Page 12 of Absent Remorse

She saw Simon nod. He looked frustrated. “Rose was killed in full view of a hotel entrance, but the killer seems to have found the one spot where we don’t seem to have security footage of it happening and no one remembers it. It’s like we’re dealing with a ghost.”

Or someone who had planned every moment of it down to the last detail.

“So, this puzzle is really the only way to find an answer?” Amber asked.

“I’m going to keep trying to pursue other angles if they’re there,” Simon said, “but, for now, the puzzle seems to be our best shot. Can you solve it, Amber?”

“I … think so,” Amber said. She wished that she could sound more confident. She’d gotten one layer of it, but the layer beneath made no sense to her. Each face of the new cube that had been revealed contained at least one pocket watch that Amber could see, embedded into the surface and ticking gently. Then there were the symbols around them, which Amber hadn’t been able to find historical analogues for, as if the killer had made up his own language or was just engaging in abstract drawing.

“Then I need you to do everything you can to try to crack this puzzle.”

Amber nodded and bent over the cube, trying to concentrate on it. She heard Simon on his computer, typing as he obviously began research on the victims or tried to look at individuals who might have a motive to kill them. Amber ignored that, focusing on the cube and its strange markings.

Getting out her phone, Amber started to search again, looking for anything that might be similar, whether it was a code, a language, or something in between. She could find a few things that were similar, but only in very general terms. For the purposes of deciphering it, that wasn’t nearly close enough.

“On the outer layer, there were symbols that showed up under heat,” Amber said, as much to herself as Simon. “But those were hieroglyphs that were easy enough to translate with the right information. These symbols aren’t like that. They’re not something I can put into a computer to find an answer.”

“So, what would it take to get an answer?” Simon asked.

Amber considered that. “That’s the problem; I don’t know yet. It feels as though we’re missing a key component here, something to tell us what’s going on with this layer. Maybe something about the murders will provide that information?”

“You think the killer has left clues to his puzzle at his murders?” Simon said. “There wasn’t anything found there, Amber.”

“There has to be something,” Amber said. If there wasn’t, then she simply didn’t know how to make any progress. “Wait, you said that there were notes at both scenes? And knives?”

Simon nodded.

“I need to see them,” Amber said. She just had to hope that the clue she needed was on one of them. It seemed like the only way to find a way into the puzzle and stop the murders.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Planning a murder was like working through a particularly complex puzzle, one where the variables shifted from moment to moment. He needed the perfect victim, in the perfect place, at the perfect time.

He’d already determined his victim: Alicia Greening, who was moving a little ahead of him along one of Washington’s streets, looking into stores without a care in the world. She didn’t know what was coming for her.

Alicia was young and pretty, in her twenties, wearing a brightly colored outfit she probably thought was quirky. Yet, she was ultimately predictable. She went for coffee in the same place regularly, meeting the same friends, returning to her place of work by the same route.

It made it easy to work out the best way to kill her.

She had connections to the other women that he’d killed. That was deliberate. He’d assessed and understood those connections very carefully before he’d decided on her as his next victim, his next piece of the puzzle he was weaving.

Place was the second component of the kill. He wove his way through the streets of the city after Alicia, and there was an art to it, because he needed to move in such a way that he wouldn’t draw attention, while also not giving nearby security cameras a clear view of his face. He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses to obscure his features, but he knew that wouldn’t be enough if he got the angles wrong. It was like moving along a puzzle route with one very precise path—any deviation from it potentially costing him his freedom.

He wasn’t worried about people spotting him and remembering him as he passed them. He moved through them like a ghost, unremarkable. The physical had never been his field of choice, but his mind … his mind had always been what mattered most. He’d always been smarter than those around him, always been able to plan ahead where they blundered through life.

For the longest time, he’d loved puzzles. He’d solved them, then set them, becoming bored each time with the mundanity of it all. He’d sought something with more of an edge to it, something more complex, something that would matter.

That was why he’d started to construct the puzzle cube.

That had been anything but easy, even for someone like him. He’d needed to weave in what was going to happen with the puzzles that he set in the cube. He’d needed to construct it, not just precisely but secretly, ensuring that no one would be able to trace it back to him through the materials or the process of its creation. That would be cheating.

Crucially, he’d had to commit to this whole course of action. He’d had to decide all of the things he was going to do ahead of time, mapping out the kills he was going to make, deciding that he was actually going to do it.

That had been the step that was hard to make. Intellectually, he’d wanted to do something like this for a long time, but actually doing it was something else entirely. He could plan all he wanted, but he’d still needed to step up to the first of his victims and make the killing thrust. He’d needed to enact his plan.

Perhaps without the way the circumstances had played out, he wouldn’t have done any of this. Now, though, he found himself wondering why he hadn’t done it far sooner.

He continued to follow Alicia, staying a little behind her. He didn’t need to follow her closely. He knew which way she was going to go, and he’d already plotted out his exact route to intercept her. Indeed, he pulled off from the main street now, hurrying as much as he could. He’d calculated how quickly he could manage this part, along with how quickly Alicia would move. It was important that he left nothing to chance.

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