‘The hotel room was clean, Detective Alvarez,’ said Brian O’Dea, the Orlando PD homicide detective, over the phone. ‘No prints, no messages, nothing. We’ve pulled surveillance on the parking lots. We think we have her on a video leaving the Hilton with a tall, dark-haired guy. He slipped on sunglasses right before the camera caught him, so we’re figuring he knew the camera was watching and knew not to get caught on it. That makes us think this was planned out. That it could be an abduction. We’re exploring that. We’ll get you a still shot of the guy, Detective, but I’m warning you, it’s not great.’
Manny stood in Daria’s kitchen and stared out her sliding glass doors on to her ugly, dead garden. There were no flowers. Just a barren patch of thorny stems where her roses presumably once stood proud. Any floral life that had survived the rose massacre was killed off or carried off by the hurricane. In the corner of her small cement patio was a pile of broken roof tiles, ripped screening and a heap of palm fronds — trash from Artemis. This was the first time Manny had been to her townhouse since the hurricane. He had had coffee in her garden one morning, not so long ago. He’d watched, as he sat at a wobbly, wrought-iron table for two that his ass had barely fit in, while she potted some baskets with all sorts of colorful flowers whose names he didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce. She’d used some herbs she’d grown to make him an omelet that day. Or rather, he’d made the omelet because she couldn’t cook worth a damn.
‘Any luck on her cell?’ he asked, rubbing his eyes and turning away from the doors.
‘No. It’s still off. Hasn’t been turned on since Sunday night. If it goes back on, we can track it.’
‘I got a subpoena into AT&T to pull the records and texts. Maybe there’s something on it,’ Manny said softly. ‘I should have those by the morning. Normally that takes a few days, but they’re rushing it through.’
‘Good,’ the Orlando detective replied.
‘And her car?’
‘It was in the lot, parked in the back. From the surveillance videos, it looks like it hasn’t moved since Sunday, either. We got Crime Scene going over it right now, but nothing so far. We got the waitress working with a sketch artist to get a composite of the guy who she said bought Daria a drink Sunday night. Maybe we’ll get something off that. And we’re running tags of the cars that left the parking lot around the same time as Daria and this dark-haired guy left the hotel. We’re hoping the car was in a ticketed lot.’
‘Did he pay with credit? Did he pay the waitress with credit?’
‘Wouldn’t that be nice? No. Cash.’
Back to the question of what then? What if she meant what she’d said? What if a smart, sophisticated, sometimes bitchy, beautiful woman really meant it when she said she loved him?
‘Okay, keep me advised.’
‘Where you at now?’ O’Dea asked.
‘Her house in Fort Lauderdale. We’re sweeping it, but like you said, so far nothing. Got guys fanning out across the neighborhood to see if anyone noticed something — anything—out of the ordinary. A suspicious person around her house the last couple of weeks, maybe; anyone following her to the Internet coffee shop down the block in Victoria Park, where she liked to do work, or maybe to the supermarket, or the bagel store, or the cleaners. I don’t know. I’m reaching here, but it’s all I got.’
‘We’ll find something, Detective Alvarez. Hold on, now. She’s a prosecutor, right? She knows how to handle herself, I’m sure.’
The Orlando detective’s words weren’t helping. Because she was a prosecutor, Daria was a bit paranoid. And always prepared. She knew what was out there. She knew all the tricks on how not to be a victim. She always locked her door. She always locked her car. She never walked down dark alleys or in dark parking lots. She carried mace in her purse and a Beretta Tomkat in her glove compartment. She gave speeches to local schools and community awareness meetings on protecting yourself from cyber predators and parking-lot stalkers. She knew enough to avoid the bad guys, so the fact that she was missing spoke volumes about just how much trouble she was in.
Daria’s brother, Marco, walked into the kitchen, arms folded across his chest. He had circles under his eyes. Behind him was his wife, CeCe, who gently rubbed his shoulder. Today was the first time Manny had met the man that Daria loved to tell childhood stories about. The big brother who was her best friend while they were growing up. The triplets that she often babysat and bought Poprocks and Charleston Chews for whenever she passed a candy store, were at home, Marco had told him, being looked after by Daria’s mother. Daria’s father, unfortunately, was not doing well with the news of Daria’s disappearance. He’d started having chest pains and was now in ICU over at Memorial West. It wasn’t looking good. Marco mouthed the word, ‘Anything?’
Manny shook his head. ‘Keep me advised,’ he told the sergeant as a glum Mike Dickerson walked into the kitchen. ‘We’ll keep digging down here. Maybe we’ll find something,’ he finished, turning away from Marco and Mike. But he doubted it. Like Holly Skole and Gabriella Vechio and Marie Modic and Jane Doe and Kevin Flaunders and Cyndi DeGregorio, and all eleven of Cupid’s victims, Daria DeBianchi had gone to a bar, met someone, and simply vanished into the night.
The big detective willed back tears as he watched crime-scene techs in protective clothing comb through her dead garden. He hated himself at that moment. If he had only picked up the phone that night when she kept calling. If he had only spoken to her …
Then he’d say it back. Because it was true. He loved her.
But he hadn’t. He’d been mad and stubborn and stupid. He remembered her face as she worked in the garden. The sweat that ran down her cheeks, cutting a path through the streak of potting soil on her skin. Her red hair was pulled up into a floppy pony, her hands were caked in dark dirt. Dressed in his shirt, she wore four-inch platform sandals even for gardening and they showed off her legs, which were in desperate need of a tan, but still beautiful.
Now she was gone. And there would be no more opportunities to tell her how he really felt about her, because deep down in his heart he already knew he’d never see her again.
At least not alive.