Mute (5 page)

It
took nearly an hour until they found a setup in the police station that didn’t
make Mariella freak out. Moni tried leaving the girl in her office with a guard
outside the door, but the girl started banging on the door and window the
moment she left. Sneed told Moni to ignore it and get her ass in their
investigation unit meeting. Moni sped back to the office and scooped up the
frantic girl. Even with all that protesting, she hadn’t voiced so much as a
whimper.

Since
they couldn’t discuss the case with the only witness hearing the evidence, they
compromised. Sneed begrudgingly moved the meeting to the maze of cubicles
outside Moni’s office, which had a sound-proof window that gave Mariella a
clear view of Moni, and vice versa.

The
girl stared at Moni nonstop for nearly five minutes before finally finding the
crayons and paper on the table. As the officers huddled around the folding
table and ran through the gruesome evidence, Moni turned an empathetic eye back
toward the child at each detail.

Like
the other two murders by the lagoon before it, the heads had been severed
smoothly, right down to the blood vessels. The vertebra had separated as easily
as Legos unlocking and the nerves were cut, not yanked apart or twisted. Like
the prior victims, the Gomez’ had their blood thinned out and stripped of all
its iron. Yet they showed no signs of long-term exposure to iron deficiency
anemia—the only medical explanation. Somebody had mined the iron from them
quickly. They had taken many organs with it.

The
first victim had been left nearly hollow, with bones and muscle but no organs.
The second victim was missing about half her organs. For the Gomez couple, the
killer had narrowed it down to their lungs, livers, kidneys and reproductive
organs. Once again, they hadn’t been ripped out through the skin. The murderer
extracted them through the gaping hole in his victims’ necks, much like
orthopedic surgeons remove gallbladders through a small incision. Except these
organs had been severed more precisely than even a surgeon’s scalpel could
cleave them.

“This
is the work of someone who’s done thousands of dissections,” said Paul Rudy,
the Brevard County medical examiner. He would know, as he’s diced apart and
stitched back together thousands of corpses. “The killer is working with
top-notch equipment.”

“That
should tell us something about the motive,” Sneed said. “The killer left their
wallets and their car. They weren’t sexually assaulted. The freak wanted their
organs and their heads. What a fucking prize.”

Moni
gazed at Mariella’s angelic little face as she colored in a notebook. If the
killer had seen her… An image of that petite body without a head, with blood
spouting from its neck, flashed into her mind. She shook it off and eyed Sneed.

“Do
we have any idea how the killer subdued the couple?” she asked.

“The
results of the toxicology reports aren’t back yet, but I suspect something very
nasty got into their systems shortly before their decapitations,” Rudy said.
“The iron in their blood dissolved rapidly. They had internal chemical burns,
like someone had injected battery acid into their veins.”

“Battery
acid?” Moni covered her mouth. She remembered the time her father had burned
her arm with a cigarette because she hadn’t cleaned up her toys. She still had
a circular scar. “Were there injection marks on their bodies?”

“No.”
The medical examiner shook his head. “At least, not below the neck.”

The
heads of the prior two victims hadn’t turned up, so Moni didn’t expect they’d
get any more evidence from these bodies. So far, they hadn’t found any signs in
the rat trap of an apartment the Gomez family called home that indicated why
they had gotten butchered. They were at a dead end, unless Moni coaxed
something useful out of Mariella.

Moni
caught Sneed eyeing Mariella in her glass box like a gator with its snout
poking out of the water sizing up a limping lamb.

“We’ll
be needing her side of the story ‘bout now,” Sneed told Moni.

The
officers focused on Moni. They waited for the answers that she didn’t have. She
shifted her gaze to Mariella, who looked right back at her. The girl’s hands
had frozen clenching the crayons. Moni could lie and tell them the girl hadn’t
seen anything. But they’d never buy it. She hadn’t been traumatized into
selective mutism without seeing something terrible.

“I’m
still working on it,” Moni said. “When girl gets over the shock, I’ll bring you
what she has.”

“Yeah,
and how long will that take? Weeks? Months? Her whole damn life?” Sneed threw
his arms up and bumped the folding table with his belly so that it collided
with Moni’s elbows. “How many people will die until she can get her shit
straight?”

“Sir,
I…”

“I
don’t care!” Sneed hollered. Even though Mariella couldn’t hear the commotion,
Moni saw her wince inside the office. She must have seen the rage on his
boiling face. “My brother is with the Lord right now because people didn’t
talk. We had four of them people who witnessed a gang-related shooting in
Atlanta and none of them said a damn thing about what happened right in front
of them. We didn’t catch the gunman until after my brother pulled him over for
driving like a motherfucking crazy man. As soon as he stepped out of the patrol
car, that thug blew his head off. If even one of those witnesses had offered up
his name, it never would have happened…” She could see the stinging pain in his
red eyes as they stared her down. “So I don’t wanna hear no bullshit. The girl
talks.”

Moni
hung her head. She caught Mariella sending an anxious look her way after
spending so much time locked in the office. Moni could only protect her for so
long until she started putting other peoples’ lives at risk.

 
“I’ll talk to the psychologist and push her as
far as she can go,” Moni said. “But don’t expect a breakthrough right away.”

“Well,
when there is a breakthrough, why don’t you ask her about her mother’s hand?”
said detective Nina Skillings. “There was a big bruise on it. Looks like it
came from some little fingers squeezing really tight.”

Sure,
that would be an easy question. Skillings assumed all girls were made of bricks
and barbed wire like her.

“That
bruise could have happened shortly before or shortly after her mother died,”
Dr. Rudy said. “But it’s clear that Mariella left the mark. She’s stronger than
she looks.”

Moni
watched the girl gently coloring in the finishing touches of her drawing.

