Page 32 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Raisa

Now

Raisa managed about three hours of sleep, but she was up with the sun. Kate Tashibi had said to focus on Dallas and the interview day, and Raisa believed her.

It was a long shot, but she called the social services office Conrad had worked for while he was in Houston. Of course, no one answered at the butt crack of dawn, but she left a message with her badge number and details about the case.

What she wanted was a list of the people Conrad had met, even briefly, during his day in Houston. Kate was right—he’d been triggered into killing his very first victim only a day later. It seemed like too much to be a coincidence.

No more than a minute after she hung up, a call came in.

Delaney.

Raisa closed her eyes for one beat. And then answered.

“What do you have for me?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Delaney said, dryly. “I found one more male victim in the Houston area that might match your list.”

“Can you—”

“It’s sitting in your inbox as we speak,” Delaney cut in. “Time frame is right, age is right. Mother seemed like she was Munchausen by proxy. But she died when our vic was nine.”

“Sounds like exactly what I was looking for,” Raisa said. “Thanks.”

“Hold your applause,” Delaney said. “I could have sent that all to you yesterday. But I got curious. This seems like a definite pattern with our killer. So I broadened the search to all of Texas.”

Raisa hummed in approval. “You found something.”

“Three more cases. The victims all had some kind of violence in their past,” Delaney said. “When they were young children. But what was more interesting was that they were also then freed from that situation in some manner. So Munchausen guy was being abused, and then his mother died a mysterious death. Same goes with the other three.”

“It’s both. They were abused and escaped it,” Raisa said. Like Max. Like Beau, almost, even if it was delayed. Like Isabel and Delaney and herself, though she might have been too young for it to match up perfectly. Was she looking for patterns? Or maybe they just lived in an incredibly cruel world, where people who were exposed to trauma and crime at a young age tended to be the ones, statistically, who experienced it throughout their lives.

“Yup. And one of the other interesting things of note is that they weren’t all men,” Delaney said. “There were two women as well.”

“Interesting.” Raisa couldn’t see the bigger picture yet, but she felt like they were closing in.

“I’m sending you information on all of them,” Delaney said. “You might be able to find more through the official files, but it doesn’t appear anyone’s made the connection between the victims. And they all died in different ways, so I probably wouldn’t have, either—except that I knew what to look for.”

“Like with Isabel,” Raisa murmured, not sure she’d meant to say that out loud. “How she killed.”

Heavy silence greeted her, but then Delaney made a thoughtful sound. “Exactly like Isabel, actually. Only one of the deaths was even suspicious—a mugging gone wrong.

“There was a single-car accident and then an apparent suicide,” she continued. And for one ridiculous second, Raisa had such intense déjà vu that she wondered if they were somehow looking at Isabel’s trail of death. She had been killing for two and a half decades before she’d been caught, after all.

“Isabel?” she tried out, hardly believing it, but needing to put it into the universe.

“I don’t think so,” Delaney said, and Raisa relaxed slightly. Delaney would know. “I think Isabel was in the Pacific Northwest when a few of these occurred.”

“La la la la la, I didn’t hear that,” Raisa said. Ignorance was bliss when it came to Delaney’s knowledge of Isabel’s crimes. For all anyone was supposed to believe, Delaney hadn’t talked to Isabel since they’d been teens.

But Raisa couldn’t get on her high horse if she was using Delaney for her services.

“There are similarities to Isabel, though,” Raisa said.

After another moment of silence, Delaney asked, “Did she ever tell you how she figured out that Conrad didn’t kill Shay Kilkenny?”

“She said the letters sent during that time didn’t match the ones Conrad had sent earlier,” Raisa said. “And she was right.”

“Hmm.”

“What are you thinking?” Raisa asked.

“Well, for all her strengths, Isabel is quite the liar,” Delaney said delicately, and Raisa snorted.

“Her strengths?”

“She does have some,” Delaney said. “But she has no relationship with the truth.”

“You think she lied to me?” Raisa asked, dubious despite the fact that she’d just had that thought. “But she was right.”

