Yet Paige couldn’t find anyone there who looked like they had any kind of problem with Meredith. There was no one who had picked a fight, no instance where she had to break up an altercation, or stop them from acting in a way they shouldn’t. There simply wasn’t any sign of conflict on the footage Paige had.
“How’s it going?” Christopher asked, coming over.
“Did you get the footage?” Paige asked.
“They’re sending it through to our techs,” Christopher said. “If there’s anything there, they’ll let us know.”
Paige hoped so. The FBI’s techs were good at their jobs, but would they be able to identify the subtle behavioral cues that said someone was thinking of killing Meredith? That was the danger with leaving it to others: Paige couldn’t be sure that they had the same skillset as her.
“Was there anyone on the footage who looked like they might be the killer?” Christopher asked.
Paige shook her head. “There’s no one who had a problem with her that I could… wait.”
Paige pointed to the screen as a figure briefly walked across. He was obviously looking Meredith’s way, unable to take his eyes from her.
That wasn’t the part that made Paige pause, though. That had more to do with the part where she recognized the figure there. It was someone who shouldn’t have been there, someone who certainly hadn’t admitted to being anywhere near Meredith when they’d talked to him.
“Isn’t that the guy from the entrance?” Paige asked. “The one in the knight’s outfit?”
It was; Paige was sure that it was. He was standing there, staring at Meredith, when he’d claimed that he was on the gate all day, and had said that he was nowhere near her when she died. He’d lied about where he’d been, and that made Paige curious. What else hadn’t he told them? Why had he tried to hold back where he’d been yesterday? Was it because he’d been busy killing Meredith, and was even now trying to find a way to hide it?
Whatever the reason, Paige and Christopher needed to talk to him, right away.
CHAPTER SIX
Paige and Christopher hurried towards the entrance where they’d first met the guy in the knight’s costume, with Paige feeling a growing sense of anxiety. When they got to the entrance, would the man in the knight’s costume try to fight? Would he run? Had he already run, seeing the arrival of the FBI at the Renaissance Faire as his cue to get as far away as possible? Paige suspected that it wouldn’t be the latter, if he hadn’t run already, but she knew that she had to be ready now for whatever happened. If this was the killer, then they couldn’t let him get away to kill again.
They reached the gates at something close to a run. The waiting lines of people there were still out in front, trying to get in. Paige was more interested in the greeter, though, ready to confront the man in the knight’s costume that she had just seen in the video.
Only he wasn’t there in the spot he’d been in before. Instead, there seemed to be a jester taking people’s money and letting them into the Faire, making wisecracks at their expense as he did so and occasionally juggling. Paige went up to him anyway.
“Where’s the guy who was on the gate?” she asked, in an urgent tone.
“Marry, nuncle,” he said with a playful expression that Paige guessed was well practiced, “how strange your mode of speech is. And your dress. Most unfitting for a wench of King Arthur’s court.”
The jester was obviously playing a part he’d played plenty of times with anyone who looked too modern for the general dress code of the Faire, but Paige didn’t have time for it right then. She had a suspect to catch, and the man in the knight’s costume could already be running.
Paige took out her badge and repeated her question slowly and carefully, leaving no room for the jester to think that this was a game.
“The guy who was on the gate before you, where is he?”
“Marry, nuncle…” the jester began, and only then seemed to fully take in the badge in front of him. The playfulness fell out of his expression, fading into something far more serious and worried. “FBI? Seriously? And you want to talk to Steve?”
“What’s his full name?” Christopher asked, obviously wanting to be able to get details on their suspect even if they couldn’t catch him right away.
“Steve… Baker, I think,” the jester said. “Sorry, we don’t use a lot of surnames. He’s over at the jousting at the moment. He’s not like the top guy, but the crowds like him. He plays the black knight pretty well.”
The jousting meant the large churned up field in front of the Renaissance Faire’s fake castle. Paige and Christopher made for it as fast as they could, covering the ground at something close to a run, and found a growing crowd heading that way too, albeit at a slower pace. The crowd was filling up wooden stands emblazoned with the colors and heraldic devices of different jousters, presumably to give them a sense of rooting for one knight or another.
Another stand sat opposite, more of a stage than a true watching platform, there to house a couple of figures seated on elaborate thrones, plus their servants and heralds. It was obviously a part of the show, although a couple of VIP guests also seemed to be up there. Paige found herself wondering just how much they’d paid to be up there.
The space between held a long railing to separate the jousters, adorned with flags, with knights clustered at either end, waiting for their turns to charge at one another down the lists. They paced and adjusted the straps of their armor. Not everything was quite so medieval, though: a small golf cart was making its way around the crowd, selling refreshments to the watching spectators, and a jester was using a t-shirt cannon to fire clothing out into the stands.
Even as Paige stood there, two figures on horseback came out, their armor shining so bright that it almost hurt her eyes to look their way, their shields emblazoned with a sun and a bear. Their horses were huge and covered in armor of their own, the barding displaying the same heraldic devices as the shields. Their hooves pawed at the ground as they stood waiting at the end of the lists and they snorted as if eager for the fray.
“And now,” a figure on one of the thrones boomed, obviously assisted by a hidden speaker system, “the magnificent knight of the sun will take on the knight of the bear, for the favor of Lady Gwendoline!”
Paige saw the two of them level their lances, lowering them towards one another with hostile intent, their horses charging towards one another at speed. At the last minute, both knights ducked down behind their shields, angling their lances to try to strike a clean blow on one another while they tried to keep their heads out of the way of the impact. The sound of that impact was like a thunderclap, loud enough to fill the open space in front of the castle, and Paige saw splinters fly in every direction as the two lances snapped. One of the knights went tumbling from his horse in the midst of that shower of fragments, hitting the ground hard and rolling as he did so.
He came up, and now he seemed to be taunting the other knight with deliberately large, obvious gestures that the crowd would understand, drawing a longsword two-handed as he did so and flourishing it to get an appreciative sound from the crowd. The other knight turned and dismounted, keeping his shield and drawing a mace that looked heavy and violent. The two of them stalked one another for a few seconds, feinting and threatening.