She nodded, but seemed frozen. “I need a cigarette,” she said, her voice breaking. “Sorry.” She looked around. “There’s none here. They don’t let us smoke on the property.”
Shooter touched the woman’s arm. “I’ll go across to the liquor store.”
She returned a few moments later and handed Amber a pack of Camel Lights. We stepped through the glass door to the curb outside—to get the woman some air, if nothing else. Cars passed, and Amber’s fingers trembled as she lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the curb.
“I’m scared,” she said, her voice so light I could barely hear it.
I studied her. What we lacked so far on this case was victimology, but now we had the relative of a victim. Someone who’d seen the perpetrator. We just needed to get her talking. About anything.
“Mavreen was your sister,” I said to her. “Where did you two grow up?”
“Boston,” she said. “Mavreen was two years older than me.”
“What brought you to Florida?”
Amber took a long drag on her cigarette and nodded. “I was a few years out of high school and working at Star,” she said. “That’s a grocery store up north. Mavreen came to me one day saying she was going to Florida. Wanted me to come with.”
“She had a job?” Shooter asked. “School?”
“No,” Amber said, shaking her head. “But Mavreen was always doing stuff like that. Spur-of-the-moment trips. She was the wild one, you know? But… she was my best friend.”
We nodded and waited for more.
“I figured I could do the same thing in Florida that I was doing in Boston,” Amber continued. “But, you know, better weather?”
She went quiet, and I prompted her. “So you two left and came down here?”
“Jacksonville at first,” she said. “But it was the usual. We got there, and I realized Mavreen already had some guy lined up. That’s why she’d picked that place. I ended up staying with them awhile. A room in his garage.”
I pulled out the sketch. “This is the guy you stayed with?”
“No,” she said. “This is earlier. You asked where I was from. How I got down here.”
Shooter gave me a glance, and I heard my mother’s voice.
Slow down, Gardy. Give people time to tell their story. Let them own their moment.
“I apologize,” I said, my words sounding hollow. “Please keep going.”
Amber placed the cigarette on the edge of the curb, its tip still lit. “I didn’t know for sure,” she said, wiping at her eyes with both hands. “That Mavreen was dead. I thought maybe…”
“Amber,” Shooter said. “Why were you using your sister’s name?”
“That goes back to him.” She pointed at my bag, where I’d put the sketch away.
“The man in the picture?” I asked.
“I don’t know his name or anything, but—”
“You saw him?” I said.
“Not exactly.” She looked at me. “Mavreen met this guy and wouldn’t stop talking about him. Then she kinda became his girlfriend, I guess? It was weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Like how she acted. Like a kidnap victim or a cult member or something.”
“He had some control over her?” Shooter asked.
