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“I guess this isconfirmation that all of this is related to the car recall,” Amber said. “Butwe’d kind of guessed that already.”
“It seems thatway,” Francesca agreed. “It’s good that we can be certain about it, though. Whichbrings us back to the long list of people who have a reason to hate anyoneconnected with the project. People who were hurt in accidents, people whosefriends or relatives were killed.”
“Do we have anyway of narrowing it down?” Amber asked. There had to be some way of taking themass of potential suspects and reducing it to those who were most likely. “Wereforensics able to pull anything from the scene this time?”
“Nothing,”Francesca said. “Simon, was the FBI able to get more from the connection to thewebsite this time?”
“Nothing,” Simonsaid. “It’s the same problem as last time. It would take weeks to find a link,and I don’t think we have that kind of time.”
Which meant thatthey needed to either find another way to narrow things down or genuinelyconsider investigating the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who had beenaffected.
Was that possible?The FBI had resources, so maybe it would be better to get dozens of agents onthe case and talk to each one in turn.
Of course, therewas one piece of evidence. The killer had leftonething behind at everycrime scene.
“What about the winches?”Amber asked. “It would take some engineering skills to construct them, right?”
“Especially tolink them up to the hangman program,” Francesca agreed. Amber could hear theexcitement in her voice. “I’d guess that not just anyone could do that.”
“So maybe we canuse that to look for likely suspects on the list,” Amber said. “We can narrowit down to those with the engineering skills to do this who could have been inthe area. It has to be better than trying to look into all of them.”
Simon chimed in. “It’sworth a shot. We should start looking into that angle and see if it can lead usto a good suspect.”
Francesca nodded. “Wecould also try to trace the purchase of any materials needed to build thewinches. I’ll start looking into that. See if we can track down any largepurchases of steel cables or anything like that.”
Amber felt a senseof relief. Finally, it felt as though they were making some progress. Thekiller had been one step ahead of them for too long, and it was time to turnthe tables. She wasn’t going to let her failure with Dave Muldeer defeat her.They would catch this killer, and justice would be served.
But as she glancedout the window, she couldn’t help but feel like time was running out. Thekiller was still out there, and who knew how many more would suffer before theywere caught. It seemed clear that he was going to keep killing until he wasstopped. It was up to Amber and her team to make sure that didn’t happen.
That meant lookingfor engineers who could have done this, ones who had a reason to hateeverything, and everyone, connected with the failure of the WM 120 project.Somewhere in that list, the killer was waiting.
Amber wasdetermined to find him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There was no easyway to do this.
Finding a possiblesuspect meant Amber working her way through the legal cases againstWestford-Myer in relation to the 120’s brakes, trying to find any informationshe could on the people behind those cases.
Thankfully, thelawyers had been quick to provide it, adding in the individual stories ofhundreds of claimants against the company in the wake of the problems with thebrakes, presumably trying to humanize their lawsuit to the greatest extentpossible.
It meant thatAmber had to read harrowing story after harrowing story about car accidentscaused by the faulty brakes, stories of lives lost and families destroyed. Eachone only took a few minutes to read, but Amber knew that to those left behind,they would represent a lifetime of pain.
It was difficultto read, but Amber knew that it was necessary. These were the people with themost reason to kill those involved in the project. She needed to find a way tonarrow that list down to those people who could have constructed the winchesand used them to exact revenge on those involved with the WM 120 project.
The others seemedto be doing it quickly.
“Not this one,”Simon said. “He’s out of state… This one was a painter, not an engineer… And thisone is a seventy-year-old woman. I can’t see her hauling the victims intoposition easily.”
Amber knew thatwas what she needed to do: to work quickly, not touching on the individualstories too deeply, simply looking for any reason to discard people aspotential suspects, narrowing down the list they were looking at.
Even so, it washard to do that when it seemed that the Westford-Myer Motor Company had causedso much misery when they decided to use inferior brake materials to save money.Amber kept reading the stories in the depositions, about lives lost andfamilies torn apart. It was difficult to stomach, but it was necessary if theywere going to catch the killer.
As she readthrough the stories, she started to cross people off the list of potentialsuspects. Many of them lived far from Westford, while others didn’t have theskills required to do this. A few had been so badly injured that it seemedimpossible that they could have moved the heavy winches into position orcarried the victims to them. It meant that Amber could discard story afterstory.
As she keptlooking, Amber was beginning to think that maybe she would never find a good suspectfor the murders like this. She was discarding so many so quickly that shestarted to consider the possibility that they should be looking for other typesof leads.
She kept going,though, and, as she read through the files, Amber’s eyes paused on one case inparticular. The plaintiff’s name was Jack Morrison, and he had lost his wifeand daughter in a car accident caused by the faulty brakes.
