Mute (25 page)

Moni wouldn’t legitimize such an obnoxious question
with a reply. She carefully weaved through the intersection and around the
other patrol car as Skillings followed close behind. The Lagoon Watcher had
recovered from his off-road jaunt and once again had some distance on them. Not
eager to put Mariella’s life in danger once more, Moni hung back while
Skillings closed in. With the superior speed of Nina’s patrol car, plus three
pairs of flashing lights growing larger in Moni’s rearview mirror, the Lagoon
Watcher would soon have a net of officers surrounding him. Then they arrived on
his turf. The left side of the road opened up into a small clearing. Out past
the line of palm trees, Moni saw the black pool of the Indian River Lagoon. The
highway curved closer to the waterline. Soon they were driving about a dozen
feet from the home of the bacteria that ate iron, fuel and any living creature
that strayed too close.

The stench of over-salted rotten eggs hit Moni’s
nose. It usually smelled of salt, but it shouldn’t reek so putridly. Randy
Cooper had described such a stench from the lagoon before the infected gator
snared his brother in its jaws and dragged him into an acid bath. Moni pulled
her car into the far right lane so she drove as far away from the lagoon as
possible. Even with the man who had been stalking Mariella straight ahead of
her, Moni couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting off the road and over to the
lagoon. They called her. They begged her from beneath the black water. Her head
rang as if there were a hive of buzzing bees inside her skull. She could no
longer feel her body. She felt the lagoon. She felt its insatiable appetite
pulling her and the girl toward it. Moni remembered her father’s words.

“The
lagoon man has a hunger and I smelled it out there today. That girl belongs to
his lagoon and he’s coming to take her back. You can’t stop it, so you best get
outta the way.”

Her senses rejoined her body and she quickly
realized that she had eased off the gas and let the car drift left. She had
been slowing down on the side of the road closest to the lagoon.

“What am I doing?” Moni exclaimed as she smacked
herself in the forehead. She shot a glance toward Mariella. “I’m sorry about
that, baby.” The girl didn’t seem bothered in the least.

 
Whatever had
districted Moni didn’t show any signs of impacting Skillings’ dogged pursuit of
the suspect. Her patrol car had once again closed the gap and got into position
for another run at him. Out of the corner of her eye, Moni saw a black figure
swoop out of the sky above the lagoon. She saw them. They were unmistakable.
The thing had purple eyes that gleamed in the night. It smashed through
Skillings’ windshield. Her patrol car careened off the road and lost its grip
on the ground. It buckled over the curb and rammed straight into the wide
pillar of an office building. Shards of glass erupted from the car. Its frame
bent as easily as aluminum foil.

“No!” Moni yelled. She slammed on the brakes and
headed for the wreck, which let the Lagoon Watcher turn down a side street
without anyone following him. She jumped out of her car and ran to the driver’s
side of the battered patrol car. She saw a mess of feathers. The pelican
whacked an unconscious Skillings over and over with its long bill. The officer
wore a mask of blood and a badly twisted nose. Moni reached through the
shattered window, grabbed the bird around the back of its neck and hurled it
out of the car. Its feathers flew as it rolled across the pavement before it
finally caught its feet under it. The pelican stood and stared down Moni with
its glowing purple eyes. She drew her gun and put a bullet between them. The
infected creature fell motionless.

It barely registered that Moni had a cut on her
hand from the broken glass when she reached for the window. Sticking her hand
in once more, she unlocked the door from the inside and felt Skillings’ neck.
She hadn’t broken it and she had a pulse, but it wouldn’t last for long with
her gushing blood from that gash on her forehead. Moni wrapped her arms around
Skillings’ chest and started pulling her out of the wrecked car. A hulking
figure swooped in and grabbed the officer’s feet.
Clyde
Harrison, Skillings’ usual partner, carefully helped set her down on the grass.
He knelt over her in a concerned pose. Then he peered up at Moni—all but
strangling her with his eyes. They had embarked on this chase together, but
instead of watching her fellow officer’s back, Moni had played it safe and let
her take the shot that could end her life.

