Page 25 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Raisa

Now

Jason Stahl. Tyler Marchand.

Those were the men who might unlock their mystery.

Raisa started at the beginning of Stahl’s file.

At the time of his death, he’d been working for a printing company that had locations all over the Houston metro area. One note caught her attention. The company had offices near several body-drop locations, and Stahl’s route took him by all of them. People at the time had speculated about that fact on a few message boards. It was the kind of information low-level task force members in charge of monitoring social media put in to show they were doing their jobs. Raisa tried not to put too much stock into any of it, though, because it usually was just gossip.

When it came to big cities where lots of people lived, there were tons of ways to draw connections that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Instead, Raisa went further back, into Stahl’s childhood, to the protective services section that had been included in his file. When Stahl had been thirteen, he’d been living with his mother and her boyfriend—who’d apparently had the habit of beating up on the kid. There were three urgent care visits and two more ER trips in the space of two years. That should have warranted intervention quicker than it had, but Raisa knew that everyone in those offices was overworked. She couldn’t blame them too much.

Then Stahl had turned thirteen, and of his own admission, he’d started hitting back. He’d been a big kid, and one night he’d landed some kind of lucky—or unlucky, depending on your point of view—punch. The boyfriend’s head hit the curb just wrong. Because it was considered self-defense, and the judge had rightly seemed to realize Stahl should have been removed from the situation before it escalated to that point, he’d gotten probation and community service.

A social worker had been assigned to him—she quickly checked, no connection to Conrad—and the woman’s reports from ages thirteen to eighteen had been glowing. Stahl barely ever acted out, and when he did, it was never violent. The mother moved them to a new neighborhood, got a stable job, and Stahl went on to become a responsible, productive citizen. At least on paper.

The system had worked, and Stahl was an example of why Raisa would never suggest harsh punitive sentences on underage children.

The success story might have been a little sweeter if he hadn’t died at twenty-six at the hands of a serial killer.

Everything else about Stahl’s case—the tattoo, the body drop, the fact that he’d been held for three days—all matched up with the Alphabet Man’s MO.

Except there had been no hard evidence tying Conrad to the crime after he’d been caught. That wasn’t a complete anomaly—the state had been able to tie him to eleven of his twenty-seven believed victims through both DNA and souvenirs he took from the women. That had been enough for the prosecutor to argue he’d likely killed all of them.

That was fair and consistent with other serial killers, and there didn’t seem to be anything fishy about that or the lawyers involved in Conrad’s case.

Raisa set the file aside and moved on to the second male victim.

Tyler Marchand. He’d worked at a nonprofit that helped foster kids transition out of the system. Raisa checked for obvious ties to Conrad, but couldn’t see any beyond working in similar fields. Conrad hadn’t even worked with kids in Houston, just adult cases. It would have been unlikely for them to come into contact.

She didn’t have to go far to find the section for his child protective services file. Marchand had been a single kid of a single mother. He had some red flags for abuse—a couple ER trips, a note about suspected malnourishment from the school nurse—but nothing as obvious as Stahl’s.

When he was eleven, his mother had died in an apartment fire. She’d been drunk and passed out with a lit cigarette in her mouth—one of the oldest stories of all time.

Marchand had been dumped into the foster system, but had been adopted by a wealthy couple less than six months later.

Another success story.

That was strange, though maybe Raisa was biased.

Raisa toyed with her phone for a moment and then texted Kilkenny.

What can you tell me about two vics?

Jason Stahl and Tyler Marchand

Dots appeared almost immediately, and she waited him out. What she got was a long list of facts that were nearly verbatim to what she just read.

Not what’s in the files , she typed, rolling her eyes.

This time it took longer.

They disrupted the pattern, but not enough for me to change my profile.

Raisa chewed on her lip. Can I call?

A second later her phone rang.

“What’s up?” Kilkenny asked.

“Are you with Kate?”

“No, she’s driving in. She didn’t want to send us the footage via any digital pathway,” Kilkenny said, and she heard the frustration clear as day. The FBI had secure drop boxes that would have made it both safe and easy for Kate to send in whatever interview file she had. But the move didn’t surprise Raisa. Kate seemed to want to be in control of every aspect of her work.

