Page 15 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Raisa

Now

FBI Special Agent in Charge Xander Pierce was waiting for Raisa and Kilkenny in the parking lot of the prison just outside Houston. As she’d remembered, he was lean and tall and handsome.

He and Kilkenny hugged like old friends. Considering they’d spent five years hunting down a serial killer together, she probably should have expected the greeting.

“You look old as shit,” Pierce said, still gripping Kilkenny with one hand and slapping his shoulder with the other.

“Back at you.” Kilkenny grinned. It was all very Male Bonding 101. “Thanks for coming out.”

“Of course.” Pierce glanced at the concrete walls behind him. “He’s lying, though. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” Kilkenny agreed, despite the fact that they both had doubts about that. “I just ... I need to make sure. I would regret it the rest of my life if I didn’t.”

“I get it,” Pierce said, though there was a sharpness to his voice that hadn’t been there before. This had to be hard on him. He had been the lead agent on the Alphabet Man case, of course. But what was more important was that he’d led the investigation into Shay’s death. The fact that Kilkenny didn’t trust the results must hit like a personal blow.

If it got out that Kilkenny was down here because of the new information released by Kate Tashibi, it could tarnish Pierce’s reputation as well. Cynically, Raisa wondered if that was the reason Pierce wanted to take a hands-on approach here. He could make sure he tilted this in a way that would reflect best on him.

Or maybe he just wanted to help an old friend, and Raisa was being a judgmental dick.

Probably it was a little of both, as most things were.

Pierce’s attention slid to her for the first time. His expression turned speculative, and she didn’t blame him. Her friendship with Kilkenny was so new, it hadn’t made it to the Bureau’s gossip grapevine. “Agent Susanto. A pleasure to have you in Texas again.”

There was a question in the space following the greeting, but Raisa didn’t rush to fill it. She didn’t care if people talked or speculated. That was none of her business, and she had the track record to keep the whispers just that.

“Good to be back,” she said. “Are you joining the interrogation?”

They moved as one toward the front gates.

“If you’ll have me,” Pierce said.

Of course they would have him. There had been a narrative built around the idea of the Alphabet Man versus FBI agent Callum Kilkenny. It had an appealing cinematic quality to it—a real-life showdown between an expert psychologist and a serial-killer mastermind. But as it often did, mythology had flattened reality into black and white. In truth, Pierce may have even known Conrad better than Kilkenny did.

After all, Pierce had been the point person receiving reports from the entire task force, not just Kilkenny. Kilkenny may have done a deep dive into the killer’s psyche, but he’d also flown in and out of the case, coming to Houston only as needed. Pierce had probably lived and breathed the Alphabet Man investigation for five years straight.

“You think he’s lying?” Raisa asked Pierce once they got through the prison’s security process.

“Of course. Conrad loves getting attention from both the media and Kilkenny,” Pierce said. “I’m sure he wants to have one last confrontation with Kilkenny.” He paused, thoughtful. “Honestly, I think this might be the cherry on the top. He really just wanted back in the spotlight. Now people are buzzing about this miniseries. He might even think he can magic up a stay with this.”

The idea slammed into her, not because it was shocking but because she felt a little foolish for not thinking of it herself. She could tell from Kilkenny’s expression that he hadn’t traveled down that path, either.

It made sense, though. If Conrad could convince Kilkenny that he had information on Shay’s death, there was a chance in some universe that either Kilkenny or Pierce would want to keep him alive until they figured out the whole mess.

Would buying a day, a week, a month appeal so strongly to Conrad that he would lie about his victim count?

Still ... there were the letters.

Her science proved that he was telling the truth, or at least part of it.

“Did any other suspects come up during the investigation into Shay’s death?” Raisa asked, as they settled into the interview room they’d been assigned.

Pierce leaned against the wall closest to the door. He briefly met Kilkenny’s eyes before returning his attention to Raisa. “The Alphabet Man left the first letter with her car.”

“So you didn’t investigate anyone else?” Raisa pressed, not to be antagonistic but because she needed a clear answer.

“No,” Pierce said. “We knew we had three days to find Shay. We didn’t want to waste time with anything else.”

As much as field agents wanted to dismiss her experience sometimes, Raisa wasn’t a newbie to task forces. The one in Houston would have been up and running for four years by the time Shay was taken. There would have been a few spare men to chase down speculative leads, no matter how wild.

At least that’s how well-organized task forces operated, and she’d always been under the impression that Pierce’s fell under that category.

Perhaps she’d been wrong there.

“There was nothing to suggest someone could be framing the Alphabet Man?” Raisa asked.

“Everything matched his MO,” Pierce said, a muscle in his jaw ticking.

She wasn’t even interrogating him, not really, and he was getting annoyed.

“But all of that was public knowledge,” Raisa said. “I know you wouldn’t have been able to tell the letters were different at the time—”

“What?” Pierce cut in.

