Every fiber in Moni’s body told her she shouldn’t leave Mariella alone at school. She thought of the raven that had been splayed across the back windshield of her car in a fake death - like someone’s gruesome mockery of Jesus pulled from the cross and rising from the grave. Mariella had a demon on her heels and her guardian angel was stuck 25 minutes away.
When her cell phone rang, Moni banged her knee on the underside of her desk as she jumped and answered it. No one responded. She checked the number. It hadn’t been a call. The phone had reminded her of the first task force meeting over the Indian River Lagoon killer.
She stuffed a folder full of haphazard notes, so at least it looked like she had done something useful, and shuffled down the hall to the conference room. She had sat in on sexual predator task force meetings, but never for homicide. Moni had finally broken down the door of Sneed’s good ol’ boys club.
Too bad Sneed wasn’t seated in his leather chair at the head of the conference table when Moni entered with swagger, her hips and braids swinging. She notice that her grand entrance had caught the eye of a blond cutie with a lab coat fashioned around a surfing t-shirt. He reminded her of a puppy that hadn’t yet tasted red meat, just those little cardboard nuggets. When he looked her up and down with eyes as blue as the waters of Aruba, Moni saw him longing for a taste of some soul food sista’. Instead of licking his chops, he blushed.
If her ex Darren had a polar opposite, this might be it, Moni thought.
“Mm, hey there,” Moni said across the table at the gawking young man. His eyes went wide. “You look like you’re here on a field trip.”
His golden curls flopped over his ears as he laughed. “It’s something like that. But this one wasn’t in the lesson plan.”
Moni raised an eyebrow. He was a college student, an upper classman at least. Since she went straight into police training from high school, she never got the chance to go to college. It left her with regret—regret that she had stuck with Darren and didn’t sample a college guy.
“I’m Detective Monique Williams, but you can call me Moni.” She flashed a flirty smile.
“I’m Professor Herbert Swartzman, and this is my grad student Aaron Hughes,” said the middle-aged man beside the young stud. He gave Moni a gerbil-like grin in return for the fawning smile she had meant for Aaron. The professor had all the charisma and charm of a pair of bowling shoes. Apparently, he regarded himself more like fine Italian leather footwear. “I’m here from the Atlantic Marine Research Institute to steer this case in the right direction.”
“Oh, because us dumb-ass cops can’t solve this riddle, huh?” Moni asked facetiously.
Aaron nodded. “We got tired of solving crimes like manatee seagrass snatching and dolphin flipper abuse, so we’re taking a step up in class, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m sure those marine mammals are tougher than they look,” Moni said as she folded her arms. “I heard those manatees have one mean bite.”
She started laughing, but cut it out when she saw that Aaron and his professor didn’t join in. They actually believed that whopper about the rabid manatee.
“This crazy shit in the lagoon might sound like something dreamt up by a couple of tripped out dudes,” Aaron said. “But, believe me, it’s damn real.”
Professor Swartzman grumbled deep in his throat and fixed the tie that peeked out from his lab coat. Moni guessed that he didn’t appreciate anyone dubbing him a “tripped out dude.”
“What my ever-so-modest student was trying to say is that we’ll unveil something that will completely alter the DNA of this case,” Swartzman said.
“You better,” Detective Sneed huffed as he moseyed his cast-iron gut into the room and set it down in one of the two leather chairs. Nina Skillings trailed him like one of those pilot fish shadowing a great white shark. “I didn’t invite you up here to hear about your science fair project.”
“I assure you, sir, that…” the professor started.
“We’re here to make sense of the evidence and stop a killing spree,” said Sneed, who always made a point of putting the new guy in his place in front of everybody—just like he did on Moni’s first day as a detective. “If you’ve got some good evidence, let me hear it. If not, shut up and stay out of the way.”
Aaron shot Sneed a surly glare. His professor elbowed him in the arm and Aaron wiped his face clean. It’s good he did, otherwise Sneed would have driven his boot into Aaron’s pretty dimpled cheek.
