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Now, though, it might mean everything. Amber's mind raced, thinking of the potential implications of this revelation, what it meant for their case. If Professor Samuels had made a pass at Kelly and she had turned him down, it was possible that he could have held a grudge against her. Maybe even one that might have given him a motive for murder.
And if he'd been having a relationship with Mia, that meant that suddenly he was the only connection between them. It was easy to imagine how things might have gone. Maybe Mia told him that she wasn't prepared to see him anymore, or maybe Kelly had found out about Mia and threatened to tell the university authorities.
There hadn't been any evidence of the relationship with Mia on her phone or any connection with Professor Samuels on Kelly's, but maybe that just meant that the messages had been deleted. Maybe a tech team could still recover something?
Amber wasn't sure about the significance of the bridges. Maybe they'd just been a convenient place to meet the young women? Maybe he'd asked to meet them there, and that was why they'd been killed in spots where they wouldn't usually have been. Maybe the bridges had been a way to display them, to tell the world that no one got away with turning him down?
Amber didn't have any answers, but she did know where to get them. She and Simon needed to find Professor Samuels. The sooner they did that, the sooner they had a chance to find out what his involvement in all of this was.
Amber and Simon exchanged looks. They had a potential suspect and a lead to follow up on. It was time to move quickly.
"Thank you, Justine," Amber said, standing up. "You've been a big help.”
Justine nodded, looking a little overwhelmed by the whole thing.
“Are you going to be okay?” Simon asked her.
She nodded. "I… yes. It hurts losing a friend like this, but if you can catch whoever did this to her… that will be something, at least."
Amber nodded. “We’re going to do everything we can. I promise you that.”
Amber and Simon made their way out of the dorm, hurrying back through the university.
They went to the math department, which proved to be a confusing maze of nearly identical-looking hallways lined with notice boards and occasional problems set up as if on the off chance that some passerby would solve them. Amber stopped a passing student, a young man who looked as though he was barely awake. Maybe he'd pulled an all-night study session.
"We're looking for Professor Samuels' office,” Amber said. In a place like this, it seemed like the quickest way to find who they were looking for.
"Just over that way. Room five."
"Thanks."
After a minute or so of searching, they found Professor Samuels' office. They knocked on the door, but there was no answer. Amber tried the handle, but it was locked.
"Are you looking for Dirk?" a voice asked. Amber turned to see an older, white-haired professor standing there watching her and Simon.
"We need to talk to Professor Samuels," Simon said, showing his badge. The professor peered in to look at it as if checking that it was real.
"The FBI, oh my. Well, this time of the day, you'll find him teaching classes. Lecture room four, I think."
Amber and Simon set off, looking for the lecture hall. To Amber, it felt as though they were following a trail of breadcrumbs, going from one person to the next in search of Professor Samuels.
When they reached lecture room four, they slipped inside and peered down at the front of the room from the rear. It was a large lecture theatre with sloped banks of seats so that the two of them were high above the lecturer who stood at the front, pointing to equations that were being projected up onto a screen, trying to explain the concepts behind them to the class.
"So, as you see, there's a fundamental flaw in the proof that was provided in the late 19th Century. A more modern approach is..."
The lecturer kept talking. He was a man in his forties, with thickly curling dark hair and small, wire-framed glasses. He was athletically built and dressed in dark slacks with a deep blue shirt. Amber tried to imagine him in place of the figure from the security footage. This had to be Professor Samuels.
"Do we wait for the end of the class?" Amber asked Simon. They could stand there, making sure that the professor didn't get away, until the end of the lesson, the way they had when waiting for the students.
Simon nodded. "He isn't going anywhere. We'll-"
“Who’s talking there?” the professor demanded.
Amber looked over at Simon, wondering if she should say something.
"You there! Who are you, and why are you talking at the back of my class?" The words came out sharp and hostile. Professor Samuels was looking their way. "You don't look like my students, and I don't know about anyone due to audit my session. So who are you?"
Amber winced at being singled out like that. So much for any plans they had of doing this discretely. It was time to do things more directly. Amber pulled out her ID, walked down the steps that led to the front of the lecture theater, and approached Professor Samuels.
