“I’m telling you, the Lagoon Watcher couldn’t…” Swartzman started until Sneed cut him off with a “Shut up!” The flustered scientist recoiled from the table and hid his nose behind his mobile phone.
“I’m getting sick of this shit,” Sneed rumbled on. “Every day there’s another attack and, before we can finish sorting through all the evidence, there’s another one. It’s like gangs waging a turf war. And the thing that always pissed me off about busting up a gang is that people would witness a shooting and not say a word. They stayed silent and others died—sometimes their own brothers or sisters. And here again, we have our best witness keeping her mouth shut.”
“I told you…” Moni started.
“Cut the bullshit! How many more good people do I need to bury? How many more times do I have to call a firefighter’s fiancé and tell her that her groom won’t make the wedding because he’s dead? If there’s anything you can do to help me put an end to this madness, Moni, you better step up with it.”
A raging retort bubbled up in her throat. She cut it off. Moni knew Sneed was right. She had protected Mariella above all else—above even the investigation into a murderer who had taken eleven lives so far. So many people died so that one girl didn’t get forced into dwelling on her demons. Moni had lied when she told herself she couldn’t do more to encourage Mariella’s cooperation. She had barely done anything.
If she didn’t get something out of Mariella and catch the killer soon, his next strike might hit too close.
Moni didn’t say a word for the rest of the task force meeting. Aaron said a few nice things to her afterwards about how she had done so well with Mariella, but she couldn’t honestly look him in the eyes and accept those compliments.
She found the girl asleep on the couch in her office. A drawing of a horse lay on the coffee table across from her. Moni scooped the girl into her arms and cradled her head against her shoulder so she didn’t awaken. As she carried her out into the parking lot, it surprised Moni how dark it was. She didn’t realize the meeting had run so late. No wonder Sneed’s rants felt like they had gone on forever.
Moni slipped past the bushes and approached her car on the outskirts of the sheriff station parking lot. She reached into her pocket for the keys when she heard someone jump behind her. A paper got shoved in her face. Moni saw a drawing of a burning figure—just like the boy who had roasted in the marina.
Chapter 24
“Your girl’s quite the little artist,” Officer Nina Skillings said as she stood behind Moni holding the drawing of the burning teenager in her face. Even though she stood four inches shorter than Moni, it felt like Skillings towered over her like a bear.
“You’re lucky I have a child in my arms, ‘cause next time you jump out on me like that, I might have an involuntary reaction with my trigger finger that you wouldn’t appreciate,” Moni said as she spun around carefully so she wouldn’t wake Mariella. “Now where’d you get that from?”
“I did a little searching in your girl’s backpack. You left it in the car and I was about to return it to you.” Skillings flashed the mischievous smile of a brat who could do whatever she wanted and get away with it. It helps having the lead detective in her pocket. “So she drew a decapitated dog and it happened. Then she drew a burning man and it happened. What are the odds of that?”
Mariella rolled her head across Moni’s shoulder and hung it stiffly off her side. She gently nudged the girl back into a more comfortable position. Moni’s wrists began aching from hoisting her up for so long. If only she could put her in the car and drive out of there, but that pest Skillings wouldn’t get out of her way.
From the academy on, Skillings had always shot straighter and fought harder than Moni. Top brass had put Skillings on the biggest cases because she would knock a few heads to get results. Moni had striven for years to win the confidence of her superiors so they’d trust her with the big cases like they did with Skillings. Instead, Moni got the “kiddie” beat.
The one time her skills with juvenile victims made her a vital part of a key investigation, Skillings made sure Moni knew she couldn’t play in her league.
“Kids draw a lot of funny things, but you wouldn’t know, because you terrify them with that sunny personality of yours.” Moni said. “Now, excuse me. I’m taking Mariella home.”
Moni tried slipping around her, but that stack of muscles with a ponytail blocked her off from the car.
“You’re letting your feelings for that kid blind you to the facts of this case. That girl is more than a victim. She’s part of the problem.”