Shit, she was tired. She’d meant to keep that close to the vest. Still, when she glanced over to Kilkenny, he simply shrugged. So she explained the two-author scenario to Pierce.

“I was going to say, though, that you wouldn’t have been able to tell that before decrypting it, of course.”

Pierce rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not sure that would have been enough to convince us anyway. He might as well have left a neon arrow pointing at himself.”

Or someone else had. Raisa wasn’t going to continue banging her head against that brick wall.

“Well, it’s enough to convince plenty of judges,” Raisa said, coolly. “Okay, just because we have time, let’s go do some wild theorizing. Hypothetically, do you have any gut instinct on who would have killed Shay and framed Conrad?”

Pierce looked to Kilkenny, his eyes clearly telegraphing, Can you believe this?

But Kilkenny just stared back, waiting for an answer.

Something warm and pleased bloomed in her chest at his silence. She and Kilkenny? They were a team. They would provide a united front even if they disagreed, because that’s what partners did.

She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat, and turned her attention back to Pierce.

He lifted one shoulder. “It seems like a pointless exercise.”

“Does it?” Raisa asked, and then looked around the room, reminding them all where they were. They had enough doubt that they were currently tap-dancing to Conrad’s tune. A little bit of brainstorming didn’t seem like it would hurt.

Pierce exhaled, his nostrils flaring with his frustration.

“Her family was a mess.” He grimaced. “Sorry, K.”

Kilkenny shook off the apology. “That wasn’t a secret. I’ve already filled Raisa in on some of it.”

“Yeah, well, there’s some of it you might not know,” Pierce said. “Hillary, the mother, was into everything in the borderlands of legal. And most things over the line as well. Drugs, guns, prostitution. It was usually her boyfriends running the deals, but she didn’t exactly object to the paydays.”

“But Hillary was never arrested?” Raisa asked.

“No, that woman was Teflon.”

Raisa gamed out a scenario where a mother could torture and kill her daughter. She knew better than most that familial ties didn’t always matter, not to a narcissistic sociopath. But if Hillary’d had violent tendencies, it was doubtful she would have been able to keep herself out of jail her entire life. “Was she still in contact with Shay?”

“She didn’t even come to the funeral,” Kilkenny said, the bitterness as sharp as if it had happened recently. “She’d swing by every once in a while, try to steal some money, use the house as a place to crash, and then leave town again.”

Even if Shay had gotten caught up in something Hillary was doing, it was hard to imagine a drug lord or pimp going to the effort of covering their tracks in such a way. When men like that had a body to get rid of, they had more efficient means than pretending to be a serial killer.

When she explained that, Kilkenny nodded, thoughtful.

“So, seems a stretch to say that had anything to do with it,” Raisa said, and Pierce made a sound that was somehow both agreement and derision.

“Right, because Conrad is lying,” Pierce said, as if talking about it for five minutes and dismissing the most obvious alternate theory were really proving his point. “He’s the one who killed Shay.”

“Maybe, but not necessarily,” Raisa said. “What about the siblings? Did they have alibis?”

She was mostly thinking about Max, the half sister. But Beau interested her as well. He was a nurse, which meant he was more comfortable with the reality of death. The brutality of it. Maybe he’d become numb enough to be able to tattoo a cipher on his dead sister’s arm.

Pierce rocked back on his heels. “Max was at home. No one could account for her whereabouts, but she didn’t have a car.”

That was hardly an issue for an ambitious young woman. “And the brother?”

“He worked at the hospital,” Kilkenny chimed in. “Security footage puts him there for most of the window of her kidnapping.”

“You can believe he wasn’t happy that I checked that, either,” Pierce said.

“Why did you?” With everything else he was saying, he hadn’t even seemed to have considered anyone outside of the Alphabet Man.

“You always check family,” Pierce said with a shrug.

“Are the hospital and mall close?”

“Close enough,” Kilkenny said, grim now. “They were relying on witness statements, too, to place how long Shay’s car had been there.”

“Oh, jeez,” Raisa muttered. Witness statements were as reliable as a broken clock—correct about one out of twelve times. “So, he’s in play as a suspect.”

“Maybe,” Pierce said.

Raisa pretended not to hear the doubt in his voice.

“Okay, so Beau is one person to look at. Her father was ... not in the picture?” Raisa asked.

“No, and she always said that was a blessing, considering what type of guy Hillary went for,” Kilkenny said.

“Asshole?” Raisa asked, and he huffed out a breath.

“Exactly.”

“And you said Shay didn’t have any friends?” Raisa asked.

“No one close. She worked at a bar, so there were always people passing through,” Kilkenny said. “But if this was just a random act of violence, well, I keep coming back to the point you made. There are easier ways in Texas to get rid of a body than framing a serial killer.”

“Right, which was why it was Conrad,” Pierce said, as if that concluded the conversation. “Once he has Kilkenny’s attention, he’ll overplay his hand. You’ll see.”

As if Pierce had planned it, the door swung open.

And Raisa got her first glimpse of the Alphabet Man.