Girl in the Water by Dana Marton

Author:Dana Marton [Marton, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dana Marton
Published: 2016-10-10T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Daniela

Daniela’s body was still tingling as they sat at the police station. Ian had held her for the entire twenty-minute bus ride—which passed way too fast.

That kind of physical contact between them was new—a first. Okay, second. This morning, she’d woken up in his arms. He was finally seeing her as a woman and as his equal. She could have spent the rest of the day daydreaming about his arms around her, but they weren’t here on a pleasure trip. Unfortunately.

They went through the case step-by-step with the investigating detective, Gustavo Santos, a man in his late forties who was graying at the temples and thinning on top. He wasn’t overweight, but he did sport a respectable potbelly, a sign that he’d primarily been riding a desk for the last couple of years. He wore a wrinkled suit and a tie that had tomato stains on it and smelled like fish. Quite a bit sloppier than the delegado had been in Rio.

Santos had his own office, crowded with file cabinets, but a decent size. He had his own coffeemaker. Must rank fairly high up. Probably the old fox of the department.

One of the men who’d always beaten Daniela at Rosa’s, the man who’d been the roughest, had been a policeman. But Santos was the picture of friendliness and cooperation.

He scanned through his own report, a copy of which they already had, but the printout in his hand was embellished with handwritten notes on the margins that he must have added since the official report had been filed.

“The call came in at nine thirty in the morning,” he said. “We responded immediately, arrived at the scene at nine forty-seven.”

He took a sip of his coffee, then went on. “We were told by the parents that they discovered the baby missing just before nine.”

Ian asked, “Why wait half an hour to call?”

“The parents had gone down to breakfast. They left the baby sleeping in the crib. They thought it was safe. The whole group had been looking after her. In fact, a couple of people had said they’d look in on her if she woke up and started crying.”

Santos sipped some more coffee. “So when the parents came up and saw the empty crib, they thought the baby cried and someone came in and got her. They went from room to room to see where she was. Some time passed before they realized that the baby wasn’t on the premises.”

“Do you have a list of who was upstairs at the time?”

The man paged through his notes, didn’t find what he was looking for, so he went to his computer. “Four of the six permanent See-Love-Aid staff were downstairs, coordinating breakfast. Out of the twenty-one visiting volunteers, fifteen were downstairs, including the Heyerdahls, and six were upstairs, including the baby. The metal door between the girls’ dormitory and the adults’ section was locked.”

“So seven people with immediate access,” Ian said.

The detective nodded. “Although, somebody could have gone up without being seen. It’s just a short flight of stairs.

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