Raisa wasn’t sure she could blame her for that. “Are you with Pierce?”

“Yup, putting you on speaker,” Kilkenny said.

She quickly filled them in on her process with the letters and how that had helped her isolate the three victims she was fairly confident had been killed by their second author rather than Conrad.

“Shay was personal,” Kilkenny said. “The last victim had to do with turning Conrad in.”

Raisa smiled at the reminder of how well they worked together. “Yeah, those were my thoughts. That’s why I wanted to focus on Stahl and Marchand.”

“Stahl was the first male victim,” Pierce chimed in. “We got a lot of questions then about copycats.”

“Did you ever wonder that yourself?” Raisa asked delicately. She really didn’t want to start an argument again.

“The ink Conrad used for the tattoo process was a dark gray, not black,” Pierce reminded her. “Even if you saw a picture of the cipher, you would think it was black.”

“Right.” She had mostly forgotten that little detail. But it was incredibly unique. Their second author had either known that through Conrad or ... or they’d worked on the task force.

She wondered how Pierce would react to that theory. From her experience with him over the past couple of hours, she’d guess not great .

“I think these two guys are key to something,” Raisa said, sidestepping that land mine for now. She wouldn’t be forgetting it, though. “Is there anything else we know about them?”

“Sasha,” Kilkenny murmured, and Pierce made an agreeing sound.

“What?” Raisa prompted them with that feeling of being outside an inside joke.

“Aleksander Malkin,” Kilkenny said. “He was the journalist covering the entirety of the Alphabet Man case.”

“Why would he know more than you?” Raisa asked.

“He found the male victims intriguing as well,” Kilkenny said. “I think he might have started writing a book on them, but it never got published. He’s worth talking to, though.”

“Okay, send me his number. I’ll see if he’s available while you guys wait on Kate.” Hopefully, given Houston’s traffic, she could get back in time for that interview. But she likely wasn’t needed.

“Yup, will get it over to you,” Kilkenny said, sounding like he was about to sign off.

She hesitated. “Kilkenny.”

There was a pause, and then the distinct absence of ambient sound that meant he’d read her tone for the request it had been and had taken her off speakerphone. “What’s up?”

“Profile-wise, what did you make of the anomaly at the time?” she asked, feeling freer now without Pierce’s hairpin trigger hanging over the conversation.

He didn’t answer for a second, and then she heard a door close behind him. “He was testing it out to see if he got the same thrill from killing men.”

Raisa pulled a face he couldn’t see. “Oh.”

“I know that sounds crass,” Kilkenny said. “Conrad wasn’t attached to the victim type, though. We already knew that.”

“So, the men were an experiment.”

“That he didn’t take to,” Kilkenny said. “He went back to women only. And that became his only real constant. I know it looks strange now. Knowing what we know. But ...”

“At the time it made sense?” Raisa guessed.

“Honestly, yeah,” Kilkenny said on a sigh. She pictured him running a hand through his hair, leaning against a wall, maybe. He was tired. They all were.

“What would you say about someone who only killed three people and framed the Alphabet Man for it?” Raisa asked. “And then turned him in to the FBI.”

“I’d say they had incredible self-control,” Kilkenny said. “Which would have made them even more dangerous than Conrad himself.”

Before Raisa could meet with the journalist, she had one pressing matter to attend to.

She couldn’t stop thinking how strange it would be if their killer had taken three victims and then stopped completely. She paced in front of her car, the contact pulled up on her phone, but she couldn’t quite make herself hit the “Call” button.

To say she had complicated feelings about Delaney Moore would be putting it mildly. Delaney hadn’t exactly aided Isabel’s killing spree—and she had enough plausible deniability to avoid charges on any of the murders—but she’d certainly known about it. Her silence and inaction had damned her in Raisa’s eyes.

But her sister was incredibly skilled at research, primarily with finding patterns that other people couldn’t see. She was also a computer guru who had written algorithms that the FBI would kill to get its hands on.

In Raisa’s opinion, Delaney owed the world a whole lot of free public-service work, and Raisa was going to make sure she paid up.

Only ... she didn’t exactly relish talking to Delaney. Nor asking her for a favor.

“Do it, do it, do—” Her finger hit the screen.