Looking around the room, Moni recognized a few outsiders in addition to the homicide team. She saw a freckle-faced blond woman wearing a Water Management District polo shirt and county medical examiner Paul Rudy. She also noticed one empty chair—the big leather one right besides Sneed. The lead detective didn’t start the meeting until the intended occupant for that chair arrived. He was the only person here who could pull rank on Sneed: a tall, trim Hispanic man in a black Air Force uniform.
Everyone rose and saluted him, although Aaron got his butt out of his seat last. Like most young men, he had issues with authority, Moni thought. She might enjoy correcting that.
“I’d like to introduce you to Brigadier General Alonso Colon, of Patrick Air Force Base and the 45th Space Wing,” Sneed announced. The police officers appeared impressed, but professor Swartzman flinched when he heard the title. “He’ll be sitting in on this one.”
“Thank you officer,” Colon said in smooth Puerto Rican accent. “I’m here only to observe. The lagoon is our neighbor too and we are sworn to protect it.” He raised his palms in that assuring gesture politicians like to throw up when spewing lies behind a smile.
His calm tone couldn’t mask the obvious. The military wouldn’t care about a serial killer unless it tied into something huge happening on base. So, either they’re being tight-lipped about an incident at Patrick, or this shit’s a lot more serious than they’re admitting, Moni thought. The last time an officer from Patrick sat in on a county sheriff task force meeting they were discussing security for the space program in the wake of 9/11.
This couldn’t be that serious. Could it?
Sneed, Skillings and the other officers pored over the evidence from five murders. They still couldn’t pinpoint the initiate causes of death and whether the beheadings took place before or after the internal trauma to the bloodstream. The crime scenes and corpses didn’t offer any fingerprints, hair or other traces of the killer. They couldn’t agree on what the murder weapon might be. Surgical saw, Ginsu knife, laser cutter—they all had whacked-out theories. They couldn’t find a common link between the victims, other than they were near the lagoon when they were killed.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a cooperative witness to settle this debate,” Sneed remarked with a berating eye on Moni.
“Our witness has shown as much cooperation as you could expect from an eight-year-old who’s been traumatized by her parents’ murders,” Moni said. “She’s making good progress. If you can chill with that attitude for a while and let her do her thing, Mariella will help us.”
The military man’s taciturn eyes shifted to Sneed, who looked like he had a bunker-buster launched down his gullet.
“How many more good folks are gonna get their heads cut off before that brat starts a’ squawking?” Sneed asked. “You forgot what your job is ‘cause you’re off playing mommy. If you want a companion, get a fucking puppy and get the hell off my case.”
Sneed pointed toward the door. Moni would have followed his finger, but that would mean walking out on Mariella too. If she gave him the slightest hint of a reason, Sneed would pull the psychologist’s strings and get the girl shipped off to foster care.
Moni couldn’t let the gluttonous detective un-wrap Mariella like a baked potato in tin foil and stick a fork in her fragile mind. While she stewed in her sweat, Aaron leaned halfway across the table and stared right at Sneed.
“I don’t know what that kid saw, but I bet she doesn’t know the whole story,” the grad student told the
seasoned detective, who had sent plenty of kids his age away for life. Sneed’s gruff frown didn’t deter Aaron from pressing it. “You need a microscope to see the best evidence in this case.”
“Our forensic team has already combed the crime scenes,” Skillings said. “We’ve got every little detail cataloged.”
“But that’s not much good without a conclusion,” professor Swartzman said. “I took a close look at all five bodies this morning. They have one thing in common, and it’s something they share with many animals in the lagoon—the bacteria thiobacillus. We believe the lagoon is contaminated with a mutated strain.”
The professor recited some complicated mumbo jumbo about the bacteria eating sulfur, iron and oxygen and spitting out sulfuric acid. He said the bacteria caused the thinning out of blood and the acid burns on the victims. The byproducts of the bacteria—sulfuric acid and depleted oxygen levels in the lagoon—spurred fish kills and damaged organisms along the lagoon floor.
