Page 33 of Absent Remorse

He saw Ilya shrug. “I guess.”

“Enough to build them? Enough to make people try to solve them?”

Ilya shook his head.

It was hard to know what to believe with him. Had he killed these women in the throes of his latest breakdown? Was this all a part of some larger game to him? Simon needed to get him to admit to something, to keep digging in search of any hint of the truth. He was still trying to work out the best way to do it when he heard a knock on the one-way glass of the interrogation room.

He went out to find Amber there waiting for him.

“What is it, Amber?” he asked. “If Ilya sees you here …”

“He didn’t do it,” Amber said.

Simon frowned at that. “How can you be so sure?”

“I just called the library. The murder of Alicia Greening? We have an exact time for it thanks to the security footage. So, I called them, and Ilya was in the middle of a shift at the time, in full view of the head librarian. He couldn’t have been there.”

Simon felt a wash of emotions, from disbelief that Amber would be the one making a call like that when it should have been him to a desire to find some hole in it all that would mean it couldn’t be true. Above all, though, he felt sudden frustration. The head librarian had just provided Ilya with an alibi, one that meant he couldn’t be the killer.

After all that, they’d arrested the wrong man. They were no further forward with this investigation than they had been at the start of the day. They needed to start again, and Simon wasn’t sure where to start.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Amber was in Simon’s office again, trying to make progress with the puzzle. It was far from easy, when Agent Palliser was just outside with him, and Amber could hear every word that she was saying. She wasn’t even trying to keep her voice down.

“What do you mean, you destroyed half of a library arresting some random guy who it now turns out doesn’t have anything to do with your case?”

“He wasn’t random,” Simon replied. “His record showed a pattern of attacks that was consistent with a pattern that we found in this case.”

“Victims with names beginning with A?” Agent Palliser shot back. “You think that’s enough to arrest someone on?”

“It was enough to go talk to him,” Simon said. “He was the one who ran the moment I identified myself and Amber.”

“Sheshouldn’t even have been there,” Palliser snapped. “She’s a trainee. A consultant. Was this whole business with names beginning with A her idea?”

The hardest part of all of this was that Amber couldn’t even defend herself. Simon and his boss were arguing about her out there while she was stuck in here working on the puzzle, and she was pretty sure that going out there to try to argue her corner wouldn’t help anything.

“Amber has played a valuable role in this investigation,” Simon said.

Amber saw Palliser shake her head. She was sure that Simon’s boss knew that Amber could hear her, that she’d picked this spot precisely because Amber would learn just how unwelcome she was at the moment.

“It’s only valuable if she finds something that helps to save lives,” Palliser said. “Until that point, she’s a liability. Before she showed up, your cases didn’t involve you causing damage to public libraries or putting civilians in danger.”

“A few shelves were knocked over, that’s all,” Simon said, obviously doing his best to protect Amber.

“Do you really think that this is the moment to quibble with me about exactly how much damage was done?” Palliser demanded. Amber could hear the anger in her tone then. She found herself hoping that anger didn’t spill over onto Simon, that Amber didn’t end up costing him his job.

“I’m just saying that there is a puzzle at the heart of this case,” Simon said, “and Amber has already solved one puzzle to bring in a murderer.”

“But she hasn’t solved this one yet,” Palliser replied. “And if she can’t, then there’s no point in having her here. If one more person dies, Phelps, then I’m calling it on trying to get into the puzzle this way. We’ll send Ms. Young back to Quantico and cut into the puzzle using a cutting torch.”

“But—”

“That’s my decision,” Palliser said, in a tone that didn’t allow for any argument. “Given some of the things her instructors have said about her, you’re lucky I allowed her onto this case at all. She can’t shoot straight, Phelps, and she has no instinct to do what’s necessary to save lives. She doesn’t have what it takes to be an agent.”

“I’m not sure that’s true, ma’am,” Simon said.

“Well, you’re not the one who has to deal with the blowback from all of this from the press and from all the important people who used to be Aiden Merr’s clients. I want results.”

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