“Hello,” Delaney said after one ring.

There was no surprise—no emotion whatsoever—in her sister’s voice, despite the fact that the last time they’d talked, Delaney had been holding a gun on Raisa.

“You need help with the Kilkenny stuff,” Delaney continued before Raisa could find her tongue.

“Yes.” If Delaney was going to make it easy on her, Raisa wasn’t going to make it hard on herself. “I’m looking for more victims in the Houston area.”

There was a pause. “No tattoos?”

And this was why she’d called Delaney even though half of her regretted having to. For some reason, she and Delaney had been able to follow each other’s thoughts as if they’d worked together for years.

A more fanciful person would think their familial connection had something to do with it. Raisa thought it was probably just genetics. Their brains were wired similarly.

“No cipher,” Raisa confirmed. “Unsolved murders, men in their twenties to thirties, Houston area. A wide net, though. Think four to five surrounding counties.”

“Anything else?”

Raisa chewed on her lip. She had a gut feeling, but it wasn’t strong enough yet to limit the searches. “No.”

“Okay.”

Delaney hung up, and Raisa was left staring at her phone.

She laughed, and it came out slightly hysterical. “Okay.”

Her next call was Aleksander Malkin, who was an easy man to get hold of. He also suggested they meet right away. Sometimes she loved journalists.

When she told him where she was, he rattled off an address not far away.

Twenty minutes later she found herself across from the massive Russian at what had to be the only vodka bar within a hundred-mile radius.

“Call me Sasha,” he told her, and then promptly downed a shot.

Raisa liked him immediately.

“You drink?” he asked, though he didn’t seem to care much about the answer, already refilling his own glass.

“One,” Raisa conceded. She wanted him to talk, and despite the fact that she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten, one shot wouldn’t incapacitate her.

His lips twitched as if he’d heard that many times. Like he’d heard it and ignored it. The liquor splashed over her fingers when she grabbed hers.

They clinked their glasses together. The vodka slid like silk down her throat before warming her belly. She’d been expecting the fire earlier, in the way of cheap university-level drinking, and she didn’t want to know how much this bottle must cost. Sasha looked unconcerned.

The place was dark and velvety and a nice respite from the warm weather.

“Did you ever try to figure out who the Alphabet Man was yourself?” Raisa asked, waving off his attempts for her to go again.

“No, not my job,” Sasha said.

“But you must have been naturally curious,” Raisa pressed. Reporters—especially crime reporters—were like bloodhounds, in her experience. “Never on your off days? Or late at night? You didn’t come up with any possible scenarios?”

“My pet theory was always Pierce,” Sasha said, with a casual shoulder lift, as if he hadn’t just accused the lead investigator of being a serial killer.

Raisa blinked, trying to catch up. “Why?”

Sasha squinted into the distance. “Pierce’s task force couldn’t catch him.”

“A task force couldn’t catch the Zodiac, either,” Raisa pointed out, as a shortcut to the plenty of serial killers who’d eluded authorities. That didn’t mean every lead agent was the serial killer themselves.

“Zodiac was back then. This was now,” Sasha said, and then tipped his hand back and forth. “Now-ish.”

Raisa knew what he meant. He was saying that with modern technology and crime-solving techniques, Conrad shouldn’t have been able to get away with what he got away with for so long. Except that mindset was influenced by movies and TV shows where every staff was well funded and had buckets of time to devote to the bad guy of the week. This was reality, and it certainly didn’t make Pierce guilty.

The fact that the second author could have been someone on the task force meant Pierce might be guilty of negligence, though.

“Was Conrad ever on anyone’s radar?” Raisa asked. “Even a fringe suspect?”

“Never once heard his name until he was arrested,” Sasha said. “I wish I could say I’d thought it was him all along.”

“He never tried to contact you? Anonymously, of course.”

“No, he was laser-focused on Callum Kilkenny,” Sasha said. “Always found that curious. Not Pierce.” He paused and saluted her with his glass. “Which lent itself to my pet theory.”

“Did you ever do any work to try to prove it?”

“Not my job,” Sasha said again with a jaunty smile, before downing his fourth shot since she’d joined him. He was a large man, so she guessed he wasn’t even feeling it yet. Meanwhile, the room had gone a bit wobbly since she’d had hers.

