Page 39 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Raisa

Now

Raisa and Kilkenny stepped into the hallway, leaving Conrad behind.

“Conrad told Kate the impostor’s name,” Raisa said. “He told her where to find the person.”

“Maybe,” Kilkenny hedged, like his instinct was to be the voice of reason, but the leaps in logic were too easy to make.

“You really think Conrad would go to his grave knowing the second author, the person who turned him in, was out there free to live out the rest of their life?” Raisa asked. “Does that fit with your profile of him?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “No. He plotted some way to make sure the impostor paid for what they did.”

Kilkenny grimaced. “Yeah. But . . .”

“But what?”

“Is Kate really a killer? Because that’s what we’re getting at, right?” he asked. “Why would she do that for Conrad? It’s not ambition driving her to do it. The series is already going to be successful.”

“And that’s a fairly unhinged way to gain fame,” Raisa added.

“Right.”

Raisa thought about Isabel. She’d used the podcaster persona as camouflage to get close to the investigation, but she’d also been a podcaster. She’d laid the groundwork with an entire earlier season so that she’d been legitimate. And she’d been good at it.

They kept thinking about this whole case backward, their preconceived views shifting everything out of focus.

“What if the documentary wasn’t ever the point for Kate?” Raisa asked slowly. “What if her whole goal was to get close to Conrad?”

“Maybe. And what better way to entice him than with the idea of that kind of renewed infamy?” Kilkenny said. “But why?”

“To get the name of the impostor,” Raisa said, bringing them full circle. “She promised him a documentary—a promise she was able to bring to the table because of her schooling. He gave up his secret before he died. That secret, that’s what she cares about.”

“But why?” Kilkenny repeated, a little helpless, a little confused.

“I don’t know. But I think that’s what we have to figure out.” Raisa chewed her lip and stared at the now-closed door that hid Conrad away from them. “I don’t think he’s going to give us anything else. I think he was trying to delay us as much as possible so that we didn’t interfere with his plans.”

Kilkenny followed her gaze. His whole body went still, and she wondered what he was thinking. Would he go back in there for one more look at the man who had dominated his thoughts for fifteen years? Did he need that closure and hate himself for it?

This would probably be his last chance to talk to Conrad, to put any final questions to rest.

She wouldn’t judge him no matter what he decided.

“You’re right,” Kilkenny said. “And I’m done listening to him talk. He’s as irritating in person as he was in those goddamn letters.”

Despite the tension thrumming through her, Raisa snorted out a laugh.

“He is unbelievably tedious,” she agreed.

The corners of his mouth ticked up, and when he met her eyes, his expression softened slightly. As if letting her know he was grateful for her support. She nodded once and then cleared her throat.

“We have to find Kate before she gets herself killed,” she said, because she was a professional, and even cocky documentarians who put themselves in danger still deserved to be saved from themselves.

“I think that means we need to figure out who the second killer is ourselves,” Kilkenny said, grim again. That wasn’t exactly an easy ask.

Raisa checked her phone and then realized she hadn’t had time to fill Kilkenny in on the Vigenère code. She motioned for him to follow her back to the library as she explained everything as quickly as she could.

He didn’t once look back at the interrogation room, and only mentioned Conrad when he stopped to let a guard know that they were done with him.

“I’ll be surprised if we don’t hear from Delaney soon,” Raisa said when they got back to the room with the whiteboard.

There was something smug in Kilkenny’s smile despite the chaos they’d been dropped into. She was pretty sure the psychologist in him thought it would be good for Raisa if she bonded with her newfound sister. The one not in jail.

“Speaking of your sisters, I can’t figure out where Isabel fits,” Kilkenny murmured, staring at the board like it held the answer. “It makes me wonder if figuring that out might lead us to our second killer.”

“Conrad says they were pen pals,” Raisa offered. “Maybe she got the ball rolling on all this?”

“But whatever scheme Conrad has going was launched more than three months ago,” Kilkenny pointed out. “And she’s only had reason to hate me for that long. If it’s true that she resents me for saving her life.”

Raisa shook her head, not because he was wrong but because she didn’t know the right answer. “Maybe we’re thinking too logically here? They’re smart and they plan, but at the very least, Isabel doesn’t think logically. Conrad probably doesn’t, either. I mean, they both have such a warped worldview that they’ve justified killing into the double digits.”

Kilkenny made an agreeing sound, but couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from the board.

“They’re so goddamn similar,” Raisa said, and then paused as her words reverberated in the room. “They’re so similar.”

“You said that.”

“No, they’re so similar,” Raisa said again, aware she wasn’t making complete sense. “They’re the same person, aren’t they? Like, almost the same person.”

“Close enough,” Kilkenny said, finally turning toward her. “There’s not much degree of separation in personality when you’re already talking about serial killers.”

“But even for a small sample size, they share a lot of quirks, right?” Raisa said. “Their origin stories are both rooted in a family-annihilation situation.” She remembered what she’d asked Sasha, the journalist. “Was there ever any talk of Nathaniel being the one who poisoned his family rather than his father?”

