Jilliane Hoffman by Pretty Little Things Page A

teenager. Just trying to figure out what kind of relationship you two had. Why she might have gone running, if that’s what she did do.’
    ‘Well, you said it. She’s a teenager. It was, our relationship was, well … normal. She was pretty busy with school stuff and friends and she was, ya know, a real bitch sometimes, but aren’t all women?’ He laughed uneasily. ‘You know, when they get on the rag.’
    Bobby looked at him a long time. ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Whatever. I don’t want to say no more.’ Todd shook his head.
    ‘I ran your name through a couple of systems, Todd,’ Bobby began. ‘And guess what? I caught a fish. Domestic battery. Solicitation. And a really interesting arrest just last year. L & L. You know what that stands for, Todd?’
    ‘That was dropped to a fucking disorderly, man!’
    ‘Lewd and lascivious conduct,’ Bobby continued.
    ‘I was, you know, peeing against a wall when this dike-cop walked up! That’s all it was! I was taking a leak!’ Todd ran his hands through the few strands of hair he had left on his head. His round face was shiny with sweat.
    ‘Less than twenty feet from a playground?’
    ‘I’m no child molester, man! They overcharged me! It was a disorderly!’
    ‘Where were you Friday night?’
    ‘What? What’s that got to do with anything?’
    ‘Where were you Friday night?’
    Todd began to tap his shaking hand against his thigh. ‘I was, I was, well, out with the boys, ya know? We went out for a beer.’
    ‘Your wife doesn’t know where you were. Not a clue, Todd.’
    ‘Fuck this! I don’t need this shit. When the – when Elaine gets her ass home her mother can deal with her. I don’t need this bullshit from any more of her fucking kids!’
    ‘I’ll need the names of those boyfriends of yours. And the name of the bar,’ Bobby paused deliberately, ‘or other fine establishment you were holed up in.’
    ‘If I’m not under arrest, then I’m going back to work,’ Todd declared as he headed toward the door. ‘I know my rights.’
    ‘I’m sure you do. I’ll need those names, Todd.’
    The cubby walls shook as the glass door slammed behind him and an angry Todd LaManna stormed back out into the showroom.

19
    The FDLE Miami Regional Operations Center – a three-storied, cluttered, chaotic maze of squad bays, secretarial pools, Formica cubbies, and conference rooms – was normally bustling with activity. Home to more than fifty Special Agents – plus analysts, lawyers and support staff – there was always a handheld squawking, a cell phone ringing, or a meeting being held somewhere in the building.
    At eight o’clock on a Sunday night it was empty.
    Bobby looked up from the stack of crap on his desk that never seemed to get smaller and out his open office door into the deserted squad bay. Ten metal desks, each stacked with their own case files and clutter, sat abandoned in the darkness. It was so quiet, he could hear the traffic buzz by outside on the Dolphin Expressway. The light from his office spilled across The Board, the montage of Missing Children flyers that covered a corkboard on the far back wall.
    He was supposed to be ‘flexed-off’ till the first of the month – meaning he had already worked his 160 hours for October and since FDLE didn’t want to pay overtime for any more, he was on involuntary vacation till November started – but the Emerson girl had given him a reason to drop in, write a report and finish up a few things. Once that happened, he couldn’t just ignore the stack of case files on his desk. Even when command told you to go home because the state was too broke to pay overtime, you were never really off, anyway. He had a charging conference Friday with the State Attorney’s Office on a multi-agency child-porn investigation, a depo on an upcoming murder trial, and a complicated search warrant to walk through Legal. Whether FDLE paid him or not, each case had to be attended to. So a thirty-minute stop-in had