He was obviously hoping that sheer pressure would convince them to let Nick Lloyd go. Except… would any competent lawyer really think that? No, Paige realized, he was just trying to rattle them and put them on the back foot. He wanted to take control of this interrogation, presumably to limit his client’s chances of incriminating himself. That suggested that there was something there he didn’t want Paige and Christopher to find out.
“That’s not going to happen,” Christopher said. “Agent King and I clearly identified ourselves as federal agents. Mr. Lloyd continued to fire on us after we did so. He also shot at us the moment we pulled up. We hadn’t shown any aggressive intent.”
“Do you have any proof of that?” the lawyer asked, with another contemptuous expression that said he didn’t believe it for a minute.
Did they? Was this really going to be just their word against that of their suspect? Christopher didn’t seem fazed by the question, though. In fact, he seemed like he’d been expecting it.
“The vehicle we arrived in was borrowed from this field office. It has cameras that recorded the entire incident. The audio from those will prove exactly what I just said. I’m sure you’ll argue over it in court, but we currently have your client on charges of attempting to kill two federal agents.”
Paige thought that she could detect the slightest note of tension in the lawyer’s features.
“I’d like to see that footage.”
“The vehicle is being recovered from Mr. Lloyd’s house as we speak.”
“Then you currently don’t have anything.”
Paige sighed. She suspected that the lawyer and Christopher might keep going around and around like this all day if nothing changed, when there were crucial questions that still needed to be asked about the case that had brought them to Nick’s house in the first place.
“The Dodge Charger on your driveway is your car, right, Nick?” she asked.
He gave her an angry look. “Yes, it’s mine. You bastards stole it.”
“You seem like a very angry man, Nick,” Paige said, not rising to meet that aggression. “Does that anger ever spill over into road rage? Driving too close to people? Flashing your lights? Trying to scare them?”
“You’re jumping from accusations of assaulting the two of you to whether my client hit his horn because someone cut him off at a junction?” the lawyer asked, sounding incredulous at the question.
Paige nodded. “It’s relevant. How about it, Nick? Do you ever get like that when you drive?”
“Sure, who doesn’t?” Nick countered, making it sound as though it was normal.
“And did you have a road rage incident like that two days ago involving this woman?”
Paige pulled up an image of Gisele Newbury on her phone, showing it to Nick. He might not even know her name, but he would remember her if he’d argued with her. If he’d killed her.
“Did you argue with her? Did you follow her home?”
“I didn’t even see her,” Nick said. “It wasn’t me.”
“Really?” Paige said. “She was driving a Porsche, going about her day…”
“She was driving like a maniac!” Nick said, in a sudden burst of temper.
Paige looked over to Christopher, who nodded. He’d caught that slip too. It was kind of hard not to when Nick had reacted so obviously.
“I thought you said you’ve never seen her?” Christopher said. “If you haven’t seen her, how do you know she was driving like a maniac?”
Nick engaged in a quick, whispered conversation with the lawyer.
“All right,” he admitted once it became clear that the lawyer wasn’t going to be able to do anything. “I saw her. I got pissed with her because she was driving that Porsche of hers insanely, all over the road. So yeah, I flashed my lights and tailgated her a little. So what?”
“So, the woman in question, Gisele Newbury, is dead,” Paige said. She watched Nick, trying to gauge any hint of reaction to that. There wasn’t any sign of sympathy now, or shock, only worry. Worry that he was about to be caught for his crimes? Worry that they’d found out what he’d done?
“I never had anything to do with that,” Nick said, in a firm tone.
“So you didn’t follow her home after your bout of road rage, then stab her?” Christopher asked.
Now Paige saw Nick’s eyes widen, the accusation obviously taking him by surprise.
“No, of course not.”
It would have been too much to hope that he might admit it. Of course he was going to deny it. It fell to her and Christopher to get past that denial to the truth.
“You just said that she made you angry,” Paige said, seeing if that would get the reaction that they needed. “And we’ve seen that you’re willing to lash out with violence.”
“But not like that!” Nick said. “When you came to my house, I thought…”
“What did you think?” Christopher asked. “That you’d been caught? That we’d found out about Gisele, and about Meredith Park?”
“Who?” Nick said, but it wasn’t very convincing. The idea that he wouldn’t have at least heard the news of her death when it happened only around a mile from his home just wasn’t believable.
Paige decided to press him on that aspect, hoping that if she kept switching angles, he would let something slip.
“Have you ever been to the Renaissance Faire?” Paige asked him.
He frowned, as if not quite sure where she was going with it. “Sure, I’ve been there. It’s more for geeks and kids, but it’s fun enough if I’m bored.”
Paige called up a photograph of Meredith. “While you were there, did you see this woman?”
Nick shook his head, although it was hard to tell if he even really looked at the picture. “I’ve never seen her before.”
“The same way you never saw Gisele Newbury before?” Christopher asked.
Nick’s lawyer stepped in then. “My client has answered your question, Agent. If you don’t have anything more relevant, I suggest that you let him go.”
The lawyer was still angling for that? As far as Paige could see, that wasn’t going to happen, but the lawyer was still pushing for it, almost with a hint of desperation. It was as if he thought that the longer Nick was here, the more chance there was of Paige and Christopher finding out something else.
What, though? What were the two of them trying to hide?
Paige found herself thinking back to the moment when she’d been sneaking up on Nick, and he’d been talking about killing her and Christopher for taking his car. That hadn’t been the whole reason, though. He’d been upset that they’d taken his “stuff.”
“What do you have in your car, Nick?” Paige asked, keeping her voice level.
She saw his eyes widen with fear at that, and knew that she’d hit close to home with the question.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was a rote denial, and Paige didn’t believe it.
“Sure you do. Now, we could have a team of FBI forensic experts tear the Dodge apart piece by piece until they find something, or you could give me an answer.”