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Which meant that the killer was thorough. Meticulous. They weren't going to catch him through some stray piece of evidence pointing back towards him.
"Is the rope the same as the one used in the other two scenes?" Simon asked. He was clearly making sure that this killing was connected to the others.
The forensic investigator nodded. "It looks the same, although we'll need a more detailed analysis to be sure."
Which meant that this was probably the same killer, even though he'd apparently changed his MO. He'd killed an older victim, and done it in her apartment, rather than murdering a young student out on one of the city's bridges the way he had the first two times.
"Did he kill her here because we had the bridges watched?" Amber asked Simon. Was this because of them? Had the killer murdered Victoria Cressing because he couldn’t stick to his normal pattern?
Simon shook his head. "You can't think like that. We don't know for sure that the bridges were ever essential to whatever he's doing. This is about the university."
Amber found herself agreeing with that assessment, at least up to a point, given the way this murder changed things. They had two students at the university, plus a TA in the math department. There was no way that was a coincidence, but Amber still wasn't completely ready to give up on the possibility that the bridges were important to all of this too. The first two murders had been so specific in their method, so precisely carried out, that it seemed improbable that the location wasn't significant somehow.
As for this murder, maybe Amber had been right. Maybe it only took place here because the killer didn't feel as though he could use the bridges for the murder. Maybe he couldn't find a way to lure Victoria Cressing to one of the bridges, or maybe he really had been deterred by the presence of the local cops.
Whatever the reason, Amber still wanted to find a pattern to all of this. She was convinced that once she and Simon managed to find that pattern, it would lead them all the way back to whoever was killing women in Verdice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"There must be something," Amber said as she paced the office she and Simon were borrowing, trying to think.
They'd come back here because it hadn't seemed as though there was going to be much else to find at the crime scene, and if there was, then the forensic team would be the ones to find it. They knew about the possible link to the math department. Now, they were trying to find any additional connections between the victims that might explain why the killer had picked them out there rather than someone else.
"I'm not sure that there is anything," Simon said. "We already checked for Kelly Wasner and Mia Wilson. If there's some overarching connection between the three women, then we would have found it between those two already."
Amber looked at a board that Simon had started to put together, with photos and information on their three victims. Everything they knew so far was up there. Amber knew though, that it was information that they'd already gone over several times, and it was information that was unlikely to give them any new clues.
Amber shook her head. "We already know about one link. They're all in the same place, doing subjects with a link to the Math department. Theyarelinked. It's just a question of why someone picked them out of all the women who work or study at the university. There must be a lot of women who pass through there."
"Which is why we need to look into the math department,” Simon said. “That's clearly the connection here. I want to know what's so important to the killer about it. Is this something about the relationships the killer built up there, or is it something about math itself?"
"If you ask a mathematician, it's the language of the universe," Amber said. "Everything from quantum physics to rocket science, everything that makes up our world, boils down to numbers and statistics."
That thought didn't help, though. If anything, it broadened the potential pool of suspects rather than narrowing it. It didn’t do a lot to explain the killer’s motivations, either.
"If he didn't already have an alibi, I'd say that this new murder gives us an even stronger link to Professor Samuels," Simon said, sounding thoughtful. "I want to check it. I'm going to give the woman he says he was with a call and see if she has anything that can corroborate that he was with her."
"You’re thinking that she might be lying for him?" Amber said.
"It wouldn't be the first time someone in a relationship has lied about an alibi."
Amber knew that if anyone could crack that alibi, then it would be Simon. He had the determination to look into the details, the drive to find out the truth. A part of Amber hoped that he would be able to. If they could show that Professor Samuels was lying, then they would be back to him being the best suspect they could find. But it was also a long shot. They needed more evidence before they could do anything concrete.
“I want to go talk to some of the other professors in the math department," Amber said. "I’ll see if any of them have noticed anything unusual about Professor Samuels or any of their other colleagues. Maybe someone there will be able to point us in the right direction."
Simon nodded, picking up the phone to make the call. Amber left the office, heading for the university and its math department. As she walked out of the car, she couldn't help but think about the victims. She still wondered what, if anything, they had in common beyond their studies. Why them and not someone else within the math department? Did they all have a certain look or demeanor that the killer was drawn to? Or was it simply a matter of convenience that they were the ones who happened to cross his path?
Amber drove over to the university. Now, the place had a tense edge to it. Maybe that was because the people there were wary after three of their number had already been killed, or maybe it was just Amber. Maybe it was because sheknewnow that a killer had to be lurking here somewhere.
When Amber arrived at the math department, she found it bustling with activity in a way that it hadn’t been yesterday. Professors and students alike were hurrying to and fro, clearly engrossed in their work. A few of them looked around at Amber as she entered the department, giving her curious glances. It was possible that they were just reacting to a new face there, but Amber suspected that they knew exactly who she was after everything that had happened with Professor Samuels. Most of them had probably seen the footage of the chase that had led to his arrest.
"Excuse me," Amber said, approaching a group of professors who were discussing a problem on a whiteboard. They seemed to be sketching out patterns there, arguing over rows of equations at the side of them.
"Is there something we can help you with?" one of them asked? He was a younger professor, but he dressed as if he were expecting to turn into one of his older colleagues at any moment, in a tweed suit with elbow patches and wire-rimmed glasses.
"My name is Amber Young," Amber said. "I'm with the FBI. What's that you're working on?"
"We're discussing ways to predict migration patterns in bird species based on existing nesting data," the professor said, with a smile that said he knew exactly how uninteresting that would be to the FBI and exactly how little chance someone like Amber would have of understanding it.
