CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was getting late, and all Paige could do was stand outside the interview room they’d put Zane in, down at the local police precinct, waiting for his lawyer to arrive. He’d flatly refused to say anything without one present. Was that because he knew he was guilty, or just because he’d spent long enough in the criminal justice system to know that it was better to say as little as possible?
Either way, it was frustrating to be stuck out there, not making progress, when they had a suspect in custody. Before, Paige might have spent a moment like this talking with Christopher, but now, she wasn’t even sure that she could do that. There wasn’t the same easy banter that there had been between them before. He seemed to be keeping his distance, as if aware of everything that Paige felt when it came to him. As if that knowledge had driven some kind of silent wedge between the two of them.
Paige found herself hoping that she hadn’t somehow ruined their partnership even as it began. She’d tried not to do anything that would make how she felt about Christopher obvious, but it seemed clear that she hadn’t managed it. He must have worked it out because he currently didn’t seem to want anything to do with her. Why else was he keeping his distance like this?
Paige tried to focus on the case to distract from the worry of that. Ultimately, both she and Christopher were there to do a job. Lives were on the line. Compared to that, anything they might or might not feel was secondary.
Even as Paige thought it, a slight, shuffling man in a designer suit, carrying a shiny briefcase came up to the interview room. Christopher moved to intercept him, but the man held out a card, presenting it almost as if he were bestowing some great favor.
“I’m here to see my client,” he said.
Christopher had to step out of the way to let him pass, and it wasn’t long before he was ensconced in the interview room with Zane, obviously running through the whole situation.
Something didn’t feel right to Paige about the whole situation. “Isn’t it a bit odd that a man like Zane can afford a lawyer like that?”
“You have a point,” Christopher said. “A guy like him, you’d guess he’d get the public defender. Looking at his file, I kind of get the impression that’s why he went down for so long last time.”
“He got sent away for manslaughter rather than murder,” Paige pointed out. “His lawyer must have been doing something right. And that guy looks…”
Well, mostly he looked highly paid. He looked like the kind of lawyer that someone much richer might have had. Certainly not the kind of lawyer that a man who designed magic props for a living might be able to afford.
The lawyer came to the door of the interview room, beckoning Paige and Christopher in as if he were the one in control of the whole situation, rather than the two of them.
“Come in, and we’ll get this all straightened out,” he said. He made it sound like some minor misunderstanding, rather than his client being arrested on suspicion of being a serial killer. Paige suspected that nothing about this interrogation was going to go quite the way she might have expected.
Paige and Christopher went into the interrogation room, taking their seats opposite Zane Caister. He looked a lot more poised than he had been when they’d brought him in. He looked confident now, even defiant and angry, as if the presence of his lawyer had energized him.
“I’m Jeremy Liston,” the lawyer said. “A partner with Liston, Barr, and associates. Would you like to tell me, agents, on what grounds you’ve arrested my client?”
“We went to question your client in connection with two murders,” Christopher said. “He then proceeded to threaten us and to try to escape. That was more than enough to arrest him for further questioning.”
“Zane, do you want to tell the FBI why you ran from them?” the lawyer said.
“It was the FBI,” Zane said, with a shrug, as if that answered everything. As if anyone would have run the moment they found that out.
“What do you mean by that?” Paige asked.
“What do you think?” Zane countered. “The cops framed me for murder once.”
He was claiming that he was framed?
“A jury didn’t agree,” Christopher said.
“Whatever miscarriage of justice there may have been fifteen years ago,” the lawyer said. “The fact remains that my client has an understandable mistrust of law enforcement figures. One that constitutes a reasonable explanation for his actions, and certainly doesn’t amount to an admission of guilt on his part.”
Paige noted that the lawyer was talking far more than his client was. Zane projected a confident look, but she also saw the way that his eyes darted around, as if he were still looking for a way out of all of this. He was scared, and his confidence was mostly down to the presence of his lawyer.
“We’re looking for a murderer who bases his crimes on magic tricks,” Paige said. “Ones that have used props manufactured by your company, Zane.”
Zane grunted and shrugged, not saying more than that.
“That amounts to no more than circumstantial evidence,” the lawyer said. “As I’m sure you both know, agents. Are you really telling me that you arrested my client for that?”
“As I said, we arrested him because he threatened us and tried to escape,” Christopher replied. “We went to ask him some questions because of those apparent connections. If he’d supplied us with good answers, then things wouldn’t have gone any further.”
“Sure they wouldn’t,” Zane said. “Just like last time, when the cops said that everything would be fine if I just talked to them. That they would get everything straightened out soon. And then they ensured that I got sent down for a murder I never committed. It took Jeremy here to get me out.”