When it came to the case, he could do that. It was just with everything else that he had to be careful to keep his distance. He couldn’t afford to be anything more than coolly professional with her, in case it spilled into more.
“What do you want to show us?” Christopher asked, making a decision and going to follow Detective Sanchez.
She led the way along a short corridor, to what turned out to be a security room filled with screens. Those screens showed security footage from the different tables in the casino, letting the house keep a careful eye on everything that went on there. One of those screens had cameras trained on the table where Lucas had been dealing blackjack. A sports jacket sat on the back of a chair there, and Detective Sanchez moved to sit there, hitting some buttons. Judging by the coffee cups stacked up by that station, she’d been there a while.
“This is from ten minutes before you showed up,” she said. Images came up on the screen of Lucas Francisco dealing blackjack, the cards flickering out. “This is why he ran from you, Agents.”
“What are we looking at?” Christopher asked.
Paige seemed to be frowning slightly, though, as if she saw something Christopher didn’t. “He’s looking at the man on the far left of the table strangely. He’s trying to disguise it, but it’s obvious that the two of them know one another.”
Detective Sanchez looked faintly impressed. “That’s because Lucas has been feeding him good cards all morning. Dealing seconds, holding cards back. He’s good; it’s hard to spot, but it’s there.”
“He’s cheating?” Christopher said. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could see the slight inconsistencies in Lucas’s hand movements as he dealt to that one player, just a slight variation in the rhythm of the deal that shouldn’t have been there, a slight stumble designed to cover something else.
“I’ve been watching him for days, hoping to identify everyone in his crew,” Detective Sanchez said. “Crews like this are often bankrolled by bigger players, so I was hoping to get them to flip. Of course, all of them will be running now that you announced to the world that the FBI is in the building.”
“He could still be involved in the murder,” Christopher said, wanting to remind the detective that that took priority.
“From last night? What time?”
“Around midnight,” Paige supplied.
Detective Sanchez shook her head. “Then I have bad news for you. Last night, Lucas here was dealing poker to a room full of high rollers, helping one of the players there to win the better part of a million dollars. I have the video, if you want to watch it.”
Christopher felt a sinking feeling as the detective said that. They’d struck out on this lead, and already used up most of the day doing it. Lucas Francisco might not be an innocent man, but the very fact that he’d been busy committing other crimes gave him the alibi he needed for the murder.
He and Paige needed to look somewhere else if they were going to find the killer, and they were running out of time. With a killer who had struck twice in a matter of days, he might kill again at any moment.