? If he used this area as his base, is it crazy that he somehow knew Shay? And then if the FBI agent who was hunting him started dating her? Wouldn’t he become more interested in Kilkenny than he would have otherwise?” She turned to Kilkenny. “Did you do anything to draw his attention? Did you offer some brilliant insight right off the bat?”
Kilkenny stared at the ground, but then he shook his head. “No. I offered a fairly standard profile. And while it turned out to be spot-on, it wasn’t the thing that led to his capture. His own mistake did.”
That mistake had been reusing a code—but that wasn’t sitting right with what they knew about Conrad. He wasn’t careless. Serial killers weren’t evil geniuses who never made a misstep, of course. But there was something they were missing with that.
“Fine,” Pierce said. “Doesn’t that mean he’s more likely to be lying right now? You really think it’s possible she was friends with a serial killer, who was then framed for her murder?”
“I don’t know,” Raisa admitted, a bit helplessly. She was just trying to figure this out, too. It seemed wild to think that Shay might have known Conrad, one of the state’s most prolific serial killers, and not died by his hand. She didn’t have an explanation for it.
“What if she figured it out somehow?” Pierce said, persuasive now that he sensed her moment of doubt. “What if she figured out that her friend Nathaniel was the Alphabet Man? She didn’t want to believe it was him, so she confronted him instead of telling Kilkenny. That’s why there wasn’t a sign of a struggle. She was meeting him in that mall parking lot.”
Kilkenny stared at him for a long time, expression blank, and then his eyes flicked to Raisa. Because that scenario sounded incredibly plausible. In fact, that’s probably what had happened.
Except ... except there had been two different authors, one who penned the Alphabet Man messages and one who wrote the Shay letters.
That was the only real evidence they had that Conrad was telling the truth right now.
And it was based solely on Raisa’s work.
Raisa was used to people dismissing her analysis as pseudoscience, no matter how many graphs and statistical equations she threw at them. They didn’t understand, so they thought it must not be as convincing as things like DNA and fingerprints. Only once before had Raisa questioned whether Kilkenny respected her work. He had explained away his doubt in a manner that had been mostly convincing. But in this moment, she realized the bruise remained—because she wasn’t sure what he was going to say.
“He’s not lying,” Kilkenny said, and she relaxed, relieved. “He didn’t kill Shay.”
Pierce deflated. Where he would steamroll Raisa, he would at least humor Kilkenny. “Okay. We need Kate Tashibi’s film.”
“Can you convince her to let you watch the interview?” Raisa asked, dubious.
“I’m not leaking it to the press.” Pierce shrugged. “There’s no reason for her not to voluntarily share it.”
Maybe no logical reason, but there were plenty of emotional ones. But if he wanted to try, she wasn’t going to stop him. “That would be great if she turns it over.”
“I’ll get it.” Pierce glanced at his watch. “I bet she’s in town for the execution. We’ll chase her down.”
Raisa hadn’t even thought about that, but of course Kate would want some final footage.
Kilkenny shook his head. “You must be busy. I can’t ask—”
“Listen, buddy, I’m seeing this through to the end,” Pierce cut him off. “Nothing else is as important.”
That probably wasn’t true. Pierce was the head of the entire Houston office. He probably didn’t actually have time for coffee, let alone whatever it would take to chase down Tashibi and get her to hand over her precious film. But the loyalty earned him back a few points in Raisa’s book.
“Thank you,” Kilkenny said, holding out his hand. Pierce took it, and they locked eyes, years of experience passing between them.
She thought about what Kilkenny had said about Shay and her siblings. They’d been through war together. Hadn’t Pierce and Kilkenny weathered the same? Didn’t that create a bond that would last forever?
What would it take for that bond to be broken?
Pierce coughed, perhaps to cover up the fact that the big, tough men had been experiencingemotions, and dug into his pocket for his keys. “What’s your plan?”
Raisa desperately wanted her hands on all Conrad’s messages to Kilkenny, wanted to see the codes and the tattoos on the victims’ arms. She was here to support Kilkenny, but the best way to do that was to analyze writing samples. “I need to see the letters.”
“I’ll call down to the evidence room. You’ll just have to show your ID, but they’ll have everything ready for you,” Pierce said, jerking his chin back toward the field office. He turned to Kilkenny. “What about you?”