The victim's cell phone bill showed that Cruz had called her obsessively, but all calls stopped the day she disappeared. Lau said Cruz had stalked her at work.
In December 2007, Adorno reported that Cruz grabbed her, hit her in the head and tried to drag her into the woods behind her apartment on Footed Ridge in Columbia. A few days later, she took out a protective order and sought help from a county domestic violence center. But Lau said she continued to see Cruz.
Lau said that just a few weeks ago, search dogs from Pennsylvania spent a day combing the woods along Footed Ridge but found nothing. The detective said Cruz moved to Middletown, Ohio, and Lau was preparing to go there in the next month to further press the suspect.
He said that before the body was found, Cruz appeared "very calm and detached." Looking back, Lau now thinks he understands: "He knew while I was talking with him that we didn't find the body. He could stick to his story. As long as we didn't find the body, he was one up on us."
Lau told me he was so confident that Cruz was the killer that he was preparing to press prosecutors to charge him even without a body. That all changed on Sunday, Oct. 4, when Lau again confronted Cruz over the now-confirmed strangulation of Elda Vasquez Adorno.
"He seemed remorseful," Lau said.
For the first time, Lau was a step ahead of his suspect. "The case we had was insurmountable," the detective said. "We had him all the way."
Baltimore Sun reporter Nick Madigan contributed to this article.