She gave him a look, and his smile widened to a grin.

“Maybe sometimes I tried to prove it, but then Pierce always had an alibi,” Sasha said. “And I worried if I dug too deep, it would all fall apart. And I didn’t want to let go of my pet theory.”

“You still believe he was guilty?”

Sasha’s bushy brows lifted. He had large features to match the rest of his build, and they were extremely expressive. She wondered how he ever bluffed sources, then thought that maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just honest with them and that’s why they trusted him.

“The perpetrator was found guilty,” Sasha said, like he was reminding her. “Should I have my recorder out?”

Raisa sidestepped that one. “Can I ask you about two of the victims in particular?”

He nodded once.

“Jason Stahl and Tyler Marchand,” she said, and he nodded again.

“The first two men,” he said.

“Yes,” Raisa said. “Agent Kilkenny remembered you taking an interest in them.”

His eyes crinkled. “Did he? Yes, yes, I did. I thought it a curious path, one that became even more curious when it was shot down by the task force.”

“Was it something other than the fact that they were men?” Raisa asked.

“You have to picture what it was like at the time,” Sasha said. “The city was on fire with all of this. Everyone terrified they would be next. And then a young man shows up dead. He fits the profile released by the FBI. He has a job where he drove by at least half of the body dump sites. What do you think? Just immediately.”

“Someone thought he was the Alphabet Man,” Raisa said, almost surprising herself with the answer. Though, of course, she must have been thinking it. Even Kilkenny had noted the similarities in their childhoods. “And they took matters into their own hands.”

“Da,” Sasha said. “I thought we might have a vigilante trying to chase down our serial killer. Now that’s an interesting story. Then the second victim turned up. Similar situation.”

“Though he didn’t have a connection to the body drops.”

“No, but he had a connection to three of the victims,” Sasha said.

“What?” Raisa asked, sitting back.

“Because he worked with the department of social services,” Sasha said. “As did Conrad, so it made sense later. But at the time, there was some low-level chatter that this was the vigilante again. Only on the most off-the-record basis, of course.”

“How did you explain the fact that the supposed vigilante covered up the murders by framing the Alphabet Man?” Raisa asked. “That doesn’t make sense, if they thought the person they killed was the Alphabet Man.”

“You think vigilantes always make sense?” Sasha asked. “You’re not from Russia.”

Raisa laughed and he shook his head.

“The vigilante realized he got it wrong,” he answered, seriously this time. “But he was already committed. Or the men saw his face. He gets it wrong once, he feels bad. War has its casualties, though. He gets it wrong twice, he worries he’s becoming the monster he’s hunting and stops.”

And the next time, he’d simply offered the suspect up on a silver platter. He’d learned his lesson. It didn’t completely fit, but it wasn’t ridiculous, either. Grief or rage did strange things to people.

What it didn’t explain was Shay, though.

Unless ... unless Shay had figured out who the vigilante was.

It was still hard for Raisa to wrap her head around someone killing three innocent people when they were trying to, in theory, stop it from happening. But, again ... people went mad with strong emotions sometimes.

“Was there anything else about Marchand and Stahl that stuck out to you?” Raisa asked.

“Mmm, well.” Sasha looked around, but the place was empty. “Stahl killed the mother’s boyfriend. Self-defense, yes, but he did it.”

“Right,” Raisa said.

“And then with Marchand,” Sasha continued. “Cigarette and a drunk. And somehow he made it out alive?”

Raisa blinked at him. “You think he did it?”

“I think it’s possible he might have,” Sasha said. “Or he saw an opportunity and let it happen. The report says the firefighters found him outside. He said he went out his bedroom window. And it was open. So.”

She tried to remember the details of Conrad’s childhood. “Was there ever any chatter about Conrad poisoning his family instead of his father doing it?”

Sasha shrugged, his barrel chest rising and falling. “They said he was a child. But in hindsight it seems possible.”

Raisa stared at their empty glasses as her mind tried to slot all this into something that made sense. But all she could think about was that while Marchand and Stahl had strikingly similar childhoods to Conrad, there were two other people who fit that bill.

Shay’s siblings.