“If the bacteria keep spreading, the environment of the Indian River Lagoon could be catastrophically changed,” Swartzman said. “We’re talking about the death of substantially all marine life and the extinction of many species.”
“The acidity levels in the lagoon are increasing and we’ve noticed spurts in some places, which were followed by fish kills,” said the scientist from the Water Management District, who earlier introduced herself as Laura Heingartner. “Some of the fish corpses tested positive for the mutated strain of thiobacillus.”
Sneed leaned his chubby chin on his palm in a complacent pose. “I think you’ve got the wrong meeting. This is the county sheriff’s office, not Green Peace. My only concern with your thio-whatever is that it contaminates corpses and muddles the evidence.”
“It might be more than that,” medical examiner Rudy said. “I can’t rule out the bacteria as the first cause of death. It’s possible that they caught the infection before the decapitation. Someone might have poisoned them with it.”
“Those decapitated bodies were in the water for quite a while—long enough to pick up all kinds of stuff,” Sneed said.
“And why would a killer use some obscure strain of bacteria to off someone?” Skillings asked the scientists. “There are much easier ways if you wanna whack somebody—believe me.”
She slipped Moni a condescending glare. Skillings had racked up near-perfect scores in the shooting range while Moni graded out average. Moni seethed in frustration as Skillings aimed to upstage her once again.
Aaron caught the exchange between the two women and stuck his head into the line of fire.
“There’s no way the bacteria are acting alone,” Aaron said. “We found a sea turtle with an infected tumor on it, but the critter escaped. Now our GPS shows him cruising along at 40 miles per hour a couple times a day. Either the turtle learned how to jet ski, or somebody’s making him spread this bacteria all over the lagoon.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Swartzman told his student. “We still haven’t caught that turtle and you couldn’t take that sample I asked for. So we can’t say for sure that it’s infected.”
“The turtle had a fat purple tumor. What else could it be?” Aaron asked.
Purple—the word triggered something in Moni’s brain. It felt like a string from a repressed memory. Where had she seen a strange purple lump before?
“Did you say the infection looks purple?” Moni asked Aaron.
“Like little purple pimples, or big purple tumors,” he replied.
“I have a picture of what they look like on a human body,” the medical examiner said.
He turned his laptop toward Moni and she saw the tiny purple goose pimples along the underarm of one of the corpses. It was Mariella’s mother. Moni choked up. She had seen the body that day, but she had barely known the girl then. Now it felt like she had lost a mother too. Moni remembered her mother’s tranquil ebony face as she lay in her open casket. Moni imagined a purple tumor growing out of the skin on her mother’s forehead until it covered her face. She tried closing the eyelid, but the purple blob flung it open.
No. That wasn’t where she had seen it.
The momentary fear stirred up the volatile mix of memories in Moni’s mind. She found the buried coal without going back far at all. The first day she found Mariella, she had brushed the despondent girl’s teeth for her. Moni had seen a few purple bumps inside her mouth, just behind her lips. She should have called the doctor. She couldn’t remember why she didn’t. Moni didn’t understand how it had gotten overlooked during Mariella’s check up. The doctor said the girl appeared perfectly healthy—physically, at least.
Moni felt a chill run up her spine. Mariella had been infected. The bacteria feasted on the iron and oxygen in her blood. It churned out sulfuric acid inside her body. And yet, the girl showed no ill effects. Moni couldn’t see how she could shake that off. Maybe Mariella beat the infection.
“So you’re not sure if the bacteria kill people?” Moni asked Aaron.
Aaron opened his mouth, but before he got a word out, his professor answered for him. “They should feel sick, but I can’t say for sure it would kill them by itself. Thiobacillus shouldn’t even survive inside people or animals. It belongs in sulfur- and iron-rich water. The lagoon doesn’t fit that bill and neither does the bloodstream, which has trace amounts of iron. It’s possible that the bacteria may starve to death inside the host’s body before it kills them. We really can’t say unless we find a living person with an infection.”
