Page 103 of The Truth You Told
She pulled up Google—people underestimated what you could find out just by doing a cursory search.
“There’s a Hana Tashibi, of Austin, who died,” Raisa said, feeling like everything was just about to click into place. It wasn’t there yet, but they were close. “Five years ago.”
“Long after the carjacking,” Kilkenny said. “What of?”
“The obituary is sanitized,” Raisa murmured, skimming it. “Which usually means suicide or drug overdose, but we probably shouldn’t assume.”
Kilkenny pulled out his phone and searched something. “No murder cases linked to that name.”
“Were the girls split up?” Raisa asked. “To different foster families?”
“Yeah, looks like,” Kilkenny said after a minute. “Kate ended up in Upstate New York, while Hana stayed in Austin. Both were adopted, which seems unusual for girls that old.”
“It would have been nearly impossible to keep them together,” Raisa said. Isabel had probably fought like hell to stay with Delaney, at least, but evenshehadn’t been able to get it done. And Kate and Hana had been much younger.
“If we’re looking for some link to Conrad, Shay, or the second killer, I think Hana is our path in,” Kilkenny said. “Since she’s the one who stayed in Texas.”
Stayed in Texas and died in Texas.
Hana Tashibi.Something about the name ...
She squinted into the distance as she thought through all the materials she’d read in the past two days. It had been so much, but Raisa had always been good with details. And patterns. Just like Delaney.
It wasn’t just theFor you, H.
Raisa had seen something else that she’d dismissed at the time. But she must have filed it away because it itched at her brain now like a forgotten song lyric.
HT.Raisa had seen those initials somewhere.
“That name’s not familiar, right?” she asked Kilkenny.
He shook his head. “What are you thinking?”
“I’ve seen ‘HT’ somewhere recently, and I can’t remember where.”
“It must be something that was connected to Kate,” he said. “The external hard drive. It had a Word-doc file on it along with those videos, didn’t it?”
“Oh shit. You’re a goddamn genius,” Raisa murmured, as she navigated to the folder where she’d uploaded everything Kate had turned over.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kilkenny responded, leaning over her shoulder.
Most of the files on the hard drive had been audio or video clips. But Kilkenny was right. There was a Word document in there, too. Raisa had skimmed over it before because the links had been to other media that had been put out about Conrad, and Raisa had assumed it was just a place to keep her research bibliography.
One of the links stood out among the rest, though. Next to it were two letters in parentheses:HT.
The link was to an individual reader’s review of a self-published biography that—from what Raisa could gather—was more of a fangirl love letter to Conrad than a factual rendering of pretty much anything.
Why would Kate have included a random reader’s thoughts on it, though? And why would she label it with her sister’s initials?
She opened the review, read it three times through, and then shifted the computer so Kilkenny could see.
“Does anything jump out at you?”
His eyes swept across the screen, and then he shook his head. “What if ...?”
He navigated to the reader’s profile page and came up with a whole list of reviews.
The one that came after the Conrad biography was titledThe Origin of a Serial Killer: Nature, Nurture, or Life-Altering Trauma?
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