Her father’s words echoed: “You been fucking up my whole life, you little whore! All you do is screw up!”
Placing the phone back against her ear, Moni heard Sneed breathing with measured intensity. Instead of asking where she had been the whole time, he had waited her out.
“That’s horrible. I’ll be there right away, sir.” Moni stopped herself. She couldn’t take Mariella to another murder scene. “I’ll see you in the office and review the evidence. Were there any witnesses?”
“Witnesses?” Sneed huffed. “We only got one of those and you know all about that.” He let that dagger sink in. “The problem is; I reckon our killer does too. If he knew Kane had visited the murder scene, I bet he’s caught on that she survived.”
“He knows!” Moni gasped. Mariella gazed at her in bewilderment. She rubbed her hand against the girl’s cheek in a soothing gesture, but Moni’s palm trembled so much that it had the opposite effect. Mariella slumped in her seat, crossed her arms and raised her knees in a cocoon around her tender body. Those scrawny limbs wouldn’t protect her. The monster had devoured her parents. It wouldn’t overlook the succulent young one. It would pluck off her head as easy as pulling a grape from a vine. It would slurp out her lungs, her liver and her kidneys. The little girl would become another hollow corpse with the bloody water lapping over her pale flesh.
As a young girl, Moni had run and hid in her bedroom closet when she heard her mother screaming. She had cowered in the corner at the sound of her father’s earth-shattering stomps and prayed she wouldn’t be next. Too often, she was. Moni wouldn’t let Mariella’s turn come. Taming her nerves so her hand held steady, she stroked her palm through Mariella’s silky hair. Like a turtle slowly poking its head out from its shell, the girl unfolded her body and sat straight in her chair.
“I know you didn’t sign up for this,” Sneed said. “Why don’t I assign her to protective custody? Harrison can guard her. That man could stop a bear.”
She had seen Harrison take down violent drunks like bowling pins, so she didn’t doubt it. He’d follow Sneed’s orders, but he didn’t care about Mariella. He’d ask her uncomfortable questions about the murders and press her too hard, Moni thought. The girl could only blossom in Moni’s care.
“No thanks,” Moni told Sneed as she offered the child an assuring grin. “She’ll do just fine with me.”
“Yeah, I hope you’re right,” said Sneed. Biting her lower lip, Moni could feel that he hoped she was wrong. Sneed was itching to break the girl down under the hot lights of an interrogation chamber. “I’ll see you at the station after I clean up here. Bring your tampons, cause it’s gonna be a long day.”
Ignoring Sneed’s boorish advice, Moni packed an extra set of new clothes for Mariella into her new backpack and tossed in an extra notebook. The girl followed her warily to her car. Mariella took slow, gaping steps as if she were approaching the ledge of a cliff. Taking her hand firmly, Moni led her along. Mariella wouldn’t sit in the back seat, so Moni put her beside her in the front. Every time she got in a car since the event Moni had been by her side.
“It’s okay to do this, for now,” Moni told her as she slid into the driver’s seat and started her Ford’s engine. “But I can’t be there every second, baby. You’ll see that you’ll be okay even with…” Moni saw the beady black eyes in the rearview mirror and screamed. Mariella didn’t join in. The girl ducked underneath the dashboard. The officer turned around all the way and faced the raven pressed against her rear window with its neck twisted at a wretched angle. Its wings were flayed and torn. It looked like the bird had been steamrolled by a pickup truck and tossed on her car.
Moni stumbled out of the car and drew her gun. She didn’t see anyone besides the old man next door. He gazed at her all bug-eyed because, after all, the old white man saw a black woman with a gun. Moni lowered her firearm. After snapping a few photos with her cell phone camera in case they needed it for the crime lab, Moni reached for the tip of the raven’s wing. She pinched the fragile bone between her fingers and started peeling the stiff bird off her windshield. Its beak hit the glass. She figured its head had gone limp when it snapped its neck. The beak tapped the glass again-harder. The raven whirled its head around at her. It opened its mouth without making a sound and hacked up purple ooze onto her trunk.
“What the fuck?” Moni backed away and reached for her gun. The wings and talons that had been stiff seconds ago sprang alive. The raven rose from her windshield. She aimed the gun at its head, which still hung at an awkward angle. Before she could squeeze off a shot, the raven bounded from her car and launched into flight. It flew away crookedly-narrowly clearing the trees on the other side of the street. She would have assumed it had a broken wing if she hadn’t seen it up close. Only a few feathers remained atop Moni’s trunk and in her driveway.
Moni fitted her gun back into the holster. If that thing had really meant her harm-like pecking her eyeballs out-she wouldn’t have drawn in time. Much like Darren had left his message against her door earlier, someone else had left a message for the girl. Darren wanted Moni back. Someone even more sinister wanted Mariella.
Chapter 5
Fish don’t have eyelids, but their eyes can still grow wide, and bug out all red. That described the look of the several hundred fish that floated lifelessly on their sides in the Indian River Lagoon. Their mouths and gills were extended painfully in a final gasp for oxygen rich water. Some of them had shiny red burns on their scales and fins.
“Total bummer,” Aaron Hughes said as he surveyed the fish kill from the skiff motoring by. “At least the birds won’t go hungry.”
Piloting the craft with his glasses on, Professor Herbert Swartzman didn’t dignify him with a response. After he lost the sea turtle with the purple tumor, his professor had been on his case like sand between the cracks at a nudist beach. He asked half the students in the institute to join him and the Water Management District researcher on this mission, but only Aaron had the cahones for it once word of the lagoon serial killer spread.
“This is the second fish kill this month, and it’s twice as bad as the last one up in Cape Canaveral,” said Laura Heingartner, a freckle-faced blond who surveyed the water quality in the lagoon for the Water Management District. As they sailed between Melbourne and Cocoa, the air control tower of Patrick Air Force Base on the beachside was visible on the far side of Merritt Island, which sat smack in the middle of the lagoon.
“It’s weird because the fish kills are so rare in the lagoon,” said Heingartner, who came suited for action in a wetsuit. She must have been ten years younger than the 50-something Swartzman, who came in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. Aaron figured that 50 must be the cut-off point for getting muddy finger nails for scientists. “I can usually tie it to an algae breakout or a sewage leak. I haven’t found any of that yet. But the lagoon’s pH is reading out far from normal.”
With pockets of low pH making the water more acidic, she warned that shell fish, clams and seagrass could suffer damage. Since sea turtles love chomping down on seagrass and that green treat could potentially cause their illness, Swartzman decided they’d accompany Heingartner on her seagrass survey dive.
Before they could strap on their snorkels, Aaron found some peculiar scenery above water. They approached a Coast Guard vessel with its tow line hooked around a capsized skiff. Its propellers were all bent and bloody. As Swartzman steered his boat wide of it, the white-suited officers cranked the line and flipped the skiff upright. The vessel had been cleaned out. Even the metal seats, which looked like they had been bolted down, were gone.