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Amber chose one of the desks, setting her laptop down on it. At least they had somewhere to work through the evidence now when they weren't actively out chasing down suspects.
"I'll see if I can get the camera footage from near the bridges," Simon said. "Maybe there will be something on them that the local cops haven’t already found. Something we can use."
Amber nodded. "I'll start to look into the two victims. Maybe there's a connection between the two of them that the local police weren't able to find."
Any connection would help them narrow down their search and give them a clearer picture of why this was happening. It would suggest a killer who wasn't working randomly but who had a purpose and a clear list of targets. If Amber could establish that, then she might be able to find a link back to the killer or at least work out who he was going to try to kill next.
There had to be some kind of reason for this, some kind of explanation, even if it was only one that made sense just in the mind of the killer. Finding a connection between the victims might be the first step to understanding that.
Amber began pulling up files on both Mia Wilson and Kelly Wasner, trying to find any commonalities between them. She started to look through their social media profiles and read through the interviews the local PD had done with their family and friends, looking out for anything that might be relevant.
They weren't friends on social media, and there was nothing up there to suggest that they might have moved in the same circles because they didn't have the same interests or friendship groups. Mia liked hiking, sports and seemed to party a lot, while Kelly seemed quieter and more into art. Although they were both young, there were still a few years between them. Even though they were both at the university, there was no reason to suspect that they might have run into one another. Just to be sure, Amber looked through as many photographs of the two women as she could, searching for any sign of the two of them together, but nothing leaped out at her.
Meanwhile, Simon was working on the camera footage. He didn’t look as though he was making any more progress than Amber was. He glanced over her way.
"Anything interesting?" he asked.
"Nothing yet," she said. "I've been through all their social media, the interviews with their friends, everything. There's just no immediate connection between them that I can see. What about you?"
Simon spread his hands. "I have what the police have, but that isn’t particularly helpful when it comes to giving us a suspect. There's a vague image of someone on the bridge, but they're wearing a hoodie, and there's no clear shot of their face. Between the angles and the darkness, it's hard to tell much about them at all. We could be looking for anyone."
That was, in some ways, more frustrating than not having an image at all to work with. Having footage of the killer seemed to hold out the promise of more, seemed to draw Amber's attention, while at the same time offering her and Simon nothing that they could use. There was a risk that they could both be caught up trying to get more out of it when they should be trying to make progress in other ways.
“Is there any chance that image enhancement might give us enough for facial recognition?” Amber asked, unwilling to give up on the possibility that easily.
"There's nothing there," Simon said, with a firm shake of his head. "I've tried looking for alternative angles, reflections, anything that the techs back at Quantico might be able to enhance, but there's nothing."
Amber could hear the frustration there in his voice. She could understand that. She felt a lot of the same frustration in that moment. She wanted something that she could work on, something that she could start to reason through in order to get to an answer. Again, she found herself wishing that there was a more obvious puzzle at the heart of all of this because that would at least give her a clear path to get to the killer. A puzzle could be solved. A puzzle gave them a clear direction. This, trying to find answers when there was no obvious piece of evidence to follow, was much harder.
She was stuck trying to find connections where there weren't any to find. Mia and Kelly were similar ages but not close enough that they probably hung out. They were both college age, and both attended the local university, but Mia was just starting out majoring in physics while Kelly had been studying for a master's degree in statistics. There was no obvious link between the two there.
"They don't even look alike," Amber said, which cut out another potential link between the two. "With a serial killer, one who’s picking victims without a clear connection to them or reason for it, I thought they typically had some factor that they latched onto with their victims, something that makes them choose one victim profile over another?"
"That's usually the case," Simon agreed. "But maybe this killer is different. Or maybe we just haven't found the common factor yet. Sometimes the killer's motivations aren't immediately apparent. Maybe there's something about their personalities or past experiences that drew the killer to them. Keep digging, Amber. There has to be something for us to find."
Amber nodded, feeling a sense of determination settle over her. If there was a link to find between Mia and Kelly, she intended to find it, no matter how small or obscure. It was the only way forward, the only way to catch this elusive killer before he struck again.
She started to look through the victims’ phones, pulling them out of evidence to make sure that the local police hadn’t missed anything. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, no messages that suggested that someone hated them or mentioned the bridges. There was, crucially, no sign of either woman in the other's contacts.
Amber did notice one thing on Mia Wilson’s phone: she had several puzzle apps there. Amber opened them almost automatically, seeing the puzzles that those apps recommended based on Mia’s interests and skill level. It felt as though she knew the victim better in that moment than she had before. The puzzles a person liked said something about them, whether they were more logical or lateral, whether they liked word puzzles or more abstract, shape-based problems.
As she continued to search, she couldn't help but wonder what kind of person could do this. What kind of person could take the lives of two young women in such a brutal way? Amber had seen killers before on her other cases, but she still couldn't understand what it was in someone that pushed them over the line into killing other people.
She shook her head, trying to push those thoughts aside. She couldn't afford to get caught up in trying to guess at the killer’s motives without evidence. She needed to find something to go on first.
"I don't think we're going to find any more connections between them," Amber said as she continued to look. The small ones they had were the best that they were going to get. "But we already have three connections, in this case, I guess. They were both young women; they were both killed on bridges, and they both went to the university. The question is whether that's going to be enough to let us find whoever did this."
Simon nodded thoughtfully, looking a little doubtful about how far those three connections would get them, "It's not a lot to go on, but it's a start. Maybe it's enough for the killer that they're women. Maybe that's his whole victim profile."
"If so, then every woman in Verdice is potentially in danger," Amber said. She didn’t want to think about the potential consequences. "Or at least, every woman connected with the university."
"Or every woman who crosses one of the local bridges," Simon said.
Amber felt a sense of relief that Simon was on the same page as she was, tempered by the possibility that so many women in the city might be in danger.
"Do you think we're missing something?" she asked. She wanted there to be more than such general connections between the victims.
Simon shrugged, "It's always a possibility. But we're looking at this from every angle we can think of. Sometimes the answers just don't come easily. For now, at least we have some potential connections to explore."
