Page 7 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Five

Raisa

Day One

Gig Harbor itself was a quaint touristy town nestled into a cove, watched over by Mount Rainier. The women’s correctional center—about as nice a place as you could expect—sat just north of it.

There was a crowd outside, blocking some of the street.

“I wonder what that’s about,” Raisa said, and Kilkenny grimaced.

She wanted to smack herself, and she blamed exhaustion for being slow on the uptake. Sometimes she forgot Isabel wasn’t just her black sheep of a sister, but also a nationally infamous serial killer. “They’re here because of Isabel, aren’t they?”

“Yup,” Kilkenny confirmed a bit grimly.

Raisa studied the crowd more closely.

It was split into two distinct groups.

On one side, women dressed all in black carried flowers as they hugged each other, wiping at tear-streaked cheeks and even wailing from the ground.

“What ...?” she murmured as she realized they were ... they were in mourning . The other side, the one with revelers drinking out of champagne glasses while holding signs declaring the witch dead, made far more sense than whatever the first group was doing.

“Isabel has gained a bit of notoriety in the past two years,” Kilkenny said, as he crept toward the gate. It couldn’t have been more than five or six hours since Isabel’s death had been announced, but there were plenty of people here already. “There’s even a hashtag-FreeBell movement that’s picked up speed in the last couple months.”

“She never went by Bell,” Raisa said, bereft of anything sensical to say. Maybe Isabel had gone by Bell—she had barely known the woman, after all.

“They don’t care, it wasn’t really about her. They were just projecting an image onto someone,” Kilkenny said, ever the psychologist. “They call themselves fans.”

“Yuck.”

“Yeah,” Kilkenny agreed. “You see all sorts of similarities to cults in these kinds of groups.”

“Yeah,” Raisa parroted. Her eyes slid to the ladies who were celebrating. She didn’t blame them, but she did wonder who would make the trip. “And the other side?”

“There’s a fairly vocal ‘anti-FreeBell’ response. They were worried she was going to get her trial thrown out because of her popularity with true crime podcasts,” Kilkenny said, and Raisa was amazed she hadn’t heard of either side. “The group is led by a woman named Essi Halla.”

“Finnish?” Raisa guessed. While she didn’t specialize in foreign languages, she could usually at least get the country.

“Her family, maybe,” Kilkenny said with a shrug. “She’s from California.”

“And she kick-started this we-hate-Isabel movement?”

“Or at least she’s become the most vocal member,” Kilkenny said. “She’s positioned herself as something of an advocate for victims’ families, though she focuses heavily on things that put her in the spotlight and not so much on the things that actually help people.”

The scene all of a sudden made a whole lot more sense. There were always going to be people who flocked to national spectacles. Attention and the money that went with it were powerful drugs. “How is she even involved?”

“She claims her father was one of Isabel’s unaccounted-for victims,” he said. “Mikko Halla.”

Raisa shook her head. She’d memorized all the confirmed kills, along with a good number of probable ones they weren’t able to use in court. “Is he?”

“Honestly, who knows,” Kilkenny said with a shrug. “But it’s not impossible, so ...”

“Hucksters gonna huck,” Raisa murmured, and then waited for Kilkenny to flash his badge to the security guard at the gate. “Were they seriously worried she was going to be freed? She was serving multiple life sentences for crimes with strong evidence against her. It was the most slam dunk a trial could be.”

“Not so much that she would be freed, realistically. This was an anti -movement,” Kilkenny said. “Those only arise in repudiation of something else. They didn’t think a court of law would overturn her sentencing—they were worried the FreeBell would have success in redeeming Isabel’s name.”

She stared at him. “How was that even a legitimate fear?”

“Well, the reason she had fans was because of the erroneous belief that she had only ever killed bad guys,” Kilkenny said, before quickly climbing out of the SUV as if he didn’t want to see her face after the pronouncement.

Raisa hurried after him. “How on earth did they reach that conclusion?”

Kilkenny tilted his head back and forth. “There are a good number of examples where she did kill bad guys. Like Delaney’s professor.”

As a teenager, Delaney had been so advanced, she’d been able to take college classes when she was still in high school. One of her professors had tried to corner her in his office to pressure her into an affair. Not long after, he’d purposefully overdosed and been found in a pool of his own vomit beside a suicide letter.

“Those tended to get more attention than the ones where she just didn’t like the look of the victim’s face,” Kilkenny said. After a thoughtful pause, he added, “I hate this, but I also think it has to do with the fact that she’s a woman. The vigilante angle is a more compelling and believable sell when it comes to women serial killers.”

That much was true. Society saw women a certain way—and that didn’t mesh well with the fact that some of them were simply sadistic psychopaths who liked torturing people. “I suppose the fact that only a few of her murders were graphic also lends itself to that story.”

“The most personal ones were,” Kilkenny observed. “But yes. The fact that a lot of her victims died in ‘accidents’ seems to have added to the mythology that she’s simply ridding the world of rapists and pedophiles.”