Dozens
of officers showed up over the next few hours. They all looked like they wanted
Moni thrown headfirst into that building, but none more so than lead detective
Tom Sneed. He didn’t care about the TV cameras hovering over the smashed patrol
car and closely watching the officers on the scene. The moment he saw her,
Sneed tore into Moni with a thunder that resonated for blocks away.

“There’s
a damn good officer nearly dead because of you!” Sneed shouted as he lumbered
his bulky frame toward her with his finger jutting in her face. “Why did you
refuse her order to box him in?”

“She’s
not my superior officer. I don’t take orders from…”

“The
hell you don’t!” The torrent of hot air from his mouth nearly knocked her over.
“Skillings has tactical training in automotive pursuit and tons more experience
than you in that field. You know that damn well. If you had listened to her
instead of playing dolls with your little friend in the back seat, Nina would
be leading our killer into a holding cell right now.”

“I
was trying. Look at my car.” Moni pointed out her trusty Taurus, which looked
like somebody had gone to town on it with a sledge hammer. “That’s all from my
efforts. I nearly got him.”

“So
you ‘nearly’ caught him and got your ass kicked. That’s something to be real
proud of,” Sneed said with a snarky smirk. “I pray to God that Nina wakes up,
because when she does I wanna hear you give her that answer and see what she
has to say about that bullshit. You could have easily ended this without any
police casualties if you had done what any good officer would do.”

Moni
knew he really meant, “What any white officer would do.” She bit her tongue and
balled up her fists.

“Maybe
I should put you on patrol of the nursery school,” Sneed said. “Or maybe not.
You can’t even control that girl of yours. She has you on a leash like you’re
her bitch. She’s the one who’s supposed to be doing the barking, but, instead,
you are.”

“I
did what any sensible parent would do, but you wouldn’t know that because your
ugly ass doesn’t have any kids.” Moni shot a repulsed glare at Sneed’s bulging
belly. “Don’t you think the DCF would have a problem with me if I got all
Bad Boys
on a police chase with an
eight-year-old girl tagging along?”

“Girl,
the DCF already has a problem with you, believe me.”

Something
told Moni that he meant those words as a threat more than a warning. She sucked
in her breath and finally disengaged from him. As she trotted back toward her
car with Mariella peering out the window at all the frantic activity, Moni’s cell
phone rang. She wished it was Aaron calling in the middle of the night to check
on her. Instead, she got another man. Moni sent Darren straight to voice mail
and then made her phone block his number. She had been damaged enough for one
day without her ex-boyfriend pretending he gave a damn about her so he could
peel her panties off.

“Douche
bag,” Moni mumbled as she smiled for Mariella, who remained inside the car.

She
welcomed the girl into the front seat with her. Moni put her arm around
Mariella, who nestled her little head against her shoulder. As she stroked her
bandaged fingers through the girl’s silky hair, Moni lamented how close she had
come to harm.

Even
though she couldn’t catch the man stalking them on that night, at least she had
protected the most important thing in the world, Moni thought. She wished
Skillings hadn’t gotten hurt in the process, but now she couldn’t tell anyone
about the drawing of the burning man. When the other officers weren’t looking,
Moni had fished the picture out of the wrecked car and pocketed it.

What am I thinking? It’s not a good
thing that Nina got hurt. It’s a horrible thing.

As
she drove home with Mariella on her arm, Moni knew she should feel terrible.
She didn’t.

Chapter 26

Moni
laid Mariella in her bed and shut the door. The girl didn’t look sleepy after
getting woken up by a little car chase. Still, Moni figured Mariella needed all
the rest she could get before another trying day at school.

