“And say what?”
“That your sister went missing,” Shooter said. “That a dangerous man had threatened you.”
Amber grabbed at the cigarette at the curb and stubbed it out, even though it was long extinguished. “Mavreen wasalwaysinto dangerous guys. She dated drug dealers in high school. The guy in Jacksonville was in a bike gang. I figured it was one more guy like that.”
Except well educated?
“What happened next?” I asked.
“She’d called me from a lot of numbers, so I tried a different one the next week.”
“You called a different number back?” Shooter clarified.
“Yeah,” Amber said. “But the same guy answered. He freaked this time. Said he warned me, and now he was coming after me. He told me, ‘Your name is Amber. You live on Oak Street.’ I just… I panicked. Loaded up my car and left Gainesville. I’m driving around the next day, and suddenly, I’m in the middle of nowhere. I get a Coke. See this place.”
“This plumbing place?” Shooter confirmed, gesturing to the office behind us.
Amber nodded. “There was a Help Wanted sign. Manager said if I agreed to work the late shift, I could sleep in this tiny house at the back of the property. I was afraid that the guy knew my name. I thought—if he killed Mavreen—who’s the last person he’s gonna ask for?”
“Mavreen,” Shooter said.
“So I told the manager my wallet got stolen, but I knew my social. Gave him hers. They didn’t even ask for my ID. I just told them I was Mavreen Isiah and they believed me.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“The last call?” she said. “A year ago. I started working here the next day.”
“Amber,” I said. “You and your sister were best friends, right?”
She sniffed, tears coming again.
“Sisters talk,” I said. “Best friends talk. We need to know anything else she might’ve said about this guy.”
Amber wiped at her nose with her shirt cuff. “In the beginning, she said she heard rumors about him. I asked, ‘What kinda rumors?’ She acted like he was in legal trouble. But then she told me, ‘It’s not like you think. He’s got money. People come to him. People who need things.’”
“What kind of things?” Shooter squinted.
“I don’t know,” Amber said. “She told me once—sometimes the system is broken, so people come to him. To go outside of regular channels.”
“Was he organized crime?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.”
We needed to learn something definitive about this guy, andAmber was going in circles. I glanced at Shooter, whose eyes ran over my posture, which was rigid, hands on hips. Taking a slow breath, I loosened up and tried to select the right phrase.
“You met him, though, right, Amber? We showed you the picture, and your face went white.”
“It was on FaceTime,” she said. “When they first got together. I called her one night and she was in a bar. So I saw him—yeah—well enough to know that’s him. But it was over the phone. And it was dark, like a bar is, y’know?”
“But he looked like the drawing?” Shooter asked.
“Yeah.” Amber nodded.
“Was he white?” I asked. “Latino? Black?”
“Not Black,” she said. “White, I think. Or maybe a mix of white and Hispanic? Like I said, it was dark.”
I pulled out the composite sketch and laid it on the curb. “And he looked like this?”