“Once it came out he was a serial killer, sure,” Kilkenny said. “I don’t know how much faith to put in that, though. There never seemed to be any chatter at the time that he was the one who’d done it.”

“There was never any talk that Isabel killed Alex and our parents, either,” Raisa pointed out. “Though Nathaniel would have been a lot younger.”

“Fits with poisoning,” Kilkenny said. “Still, doubtful. But the possibility is there.”

“Even if neither had been responsible, they both had these huge life-altering tragedies in their history,” Raisa continued. “Just like with Kate.”

Kilkenny’s brows furrowed. “Huh. There’s coincidence and then there’s—”

“This,” Raisa agreed. “Twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern.”

Kilkenny stilled, just like he had outside the interrogation room.

“What?” she asked.

He shook his head, the moment passing. “Nothing. Shay used to say that.”

“Oh.” Raisa chewed on her lip, not sure what to offer as comfort.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“Okay.” For lack of a better option, she pulled out her phone and texted Delaney.

Any chance you have Isabel’s CPS file?

Do I have it (officially?) no of course not , was the immediate answer.

Raisa rolled her eyes. Unofficially.

In your inbox.

Raisa refreshed her email, and saw not one but two unread emails. “Oh shit.”

“What?” Kilkenny was at her back immediately, trying to read over her shoulder.

“I emailed the office where Conrad interviewed before his first kill, and they just responded,” Raisa said, clicking into the email. It was short but pleasant. They told her they only had so much on record, and it was possible that Conrad had met with other people that day who weren’t on the official list. “Do you recognize any of the names?”

She held the phone out to Kilkenny, who shook his head. “No.”

Raisa deflated. For some reason, she’d thought Kate’s tip about Conrad’s job interview in Houston was going to lead to some kind of epiphany. Probably she’d just been screwing with Raisa.

The next email was Isabel’s CPS file.

“Is this a waste of time?” she asked, even as she opened the preview for it on her phone. The file was from Washington State—so far away from Houston that she didn’t know what she possibly thought she would find in there.

Kilkenny pursed his lips, which was a yes in Kilkenny-speak. But all he said was, “Not if you have a hunch.”

This was probably confirmation bias speaking. She was so focused on Isabel, all she could see was causation where there was probably only chaos.

“No,” Raisa said on a sigh, and then partly lied. “I don’t have a hunch. And even if falling down Isabel’s rabbit hole could eventually lead to our killer, I think we should focus on Kate. She’ll get us there faster.”

He nodded, even though he’d been the one to bring up Isabel. “You’re right. I just don’t see how we’re going to figure it out.”

She wasn’t used to Kilkenny not knowing what to do next. She tried to clear her mind. The task was daunting, but they had been collecting a lot of threads over the past two days. One of them would lead them to their second killer. She had to believe that.

“We need to see the incident report,” Raisa said. This was the knot, where Isabel’s, Kate’s, and Conrad’s threads intertwined. “The carjacking for the Tashibi family.”

“It would be a local request,” Kilkenny said.

“Good thing we know the man in charge of the entire Houston field office,” Raisa said, and Kilkenny smirked before pulling out his phone.

“Max isn’t here,” Pierce said when he picked up.

“We need an old report on a carjacking in Austin,” Kilkenny said. “What’s that department like? Do they share?”

“Yeah, text me the details. I have a guy over there who likes me,” Pierce said, and hung up.

Kilkenny stared at his phone. “Is it strange that he went out to interview Max without having a local uniform swing by to see if she was there?”

“Yes,” Raisa said, though she couldn’t come up with anything beyond that. Kilkenny was typing out the information for the Tashibi case anyway, not seeming to need it confirmed.

Pierce didn’t seem to be hiding anything in terms of the case, but he was hiding something . She was almost sure of it.

“You still trust him?” she asked Kilkenny, who grimaced.

“Yes,” he said, echoing her simplicity for effect.

“Okay,” she said.

“Just like that?” He’d asked her that less than forty-eight hours ago, but he still didn’t seem to understand that whether she trusted Pierce didn’t matter. She trusted Kilkenny.

“Just like that,” she said.

They didn’t have long to wait before Pierce came through on his promise to deliver the Tashibi carjacking report.

“What are we looking for?” Kilkenny asked, as he pulled it up on the computer that was already connected to the VPN.

“There was a sister,” Raisa said. It always came back to sisters, didn’t it?

“Hana Tashibi,” Kilkenny read.

For you, H.

That had been the caption on the one personal photo Kate had posted to her social media page.

For you, Hana. At the time, it had read as a dedication or a tribute.

Now Raisa wondered if it was a promise.

Why would Kate Tashibi care about the person who sent the Alphabet Man to jail?

Raisa still didn’t know the why of it all, but if they were looking for a reason for Kate to become a killer, why not listen to her own words?

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 even she hadn’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 the For 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 titled The Origin of a Serial Killer: Nature, Nurture, or Life-Altering Trauma?

Raisa clicked into the reader’s review of that book.

Now this is what I’ve been searching for , the review started. An incredible deep dive, focusing in on that moment. That moment that someone becomes a monster.