Mute

by Brian Bandell

  “Call the cleanup crew,” Skillings shouted from inside the bloody room. “And tell them to sweep the outside of the house. There’s a hole in the wall where the little bastards chewed their way in.”

  Now that rats had started breaking, entering, and murdering, Moni couldn’t think of an animal she shouldn’t fear.

  Chapter 18

  The children huddled before Mrs. Mint and sat on the carpet for story time. Mariella didn’t join them. While she stared in fascination at the white mouse Snowflake, half of her classmates snickered at her.

  Mrs. Mint called her over. The girl did nothing. The teacher didn’t know whether Mariella had a good reason but simply couldn’t articulate it, or whether she had flat out ignored her. Her classmates could care less. They saw it as an act of defiance that went unpunished because little Mariella played by different rules.

  “She’s trying to kiss her boyfriend!” said Cole Buckley, the hyperactive boy that Mariella had knocked silly—supposedly on accident—on her first day back.

  “No way. Even Snowflake thinks her breath stinks,” said his twin, Kyle Buckley.

  As Mrs. Mint told the boys they better cut it out, Mariella swiveled around and froze the twins with a cold stare. Those dark eyes extinguished their childish laughter. Mariella stalked right up to their noses and then took a seat on the carpet behind them. The Buckley boys didn’t say another word until the teacher finished the chapter. They didn’t even turn around for a glimpse at their silent adversary behind them.

  Mrs. Mint tried helping Mariella talk, but hadn’t gotten a word out of her. She had become more communicative in different ways, such as pointing, facial expression and occasionally writing down a few words like “Need bathroom.” It didn’t hamper her class work too much. Mariella picked up math better than even before the tragedy and she copied words perfectly. But when she had to compose a few sentences on her own, she refused. Mariella would reach a hand out from behind her shield, but she wouldn’t set the barrier down.

  So Mrs. Mint went along another route. She sat the class at their desks and had them draw their favorite animals. That would make Mariella reveal something for sure, and next she could push a little deeper, like for a drawing of the scariest thing she has ever seen.

  The teacher scanned the animal pictures the children had taped across the classroom window. She saw plenty of lions, dinosaurs, dogs and horses. None of them had Mariella’s name. The girl remained at her desk working diligently on her drawing after all her classmates had finished. Walking behind the girl, Mrs. Mint peeked over her shoulder. Mariella delicately traced Snowflake the mouse with a colored pencil and filled out every detail of his cage, from the water bottle to the feed bowl.

  “What a fantastic job, Mariella,” Mrs. Mint said. She caught the Buckley boys giving her a pair of peeved glares with their freckled faces. “When you finish, why don’t you put it up on the window with the others?”

  The girl nodded with a coy smile. Her classmates had chosen something a bit more exciting than a little mouse, but Mrs. Mint could understand why Mariella identified with it. The poor thing had been mishandled by rough kiddie hands so many times that she didn’t let them take him out of his cage any more.

  Mrs. Mint had just sat down behind her desk when she heard the Buckley boys laughing. Kyle had snatched Mariella’s drawing off her desk and circled the classroom with it—enticing the girl into giving chance. Mariella pivoted and watched him the whole way. Her eyes trained on him like a machine gun turret, yet she didn’t make a move.

  “Put it down, Kyle,” Mrs. Mint snapped. She hoped he’d listen, because she couldn’t run that fast on her clumsy bloated ankles.

  “Oh, sorry. Oops.” Kyle giggled as he dropped the paper—right into the hands of his brother. Cole took off around the classroom the other way. For every second of recognition their teacher paid the fragile girl, the Buckley boys demanded her attention tenfold.

  “You love a mouse! You love a mouse!” Cole taunted. “Why don’t you like a cool animal, like my dog? He’s the most kick-ass dog there is, not like those stupid Chihuahuas they have in your home, Mexico.”

  “She likes the mouse ‘cause she thinks it’s a Chihuahua,” Kyle said. “Our dog could eat your dumb mouse.”

  “Kyle. Cole. That’s enough!” Mrs. Mint shouted. She wished Mariella would stand up for herself instead, but the teacher couldn’t tolerate her taking that much abuse. None of the other kids, even Mariella’s former friends, stuck up for her. “If you don’t give her that picture back right now, you’re spending every recess this month cleaning the blackboard.”

