Page 31 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Shay

December 2013

Four months before the kidnapping

I didn’t shoot him, Shay. Beau did.

The words trembled in the air between Shay and Max, the aftershocks of an earthquake. Shay concentrated on just breathing as Max watched her.

“You thought Beau told you everything, didn’t you?” Max asked. “He has so many secrets. You’re just so easy to lie to because you always believe anything he tells you. He loves that about you.”

“Don’t be cruel,” Shay snapped.

But Max was Max. Even if she hadn’t ever killed anyone, she still had a mean streak. “You really think his father went out on a joyride at three a.m.?”

Shay pictured Callum in their kitchen in Houston after Billy’s funeral.

Where was he driving to?

Did he have any enemies?

“Do you really think it was a coincidence that two men connected to our family died like that?” Max asked, relentless. Heartless. “I walked in on Beau just after he pulled the trigger, you know. He was still holding the literally smoking gun.”

Shay’s world rearranged itself. She had always imagined the scene in reverse. Max holding the gun, Beau walking in on her and the body. Beau taking and stashing the gun as he told her to go call 911. They would suggest it was a robbery and let the cops take it from there.

But then she thought of the way Beau had defended Max. He had always insisted that Max was fine, that she was normal, that she wasn’t going to turn into a vicious criminal. Shay had thought it sweet of him to have such faith, but that had never been the case. He’d simply been lying to her all along.

Or ... she tried to remember. Had he ever said Max was the one who’d shot her father? Had he just implied it? The three of them had never addressed the incident head-on, and both her siblings must have been going out of their way to protect the other.

So had she. She’d been the one who’d driven nearly to Galveston in a panic that night after meeting Callum the first time. She’d just been protecting a different person than she’d thought.

And it would have been important for Max to be the one to find the body if they wanted to keep Beau out of jail. If Beau had been the one to call the police, the cops would have been far less likely to go with the far-fetched story of a startled petty criminal. Max had been eleven—no one would have wanted to prosecute, even if they were shaky about the truth of it all. Beau was a different story.

But Shay wasn’t the cops. They could have told her.

Then there was Billy.

How had Callum been the only one to sense something was going on beneath the surface there? And why had Beau done it?

Even if Max was being cruel right now, painting Beau as something he wasn’t, Shay knew him.

She knew him. He would never kill just to kill. And he’d forgiven Billy long ago, so it wasn’t revenge.

Should Shay even believe Max? What if Max was the one lying to her?

“Just remember how old I was when Billy had his little accident,” Max said. She must have read Shay’s mind.

Max would have been young, too young to pour two bottles of Jack down Billy’s throat and then manhandle him into his car.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t lying about her father. Shay chewed on her lip. Maybe it didn’t matter either way.

“I never actually thought you were the Alphabet Man,” Shay said, directing this conversation back to the present. “Just because you were collecting all that stuff about him. Even when I thought you’d already killed once.”

“I was, like, twelve when he started killing,” Max said, the eye roll obvious in her voice. “I’m not saying twelve-year-olds can’t kill people, but even if you think I’m both totally psychotic and also incredibly mature for my age, I still would have struggled to do all this.”

She waved a hand at the articles, at the maps. “The tattooing alone should have ruled me out.”

“I’m saying I never thought you were a serial killer,” Shay said again. “And I don’t think Beau is, either.”

“But you’re less sure than you were ten minutes ago, aren’t you?” Max said. “I’ve been following this for years. How do you think I feel?”

“What was the first thing?” Shay asked, because her brain had started working again. “That made you think: Beau .”

“You weren’t home at night. You didn’t realize Beau doesn’t always come back when he tells you he does,” Max said. “It wasn’t intentional. I just noticed that anytime a victim was found, the night before, Beau came in late.”

“That’s a coincidence, not evidence.”

“Good thing I’m not a jury that needs convincing,” Max said. “It happened seven times, Shay.”

Three times is a pattern, she thought.

A memory came to her. Her first night with Kilkenny, getting the gun, driving toward Galveston. That morning, when she’d arrived home, Beau had called her out on hooking up with someone and she’d fired the accusation right back.

He had flinched.

Shay’s eyes tracked to the room Callum had turned into a home office. Did he have files in there? Real files, not Max’s cobbled-together Nancy Drew effort. Real evidence, maybe, that Shay could point to and say, No, see, Beau can’t possibly be a serial killer .

