Page 5 of The Truth You Told

WIFE OF FBI AGENT REPORTED MISSING

Shay Kilkenny, the wife of FBI forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, was reported missing this afternoon. Her car was found at the Willowbrook Mall parking lot, and the police were called after shoppers noticed that the front door of her sedan had been left open for several hours. There were no other signs of struggle.

For the past four years, Agent Kilkenny has been hunting the serial killer known as the Alphabet Man, who has murdered more than 20 people in the Houston metro area.

“It’s a nightmare scenario,” said one task force member on the condition of anonymity. “We’ve all been worried about our loved ones being targeted by this sicko; it’s what you fear the most when you sign on to a job like this. Maybe it’s not our guy who took Shay ... but you have to think it is.”

EXCERPT FROMHOUSTON CHRONICLE

CANDLELIGHT VIGIL HELD FOR WIFE OF FBI AGENT HUNTING THE ALPHABET MAN

Hundreds of friends, family and strangers gatheredSunday evening for a candlelight vigil on the third day of Shay Kilkenny’s disappearance as the task force hunting the serial killer works around the clock to find the wife of one of their own.

Throughout the evening it was clear there was one fact on everyone’s mind: all the Alphabet Man’s previous victims were killed after being held for 72 hours.

Agent Kilkenny, the forensic psychologist who has been engaged in a cat and mouse game with the killer, did not make an appearance at the event.

According to a source close to the investigation, cadaver dogs will be brought out Monday morning to search likely drop sites.

HOUSTON CHRONICLE DATABASE OF DECRYPTED LETTERS WRITTEN BY NATHANIEL CONRAD, MAY 2009–OCTOBER 2014

“This wasn’t a decision we took lightly,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Xander Pierce said of working in partnership with the Houston Chronicle to publish the 81 letters written by the serial killer known as the Alphabet Man to the FBI over a five-year time span.

(Read all 81 letters below.)

“We didn’t want to give him what he wanted, which was more media attention,” Pierce said. “But we left no stone unturned in every other part of the investigation. We couldn’t miss out on the chance thatsomeone in the public might be able to identify his writing.”

Although no one came forward in the five years that the Alphabet Man wrote to the task force, the letters were ultimately responsible for his capture, as he made a crucial mistake in his last message to law enforcement, allowing the FBI to get a step ahead of him for the first time.

One of the lines in the message written to Special Agent Callum Kilkenny after his wife, Shay, was kidnapped and killed by Conrad became something of a rallying cry for the city in the months following her death.

“She never stopped fighting.”

CHAPTER TWO

Shay

August 2009

Four and a half years before the kidnapping

Shay Baker sucked in her breath to get the button on her lucky Levi’s to go through the hole, then tugged her white tank top down to reveal the lacy cup of her bra. She needed the extra tips tonight. Their electricity would be shut off in two days if she didn’t somehow magic up the hundred bucks she owed.

Her choppy blonde hair was freshly washed, her blue eyes rimmed smoky black, and her mouth smeared red with the last of her cherry lipstick.

If she squinted, she almost looked hot. Not pretty, not like the girls who sometimes slummed it in the bar with their cardigans and tasteful makeup. Shay would never be the girl you took home to Mama, but she might be the girl you tipped a twenty because she made you feel like you were eighteen and sexy and suave.

That’s all she cared about.

The CD player blared from the living room, and Shay shook her head as she grabbed her purse.

Max was rapping along to Eminem’s lament about losing his spaghetti due to stage nerves, spitting beats and not missing a single note, when Shay yanked the snapback from her head. Her sister ratcheted up the performance, gesturing to their own dilapidated house and stagnant life.

Just because it had Shay rolling her eyes didn’t mean she could resist the song that had become their anthem. She plopped the snapback on her own head and took over the rap, the fast part about normal lives being boring, about a father not knowing his own daughter. They were her verses, even though they were Max’s verses as well.

They both hit theda da dum dum dumhard right before the last chorus. Max jumped, one hand in the air, as Shay hair-banged like the child of Nirvana she was.

Shay dropped the hat back on Max’s head as the outro played and then went to make sure there was one more box of mac and cheese left. Max was probably sick of it, but it was better than nothing. It sucked that Max had experienced too much hunger in her short life.

---