  Cole slowed his run into a cocky strut and waved the drawing above his head. Mariella held her hand out anxiously, but he chucked it on the floor between the desks. She dashed after her precious picture, tripped and fell flat on her face. As the whole class roared with laughter Mrs. Mint caught sight of a giddy Kyle retracting his foot from the aisle Mariella had just run down. Mariella sat up cradling her drawing against her chest and, besieged by faces reveling in her pain, buried her head into her knees. Even Mrs. Mint’s scolding and threats of detection couldn’t smother the contagious cruel laughter.

  Most children would have broken into a fit of whining or enraged screaming. That would have been a very human reaction. And it would have required that Mariella make a sound. Instead, the girl rose up, left her once treasured drawing on the ground and marched to the window with the other pictures. Snatching a handful of crayons on her way, Mariella made a B-line for Kyle’s drawing of his golden Labrador retriever. She reared the red crayon back and stabbed at the page, slashing a red gash across the dog’s neck.

  “Hey! That’s mine!” Kyle charged at her, but he couldn’t weave between the desks in time.

  Mariella smeared the crayon against the page until it blotted out the dog’s head. She did the same to one of its front legs. Then the girl took a purple crayon and bashed it over the dog so it left blotchy spots.

  Her parents had lost their heads, Mrs. Mint thought. Could this be a reenactment of what she saw that horrible night? If she wanted revenge on the Buckley boys, she’d use the most deadly thing she’s ever seen. That must be it. She would save the drawing for the child psychologist.

  Mrs. Mint caught Kyle by the collar a second before he reached Mariella. She blocked off Cole and snatched him up too.

  “That stupid wetback is ruing my picture of Butch!” Kyle protested.

  “Watch your mouth. That’s a dirty word,” Mrs. Mint said as she dragged the brothers toward the timeout chairs. “You didn’t let her finish her picture, so now she’s putting the finishing touches on yours.”

  Ignoring the familiar refrain of “It’s not fair,” Mrs. Mint put the mischievous twins in punishment. When she returned to face the rest of the class, she found them staring at the massacre Mariella had made of Kyle’s drawing of his dog. With it hanging in the window, everyone who passed by her classroom would know there’s a disturbed child inside. The girl had already returned to her desk, where she finished off her picture of Snowflake the mouse. The whittled stubs of red and purple crayons lay at Mariella’s feet. Studying her face, Mrs. Mint couldn’t detect a hint of the malice Mariella had bristled with moments earlier. It had dissipated like the ripples from a dropped stone smoothing out over the lagoon.

  How much longer can I protect her, and still protect my class from her?

  Chapter 19

  Aaron knew he’d need those cheesy eighties cop show sunglasses for something one day. The perfect opportunity for playing a bad-ass, cocaine cowboy-buster came when the real cops called him along for a search warrant. The target: Harry “Lagoon Watcher” Trainer.

  Seated besides Aaron in the back seat of the police cruiser as they sped up A1A along the sand dunes and hotels of Satellite Beach, Professor Swartzman didn’t look all that pumped. Aaron overheard him pleading with Sneed over the phone that morning in the lab. The professor had told the police investigator that they were wasting t
heir time. Trainer couldn’t possibly engineer a baffling organism like this, he had said. Sneed didn’t give a damn what the professor thought. He only wanted his opinion on what they found in the Lagoon Watcher’s digs in Merritt Island.

  It looked like the Watcher had been growing a rain forest on his lawn. With the thicket of bushes, the knee-length tangle of grass and weeds and un-pruned trees, a passerby wouldn’t know the house sat on a canal leading into the lagoon without looking at the normal home next door. In this neighborhood of meticulously manicured beachside homes, Trainer’s shaggy place had a mailbox bulging full of letters, which Aaron guessed included many homeowner association fines.

  “Recognize the place?” Sneed asked from the driver’s seat as he eyed Swartzman in the rearview mirror.

  “I thought I would, until I saw it,” the professor said. “I remember when Harry had the housewarming party with his wife—ex-wife now. That was nearly 20 years ago. I haven’t visited in at least five years.”

