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Amber had been thinking about that. They’d had two potential leads, and they’d already looked at one of them. Maybe it was time to look into the other one.
"We didn't get anything from looking at the bridges," Amber said. "So I think it's time we took a look at the university. Therehasto be a connection between the two victims somewhere there."
***
They grabbed breakfast at a small diner, then headed over to the university, looking for the building given over to physics. It proved to be a little more modern looking than the rest of the campus, with sleekly angled sides and large banks of solar panels covering the roof.
Amber and Simon went inside, walking up to a reception desk staffed by a young woman with glasses and a friendly smile.
"Hi, can I help you?" the woman asked, peering over her glasses at them. There was a textbook on one side of the reception desk, suggesting that she was only working there while she was studying.
Amber showed her ID to the young woman. "I'm Agent Young, this is Agent Phelps. We're looking for anyone who might have known one of the students in your department: Mia Wilson."
Amber saw the receptionist's eyes widen slightly at that. They hadn’t mentioned the murders explicitly, but she clearly knew what this was all about.
"We don't keep track of who the students' friends are," the receptionist pointed out, "but I guess I can pull up a list of the classes she was in, if that helps."
Amber suspected that would help their investigation a lot. If they could find a class that Mia was in, they would be able to find the people who knew her and who might be in a position to tell them about what had been going on in her life. Hopefully, that would give them something to go on, a direction to look in that might allow them to find the killer.
The receptionist tapped away at a computer for a few moments before bringing up a list of Mia's classes. One of them, a general introductory class in physics, was running right then. It seemed like a good place to start Amber.
Amber and Simon made their way over to the lecture theater, waiting for the class to finish. They wanted to catch people when they were more relaxed and willing to talk rather than interrupting.
Eventually, students started to pour out of the lecture theater, some of them hanging out in the hallways after the class finished. Amber went over to one group of them while Simon headed to another. They needed to split up here to talk to as many people as possible and give themselves the best chance of finding people who might give them the information they needed. They had no way of knowing which, if any, of the students might be able to tell them something that they could use.
"Hey," Amber said, flashing her badge briefly but not trying to make too much of it. She didn’t want to risk intimidating any of the students there. "Did anyone here know Mia Wilson?"
She tried to sound casual in spite of the seriousness of the case. A few of the students looked at each other, but one girl stepped forward. She had spiked blue and green dyed hair while she was wearing a t-shirt for a band Amber hadn't heard of.
"I knew her. Most of us here did. We had a few classes together. She was a really sweet girl." There was a note of pain there in the young woman’s voice as she talked about Mia. Amber guessed that was simply because it was hard for anyone there to believe that one of their number had been murdered the way Mia had.
"Did you ever hear her mention a woman named Kelly Wasner?" Amber asked. That potential connection was important to explore, even if it hadn’t appeared from the files as if the two of them knew one another. If she could find a link, it might be enough to tell her what all of this was about.
Around Amber, the students shook their heads.
Amber tried something else. If she couldn’t find a link to Kelly, then it was better to focus on finding any reason why Mia might have been killed. "Do you know if she was having any problems? Did anything seem off about her lately?"
Again, no one seemed to know anything. Maybe it had been too much to hope that going to speak to the people who knew Mia would give them answers. Still, Amber kept going, wanting to make sure.
"And no one saw anything strange going on around her in the last few days?"
Still nothing. Amber left that group, going over to another to ask the same questions. The key was to ask as many of the students as possible. They only needed one to remember something, and they would be able to start making headway in this case. She could see Simon working his way around the hallway, too, asking about Mia. From the frustration on his face, she suspected that he wasn't getting any more from them than Amber was.
The problem was that the students were starting to drift away now, heading off to their next classes, and it didn’t look as though Simon had gotten anywhere. Amber went over to check in with him.
"Anything?" she asked, hoping for a moment that she’d misread his frustration.
Simon shook his head. "There's no sign that she knew Kelly Wasner, and there's no hint that there was anything else going on in her life that might have gotten her killed."
They’d struck out here, then. Amber could feel her frustration building. She’d hoped that if they couldn’t get anything around the bridges, then the university would be able to provide them with answers.
Even as Amber thought, though, the girl from the first group of students Amber had spoken to came over.
"Look, I didn't want to say this in front of everyone," she said, sounding hesitant. Even now, she looked as though she might hurry away without saying anything. Probably only the seriousness of what happened to Mia was keeping her there.
That caught Amber's attention. "What is it? Some problem Mia had?"
The girl hesitated before answering. "I don't know about any problems, but I did hear some rumors that Mia was seeing someone. Someone she shouldn't have been."