They could test Mariella for the bacteria, Moni thought. If she had the infection, they could finally learn how it acted inside a human host. What would happen then? They would rip the girl from her hands and zip her up in a quarantine tent. With Mariella’s fragile mind still scarred from her parents’ deaths, they’d lock her away with nothing keeping her company besides her torturous thoughts.
Moni couldn’t let that happen. So she kept her mouth shut. It did no good.
“Wasn’t Mariella out in the mangroves all night?” Skillings asked as she sent Moni a needling glare that was thinly-veiled as a look of concern. “We should get her tested for the bacteria.”
“Good idea,” Sneed chimed in. “While we’re at it, let’s give her vocal cords a good tune up.”
“Excuse me. Mariella is perfectly healthy. I haven’t found a spot on her,” Moni said. She clenched her hands in her lap so the officers wouldn’t see them trembling.
That lie didn’t comfort her at all. The bacteria could still live inside the girl—dissolving her guts slowly like a Popsicle melting on the table.
Hoping that her eye for men had led her to someone trustworthy for once, Moni penned a note in her lap that read, “Call me tonight,” followed by her phone number. While the officers and the scientists argued over what to tell the public about the bacteria threat, Moni passed the note across the table to Aaron. With the sleight of hand of someone who had passed many notes in his school days, he plucked it off the table and opened it. His face lit up with a grin full of perfect teeth—no gold caps like Darren.
By the way he flapped his eyebrows at her Aaron probably thought that she made the first move because she wanted him then and there. She really wanted him to check Mariella for the bacteria on the down low, but Moni didn’t consider the invite leading him on as long as she could see a hookup going down. She just didn’t plan on it that night.
The meeting finally broke up after the lady from the Water Management District agreed she’d put out a bulletin warning people that they shouldn’t swim in the lagoon or eat anything from the lagoon until the bacteria clears up. The announcement wouldn’t connect the bacteria to the murders because Sneed didn’t want to let the killer know how they’re catching his scent. He said an overconfident suspect would be more likely to make mistakes.
Brig. Gen. Colon had his own words for Sneed, but no one else could hear them because the military man whispered them in the lead detective’s ear. Sneed nodded. Moni couldn’t read his stoic expres
sion. Judging by the giddy-up in his step on the way out the door, Colon had heard something in that meeting that rocked his world.
* * * *
The dreaded ring buzzed her cell phone as Moni strolled back to her office. Her mind overstuffed with worry about everything she had heard during the meeting, Moni answered just before her voicemail stole it away.
Checking the caller ID this time, she saw: Challenger 7 Elementary.
“Hello, Mrs. Mint?” Moni asked.
“Hi, Detective Williams,” the teacher answered. “I hate bothering you. I know you’re working hard solving this case.” Moni made a guilty shrug that thankfully the teacher couldn’t see. “A little something happened today. It’s really minor, but I figured you should know.”
The teacher did such a good job of downplaying it that Moni’s heart skipped a beat. She thought of the vengeful Buckley twins cornering Mariella and pelting her with rocks until blood streaked down her smooth black hair.
It turned out that Mariella hadn’t gotten hurt, but the ramifications of the incident unhinged Moni even more. Mrs. Mint said the school security officer saw a blue pickup truck circle the school at least five times during the day. The driver was a white male with a black Marlins baseball cap and dark glasses. While Mariella stood quietly by herself during recess, the truck parked on a lawn across the street from the fence. When the officer thought he saw the driver peering at the kids through a pair of binoculars, he marched toward the truck. It took off and hasn’t returned—so far.
“Did the officer get a photo? A tag number?” Moni asked the teacher.
“He didn’t get close enough,” Mrs. Mint said. “But I wouldn’t worry. There’s a fence around the school and we’ve got cameras all over the place. Kids don’t wander off and strangers don’t wander in.”
They weren’t dealing with an anonymous stranger, Moni thought. The person stalking Mariella wasn’t a cowardly child snatcher. He was a remorseless killer with a thirst for her young blood and organs. The moment everybody forgets about the little girl that doesn’t speak and tries so hard to be invisible, that’s the instant the killer will glide in between the shadows and slice off Mariella’s head.
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