  “Was that the last time he mowed his lawn?” Aaron asked.

  The wisecrack drew a chuckle from Sneed, but it didn’t get his professor off the hook.

  “I thought you were all buddy-buddy with the Watcher,” the detective said. “What, he didn’t have you over for a couple beers or playing around with your microscopes?”

  Swartzman folded his trembling hands. “Harry wanted me to review his research. I know he did most of it here after he got fired. He asked me to co-author papers with him, since no legitimate journal would accept an article from an unemployed scientist. But the subjects were too…” The professor winced. “Political. Most of my institute’s funding comes from the state, and the folks in Tallahassee wouldn’t appreciate us pointing out that they need to spend billions cleaning up the lagoon.”

  “Well, you’ll get to see your pal’s research after all, and you can help me write up a police report to boot,” Sneed said. “It looks like your Watcher skipped out on us.”

  He pointed out the empty driveway as they pulled in. The other patrol car, driven by Nina Skillings, parked on the curve. The policewoman emerged and circled around back.

  “No sign of the boat,” Skillings shouted.

  “And no sign of the suspect, I reckon. Give your buddy a warning call?” As Sneed killed the engine, he glared over his seat at Swartzman like a bulldog sticking its growling mug out of its doghouse at a trespasser in its yard. Aaron tugged at the door handle. It didn’t open. Of course, the backdoors of a police car wouldn’t open from the inside. Suddenly, Aaron felt like something other than a passenger.

  “I’m not an idiot,” Swartzman said. “I haven’t told Harry anything since you called this morning.”

  “So you have talked to him?” Sneed asked.

  “I called him yesterday and asked him how he was doing, you know, after the incident where he picked up that boater after the gator attack.”

  “You mean the same boater who got chewed up by rats?” the detective asked as he eyed Skillings.

  “I saw it myself,” Skillings said. “Nasty shit. They didn’t take his head this time—maybe because he wasn’t near the water. But there was that purple stuff and the acid burns.”

  “So we have two dead witnesses and both of them had a run-in with the Lagoon Watcher not far from the crime scenes on the day of the murders,” Sneed said.

  Swartzman ran a heavy hand over his forehead, and the little hair he had left on his scalp. Aaron recognized the sign of disappointment from the many times he had botched his assignments for the professor.

  “It is a compelling motive,” Aaron admitted. His professor shot him a stern stare. Aaron felt his GPA slipping and changed course. “But if the Watcher wanted to make everybody freak out and clean up the lagoon, wouldn’t he need witnesses to tell people about the creature attacks? It doesn’t help his cause if there’s no one left to blab for the cameras.”

  “And I don’t see any way Trainer could order a manatee attack and then a rat attack,” Swartzman said. “There must be a biological explanation. Maybe the bacteria-infected animals seek out people who’ve been in the lagoon because they have a certain chemical signature to them.”

  “Whoa, that would suck for me,” said Aaron, who remembered his dive only days ago.

  “And for ten-thousand other people who’ve dipped more than a toe in the lagoon in the past few weeks,” Sneed said. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s have a look inside this place and then you can tell me what the Lagoon Watcher is capable of.”

  They didn’t have a hard time getting inside. He had left his front door unlocked—perhaps expecting they’d stop by and break in so he might as well spare his locks and hinges. When Aaron followed the officers inside, his nose got overrun by a salty fish stench. It smelled like a commercial fishing vessel with the catch jammed into a festering tank that held more fish than it did water. He didn’t see the marine specimens amid the clutter of papers and boxes stacked waist high, but they were somewhere in that house no doubt.

  Aaron thought of Trainer’s home like an ex super model who became a junkie. He caught glimpses of its former luxury peeking out from the mess. The marble countertops and the mahogany dining table hardly had any breathing room. They were smothered underneath a flood of paperwork. Aaron skimmed through a few boxes. Some of them dated back 25 years. The ousted scientist had brought his work home with him—every scrap of it.

  “We’ve got a real pack rat here,” Sneed said as he sifted through Polaroid photos of various seabirds. “I wonder what else he collects. Heads and organs, maybe?”