“The problem!” Moni recalled all the times her teachers had saw her sulking and irresponsive in class as she recovered from the beating her father gave her the night before. Those teachers had called her a problem child. “This child just lost both her parents. Nothing could be more devastating. I can’t believe you would dare accuse her of doing anything wrong.”
“I’m not accusing her. I’m accusing what’s inside her and what was inside him.” Skillings pointed to the burning teenager in the drawing. “He was possessed by the bacteria from the lagoon. That’s why he blew himself up with the pier. Why would the bacteria make only animals attack and not people?”
“Possessed? That fool wasn’t possessed. He was a teenager drunk off his ass and scared of the dolphins with human arms that took his friends. Of course he wasn’t thinking straight when he fired that shot.”
“But how did Mariella know he would do that? How did she know about the attack on her classmate’s dog?” Skillings asked. She answered her own questions before Moni could reply. “The girl’s connected to all of this. She spent a whole night on the shore of the lagoon. It must have infected her. That’s why she’s so damn weird.”
“No,” Moni muttered, but the accusations found a foothold in her brain.
She had never questioned Mariella’s behavior. She accepted everything as grieving. From the moment Moni had pulled her from the mangroves, the girl acted as if she had never set foot on this planet. Everyone who knew Mariella before the incident said she emerged as an entirely different person. When she couldn’t explain the girl’s keen reading of her emotions, or her haunting drawings, she simply let it roll off her as smoothly as rainwater. Before she knew it, she found herself standing in a deep puddle.
“You need to get the girl tested for bacteria—for real this time,” Skillings said. “Let’s take her in now before something else happens.”
Mariella’s once limp hand slid up and gripped Moni hard around the back of her neck. The girl unconsciously pulled herself up around Moni. Mariella depended on her, Moni thought. Skillings cared about her career, not protecting the girl. Her rival sought to embarrass her in front of Sneed and steal the most precious thing that had ever come into Moni’s life. Mariella couldn’t be infected, Moni thought. She knows the girl. She loves her. She doesn’t love some bacteria or an experiment by a deranged scientist.
“Get out of our way,” Moni told Skilling.
She put her hands on her hips and stood there as if she were cast in granite. “Bring the girl in.”
Without a second of thought, Moni drew her pistol. She brought it halfway up to Skillings’ chest. Then she stopped. In one flick of her wrist and tug of her finger, all her problems would get blown away. Usually so hesitant to use her weapon, Moni felt an insatiable urge to send a bullet through Skillings’ throat so she’d shut the hell up and leave poor Mariella alone.
“You really wanna go down this road with me?” asked Skillings, who didn’t appear intimidated in the least. She obviously didn’t believe Moni would shoot because she had heard the stories. The last time one of her partners got in a shootout with a suspect, Moni had ducked behind a wall and let the other officer take care of it. He nearly got his head blown off but the suspect ran out of ammo and surrendered.
Moni knew she should put the gun away. She couldn’t—not until Skillings backed off from Mariella.
What am I doing? W
hat am I doing? She might be a bitch supreme, but I can’t shoot her.
Suddenly a patrol car pulled into the sheriff station’s parking lot and its headlights grazed past them. Moni quickly put her gun away and turned around so the light wouldn’t hit Mariella in the eyes and wake her up. That move solved one dilemma for her, but it created another one. When Moni glanced across the street as the headlights briefly illuminated the parking lot of a retail plaza, she saw a blue pickup truck with two reflective circles in the driver’s seat. Moni knew right away that those were binoculars. They were pointed right at Mariella and her.
Chapter 25
The parking lot across the street darkened when the patrol car moved on, but Moni knew the man inside the pickup truck still watched her and the girl as they stood underneath the bright lights around the Melbourne sheriff’s station. When Moni stared back at him for too long, the truck sprang alive like a lion roaring in the middle of a jungle night. It jumped the curb from the parking lot onto the street and burned rubber down Sarno Road. It sped east in the direction of the Indian River Lagoon.
