Page 14 of Absent Remorse

She found herself wishing that Joseph was there, not because he knew anything about puzzles, but simply because his presence would have helped to lift her mood.

“You’ll get it,” Simon said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Amber was just about to point out that they might nothavetime when Simon’s phone went off. He picked up the call straight away.

“This is Agent Phelps. Yes, I understand. Can you send the address through to my phone? Yes, we’ll be right there.”

“What is it?” Amber asked as he hung up. She could see the concern on Simon’s face, the sudden sense of urgency there in his expression.

“There’s been another murder.”

***

This crime scene was out on an open street, in a spot where Amber could barely believe that a murder could have taken place. She and Simon pulled up to it, and in spite of local police being there to hold them back, there were still plenty of people around the scene looking on. Without the crime scene shutting down the street, how many more people would there have been moving past?

A killer prepared to murder someone out in the open like this had to be very confident, very stupid, or simply not care about whether anyone caught him. Amber already knew from the puzzle he’d designed that he wasn’t stupid, so which of the other options was it?

There were reporters lining the road, obviously trying to get footage of everything that was happening there. Amber found herself looking around for Joseph, hoping that she might see him there, but the reporters weren’t ones she knew.

“Agent Phelps!” one of them called out. “Why hasn’t the FBI caught the killer yet?”

Simon put a hand on Amber’s arm. “Keep moving. We don’t have time to get caught up answering questions for the press, and it won’t help us to catch the killer.”

Amber nodded. In her FBI training, there had already been a session on the ways that press involvement could complicate a case, putting information out into the public domain that it was better to hold back or giving criminals a sense of celebrity that might make them escalate their crimes. She headed for the crime scene with Simon instead.

A uniformed officer moved to block their way as Amber and Simon approached the crime scene tape. Simon showed his badge and the officer stepped aside, letting them inside the cordoned off area.

A team that Amber took to be from the coroner’s office was there, loading a body bag onto a gurney so that they could take the body back to the morgue. As fast as Amber and Simon had gotten there, it still seemed as though plenty had happened before they arrived.

“Who’s the officer in charge of the scene?” Simon asked the officer.

The uniformed officer pointed to a detective in a sports jacket and slacks. He was an older man, with dark stubble and close-cropped hair. He looked harassed and like he really didn’t want to be the one in charge of all of this.

Simon and Amber went over to him.

“I’m Agent Phelps,” Simon said. “This is Amber Young, who’s assisting me in this case.”

It hurt a little that Amber couldn’t be identified as an agent yet. It was a reminder that she hadn’t finished her training course, and that if she didn’t improve in the more physical aspects of her training, she might never become one. Amber was determined not to let that happen.

“Detective Ede,” the detective said.

“What do we know so far?” Simon asked.

“Not much. The initial 911 call was for medical assistance for a woman who had collapsed in the street. It was only when the EMTs got here that they saw that she’d been stabbed, the knife left in her body. She was dead by the time they arrived.”

“Was there a note left behind, the same as with the others?” Simon asked.

Detective Ede shook his head. “No note.”

“Wouldn’t there be witnesses, out on the street like this?” Amber asked.

To her surprise, though, the detective shook his head again. “No one who saw anything useful. A couple of people saw the moment it happened, but they can’t tell us anything much about the man who did it. They didn’t see his face properly; he was wearing a face mask and a hat.”

“So, he stabbed someone in the street, and no one even noticed?” Amber said. It didn’t seem very likely.

“They probably thought that he just bumped into her,” Simon said. “He would have moved up to her, struck in one movement, and kept walking.”

He looked along the sidewalk, as if able to see how it must have happened.

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