Page 114 of The Truth You Told

“What did Beau say to that?”

“He said he remembered, thought it was nice, too, and called Shay a lightweight in her old age,” Max said. “And they both completely moved on from the topic.”

“Two months,” Raisa said softly.

“Tori was nothing if not obsessively careful,” Max said. “She waited, and she was right. Two months was long enough. No one linked her to Shay’s death.”

“Except you,” Raisa said.

“Fat lot of good that did.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police about your suspicions?” Raisa asked, even though she knew it might make Max shut down completely.

“Because I didn’t have a good track record when it came to accusing people in my life. At one point I was convinced Beau was the Alphabet Man,” Max said, still writing. It was impressive that she could do so while talking. “Shay pretty much laughed me out of her apartment when I laid out my theory. So. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“But all these years—”

“I didn’t tell anyone right away,” Max corrected. “I was gathering information. I thought Tori killed Shay because Shay was onto her. Which I still think was true. But I was pretty sure Tori killed other people, too.”

At the very least, Marchand and Stahl. Probably some of the victims Delaney had found in her broader search.

“Could never confirm anything. But I must have talked to the wrong person,” Max said. “About six months after my last visit with Conrad, Tori shows up at my place. She knew I hadn’t gone to the cops, of course, knew I probably wouldn’t. Killing me would have brought too much attention to her. She’d already decided I wasn’t one of her pet monsters, and so her name was attached to my file. Which was something she was insanely careful about.”

“Not careful enough, apparently,” Raisa pointed out, and Max nodded.

“Anyway, she knew a secret of mine. She threatened to expose me if I didn’t leave town and cut off all contact with anyone here,” Max said. “I didn’t have any actual proof she’d killed anyone, either. Not Shay, not anyone else.”

“She knew that you killed your father?” Raisa guessed.

“She knew that I hadn’t,” Max said, meeting Raisa’s eyes again. Each time Raisa was knocked back by the intensity of that strange color, the directness of her stare.

Raisa’s mind made the quick leaps in logic.Beau.

The revelation must have shown on her face, because Max nodded once, quickly. “She wasn’t bluffing. It would be a risk to kill me, a risk to expose Beau to prison time. But it was still better than me spewing my theories to Kilkenny. And I couldn’t lose Beau. Not right after Shay.”

“So you cut him out of your life,” Raisa said. Everything she learned about him only added to his tragic narrative.

“Sucks,” Max said, succinctly. “But life sucks. At least he’s alive and not rotting away in prison.”

She stopped writing and dropped the pen to the ground. Her eyes moved over the paper and Raisa sat quietly, afraid to make a move. Finally, she folded it up into perfectly neat thirds and stuffed it in an envelope.

When Max didn’t do anything but stare at it in her lap, Raisa asked, “What did you tell Agent Pierce this morning?”

“Where to find Beau,” Max said, her frown sliding into a satisfied smile.

“Where is he going to find Beau?” Raisa asked, gently.

“At an empty house,” Max said.

“Why?”

“Because I told Beau that’s where he would find Shay’s real killer, and he wasn’t about to let her walk free.”

Raisa’s heartbeat kicked up. She didn’t want to think about why Pierce hadn’t told them that was where he was actually headed. “Why is it empty?”

“Because I let Beau pull the trigger for me once before,” Max said, still staring at the envelope. “And I wasn’t going to let him do it again. Then I told Pierce where to find him, so there would be no doubt that he had an alibi.”

Pierce was chasing after Beau, and Beau was chasing bad information. That left Kate Tashibi as a wild card. But Raisa had a feeling that point was moot.

---