“The two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive,” Delaney lectured. She had a tendency to do that, but it was actually a good reminder, so Raisa couldn’t begrudge it this once. “Maybe she knew Conrad hadn’t killed Shay, but she didn’t want to tell you how she knew. She needed to convince you, though, so she found something that would.” She paused, and then repeated the sentiment from earlier: “It’s easier when you know what to look for.”

“Why lie, though?” Raisa asked, not expecting an answer.

She didn’t get one. “I don’t know. But it might be worth figuring out. I know you have limited time ...”

Raisa rubbed her palm against her forehead, the pain brewing there just a wisp now. But she could see it becoming a thunderstorm. “I’ve got quite the list going.”

“Let me know if I can help with anything else,” Delaney offered, then seemed to stop herself from hanging up. “Oh, but I found one more thing to add to your plate.”

“Oh lord,” Raisa muttered. “Okay, lay it on me.”

“I got curious.”

“Yes, you mentioned that,” Raisa said.

“One of the extra things I did, because I’m brilliant, was run a check on any kids that might have fit Conrad’s trajectory. So, a child who was a sole survivor of a mass-casualty event,” Delaney said without acknowledging the interruption.

Raisa made an approving sound. It was similar to their other search.

“The match wasn’t perfect,” Delaney continued. “But it was interesting. There were two survivors, but four other family members died in the incident. It was close enough that my filters caught it. And then once I saw who it was ...”

“Am I going to recognize the name?” Raisa guessed, bracing herself.

“Yes, ma’am,” Delaney drawled. “It was Kate Tashibi.”

Kilkenny knocked on Raisa’s hotel room door ten minutes later, holding out a coffee with a chain’s logo on the cup.

Raisa took it gratefully. She could never drink the cheap swill hotels provided. “Bless you.”

“I don’t think I’ve thanked you for coming down here,” Kilkenny mused as she grabbed her bag and headed into the hallway. “I owe you a lot more than coffee.”

“You don’t have to,” Raisa said. “But I’ll never say no to coffee.”

“Or Four Roses,” Kilkenny said, nudging her shoulder. She laughed softly.

“Or that,” she agreed. She’d wondered if they would be awkward with each other, a twist on the morning after, where the vulnerability had come from sharing emotions rather than sharing a bed. But Kilkenny looked loose, almost relaxed, and she thought she might have actually helped.

She grinned into her cup and then filled him in on everything Delaney had shared.

“Kate,” Kilkenny murmured when she wrapped it all up. They were by his car now, and he fiddled with the keys. “Might explain her interest in Conrad.”

“Yeah,” Raisa said as they climbed into the SUV. They were headed to the prison for one last talk with Conrad.

Once Kilkenny settled into his seat, she slid him a look, trying to assess if he’d had the thought she had when she’d heard Kate’s name. The woman’s red flags were starting to add up. She’d manipulated them yesterday, lied to them, wormed her way into Conrad’s life and into contact with the original investigators—something Raisa knew Kilkenny had suggested might happen in his original Alphabet Man profile.

And now this.

Kilkenny’s expression remained thoughtful, but not shaken.

“So, do you think she’s our second killer?” Raisa asked when he didn’t say anything.

“The first victim that we think is from our second killer was found ... thirteen years ago?” Kilkenny asked, obviously doing quick math.

“Yeah.”

“That puts Kate at ten or so,” Kilkenny said. “Probably rules her out.”

“You have to be all logical,” Raisa teased. She waited until he pulled out onto the road so that she wouldn’t have to worry about him scrutinizing her expression. “I’m getting shades of Isabel with all of this.”

“You do have PTSD,” Kilkenny pointed out, and they both knew he was being serious. “And a true-crime documentarian is a close cousin to a podcaster.”

Which Isabel had tried her hand at with the intention of getting close to the investigation back in Everly. Raisa silently admitted he had a point.

“I do think it means something that we keep seeing similarities in all these people,” Raisa said, shifting them away from her trauma.

“And that Conrad himself fits the pattern,” Kilkenny agreed.

She almost hesitated to say it, but right now, no theory was too wild. “So when I met with that reporter yesterday? He suggested a vigilante. Someone who killed people who matched the profile for the Alphabet Man.”