She
should have hit the sack too, but Moni’s rush of adrenaline wouldn’t settle
down. She replayed every swerve and bump of the chase in her mind. If she had
clipped him harder on that first hit, he would have spun out. Or if she had
listened to Skillings and boxed him in, they might have slowed him and help
would have arrived before he reached the lagoon. He would be behind bars right
now and not out there as a threat that could spring at Mariella from any
direction. Moni’s hands trembled as if they still held the wheel that guided an
engine blasting over the asphalt.

She
grabbed her wrist and steadied it. Moni opened the refrigerator door and gazed
inside for a few long moments. She felt like cramming everything on the shelves
down her pie hole. Instead, she settled on frying up a couple of eggs for some
late night breakfast.

Moni
sat down with her plate and grabbed the remote control. She couldn’t turn on
the TV. She feared that the first thing she’d see would be a newscast of the
crash scene. The cameras must have caught Sneed chewing her out. That’s why
Darren had called hoping he could take advantage of her, Moni thought. He
always waited for her to throw herself into his arms for refuge any time
something went wrong in her life. Not this time.

Moni
called up Aaron. She hoped he slept near his phone. He answered on the fifth
ring with a groggy voice. “Hello?”

“What
do you mean, ‘Hello?’ Don’t you know it’s me on the caller ID?”

“Moni?
Aw, I’m sorry. My eyes are still adjusting. Is it morning already?”

“Well
technically, yes. It’s four in the morning.”

“Oh
shit. What happened?” He suddenly sounded more alert. “Are you okay? What about
Mariella?”

She
told him everything about the chase, save for the drawing of the burning man,
and the strange feeling in her head when she approached the lagoon. She
couldn’t even remember how it felt anymore. It seemed like a fleeting dream.
Aaron asked her whether she knew for sure that Harry Trainer had been in that
pickup. She told him that she didn’t get a clear look at his face, but the
vehicle had Trainer’s license plate. He accepted the evidence. She knew his
professor would seek another explanation, just as he would if they had caught
the Lagoon Watcher with a machete in one hand and a severed head in the other.

When Aaron learned about Skillings’ serious
injuries, he stopped asking anxious questions about the pursuit. He went
silent. This time, someone he knew had gotten hurt. Moni recalled the first
time she learned that police work was no rumpus adventure. She had stood over
the flag-draped coffin of a 24-year veteran and then watched his sobbing wife
and kids receive the flag. Luckily, they wouldn’t need that for Skillings now,
but Moni knew either one of them could have been body-bagged after that chase.
The pelican might have struck the wrong car.

With the Lagoon Watcher still lurking in the dark,
body bags with the names Moni and Mariella on them might yet get filled with
their cold, stiff contents.

“Will you come by again after I pick Mariella up
from school?” Moni asked.

“Sure. Why don’t I come in the morning and meet you
after you drop her off? You sound a little shaken up. Maybe you should call in
sick.”

“Wait a minute. Don’t you have class in the
morning?”

“I have lab with Dr. Swartzman. I can blow it off.”

“Hold on there, slacker. Don’t make me bring you in
for cutting class,” she said playfully. It didn’t escape her that if he came by
after she dropped the girl off, they would be in her house alone. That playa
better check himself. “But for real, there’s a ton of evidence you and your
professor need to go over. I’m sure the pelican that attacked Nina was
infected, but you better make sure. And there’s more stuff from the marina
explosion, so, put your work in and then come by.”

“Alright.” He sounded bummed that he didn’t have an
out from his studies. “But this time, I’m stopping for pizza first. And with
extra pepperoni.”

“Okay, I can live with that. I’ll see you… tonight.”
She ended the conversation with a smile—a total 180 from where she began it.

* * * *

Moni kept Mariella under her watchful eye that
afternoon. The girl tried going outside to the back porch, but she wouldn’t let
her anywhere near the water. She felt a chill every time the girl walked by the
rear sliding glass door. She still hasn’t replaced the screen that the infected
snake had destroyed.

She had Mariella sit on the coach, where she
breezed through her math homework in a few minutes.