CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Paige stayed out of the interrogation room this time, watching while Christopher went in to try to make another run at Mark Zint. At the same time, she started to look through everything she could find on him, trying to find something that they might be able to use as leverage to get him to talk.
“Is there a reason that you and Agent Marriott don’t want to be in the same room together?” Detective Sanchez asked.
That caught Paige by surprise. She hadn’t thought that it was that obvious. Although the detective had it the wrong way around. The problem wasn’t that Paige wanted to stay away from Christopher, but that she wanted to be far too close to him.
“We’re just taking different approaches to this case,” Paige said. She really didn’t want to go into the details of what was actually happening between the two of them, or everything she felt.
“Is that all it is?” Detective Sanchez asked. “Usually a partner is there to back their partner up.”
“It’s… complicated,” Paige said. She couldn’t help looking over towards Christopher in the interview room as she said it.
“Complicated, sure. It looks pretty simple from where I’m standing. What? You think you’re the first person to feel something for her partner?”
Those words sent a thrill of fear through Paige, because if Sanchez could see all that at a glance, how much would Christopher see?
“That’s not an option,” Paige said. “He’s a married man.”
“So don’t do anything, then,” Sanchez said. “But you can’t be in this weird in between place where you can’t do your job.”
“Drop it, Sanchez. We need to focus on getting a conviction.”
Sanchez didn’t’ look comfortable with that. She looked as though she wanted to ask more, but that wasn’t going to help the case. It wasn’t going to make a difference.
“Just so long as the two of you can actually work together,” Sanchez said. “Whatever you think or feel about one another, you’re partners. I don’t know how it works in the FBI, but here, that means that you have to be there for one another, ready to back one another up, whatever happens. That can’t happen if the two of you can barely stand to be in the same room."
Paige knew that the detective had a point, but it wasn’t a point she wanted to discuss right then. She wanted to focus on Mark Zint.
She started looking deeper into him, trying to find out more about him. She scoured what she could find of his social media, looking for one comment from Clarissa Bale or Mylene Jacques, one hint that he knew either of the women.
It was obvious that he was self-obsessed, and had a problem with women. He’d sent a death threat to Sienna Niven, but they needed more than that. They needed either proof or a confession, and it seemed pretty clear from what Paige could see through the one way mirror that they weren’t even close to a confession.
“Let’s talk about your day yesterday,” Christopher said. “How did that go?”
“Fine,” Zint replied.
“Walk me through that day.”
“My client has already said that he has no wish to provide an alibi,” his lawyer put in.
“I’m more interested in whether he went to a storage facility used by online sellers,” Christopher said.
“Why would I go anywhere like that when I have a mansion where I can receive things?” Zint countered. “Do you have a mansion, Agent Marriott? What do they pay you in the FBI for asking stupid questions?”
He was being deliberately combative, obviously enjoying this. He probably thought that there was no way that the FBI were ever going to find enough to charge him. Paige couldn’t make up her mind if that was a sign of a man who was guilty, taunting them, or a man who wasn’t but was simply so narcissistic that he wanted to make this whole thing about him.
The trouble was, he might be right about them not finding enough to charge him. Paige couldn’t find any comments by Mylene or Clarissa on any of Zint’s social media posts, and a quick search through their social media didn’t show any posts about him or messages to him either.
That worried Paige a little. If it were just Sienna who had been killed, then maybe that obvious connection would be enough, but with three victims, Paige needed evidence of a connection to all three.
With Zint, it would be messages, wouldn’t it? He’d stalked Sienna at least partly online, and he hadn’t been shy about sending her messages, even threats. Yet there wasn’t anything like that for the other two victims. Paige would have picked it up in her first pass through their social media if there were.
Had he met them in real life? Had he hit on them in clubs he went to, or at his shows? There was no evidence that either of the women had been to his shows, and Paige expected most people to announce that kind of thing on their social media, but maybe these two were outliers.
“I want to talk about Clarissa Bale and Mylene Jacques,” Christopher said.
“Well, I don’t,” Zint replied.