“Yikes,” Raisa said, glancing back toward the mourners. Did they imagine they’d lost some kind of superhero today? “Even if that were the case, she shouldn’t have just been let out on the streets to continue murdering ‘bad guys.’ We’re not Dodge City circa the late 1800s.”

He laughed at that. “Does it sound incredibly stuffy to blame movies and popular culture for glorifying vigilantes?”

“Yes, you sound like you’re lecturing us from six feet down in your own grave,” Raisa said, skipping to catch up with him. “But you’re not wrong.”

When they stopped in at the front desk, they found out that Raisa had been listed as Isabel’s emergency contact. Isabel had apparently given the facility the wrong number, which was why Raisa hadn’t heard from them yet.

The man at the desk suggested it was a typo on Isabel’s part, but Raisa didn’t think so. Isabel had wanted Raisa to find out about her death in the scripted manner she’d intended, not by a phone call from an administration official.

They flashed their badges, which got them a meeting with the facility’s superintendent really quickly.

Aileen Baker was a no-nonsense woman with a face that carried a lifetime of experience in facilities such as the one they were in. She’d relaxed noticeably after Raisa had assured her she wasn’t there to file a lawsuit over Isabel’s death.

“I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you beyond what we already did,” Aileen said, looking between them.

“There was no way for anyone to get access to her cell last night?” Raisa asked.

Aileen had started shaking her head before the question was even out. “No, we’ve done a thorough review of the security footage. No one but the guard went near her cell, and even then he didn’t get close enough to do anything to her.”

“And the guard who found her ...” Raisa let the question hang as delicately as possible. Superintendents usually got defensive in the face of criticism against their staff.

“She had been dead for hours,” Aileen said. “We’ll have to wait for more from the coroner’s report, obviously, but you didn’t need to be a medical examiner to tell Ms. Parker probably passed away not long after roll call.”

“Do we know what guard last saw her alive?” Raisa asked.

“Yes, and the police talked to him this morning. I haven’t heard anything, so I’m guessing they were satisfied with his answers,” Aileen said. Her expression turned considering. “You don’t think this was natural causes.”

“We’re just exploring all options,” Kilkenny cut in diplomatically. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen in the days preceding her death?”

“No. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t the model inmate.” She glanced at Raisa with an apologetic expression, but Raisa just shook her head. She didn’t care if Aileen spoke ill of this particular dead person. “She liked to insert herself into the middle of all the power struggles going on around here. But she didn’t really cause all that much trouble. The last incident that occurred involving Ms. Parker happened over six weeks ago.”

“Incident?”

“She got into a fight with another inmate,” Aileen said, her mouth tugging down. “Her hand was slashed, badly enough that she had to visit the infirmary.”

“Her hand was slashed?” Kilkenny asked. “With what?”

“A shiv, Agent Kilkenny,” Aileen said, her tone adding in you idiot . “I would have thought you’d be familiar with them.”

Kilkenny gave her a tight smile. “I’m not wondering why an inmate had a knife, that’s your job. I wanted to know if the weapon was big enough to cause actual damage beyond a cut hand.”

Aileen seemed to finally understand Kilkenny’s train of thought. “I would have to check the reports again. But I do remember thinking it could have been used to cause some serious injuries and Ms. Parker got lucky.”

So it was possible that had been the original attempt to kill Isabel. What a clean way to take her out: make it look like she took a shiv to an important organ during a yard brawl. Raisa wouldn’t have doubted that kind of death for a second, whereas a heretofore unknown medical condition raised at least a few—admittedly weak—alarm bells.

“Who was the inmate?” Raisa asked. She didn’t think Aileen would tell her, not without a warrant, but she had to try.

“I’m sorry,” Aileen said, the brick wall coming down as expected. “Unless this is part of an official investigation, I don’t feel comfortable giving you that information.”

They were always going to have to bring in the locals. This just made Raisa wonder if they should have made that their first step. “You do see how we might be suspicious about an attack six weeks before Isabel died under mysterious circumstances—”

“They weren’t mysterious,” Aileen cut in, any softness completely gone from her voice. “Now, I am sorry for your loss, Ms. Susanto.”

“Agent,” Raisa corrected, and Aileen’s mouth pinched in. They weren’t exactly doing a great job of making friends here.

“Well, you’re not one right now. Right now, you’re here as the next of kin,” Aileen said, and stood. “The autopsy will provide all of us with more information to move forward with, but until then, I’m afraid I have other appointments.”

Raisa and Kilkenny stood as well. “Would we be able to review the tapes in the hours preceding—”

“We’ll be conducting the investigation,” Aileen said. “Along with the local police. I’m sure they’ll keep you informed.”

She’d had to try. “Okay. Well, then, I’d like to collect Isabel’s possessions. Are they still in her cell?”

“No, we boxed them up already,” Aileen said, moving toward the door. “I’ll have my secretary help you retrieve whatever was left.”

They were closely watched the rest of the time in the facility, quickly handed a box, and then shown the door.

Raisa couldn’t be too upset with the haul, though.