Moni’s skin crawled as she thought of how the man had been observing her and the girl the whole time. and lord knows how many other instances. If she had left Mariella alone for one minute, she might have lost her girl forever.
“It’s a blue pickup truck like the one the Lagoon Watcher drives,” Moni told Skillings, who finally set her hawkish gaze elsewhere. “He was outside Mariella’s school one day too. He’s stalking her. So there’s your suspect.”
Skillings growled as she sprinted towards her car. “This doesn’t change anything I said. We’ll finish this after I bring him in.”
“No, after I bring him in,” Moni corrected her as she finally unlocked her Taurus so she could give its six-cylinders a workout. “That asshole’s gonna pay for the hell he put my baby though.”
Moni swung open the back door and placed Mariella in the seat as gently and quickly as she could. Her nerves must have rattled her hands, because when she finished strapping the girl in she noticed Mariella staring at her—not with sleepy eyes but fully alert and razor sharp. She sensed Moni’s urgency.
“I’m gonna catch the man who did bad things to your parents,” Moni said as she jumped behind the wheel.
She peeled out of her parking space and leapt the curb. Skillings’ patrol car had a good lead on her. She saw the red taillights of the Lagoon Watcher’s truck farther down the road. After11 p.m., there weren’t many other cars on the quiet Melbourne streets. Moni radioed for backup. She didn’t count on it getting there before the stalker had plenty of chances to escape..
A sedan pulled into the road ahead of her. Ignoring the brakes, Moni swerved into the oncoming lane and back again as she zipped around it. Suddenly, the suspect’s truck barreled onto the grass on the right side of the street. It headed straight for an elementary school. Skillings’ patrol car raced behind him. He spun up chunks of turf—with one a big clump splattering off Skillings’ windshield. The truck shredded some bushes and then rumbled into the school’s empty parking lot. The Lagoon Watcher turned toward a building, then swerved the truck the opposite way and burst through a chain link fence that led him back onto Sarno Road. Skillings’ car was slowed down by the muddled grass and whacked by the fence as it reentered the roadway. That gave the Lagoon Watcher plenty of distance from her.
Moni hadn’t fallen for the bait. She had stayed on the road the whole time and found her car right on the truck’s tailpipe. She could only imagine the look on Skillings’ face when she saw that the “kiddie cop” had out-maneuvered her.
Of course, following the Lagoon Watcher like a tick on a dog’s ass wouldn’t get the job done. This wouldn’t end until she stopped that truck and yanked him out by the hair on the back of his neck. Moni pumped the gas. Her car rammed the pickup’s bumper on the right side. It drifted slightly left, toward the oncoming lane, but quickly straightened out.
It would take a much harder blow if she wanted his truck spinning across the road. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Moni saw Mariella on edge in her seat like a cat spooked by a thunder storm. She couldn’t play bumper cars at 90 miles an hour with her girl in the backseat.
Looking for a glancing blow that would slow him down, Moni pulled even with the truck along its right side. She nudged her car into its door. Sparks flew. The pressure forced the truck toward the opposite lane, where a pair of headlights sped toward them. Seeing the oncoming car, Moni disengaged the truck, and pulled back into her lane. The truck pulled left—straight at the car racing toward it. Moni flinched. The oncoming driver, who got a rude surprise on his twilight drive, sounded his horn. The Lagoon Watcher swung his truck back into the right lane, sideswiping Moni’s smaller car.
“Hold on!” Moni cried as her car shot over the sidewalk and onto the lawn of a church. She struggled for control over the vehicle. Her headlights caught sight of a large gazebo; it was the kind used for a wedding, or maybe a memorial service. Rejecting the brakes for fear of skidding through the grass, Moni banked the wheel hard left, and revved the gas. Her car responded so well that it brought her back onto the road, and straight into the oncoming lane. She saw the glare of headlights ahead. A horn shrieked. Moni weaved back into the right lane an instant before the tow truck sped by. She hoped she would need its services later, but not for her car.
