The Cutting Room. Jilliane Hoffman

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      ‘Not tonight. I got tickets for Saturday.’

      ‘See ya there!’ the lawyer replied before disappearing into a courtroom.

      He turned his attention back to her. ‘Like I said, you look drained. Give me that.’

      The man knew everyone and everyone knew him. She handed her file over without a fight. ‘Bullshit. I texted you a dozen times — no Manny.’

      ‘There’s your problem. I never text. Hate that thing. The world is going to shit, Counselor; no one talks to nobody no more. Everyone just sends cryptic messages. Can’t even bother to spell out the fucking words — pardon the English. I’m old school — call me if you need me. That’s not so hard.’

      ‘I can’t call you when court’s in session.’

      ‘You’re not supposed to text, either.’

      ‘You were so not out in the hall.’

      ‘I was, too. Dixon came and got me.’

      ‘You were drinking coffee downstairs in the cafeteria; I can still smell the espresso on your breath. Don’t lie.’

      Manny smiled again. ‘You’re good. Let me clarify: I was in the building the whole time. My buddy told me we were on page twenty-two. I’ve been before Slow Steyn enough damn times to know that means I had at least an hour. That guy is never on time.’

      ‘Your source is unreliable. We got moved up.’

      ‘And I was still there on time. No harm, no foul.’

      Daria shook her head. ‘Next time I’m gonna lie to you. Have you here two hours before kick-off. That’ll teach you.’

      ‘I’ve been doing this for a long while, Counselor; I know every trick in the book. And I always make it. Always. Ask anybody.’

      She sighed. ‘I can’t live like that.’

      He laughed. ‘I like how you shot down the Palm Beachers. Now that was fun to watch. You got a set of cojones on you, Little Lady. That’s a good thing to have in this building.’

      She really wanted to stay mad at him, but unfortunately it wasn’t sticking. ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘I’m ignoring the short comment for now, though I want you to know I don’t like jokes about my height. The hearing went pretty smooth, considering. But don’t count out Yin and Yang just yet. They get paid a lot of money for a reason. Today was a fishing expedition, and they netted more than a few fish and a real good understanding of where we are with our case. Or, more telling, where we are not. I don’t imagine they’ll be making deals anytime soon. Which brings me to my biggest concern: Kuzak’s going to the grand jury on this tomorrow. You know that, right?’ Guy Kuzak was a seasoned prosecutor and the only ASA who presented cases to the grand jury.

      ‘I’ve already met with Guy. Don’t worry, Counselor, I’ll be there at nine.’

      ‘Yeah, well, I am worried. But if everything goes like it did today, and you testify the way you did on the stand, I’m confident the good people of Miami-Dade County will do the right thing and indict. Now I’m thinking ahead. If our defendant’s not talking and he’s not plea-bargaining, then for trial purposes, we’re gonna need something tangible to tie him to the murder: blood, semen, hair, smoking gun. Any of the above would be nice. Anything on the boat?’

      ‘We’re running tests on shredded fibers that were found in the bathroom of the cabin and the driver’s side floorboard of the Mercedes. They were black viscose and spandex with a shiny silver poly weave that would seem to match the shirt Holly was wearing when she disappeared, but because the shirt was never found, we have nothing to compare it to. I’ll try to track down where and when she might’ve bought it. If it was recent enough, then maybe I can get the same shirt and test it against the found fibers.’

      ‘How many fibers do you have?’

      ‘About twenty or thirty strands in the boat. Another half-dozen in the car and in the trunk. They were torn, you know? Shredded. Enough to figure that the shirt was ripped off the girl, possibly on the boat, and then he carried some on his person that fell off in the car.’

      ‘That would be something,’ Daria said as they both stepped on to the next floor’s escalator. ‘Better still, find me that ripped shirt stuffed inside one of Talbot’s toys. If we can also find something that can tie him to the sulfuric acid, that would be big. Really big. Receipts, Internet surfing. Where the hell do you buy that shit anyway? We have his computer, right? What’s on that?’

      Manny shook his head. He hesitated before speaking. ‘We have it, but it’s wiped clean. It had a sensitive password protection on it. One try and then it activated a virus that wiped the hard-drive clean. Our tech guy had never seen that sort of security before, and he blew it.’

      She stared at him. ‘You’re kidding, right? We can’t retrieve any of it?’

      ‘Nope. The whole thing’s gone. Whatever he was trying to protect must have been pretty important.’

      ‘What about his cell? Tell me that didn’t self-destruct.’

      ‘Pulled the records. He stayed in Miami the night Holly disappeared, according to the cell towers. Made two calls between four and five-thirty a.m. — both to the same number, and that was a throwaway. No way to find who owns that phone.’

      She tapped her hand impatiently on the escalator’s handrail. ‘Well, we need something. Since you made the arrest already, time is ticking and we have to deal with the cards we have. I’d sure as hell like a better hand.’

      ‘Hey, hey,’ Manny said, his face growing dark as they stepped off and went to get on the final set of escalators down. He moved in front of her, blocking her from getting on. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t have arrested the guy? No, don’t answer that, because, yeah, that’s what you are saying. Listen, he was gonna run and you and I both know it. So let me ask ya, Ms Hard-ass, would you rather be standing here with me now and the scumbag tucked away safely in a jail cell trying to figure out how to make a good case better, or be sitting in your office with what looks like a better case but your fucking psycho playboy nowhere to be found? Or worse — living the high life up at the family chateau in Switzerland, thumbing his nose at us while we sit here and beg the Swiss to extradite his ass before he ups and kills some hot-looking yodler, knowing full well they won’t? And oh, yeah, by the way — your boy’s family does have a crib in Lucerne. I checked before I popped him. Dad’s a Swiss national. Ooh la-fucking-la.’

      Daria shrugged. ‘What I’m saying is that now we have a potential speedy problem. And what we don’t have is the luxury of waiting for shit to fall in our laps. I don’t want to see an acquittal because while we had plenty of evidence to prove the guy took pretty Holly for a spin in Mommy’s new Benz, we didn’t have enough evidence to actually prove him guilty of murder, ’cause then he can sit across the street from my office and thumb his nose at both of us for the rest of our sure-to-be-shortened-careers, and even if I find the bottle of sulfuric acid with his name on it that he used to melt her fucking feet off, or the rope he used to tie her wrists together, there will be nothing I can do about it since it will be too late. Pardon my English. So let’s get past the blame game, shall we? And let’s build a case that will send his sorry ass to death row.’ She moved past him and on to the escalator.

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