Page 24 of By the Time You Read This

They were FBI, so she probably didn’t want to be outright dismissive, but she obviously wanted to get them out of here so she could hand this off to someone much lower in the pecking order.

“I realize this isn’t the most appealing case to solve—”

St. Ivany held her hand up, looking genuinely insulted. “If this was actually homicide, I’d want it solved even if Hitler was the victim. We’re a small town, though. And we’re already dealing with a death that’s stretching our resources thin.”

“So call us in on this,” Kilkenny offered, before Raisa could ask what the other death was.

The FBI had limited jurisdiction when it came to local cases, but anyone could ask for their help. It would let Raisa and Kilkenny navigate the investigation so much more easily if they were there as law enforcement instead of as a relative of the victim and her friend.

“A forensic linguist and a criminal profiler?” St. Ivany asked, brows raised. “How exactly do I justify that?”

Kilkenny tensed beside Raisa. Out of the two of them, he usually garnered the most respect. TV shows likeCriminal MindsandMindhunterhad legitimized forensic psychology in a way Raisa could only dream about when it came to her career. But some doubt would always linger for people who wanted to discredit his existence.

St. Ivany placed her hands flat on her desk in a conciliatory gesture. “Look. I promise, I’ll keep an open mind, once we get confirmation foul play was involved from our—very competent and brilliant—medical examiner. Now, I’m going to set you up with my partner, who will take your statement.”

She stood and they had no choice but to follow suit.

“If it is homicide, that means there’s a murderer on the loose in your town,” Raisa said. “If you don’t care about solving it for Isabel, you should care about the safety of your residents.”

It was a low blow, but Raisa was desperate. They wouldn’t get very far if both the prison and the local detectives were against them.

“I already have a murderer on the loose. So.”

“What?” Raisa asked, not sure she understood.

“A homicide, a violent one.” St. Ivany shook her head and then took a deep, composing breath. “I’m sorry. Like I said, we’re not going to prioritize the death of a serial killer when we’re dealing with anothercase. But believe me, if the ME finds anything suspicious, we’ll give it all the attention we would any other investigation.”

“Two deaths, so close together,” Kilkenny murmured as they walked past a conference room toward the back of the station. They could see a whiteboard with pictures and papers hung up on it, the scrawled handwriting of multiple different people colliding together with theories and suspect names.

Had they been anyone else, St. Ivany probably would have led them a different way, but being in law enforcement bought you some degree of trust.

“We’ve had a couple a year since I moved here,” St. Ivany said. “But there’s usually an obvious suspect. A domestic, or a bar brawl gone incredibly wrong.”

“That’s not the case in this one?” Raisa guessed, squinting to try to make out the name written at the top of the board.

All St. Ivany offered was a terse “No.”

Perhaps she was defensive or just proprietary.

Or maybe she just didn’t like them.

Raisa tried to think of any news alerts from the past couple of weeks, but she’d been so wrapped up in the San Diego case that it wasn’t hard to imagine missing even a violent homicide so near to her house.

The man waiting for them in the smaller conference room was dumpy and forgettable, and his clothes did nothing to address either problem. His trousers were too tight and his blazer too big, while he had a coffee stain on a wrinkled shirt. He smelled of menthol and lavender, making her wonder if he had some kind of joint ailment.

St. Ivany left them with a tight smile and light knuckle-rap on the doorjamb. Off to try to solve her much more important homicide.

The detective cleared his throat, looking perfectly pleased to have been entrusted with the task.

Raisa gave her statement, repeating much of what she’d just told St. Ivany. And then they were seen to the door.

“It’s going to be at least a few days before that report comes back,” Kilkenny said, as they lingered by the SUV.

“That’s optimistic.”

“You’ve done more than anyone could ask from you,” Kilkenny said. “We could just go home.”

“We’re not going to prioritize the death of a serial killer ...”

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