The truck she had a fix on wrecking opened a sizable lead on her. He didn’t have it all in the clear, though. Moni’s ass-busting work had helped Skillings and her patrol car slide right onto the Lagoon Watcher’s tail. They crossed the train tracks within moments of each other. Moni lagged behind. She didn’t mind trailing so much anymore. She could nearly feel Mariella’s tremors of terror from the backseat. Moni’s assault had nearly gotten her killed. It frustrated the hell out of her, but she couldn’t take any more risks with the girl in the car.
That’s exactly what everyone says about me; that I always find an excuse to back down. Damn it. I have no choice this time. If I get Mariella killed trying to arrest him, then the Lagoon Watcher will have gotten exactly what he wanted. He might even have baited me into this chase so I would risk her life. That lagoon-loving vegan son of a bitch.
The Lagoon Watcher’s truck cut the corner of Sarno Road and U.S. 1 by ducking through a parking lot. It emerged onto the highway with a southern heading. Moni got on the radio and updated the second wave of patrol cars on his direction. She had a feeling where he was headed, and she knew backup wouldn’t make it in time. They were one mile away from the stretch of U.S. 1 that ran right up against the bacteria infested Indian River Lagoon.
Moni grabbed her radio. “He’s headed for the lagoon. That’s his refuge. You hear me, Nina? You gotta cut him off.”
“Then come on! Box and stop.” Skillings replied over the radio. Moni didn’t respond. “You need me to spell it out for you? I’ll pull ahead of him to slow him down. I need you to get behind him and box him in on my tail. That should buy us time until help arrives. Got it?”
“But why don’t you just clip him and spin him out?” Moni asked.
“This is the highway, not some backwater street. He could spin into someone—like you almost made him do back there.”
Moni clamped her teeth. Her tongue simmered in her mouth from the fiery words she refrained from releasing. Everyone could hear what they said on the radio, especially the part about how Moni had screwed up.
“While you were getting faked off the road, I got some good licks on him,” Moni said over the radio. “But I better stop now. It’s getting too dangerous for Mariella here with me. It’s your turn to step up, Nina.”
“Oh sure, it’s too dangerous for her,” Skillings said. “Big surprise—Mariella helps the Lagoon Watcher get away. What else do you think she’s been doing for him?”
Moni could imagine Sneed’s ears perking like a K-9 catching the scent of blood when he heard that remark. If she didn’t catch the Lagoon Watcher and prove that he had been stalking
Mariella and not colluding with her, Sneed would rip the poor girl limb from limb until she talked.
Gripping the steering wheel so hard that she nearly broke it off, Moni made a looping turn onto U.S. 1. She saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings rounding a curve in the road. Moni floored it. Seconds later, Moni’s foot suddenly numbed over and eased off the gas. She realized that Skillings hadn’t shown Mariella’s picture of the burning man to anyone else. Without that, Sneed wouldn’t know that lightning had struck twice with those pictures. Skillings wouldn’t let the suspicious drawing stay secret for long.
“We’ll catch this guy,” she told Mariella, who clutched the back of Moni’s seat so she wouldn’t bounce around. “And then we’ll have a little talk with our friend Nina.”
By the time she came out of the curve in the road, she saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings crossing a flat bridge over an offshoot of the Eau Gallie River. The patrol car edged its nose toward the pickup’s right rear tire. If she connected on target, the truck would whip around and thump right smack into the bridge’s guardrail, and maybe over into the water. The Lagoon Watcher must have seen it coming because he swerved left. Instead of connecting on the side of the truck, the patrol car clipped its rear bumper. While the truck weaved in and out of its lane a few times until it steadied, Skillings’ patrol car straightened out but lost much of its velocity. Moni quickly pulled even with her. She shot Skillings a glance through the window. Skillings greeted her with an accusatory stare that said this would have been over already if Moni had done her job.
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