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While that had been happening, Liv had been sleeping in her top bunk at Gran’s house, blissfully unaware.
The detective continued. “Kristina had been badly beaten. Lots of trauma. The medical examiner determined the cause of death was her head striking the edge of the coffee table at high velocity. Most likely, she was pushed.”
Liv closed her eyes, fighting a rush of nausea. She remembered that coffee table—it had a marble top. Gran used to have it in her front room. Kristina had loved that table, had asked Gran for it.
“But—” She cleared her throat. “But how do you know it wasn’t Sam?”
“He was our prime suspect at first. He and Kristina had been arguing over custody of Gabriela, and your grandmother said Sam knocked on her door around midnight, wanting Kristina’s new address.”
“Right, I know,” Liv said.
“But then we learned that around one o’clock that night, Sam arrived at his girlfriend’s place with Gabriela.”
Liv was stunned into silence. “His girlfriend’s place?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Sam told her that when he got to Kristina’s apartment, she was passed out on the couch, so he took Gabriela. He stayed at the girlfriend’s place overnight and left in the morning. She didn’t hear from him after that—she assumed he was busy with the baby—but then she saw his picture on the news a couple days later. That’s when she called us.”
Liv shook her head. “Even if that’s true, Sam could’ve snuck out in the middle of the night and gone back to Kristina’s apartment. He still could have killed her.”
“Kristina’s death happened between two and four a.m., per the medical examiner,” Rasband said, his voice patient. “Sam was at the girlfriend’s place from one o’clock until around seven. They were up most of the night with Gabriela; she was fussy.”
“You’re telling me a girlfriend is a reliable alibi?” Liv didn’t even try to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
“I hear you, but a neighbor of the girlfriend corroborated the story. He worked nights from home doing customer service for an airline. Said he saw Sam’s truck parked outside all night.”
Liv sat back, her mind spinning. If Sam didn’t kill Kristina—which she still had trouble believing—why did he take off with Gabriela? With Kristina dead, he would have been given custody. There was no need for him to move across the country and take on a new identity.
“So who did it?” she demanded, refocusing. “If it wasn’t Sam, then who?”
“Kristina’s neighbors reported seeing sketchy characters going in and out of her apartment in the weeks before her murder. Multiple prescription drugs were found in Kristina’s apartment, and in her system, too. Oxycontin, Ativan.”
Liv’s eyes filled with angry tears. She hated that this was how the cops had seen Kristina: an addict, a neglectful mother. Yes, Kristina had struggled in the months prior to her murder—exhausted, overwhelmed, and grieving her father. But she loved her daughter.
“But Kristina didn’t overdose.” Liv could hear how she sounded: desperate. “You just said she was beaten. She was shoved to the ground and hit her head and died.”
Rasband paused. “Listen, I knew Kristina since she was a kid. Such a bright, happy little thing. But after Joe was killed, she had a hard time. You remember that, right? I think she was looking for something to take the pain away and fell in with the wrong crowd. In that situation, even a good person can make poor decisions.”
He was trying to be kind, Liv could tell, but in that moment she wanted answers. Kindness might make her fall apart. Blinking back tears, she tried to hold onto the anger that had been her companion for so many years. “That still doesn’t explain who killed my sister.”
“I know,” he said, sighing. “I can’t answer that for you. Look, Olivia, I’m sorry, but she was involved with several known drug dealers. One in particular that we’d been tracking for a while, a guy named McKinley. There was likely an altercation, which led to her death. I know that’s not very satisfying. The one bright spot in all of this is that Gabriela wasn’t in the apartment when it happened.”
Liv’s eyes filled with tears, and she focused on the blank wall in her bedroom. There was a hairline crack in the paint, so thin she’d never noticed it before. But now it was all she could see.
“And no one cared that Sam had taken Gabriela?” she said, her throat raw. “You just let him get away with it?”
“Whoa there,” Rasband said. “Of course we cared. That was Joe’s granddaughter. But we didn’t know for a while that Sam had disappeared. We were focused on the murder investigation. A couple days passed before it was clear he had taken the baby, and the FBI managed that case. Parental abductions are difficult, you know. There are a lot of them. Resources are stretched thin.”
Rasband exhaled, and Liv imagined him rubbing a hand over his bald head. “Although I do wish we could have recovered the money from the charity.”
“Charity?” This meant nothing to Liv.
“Raised money for kids with leukemia. The same night Kristina was killed, someone stole nearly two hundred thousand dollars in cash from their office in Pittsburgh. They’d just had a swanky fundraiser, a casino night with a cash bar, auction, the works, but it was a Saturday night, so they put the money in the safe at their office. By Monday morning, it was gone.”
“You think Kristina’s killer stole it?” Liv asked, confused.
“No, sorry, I’m not making sense. Sam Howard worked for the nonprofit. He had access to the safe, knew the code to the security system. Seems out of character—kid who graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State, got into law school at NYU—but we’re pretty sure he took the money. Probably why he ran off.”
Liv hadn’t known that about Sam, but even if he was the thief, what would she do about it? Her entire perspective on him—on everything, her life for the past nine years—had shifted so radically in just a few minutes that she felt off balance.
