Mute (24 page)

“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? What 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.

“I haven’t worked with you before, bitch, and I
ain’t starting now,” Moni said, but not over the radio.

By the time they were approaching the major
intersection with Babcock Street, Moni saw flashing red and blue lights far
back in her rearview mirror and up ahead. She also saw red traffic lights above
the intersection and a smattering of cars racing by at speeds only driven late
at night when people think they’re the only cars on the road. The Lagoon
Watcher’s pickup didn’t slow one bit. Instead he slammed on his horn in a long
wail. It jumbled with the blaring siren of the police car approaching the
intersection from the oncoming lane. Somehow, the noise didn’t rattle a car
streaking left to right across the truck’s path. The oncoming patrol car
created another obstacle by looping around and covering most of the three lanes
on the other side of the intersection. Unless the Lagoon Watcher slammed the
brakes before crossing, his bones would get crushed inside his truck like a bag
of potato chips under boot.

Anticipating a horrible smashup, Moni held her
breath. He didn’t slow down. The Lagoon Watcher whipped his truck to the left
just as the car crossed his path. His pickup delivered a hard lick across the
car’s rear tire that spun it out—straight into Moni’s lane. As the Lagoon
Watcher’s truck avoided the parked police car by jumping the curb on the left
side of the road, the struck car hurtled toward Moni with its broadside. Her
heart seized up. A chill shot through her body as her headlights showed the
rapidly approaching mass of glass and steel. Moni thought of Mariella sitting
in the backseat. The innocent child had lost her parents. Now Moni would lead
her straight to her death. She hit the brakes and swerved right. They missed
the oncoming vehicle, but smacked into the side of Skillings’ patrol car. The
blow bumped the patrol car halfway off the road, where a light pole sheared off
its right side mirror. If Skillings hadn’t been there, Moni and Mariella would
have hit that same pole with much more force.

“Sorry ‘bout that, darlin’,” Moni said sweetly
without Skillings hearing her.

The next second, Skillings answered her over the
radio anyway. “What the fuck was that? Who are you trying to catch, him or me?”