  He tossed Skillings a glance. She nodded, headed for the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. “Holy shit!”

  “What? What is it?” Swartzman tripped over a box on his way there and barely regained his balance.

  “What man doesn’t own meat? He’s an organic food nut. He must be a vegan too,” Skillings said as if that fit the profile of an environmental activist serial killer. “By the look of these fresh vegetables, he’s gone shopping in the past week.”

  “So something happened recently that made him abandon ship,” Sneed said. His roving eyes settled on Swartzman.

  Aaron could think of a couple reasons why the Lagoon Watcher would take off. The man he pulled from the lagoon had gotten killed. That could mean Trainer did it, or thought he’d get wrongly accused of it. Or maybe he feared his name had made it onto the killer’s hit list. Either way, he had something to hide.

  They cleared all but one room. The den had its windows boarded up and a padlock on the door—the only place where Trainer didn’t have an open door policy. When the officers pried off the lock and threw that last door open, they found the source of that fishy smell. The bookcases on the walls were stacked with jars full of marine life suspended in fluids—fish heads, manatee flippers, dolphin lungs and all kinds of internal organs. Some of them were large enough to be human, but Aaron couldn’t tell for sure without examining them closely. As he drew near, Aaron found that some of the specimens had purple bacteria tumors.

  “The Lagoon Watcher has his eye on the thiobacillus strain too,” Aaron said as he pointed out the samples to his professor. “Some of these look months old. He knew before we did. He’s playing us, man.”

  “Harry probably doesn’t understand what he’s looking at here,” Swartzman said. “We’ll examine his notes on the subject and then you’ll see.”

  “That won’t happen today.” Skillings pointed out the empty desk, which had a frame of dust on its surface in the outline of the computer that had recently sat there. “Looks like he cleared his work station.”

  “Oh, he sure didn’t have anything to hide,” Sneed told the professor. “Your boy didn’t know what the hell he was looking at in the lagoon, right?”

  Swartzman stared at his feet, but an answer didn’t crawl out of his socks. Turning his back on Sneed, he hunched over a microscope with a sample of the bacteria in its sights.

  “Harry would know enough to identify this as a ty
pe of thiobacillus, but that’s it,” Swartzman said while shielding his eyes from the detective behind the microscope. “He couldn’t do more without a DNA sequencer, and I don’t see one around here.”

  “Maybe he took that with him along with his computer and the rest of his good equipment,” Sneed said. “If he knew we were coming, he wouldn’t leave behind the smoking gun, like whatever he uses to make that purple gook.”

  Yet, the Lagoon Watcher hadn’t taken all the good stuff.

  While everybody gazed at the jarred animal parts, Aaron headed for the industrial-sized freezer in the corner. He craved a beer, but doubted he would score one there. When he swung the heavy door open a clawed, scaly hand swooped out at him. Aaron leapt back. The decapitated gator carcass fell at his feet. The Lagoon Watcher had stashed it in the fridge like a scaly bloated turkey. The cut that severed its head had been done with more precision than any butcher’s knife could render. Its stubby neck had been separated along a line as smooth as the collar of a leather jacket.

  A puffy purple tumor flourished in the cradle of its armpit. Before Aaron could say a word, Sneed bulled him out of the way and snapped a picture of it.

  “I’ve got Exhibit A right here, your honor,” Sneed said. “This is your killer taking a practice run.”

  “If he could slice through a gator’s leather neck, there’s no way a person would stand a chance,” Aaron said.

  After examining it, Swartzman shook his head like a little kid refusing to admit he stole something. “He must have found this corpse after it had already been mutilated—just like how we found the human corpses. This doesn’t explain how Trainer could have committed these murders.”

  “I think this explains it pretty well.” Skillings wrapped her arm around the professor’s head and shoved electric bone saw in his face.

  “Agh, stop that!” Swartzman ducked.

  With a cackling laugh, Skillings placed the bone saw on a metal tray with a collection of cutting tools, including a surgical scalpel and a pair of sharp tongs. The Lagoon Watcher even had an endoscopic tube that could probe deep into bodies with a camera and tiny surgical utensils. In the right set of hands, they could extract an organ while making only a small incision.