Steve shook his head. “That… that was different. Pamela never understood me.”
“But you still thought that you loved her, didn’t you?” Paige said. “You still stalked her, showing up at her house, and her place of work. The way you showed up at the restaurant just to see Meredith.”
Steve was shaking his head. “You’re making it sound… wrong. It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?” Paige asked. “The police reports suggest that it was obsessive, and even violent…”
“I never hurt her! I never hurt anyone!”
Steve was on his feet now in his armor. Paige and Christopher stood too, ready for trouble.
“Sit down, please,” Christopher said, with a firm note in his voice. Even though Paige was sure that she could take down Steve if she had to, it was good to know that Christopher was there and had her back.
“Sit down,” his lawyer said.
Reluctantly, the Ren-Faire knight settled back into place, and Paige considered her next questions.
“You say that you loved Meredith,” she said. “Was that love reciprocated?”
“I… I only asked her out the day she died,” Steve said. “She was pretty busy, so we hadn’t even worked out a good time to meet up.”
Suggesting to Paige that she’d rejected Steve, however gently. It certainly seemed possible that someone sufficiently obsessed my take that as his cue to kill. Steve’s link to Meredith was unquestionable, along with his potential motive. Add in the fact that he’d lied about where he was, and that he’d run, and he looked pretty suspicious. Once they started to look into his life, Paige felt pretty confident that they would find more, certainly about his obsession. They could try to get a warrant and search his home, anywhere he might hide a weapon that matched the wounds. If they found that, then they would have him.
First, though, Paige wanted to establish any connection Steve had to Gisele Newbury. This was a killer who had murdered two victims, not one.
“Tell me about Gisele,” she said, watching for a reaction. That was more important than Steve’s words.
“Who?”
“Gisele Newbury. She was found dead by her car two days ago. Where were you, the day before yesterday, at 5pm?”
Steve looked over to his lawyer, who nodded.
“I was out in Lexington. It was my day off. I went to a restaurant. You can check.”
Meaning that he’d been in front of a whole crowd of people at the time when Gisele was killed. More than that, it was an alibi that she and Christopher would be able to check relatively easily, just by calling the restaurant. It meant he couldn’t have killed Gisele.
“We’ll need the name of the restaurant, and any receipts you got there,” Christopher said. Paige could sense the disappointment in his voice.
It matched Paige’s. If what Steve was saying was true, then he couldn’t be Gisele’s killer, and the odd shape of the stab wounds in both cases meant that it was almost certainly one killer.
A killer who was currently out there somewhere, and who might kill again soon if Paige and Christopher didn’t find him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He was not in his usual conveyance as he made his way around the city. No, for today, he was wandering Lexington in his own way, ignoring the occasional looks he got from lesser folks who glanced his way. He wanted to experience his city fully, and let people see that he was better than they were.
It was natural that they should look on their betters with awe. It wasn’t their fault if their place in the grand scheme of things was simply… less. So long as they understood that, and paid him his proper deference, all was well. The natural order of things was maintained.
He walked with a light step for now, taking in the day around him, feeling a hint of joy and power at the memory of the things he’d done in the last couple of days. The weight of his weapon of justice was there at the small of his back, hidden beneath his clothing so as not to provoke any difficulties. He didn’t want difficulties; he simply wanted the world around him to work as it should, as it must.
He just wanted people to acknowledge his superior place in the grand scheme of things. The realtor had failed to, and the waitress. They had paid the price for that failure, and there was only one price great enough for it: death.
He stopped to wait for a bus, a line of people already waiting there. They didn’t acknowledge his presence, and if they looked his way with a hint of resentment as he made his way to the front of that line, none of them said anything. That deference was enough for him, for now.
He had learned a long time ago that the world was not the equal place it claimed to be. He suspected that he’d been born knowing it, deep in his bones. People were not born equal, were not the same as one another, did not have rights and privileges, whatever fiction they told themselves about it. The truth was that some were just born greater, and it fell to others to acknowledge that, or the great system of the world failed.
He was, of course, better than any of the rest of them. Smarter, stronger, simply better in every way. Even with people who appeared to be clever, or rich, or powerful, there was an indefinable essence to him that just made him… more. That much had been revealed to him years ago, the moment he’d first read about the order and structure of the medieval world. He had never doubted the truth of it since.
The bus came, at last, running several minutes late. That inconvenience was the first small insult, but at least the driver smiled as he graced the conveyance with his presence, and told him to have a nice day, the way such a servant should.
The problem came when he stepped past the driver to find the bus nearly full. There were no seats that did not have at least one person in them, and most were filled with two. He preferred a seat to himself, or certainly one where there was enough room for him to spread out properly. The idea of having to share his space was deeply annoying.
He picked one close to the front, the ideal spot. His spot. Only there was a woman sitting there, young and spikey-haired, dressed most inappropriately in jeans and a leather jacket more suited to a man, listening to music on a set of headphones, while taking up more of the seat than she should.
He stood before her, waiting for her to acknowledge his presence as she ought to. Yet it took almost a minute before she even looked up.
“Yeah, what do you want?”
“I require my seat.” He said it with the authority of the man he knew he was, an authority that should have made this peasant practically leap from her spot to concede it.
“Your seat?” The young woman snorted. “Does this seat have your name on it?”
“I require my seat,” he repeated, anger growing in him at the insubordination. “Do you know who I am?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” the young woman said. She deliberately spread out even more, making it clear that he wasn’t going to be getting any part of the seat without a fight. Maybe not even then.
His anger made him want to reach for his weapon, there and then, to strike her down, to kill her so that the others would see it and fall back from him in fear…
The only problem with that was that far too many of the rest of the world didn’t acknowledge him the way they should, either. Already, he had seen on the news that the FBI was hunting him, as if he were some common criminal, as if their role were to capture him. As if he weren’t above their rules. The world should be a place where he could tell them to back off, and they would understand the necessity of it, but it didn’t seem to work like that. Yet.