Page 33 of Absent Reason

He crept up to the house, leaving his envelope in the mail, addressed to Nicole. Nicole was another one who deserved everything she got, who had ignored him and not taken him seriously. Who hadn't seen his genius, who hadn't given him the respect he deserved?

She would see his brilliance soon enough, though, when she found herself forced to play his impossible game. When she realized that she had lost before the game even began. She would walk the bridges and die knowing that she'd failed, or she would refuse and know that she'd chosen her own death.

Either way, soon enough, he would leave her hanging the way he had with all the others.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"The Konigsberg what?"

Amber sighed as she tried to explain the whole thing again to Chief Williams back in the Verdice PD. This was not proving as simple as it had with Simon, but then, he hadn’t spent case after case working with her, learning to trust her.

"The Konigsberg bridge problem. The city of Konigsberg, which is now Kaliningrad, used to be a part of the old Prussian empire. It had seven bridges spread across two islands and the banks of a river. Does that sound familiar?”

“Sure,” Chief Williams said. “I get that’s similar to the layout of Verdice.”

“Not similar, almost identical. The puzzle was whether it was possible to find a route that would let you cross all seven bridges only once each."

"And that note you found shows that someone is making women do a version of it here, in real life?" Chief Williams said. He looked over to Simon as if seeking confirmation that all of this was real and not some flight of fancy on Amber's part.

"Listen to my partner, Chief Williams," Simon said. "She knows about this kind of thing. There’s probably no one out there who knows more about puzzles."

Amber wasn’t so sure about that. She could still remember the corrections to her designs that someone had drawn in her diary.

"All right," the police chief said. "What do you recommend, Agent Young? Should we warn women about this puzzle? Hell, we could even put out the solution over the media and really spoil this killer's day."

Amber shook her head. It seemed that the police chief hadn't been listening closely enough the first time she explained this.

"It wouldn't work for two reasons. First, even in the hypothetical situation where we could do that, the killer could easily just change the puzzle so it's not the Konigsberg bridge problem anymore. He could set something else, change his MO, and then we're no better off. Second, it's an impossible puzzle. Thereisno solution. That was the whole point of it. A problem that could be proved to be impossible."

"Then what use is it knowing that he uses this puzzle?" Chief Williams asked.

Amber sighed. "As I said before, the puzzle itself isn't the point. It's just a way for the killer to torment and control his victims. It tells us something about the kind of man he is."

"And what kind of man is that?"

Amber hesitated before answering. She knew that her answer would be unsettling, but it was the truth. She felt as though she knew exactly what kind of person would set an impossible puzzle. She knew puzzlers and the kind of cruel people who wouldn't play fair with a puzzle.

"He's a man who believes that he's smarter than everyone else and that anyone who disagrees with him or challenges his intellect deserves to die. He's arrogant, narcissistic, and sadistic. And he's not going to stop until he's either caught or dead. He enjoys the power he has over others, and the puzzle is just a way for him to exert that power. He's probably meticulously planning everything, calculating every move and every possible outcome."

"Then we'll just have to find a way to make sure that the only outcome is with him in jail," Chief Williams insisted.

He made it sound so simple. Amber wished that it were that easy. The killer hadn't left any forensic evidence behind at the scenes. They'd only found out about the game he was playing with his victims because he hadn't been able to retrieve the challenge he'd sent and because Amber had followed a chain of guesses back to it.

Amber was about to ask Simon what he wanted to look into next when her phone went off. The moment Dianne's name came up on the screen, Amber hurried off to take the call, not caring that she was in the middle of talking about a case with the others.

"Amber?" Joseph's sister said as Amber picked up.

"Yes, Dianne, I'm here. Did something happen with Joseph?" Amber's heart felt tight in her chest as she asked that. If Dianne was calling rather than Joseph, did that mean that things had taken a turn for the worse? If she was calling so suddenly, did that mean that something had happened?

"Joseph woke up briefly this morning," Dianne said. "I thought you would want to know."

Amber breathed a sigh of relief. That relief flooded through her at the thought that nothing worse had happened to Joseph. At the thought that he might be turning the corner. "Thank you for letting me know, Dianne. How is he doing?"

"He's stable for now, but it's still touch and go. The doctors are doing everything they can, but they need more time to see how he responds to the treatment."

"I understand. I'll come visit him as soon as I can," Amber promised. She didn’t know how soon that would be, though, not when she was in the middle of a case.

"He asked after you, you know," Dianne said. "The first thing he did when he woke up was to ask where you were."

---