There were the clothes and accessories Isabel had come in with—a dress, Doc Martens, a watch, her wallet. There was also a small landscape painting that, with its soft colors, looked like it had been done in a therapy class. But the two most intriguing things were a leather-bound journal and a stack of letters.

A quick glance at the latter revealed that many of them were signed “Your Biggest Fan.”

“I think we should check out the address Isabel included before we circle back to the locals,” Raisa said, holding the box on her lap as they drove out of the correctional facility.

Kilkenny gestured toward the SUV’s GPS system, where he’d already punched in the location.

The pleasant British voice informed them that the drive would take forty-five minutes, so Raisa settled back to skim the letters.

She would need to run her full analysis on them, which involved her laptop, linguistic software, and several Excel spreadsheets. But usually she could get a feel for a voice anyway. She’d been doing this long enough to pick up tics and quirks and habits—enough to build the bones of a profile in her mind. These letters were strange, though, stripped down—as if whoever had been writing them had known Raisa would, in the future, read them, and they wanted to hide their voice.

That in itself made Raisa feel itchy. Like she’d been dropped into a world that spoke in a language she didn’t even recognize, let alone know.

“Maybe we can get a warrant for the name of the inmate involved in the shiv incident and any bank account information they might have,” Kilkenny said, once she re-stashed the envelopes in the box. He’d been quiet as she did her thing.

Raisa nodded. “You think they were paid to do it.”

It was what she was thinking, too, but there was a slim possibility that Isabel had simply made an enemy in prison, one who’d tried shanking her and then switched to a different method when that had failed.

“Yeah, because of the shifting MO,” Kilkenny said. “If this was just one inmate who wanted Isabel dead, we likely would have seen another violent altercation. Not some devious plan to make it look like natural causes.”

“Well, paying someone to kill Isabel is certainly one way to get revenge while avoiding getting your own hands too dirty,” she said. Plenty of people imagined they’d go all Batman if a loved one was killed, but most people weren’t murderers.

Kilkenny hummed in agreement. “ Aggrieved family member who wanted the death penalty is quickly rising to the top of my list of suspects.”

“Yeah,” Raisa said. “I wonder why they waited six weeks to try again.”

“Give it time for the incident to fade from memories?” Kilkenny guessed. “And if so, they were successful. The superintendent didn’t seem to think it was connected to Isabel’s death.”

“She doesn’t want to entertain the idea that there might have been a homicide in her facility,” Raisa said. She didn’t add that the superintendent might also believe Isabel had gotten her just deserts, but she thought it.

Raisa was a cynic most of the time. But she’d joined the Bureau when she could have done something else. She truly believed that it mattered how the government treated its “worst” citizens, because it maintained the integrity of the system overall. Everyone deserved a lawyer, everyone should be treated humanely.

If they didn’t fight for the rights of the most dangerous offenders, then those rights couldn’t be considered innate.

They were conditional.

And human rights should never be conditional.

Both things could be true, though. The world was better off with Isabel dead. And they should put in the best effort possible to figure out who killed her.

If this was indeed homicide.

“Revenge as the motive doesn’t really narrow anything down for us,” Raisa said. “I can think of at least a hundred people who wanted her dead. And I’m sure there are hundreds more.”

“Maybe we should ask Essi Halla. She’s a lawyer by day, but in her spare time runs the anti-FreeBell group,” Kilkenny said. “She might be helpful at least in directing us to the right people, the ones who are angriest at Isabel.”

“Maybe it was Essi Halla,” Raisa offered, but Kilkenny tilted his head back and forward.

“I’m not sure she would have drawn so much spotlight to herself if she was plotting to kill Isabel,” Kilkenny said.

“Or she’s using it to blind everyone to her real motive,” Raisa pointed out.

“Ah, true,” Kilkenny said.

“But you’re probably right,” Raisa conceded. “I’m actually surprised the confirmed victims’ relatives let her take the lead.”

Even within grief support groups, there were hierarchies to conform to.

“Yeah, I thought that, too,” he said, as they headed north, out of Gig Harbor. “But then I watched a few of her interviews.”

“Let me guess, both charismatic and pretty,” Raisa said.

“Very,” Kilkenny said, and then he actually blushed. “I meant about the charisma.”

“Rizz, I think the kids are calling it these days,” Raisa said, amused. It actually was part of her job to keep up with current slang, and she enjoyed it. Kilkenny always got a little stuffy about language—far more than she did, despite the fact that people probably would have guessed she was the pedantic one out of the two of them.

As predicted, his nose wrinkled. “That’s the worst possible bastardization of that very beautiful word.”

“ Very beautiful, like Essi Halla?” Raisa teased.

He grunted. “I’m not living that one down, am I?”

“Never.” She paused, then glanced over at him, considering. “Why have you been following along with all that? The pro- and anti-Isabel stuff?”

Kilkenny had been traumatized by Isabel as well. Raisa had thought they’d both blocked any news or updates about her after she’d been sentenced.

Here he was, though, in the know about Isabel’s—for lack of a better word—fandom.

He stared at her as if the answer were obvious, and when he said it, of course, it was.

“So you didn’t have to.”