Kilkenny grimaced, as she’d known he would. “We always take that risk when we make the information public.”

Putting a target on a particular type of person was more of a safety issue when the profile included details that would attract bigots, but there were always loose cannons you had to worry about whenever including a wider audience.

“A vigilante would have to square up with the fact that he was killing innocent men, though,” Kilkenny said.

“That’s what I mentioned as well, and Mr. Sasha Malkin chided me for trying to make sense of a madman’s mind,” she said, and Kilkenny laughed before tipping his head in acknowledgment.

“Well, that’s fair.”

Raisa chewed on her lip. This would be the moment to bring up something she’d been thinking about. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to lob the bomb.

Of course Kilkenny could tell. “What?”

She inhaled. And then ripped off the Band-Aid. “Do you want to hear the reporter’s other pet theory?”

“Pierce.”

“How did you know?” she asked.

“We all worked together closely for five years,” Kilkenny said with a shrug. “You end up picking up some things. Toward the end, it became kind of an inside joke between Pierce and Malkin.”

“You never suspected Pierce, then?” Raisa asked.

Kilkenny glanced over, taking his eyes off the road to do so. He was usually such a careful driver, that alone telegraphed his complete surprise. It was as if he hadn’t realized this conversation had been serious until just then.

“I suppose I considered everyone at some point,” Kilkenny said. “There was a strange moment between him and Shay at the Christmas party we went to one time.”

“A strange moment?”

“I went to grab a folder from my office, and when I came back, things were tense between them,” Kilkenny said. “I assumed he made some drunken pass. She wouldn’t say anything. That’s the only time I’ve ever questioned him being a good guy, though.”

“I mean, not to excuse his behavior, but drunken flirting and serial killing are two pretty different levels,” Raisa said.

He nearly smiled. “Exactly. I could never seem to land on him as suspicious.”

“Why?”

“Timing mostly, I guess. I knew where he was when the Alphabet Man would have had to be somewhere else,” Kilkenny said.

“Okay, but now we know Pierce wasn’t the Alphabet Man, he could fit the vigilante theory, right?” Raisa offered. “He got tired of chasing Conrad through official channels, and took matters into his own hands.”

“But ... Shay,” Kilkenny said. “If he was after the Alphabet Man, and only him, he wouldn’t have killed Shay.”

“She found out and he was covering his own ass.”

“Okay, I can’t believe him capable of that, but let’s say he was. That doesn’t account for the last victim,” Kilkenny said. “If Pierce had somehow finally identified Conrad, why not stage it to make himself look like a hero? None of us got much glory for the capture, not with how everyone thought it was Conrad’s mistake.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” They kept coming back to these roadblocks. She had to have faith that one of these times they’d bust through them, but they were running out of hours.

Before she could push him for more wild theories, she saw the crowd. Then the vans, then the reporters and cameras and lights. She saw the protesters, pressed up against the prison’s wired fence, most of them holding signs with anti–death penalty slogans scrawled across them. There were several people with bullhorns, standing on crates to lift them above the sea of people.

When Kilkenny rolled down his window to talk to the security guard, the noise rushed in. They were chanting something Raisa had no interest in deciphering.

She very much supported these people’s right to be here, but she wished she could somehow shield Kilkenny from them. He had to have enough conflicting feelings about what was happening. He didn’t need this extra stressor.

Raisa hadn’t needed to wonder what the protesters would do. Someone caught sight of Kilkenny, and they all turned like sharks scenting blood. They pushed toward the SUV, hands reaching out as if to beat on the windows, on the doors.

“Go, sir,” the security guard yelled, but Kilkenny couldn’t just gun it without risking clipping someone.

“Kilkenny,” Raisa said, eyeing the group, which was transforming into a mob before their eyes.

“Yup,” Kilkenny acknowledged, jaw tight. He slowly pressed on the gas, moving forward even as someone cried out.

Raisa unbuckled, lifting out of her seat to check. No one appeared hurt. “They’re fine.”

The gate closed behind them and Kilkenny breathed out. “Jesus.”

Even though she’d had a continuous clock ticking down in her head, it was almost like she’d forgotten.

It was execution day.