She halted that train of thought as soon as it left the station. “Say you’re right about your father and Billy. Beau took care of them because he was protecting you. And maybe protecting himself, I don’t know. He loved Billy at the end ...”

“Billy was dating a woman with a son who was about ten,” Max said. “They were getting serious. Beau met them. The kid had a bruise the size of Billy’s hand on his wrist. Turns out it wasn’t just the booze that made him mean around kids. Two days later he drove into a tree. The woman didn’t stick around after that.”

“Why didn’t I know any of this?” Shay asked, her voice shaking.

“Because you’re just ... different than us,” Max said. “You’re ... nice.”

“Beau’s nice,” Shay said without thinking.

Max stared at her for a long time, then started laughing. “Jeez, girl, tell me what you really think of me.”

“You know you’re not nice,” Shay said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“It means you don’t like me,” Max countered.

“Not true.” Shay plopped down on the couch beside her. “I like you a lot. I was just always worried for you.”

“And all the psychologists who said I was fine?” Max asked.

“You’ll understand if you ever have a kid,” Shay said, and for the first time in six months didn’t tear up at her own careless words.

Max nudged her knee, her version of a comforting hug.

“You always worry about your kids,” Shay said, her smile wobbly, but there.

“Awww,” Max drawled out, mocking her but only because she didn’t like to show any real emotions. “But you’re proving my point. You’re too nice. Beau’s not going to tell you he killed two guys—you’d freak the frick out.”

She thought again of her nighttime flight to that junkyard. And the time she’d run out of the bar when Xander Pierce had shown up unexpectedly.

“Okay, fair, I would have,” Shay admitted. Her world had become solid again, because Max hadn’t really dropped as big a bomb as Shay was expecting. Beau might have taken care of two people without telling her, but he’d done it for family.

You killed for family. You helped hide the body.

None of that changed who Beau was as a person.

“But you’re also proving my point,” Shay said. “Beau doesn’t kill for fun. He did it to protect you, and then he did it to protect that kid. He’s not kidnapping girls, torturing them, and dumping them naked in random fields all over the city.”

Max slumped back against the couch. “Have you ever read Beau’s DFPS file?”

“No, and you shouldn’t have, either,” Shay said. This was getting too much. Max had taken it upon herself to play amateur detective, and that kind of behavior got people taken care of .

“You’ve both read mine,” Max countered.

“We’re your legal guardians,” Shay said, exasperated. “Please tell me I don’t have to explain the difference.”

Max smirked. “No, but it still makes me feel less guilty about it.” She searched among her paper pile and pulled out a manila folder. “The good stuff is on page seven. The psychological evaluation.”

Shay refused to take it, so Max shrugged, opened it herself, and started reading out loud.

“‘Given his inability to control his violent impulses, further counseling is recommended,’” Max said.

“That evaluation was given when he was eight years old,” Shay countered. “Eight-year-olds have a hard time controlling any of their impulses. And Beau wasn’t just any eight-year-old.”

“Fine, I’m not going to convince you,” Max said. “I had to try, though.”

“Why? You don’t want me to tell Callum.”

Max rolled her eyes again. God, she was so young. “No. So that we could stage an intervention.”

“For our brother, who you think is a serial killer,” Shay said, an edge of amused hysteria creeping into her voice. “Hey, Beau, want to stop torturing and violently killing girls? Please and thank you.”

“Well, I didn’t think that far ahead,” Max admitted.

“Yeah, you just thought far enough ahead that you snuck out, bought a bus ticket, and crossed the country because Beau’s grandfather liked ciphers.” No matter what Max said, Shay could be a little mean, too. “Why now?”

“Three days ago he came home late,” Max said, eyes narrowed like she wanted to slap back but also wanted to actually give a real answer, too. “I was waiting for him.”

“Oh, Max,” Shay whispered. “If he actually was dangerous, that was incredibly risky.”

“I don’t think he would hurt me.”

“People are always certain of that right up until they get hit,” Shay countered.

“Not me,” Max said, the hardness that defined her on full display. “I always knew ... he ... would hurt me. I just couldn’t get away from him.”

“Until Beau,” Shay said softly. You killed for family. You hid the body.

