Page 14 of Absent Reason

"Then you need to stay there." Amber got the feeling that the other woman was trying to make this as easy for her as possible when she didn't have to. “The doctors say that there's nothing anyone can do here anyway except wait.”

A part of Amber wanted to go there anyway, wanted to make up for running away earlier by being there now. Especially when she and Joseph had argued so soon before he'd been attacked. Joseph hadn't been able to understand why Amber had run off everywhere, putting herself in danger to chase bad guys. Now, she was chasing another bad guy, and it was Joseph who was in danger.

Yet if she did go back, she would be running out on a case she'd already taken, one that Palliser and Simon both expected her to keep going with. If the killer wasn't caught, if he killed anyone else, Amber would see the faces of his victims every time she closed her eyes. She would feel the guilt of it as her responsibility. She would never know for sure if she could have helped to save their lives. Shehadto stay here.

"All right," Amber said, knowing that it was the only thing that shecouldsay. "But I still want to know if there's any change. Especially if Joseph wakes up."

"I'll call youwhenhe wakes up," Denise said. "Or better yet, I'll get him to call you. It will be okay, Amber."

Denise sounded as if she were saying that mostly to reassure herself. She definitely didn’t seem certain about it. Amber had to hang up and had to force herself to focus on the case. She was meant to be looking into the town's bridges, although there hadn't been anything concrete there that she and Simon could use.

Amber decided to go and see how Simon was getting on with his part of the investigation. She left the office and could see him across the Verdice PD's bullpen, talking to Chief Williams and a couple of detectives. As she walked over, she could see that Simon was animatedly gesticulating, his eyes shining with excitement at what the detectives were saying. Amber had to admit, there was something about him when he got so caught up in a case that made him almost magnetic, impossible to take her eyes off.

"What's going on?" Amber asked, coming to a stop beside them.

Chief Williams turned to her. "Agent Phelps has been asking us to go through our files to see if there's anyone who spends time around the bridges who might be a potential suspect."

Amber knew that part. She wanted to know if they’d found any answers.

"And?" Amber said.

Chief Williams gestured to a computer screen. There was a police file there on the screen for a man named Marcus Johnson. He was a skinny, bearded, white male in his late thirties, although years of living rough had left him looking older.

"One of my guys remembered Marcus when Agent Phelps asked about people who spend a lot of time around the bridges. He's been homeless here for years now. He never quite managed to get back on his feet. Some pretty serious mental health issues. He and some of the other homeless guys use the spaces under the bridges for shelter at night."

"So why him?" Amber asked, wanting to know what had made the police chief pick this one man out from the crowd. "Rather than one of the others?"

"Look at his record."

Amber looked closer at it. The record was a litany of petty theft and assault charges, including multiple complaints of harassment from local women. There were notes on his file about him spending time in a local psychiatric institution following an assault on a kindergarten teacher a few years ago. That note of violence caught Amber’s attention.

"Marcus is paranoid and a little disconnected from reality," Chief Williams said. "Mostly, he's okay if you keep your distance, but he doesn't stay on his meds, and he has a history of violence."

Amber considered that part. Could this be the killer they were looking for? Everything about him seemed to fit with the kind of profile they were looking for, but they would need a lot more than that to tie him conclusively to the crimes. A strange man who hung out near the bridges wasn’t enough.

Right now, though, Marcus Johnson was the best potential suspect they had in this case. At the very least, Amber and Simon needed to talk to him to find out about his movements over the last few nights. If he couldn't give them good answers, then he would start to look more and more like the killer they were looking for.

Of course, before they could question him, they still had to find him, and when he didn’t have a fixed address, that wouldn’t be easy.

"You said the local homeless guys hang out around the bridges?" Amber said, wanting to be certain.

Chief Williams shrugged. "Sure."

Amber looked over to Simon, who nodded his agreement.

"Then that's where we're going next."

CHAPTER TEN

"The spot where the homeless guys shelter out of the weather should be just ahead," Simon said, gesturing to the road ahead.

Simon watched the sky darkening as they drove up to one of the bridges between the two islands that occupied the middle of the river, one larger, one smaller. Amber was driving again, which for Simon felt like it fit with the way she'd been growing as an agent, taking more charge of the investigations they worked on, starting to come into her own as more than just someone there to solve puzzles. He was impressed by how good an agent she’d become. He was impressed byher.

Now, they had a good potential suspect in this case. Someone with clear mental health issues and a history of harassing, even attacking, women. Someone who had an obvious link to the local bridges. They didn’t have any direct proof linking him to the crimes, but they had to look into him.

"Do we go in and arrest him straight away?" Amber asked. "Then bring him in for questioning? With a guy like this, he isn’t likely to want to talk to us."

Simon shook his head. "All we have so far is conjecture. He's a plausible suspect, but there's nothing to tie him directly to the crimes."

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