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"Well… wedidhave a new member join a few weeks ago. He's been quite active, and he's definitely one of our strongest puzzlers," Kevin said. "I... I'm not sure about the other part, but he's definitely pretty awkward. Prickly, you know. He hates the idea that anyone could be cleverer than him. One of our members, Mia, solved a puzzle faster than him, and I thought he would explode."
"Mia Wilson?" Amber said, her interest suddenly caught.
"Yes, that's right." There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I'm not saying... I mean, I don't think that he would..."
He'd obviously heard what had happened to Mia.
"I need a name for this new member," Amber said.
"Mark Jensen."
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
"I don't know if it's enough that this is a creepy guy who likes puzzles."
Amber could understand that. It was why she was looking deeper into him while Simon drove the two of them over to the address she'd found for Mark. She wanted to find out more about him, wanted to find anything that might tell them if this was their guy.
"A creepy guy who likes puzzles and who apparently had some kind of problem with Mia Wilson," Amber said as she continued to look.
Simon still frowned. "That's just one of the three victims."
"But thefirstone," Amber insisted. "And the first one is often significant for a killer, right?" Amber was no expert on criminal psychology, but she knew the basics when it came to serial killers. She'd learned them back at Quantico. "Maybe, once he had a taste for killing, he didn't have to know the others so well. They just had to be there in order to be viable targets for him."
"It's possible," Simon admitted, although he didn’t sound entirely convinced by it.
Amber started to read out some of the stuff she was managing to pull up on their newest suspect, collating the information the way she might if there were going to be a quiz later about Mark Jensen.
"He's involved in most of the puzzle-related societies at the university. He's also a math major, so there's a good chance he could have come into contact with all three of the victims. We already know he knows Mia."
"Anything else?" Simon asked.
"He has a record. He got arrested for stalking a girl a couple of years back."
The more Amber saw when it came to Mark Jenson, the better suspect he looked.
“It seems that she turned him down as a potential boyfriend, but he refused to take no for an answer. She had to get a restraining order against him.”
He seemed like exactly the kind of man who might target women, who might want to humiliate them.
They drove over to the address they had for him, a house he was sharing just off campus with a few other students. The house was small and run-down, with a yard overgrown with weeds. Clearly, none of the students there bothered to maintain it. They parked in front of the house and got out of the car. Amber took a deep breath to steady her nerves before approaching the front door. Simon followed a few steps behind her, looking around as if expecting trouble.
She rang the doorbell, and they could hear footsteps coming closer from inside. The door creaked open, and a tall, thin man in his early twenties stood in front of them. He had messy brown hair and a nervous look in his eyes. He looked at them as if trying to work out who they were and what they were doing there.
"Mark Jenson?" Amber asked.
He nodded uncomfortably.
"Hello, Mr. Jenson," Amber said, showing him her badge. "I'm Agent Amber Young with the FBI, and this is Agent Simon Phelps. We'd like to ask you a few questions if that's all right."
Mark's eyes widened with surprise, and for a moment, Amber wondered if he would run. Instead, he nodded and stepped aside to let them in. The living room was small, with a ratty couch and a coffee table littered with puzzle pieces. The air was thick with the smell of stale pizza and dirty laundry.
They all sat down, with Amber picking a spot on the couch that was free from pizza boxes.
"You're a member of a few of the puzzle societies around the university, aren't you, Mark?"
He snorted. "If you can call them that. It's like... they all like their own little corner of things, but they don't want to do everything. They don’t see how it all connects."
He sat there for several seconds, staring at her, almost unblinking. Amber could see how easily he might make other people uncomfortable.