“Sometimes
overwhelming grief and fear can give you a strength you didn’t know you had,”
Moni said. “But when you deny yourself an outlet and turn that fear against
yourself, it eats out your soul.”

No
one could follow that somber tone in her voice. Sneed, who knew about her
father because he had access to her personnel file, must have understood how
deeply it reflected on her life. He dismissed the investigation unit.

Moni
dashed back into her office. Mariella leapt off the couch and wrapped her arms
around the officer’s waist. Now she knew why people had children.

But
Mariella didn’t belong to her. No matter how much the child needed her, Moni
couldn’t become a parent while working on this case, because a parent would
never let Mariella dwell on this horrible day again.

Moni’s
phone rang. It turned out that the demons in her past wouldn’t leave her alone
either. She didn’t feel like answering, but if she didn’t, he’d show up on her
doorstep with his calloused hand extended for her cash.

“Hi
father,” she answered in an ice-cold tone.

“Saw
you on the news today, darlin’,” Bo Williams said with the slur of alcohol on
his lips. “You was carrying a little Mexican girl away from a crime scene. It
was a nasty one, I reckon?”

Small
talk. He always did it before getting to the point: money. With his work as an
auto mechanic, he could probably pay his own way if it weren’t for all the
boozing and gambling. The fact that this animal knew of someone as fragile and
precious as Mariella settled in Moni’s stomach like rotten cheese.

“Yeah,
it was rough out there today,” Moni said. “And I’m real busy working on the
case so…”

“Great!
I’ll make it right quick then,” he snapped. She could have hung up. She could
have hung up on him right there and not answered the call when he rang her
back. But, just like how she never fled her childhood home and never called the
police on that abusive monster, Moni let him roll on. “My landlord’s fix’n to
kick me out on my ass next month if I don’t make rent. You don’t wanna see your
old man out on the street again, do ya?”

As
much as that bastard deserved sleeping underneath a bridge every night, that
would only give him more time out in public where he could encounter new
victims. If he panhandled again, he might jump in the car with a woman and have
his twisted fun.

God, why’d they let him out? Ten
years in prison wasn’t nearly enough.

Bo
Williams might have stayed in the pen if the girl he had beaten had died, but
she survived to live on with barely any use in her arm. Moni should have
protected her friend from him, but she led the girl right into her home. She
had watched her father wrench Sasha’s arm behind her back until it broke. Her
friend screamed and bawled tears. And when Moni begged him to stop, her father
shoved her against the wall. She sat where she fell as Sasha’s beating
continued. She covered her eyes and ears, like if she didn’t see or hear it, it
wasn’t happening.

“You wanna be like this girl? You
wanna be fashionable, don’t cha?”
her father had shouted at Moni as
he pulled her friend’s braids and slammed her face against the dining room
table.
“You think I’m gonna buy you all
this nice shit? Well, when you earn a nickel, you can pay me back for all the
money I wasted on you. I’m taking all those clothes your mother bought, taking
the receipt and returning them to the store. I don’t want you ever splurging on
that shit without my permission again!”

Moni
gripped Mariella’s hand as the memories flooded back to her. She had once been
a defenseless child. No one stuck up for her. Moni’s mother, bless her soul,
had a fragile heart that couldn’t stand up to him.

Now
this young girl had no one fighting for her. Everyone saw her as a jewelry case
filled with gems of information. A case proves useful only until it’s opened.
When it’s empty, it’s thrown away. Moni couldn’t let that happen to Mariella.

“I’ll
send you a check for another nine-hundred dollars, but don’t you come by and
pick it up,” Moni told her father. “I’ll mail it.”

She’d
cut ties with him for good another time. Right now, Moni needed her father as
far out of her life as possible.

“Nine-hundred?”
he asked incredulously, like he had any negotiating power besides being
annoying as hell. “How about an even grand?”

“I
know what your rent is. I’m not paying you a nickel more.”

“Well,
a man’s gotta eat, don’t he? You want me scrounging outta a dumpster like a
raccoon?”

She
wouldn’t mind watching that at all. Hell, she’d take a picture, frame it and
hang it in her office.

“I’ll
put your check in the mail tomorrow,” said Moni, who made sure she didn’t
commit to an amount. Arguing with him killed her. Every time her old man raised
his voice, her jaw would ache from where he used to slap it as he scolded her.

“I’m
sure that you will. I know you’ve got a big case and all, but don’t forget your
old pa.”

As they ended the call, Moni
wished she could forget him. She understood why the little girl holding her
hand and showing her a drawing of a manatee should be allowed to let her demons
slip from her memory as well.

Moni
sent DCF agent Tanya Roberts a text message: In court tomorrow, I will ask for
temporary custody of the child. Let me protect her.

Without
even looking at the words Moni had typed, Mariella gave her a big smile. She
must have seen the shift in her demeanor towards her. Duty be dammed, Mariella
was more than a witness.

“I’ll
take care of you, baby,” Moni said as she put her arm around Mariella. “You
won’t be afraid no more.”

If only Moni had someone to
tell her those words.

Chapter
4

When
the sun rises out over the Atlantic Ocean and dips its light into the Indian
River Lagoon, sometimes it unveils the gruesome events of the night before.
This time, a headless body rolled around in the water getting tossed against
the sea wall behind a Merritt Island home. That’s where Detective Tom Sneed
headed before he could finish his morning coffee and grits.

The
fist of dread seized Sneed around his windpipe as he feared the worst. Sneed
had gotten a call shortly before midnight from Maggie Kane, the wife of his
poker buddy Matt Kane. Her husband hadn’t returned from a late afternoon
fishing trip. After the murder investigation the prior morning made his first
outing a wash, the son-of-a-gun vowed that he’d have a fresh catch for dinner
that night. Sneed wondered whether someone had caught him first.