How could Max think Beau was anything but an old knight born into a too-modern era, trying to protect those he loved? An old knight who’d had only so-so success trusting the judicial system. Shay didn’t condone his actions, of course. But she would never, ever regret that Max’s father was dead. She couldn’t.

“I don’t want him arrested,” Max said, sounding defensive for the first time. “That’s why I came here instead of the cops.”

“Okay,” Shay soothed her. “You were waiting for him.”

“I asked him where he’d been. He told me it was none of my business,” she said.

“Well, that was fair.” They tried to treat Max with respect, but they were the adults in the house, and that meant something even if it didn’t always seem that way.

“Technically, he’s in charge of me, so it was my business,” Max pointed out. “I pushed. He kept saying no. Then I saw the blood.”

Oh, Beau. Shay just shook her head, though. “He could have gotten that anywhere.”

“It was on his shirt. Just a few spots, but nothing he’d get while shaving,” Max said. “And it wasn’t from a patient, because I asked, and he didn’t think quickly enough to lie.”

That was hardly real evidence, not without a DNA test on the blood. It could very easily be his.

“What did he say?”

“That it was none of my business,” Max said again. “And when I asked for the fiftieth time, he said he was helping out after a bar fight. Some guy broke his nose while slipping on beer, and Beau got in the splash zone and helped him plug up the blood.”

“Then that’s what happened,” Shay said with finality. It was almost believable. Beau would have, of course, helped in that situation, his medical instincts kicking in.

“Fine—you want to explain all that away, fine,” Max said. “But Shay. Where’s Callum right now?”

“Houston,” Shay said, without really thinking about it.

“Because they just found another Alphabet Man victim,” Max said. “Who was probably killed around the same time Beau came home with blood on his shirt.”

Shay shook her head.

“One thing is chance,” Max said, in a leading voice.

Shay had looked up the original quote back after that conversation in the kitchen with Callum. It came from Ian Fleming—a James Bond saying of all things—and then it had gotten bastardized as it entered common language.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

But with all due respect to both Fleming and Callum, Shay wasn’t convinced. People liked to draw connections where none existed. And like she’d thought earlier, all this was about as convincing as horoscopes. She could even prove it. “I fit the profile just as well as Beau does. I’m a child who experienced trauma—no matter what you think, living with Hillary’s rotating cast of boyfriends wasn’t exactly a treat. I work in this area.” Shay tapped the bar’s location, near the hospital, now that she thought about it. Funny, that. Then she tapped the second. “I live in this one.”

“No blood, no missing nights when girls have disappeared,” Max pointed out.

“You don’t know that,” Shay challenged. “You’re asleep when I get home. The bar has a cellar. I could be holding the girls down there. They aren’t sexually assaulted—that could be explained by the killer being a woman.”

“You didn’t fly to Houston a few nights ago.”

“And you know that how?” When Max didn’t say anything, Shay kept going. “I’m sure you can dig up some damning psychological evaluation from when I was eight. I like word puzzles, too.”

“No you don’t,” Max said, but she sounded uncertain for the first time all evening.

Shay started to relax.

“Max, the blood could be from a bar fight,” she said, conciliatory now, not mocking. “He might be dating someone and not want to tell us, which would keep him out late. He went to Dallas a week before the outside TOD for that first victim. Beau might kill for family, but he doesn’t kill for fun.”

Max just stared at her for a long minute before pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Oh my god, I really thought he was the Alphabet Man.”

Shay chewed her lip, but then Max let out a little hiccuping giggle, and Shay couldn’t help it. The next minute they were laughing, tears running down their cheeks, clinging to each other somewhere between hysteria and relief.

When they finally settled, Shay kept her arms around Max, feeling closer to her than she had in years. She kissed the top of her sister’s head. “I never thought you were a psycho killer.”

“You said that already.”

“I’ll say it as many times as I need for you to believe it,” Shay said.

“Shay?” Max asked after a minute.

“Yeah?”

“I think you should know something,” she said, and Shay braced herself, pushing away a little, though just enough to be able to look into Max’s eyes.

“What’s that?”

“I would kill for you,” Max said. Some people might say that as hyperbole, but this was a promise.

You killed for family. You helped bury the body.

Shay nodded and said, “I wouldn’t hesitate for even a second.”