Christopher pressed on regardless. “Did you know them? Did you ever have any contact, in person or online, with either Clarissa Bale or Mylene Jacques?”
Paige watched Zint’s face again as Christopher talked about them. She realized something as she watched. He wasn’t showing quite the same anger at their names as he showed when Christopher and Paige had mentioned Sienna before. Oh, there was the performance of it, the snarling and the pretense that he was above all this. There was some general animosity, but no more than he’d displayed towards Paige. He might not have reacted with surprise at their names, but he hadn’t displayed the kind of hatred that he obviously had for Sienna, even now that she was dead.
Paige went looking online, trying to work out who the women had been who had leveled allegations of sexual harassment against him. That search quickly ran into a dead end. Some of the names were out there, published on message boards along with their details, doxing them so that they could be targeted by those who were prepared to take their support for Mark Zint to extremes. Others had managed to remain anonymous, or had perhaps been required to after they’d settled their allegations out of court.
Either way, it was possible that the two dead women were among those who had made allegations. It was impossible to know for sure either way.
“Ok, you don’t want to talk about the women?” Christopher said. “Then let’s talk about magic tricks.”
“Are you going to ask me for all my secrets?” Zint said. “I saw the way you looked around my house like a fanboy. That’s what you are, isn’t it, Agent Marriott? How many times have you watched my shows? No, don’t tell me, I’m sure it’s plenty.”
He didn’t give Christopher a chance to give a real answer. Paige guessed that was a deliberate power move, designed to take control of the conversation. He was playing games with them, and enjoying this far too much.
Paige called up the security footage from the storage facility. It could have been him there, she had to admit, but there was nothing definitive that meant that they would be able to prove it to a jury. It could just as easily have been another man.
The more that Paige looked at Mark Zint answering questions, the more doubts she found herself having that it actually was him who had done this. He was an obnoxious man, and clearly one who treated women poorly whenever he thought that he could get away with it, but Paige couldn’t find anything that definitively linked him to the murders. Yes, he was a former magician, but in Las Vegas, that wasn’t unique. Yes, he owned an aquarium full of unusual sea life, but if Exotic Aquatics was anything to go by, plenty of people were willing to pay for that kind of thing.
Then there was that lack of reaction. That bothered Paige more than all the rest of it.
“Actually,” Christopher said. “I wanted to ask you if you’d spent any time exploring classic stage magic. Have you ever done a version of the bullet catch trick, for example?”
“Russian roulette where an audience member knows which chamber is loaded is more impressive,” Zint said. “But yes, I’ve dabbled in the classics.”
“What about escapology?”
“Where are you going with this?” his lawyer demanded.
“I’m just trying to see if Mr. Zint has any familiarity with the tricks copied in the course of the murders,” Christopher replied.
Zint rounded on him. “They’re some of the most classic effects in magic. Every magician in this town knows how they work. I guess even a hobbyist like you does. Knowing about them doesn’t prove anything.”
Paige could hear the frustration there. Apparently, so could Christopher.
“Mr. Zint, you can leave at any time. All you have to do is provide us with an alibi for last night. Tell us where you were. Tell us if you went anywhere near any storage facilities, or near a community art collective’s theater.”
“You think I’m going to trust you?” Zint said. “I know how this works. Everything I say and do gets twisted against me.”
“I’ll give you some time to consider,” Christopher said, and came through into the space beyond the interrogation room. He looked frustrated. “This will take time. A man like that, it’s going to take a while. I need anything you can give me to help get him to crack.”
Paige shook her head. “There isn’t anything that I’ve been able to find. There’s nothing that definitively proves he had any contact with Mylene Jacques or Clarissa Bale.”
“He’s obviously hiding something, though.”
“He is,” Paige agreed. “But I’m not sure that it’s about him being the murderer.”
Christopher frowned at her. So did Detective Sanchez.
“What do you mean?” Christopher asked. “Did you find something that shows he isn’t?”
Paige shook her head. “Nothing like that. But I’ve been watching him. He doesn’t react the same way to Mylene or Clarissa’s names that he does to Sienna’s. There’s no evidence that he has a real connection to them. Yes, he’s a jerk, but I’m not sure that’s enough to make him a murderer.”
“Before we went to his house, you were as convinced as I was,” Christopher said. “More.”
“I know,” Paige replied. “But his reactions-”
“He could be faking those reactions,” Christopher said. “Like he did when he tried to play cards with you.”
“And I saw through that,” Paige pointed out.