“Do you really believe that?” Ms. Lowerstoft asked.
“I think that we’ll know a lot more once we’ve questioned your client,” Christopher said.
The three of them went through into the interrogation room, where Ms. Lowerstoft took a seat beside Cal Sanders. Not too close, Paige noticed, as if this were a distasteful duty she had to perform. She obviously didn’t think much of her client, but then, she didn’t have to like Sanders to defend him.
“Where were you the last three nights?” Christopher asked, once they were all settled.
Sanders shrugged. “At home.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
That got another shrug. “I live alone.”
Meaning that he had no real alibi. Paige could see Christopher’s excitement at that. He really thought that they had their man, that Sanders had given up Ingram to let him keep killing with impunity.
Paige wasn’t sure if she believed that, though, for one simple reason: the killings had stopped when Ingram was caught. The copycat had paused in his grim work in a way that someone effectively trying to take over from Ingram wouldn’t have.
More than that, the more she thought about Ingram, the more Paige realized that him trying to take revenge fit his personality more than him helping to stop a killer, even as he was about to be executed.
“What about the 19th of April three years ago?” Christopher asked.
“How am I meant to remember something like that?” Sanders snapped back.
“What happened on that date?” Ms. Lowerstoft asked.
Christopher fixed Sanders with a baleful look. “That’s when your client murdered a young woman called Nikki Ashenko, isn’t it, Sanders?”
Sanders shook his head. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of this. I-”
“I would like an opportunity to consult with my client before there are any further questions,” Ms. Lowerstoft said.
Christopher didn’t look happy about it, but he stood, and Paige went with him. Suspects had the right to consult their lawyers. When they got outside, Paige could see Christopher buzzing with the need to get back in there and get Sanders to confess. It only made the next thing she had to say that much harder.
“I don’t think Cal Sanders did this, Christopher.”