She slipped Moni a condescending glare. Skillings had racked up near-perfect scores in the shooting range while Moni graded out average. Moni seethed in frustration as Skillings aimed to upstage her once again.
Aaron caught the exchange between the two women and stuck his head into the line of fire.
“There’s no way the bacteria are acting alone,” Aaron said. “We found a sea turtle with an infected tumor on it, but the critter escaped. Now our GPS shows him cruising along at 40 miles per hour a couple times a day. Either the turtle learned how to jet ski, or somebody’s making him spread this bacteria all over the lagoon.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Swartzman told his student. “We still haven’t caught that turtle and you couldn’t take that sample I asked for. So we can’t say for sure that it’s infected.”
“The turtle had a fat purple tumor. What else could it be?” Aaron asked.
Purple-the word triggered something in Moni’s brain. It felt like a string from a repressed memory. Where had she seen a strange purple lump before?
“Did you say the infection looks purple?” Moni asked Aaron.
“Like little purple pimples, or big purple tumors,” he replied.
“I have a picture of what they look like on a human body,” the medical examiner said.
He turned his laptop toward Moni and she saw the tiny purple goose pimples along the underarm of one of the corpses. It was Mariella’s mother. Moni choked up. She had seen the body that day, but she had barely known the girl then. Now it felt like she had lost a mother too. Moni remembered her mother’s tranquil ebony face as she lay in her open casket. Moni imagined a purple tumor growing out of the skin on her mother’s forehead until it covered her face. She tried closing the eyelid, but the purple blob flung it open.
No. That wasn’t where she had seen it.
The momentary fear stirred up the volatile mix of memories in Moni’s mind. She found the buried coal without going back far at all. The first day she found Mariella, she had brushed the despondent girl’s teeth for her. Moni had seen a few purple bumps inside her mouth, just behind her lips. She should have called the doctor. She couldn’t remember why she didn’t. Moni didn’t understand how it had gotten overlooked during Mariella’s check up. The doctor said the girl appeared perfectly healthy-physically, at least.
Moni felt a chill run up her spine. Mariella had been infected. The bacteria feasted on the iron and oxygen in her blood. It churned out sulfuric acid inside her body. And yet, the girl showed no ill effects. Moni couldn’t see how she could shake that off. Maybe Mariella beat the infection.
“So you’re not sure if the bacteria kill people?” Moni asked Aaron.
Aaron opened his mouth, but before he got a word out, his professor answered for him. “They should feel sick, but I can’t say for sure it would kill them by itself. Thiobacillus shouldn’t even survive inside people or animals. It belongs in sulfur- and iron-rich water. The lagoon doesn’t fit that bill and neither does the bloodstream, which has trace amounts of iron. It’s possible that the bacteria may starve to death inside the host’s body before it kills them. We really can’t say unless we find a living person with an infection.”
They could test Mariella for the bacteria, Moni thought. If she had the infection, they could finally learn how it acted inside a human host. What would happen then? They would rip the girl from her hands and zip her up in a quarantine tent. With Mariella’s fragile mind still scarred from her parents’ deaths, they’d lock her away with nothing keeping her company besides her torturous thoughts.
Moni couldn’t let that happen. So she kept her mouth shut. It did no good.
“Wasn’t Mariella out in the mangroves all night?” Skillings asked as she sent Moni a needling glare that was thinly-veiled as a look of concern. “We should get her tested for the bacteria.”
“Good idea,” Sneed chimed in. “While we’re at it, let’s give her vocal cords a good tune up.”
“Excuse me. Mariella is perfectly healthy. I haven’t found a spot on her,” Moni said. She clenched her hands in her lap so the officers wouldn’t see them trembling.
That lie didn’t comfort her at all. The bacteria could still live inside the girl-dissolving her guts slowly like a Popsicle melting on the table.
Hoping that her eye for men had led her to someone trustworthy for once, Moni penned a note in her lap that read, “Call me tonight,” followed by her phone number. While the officers and the scientists argued over what to tell the public about the bacteria threat, Moni passed the note across the table to Aaron. With the sleight of hand of someone who had passed many notes in his school days, he plucked it off the table and opened it. His face lit up with a grin full of perfect teeth-no gold caps like Darren.
By the way he flapped his eyebrows at her Aaron probably thought that she made the first move because she wanted him then and there. She really wanted him to check Mariella for the bacteria on the down low, but Moni didn’t consider the invite leading him on as long as she could see a hookup going down. She just didn’t plan on it that night.
The meeting finally broke up after the lady from the Water Management District agreed she’d put out a bulletin warning people that they shouldn’t swim in the lagoon or eat anything from the lagoon until the bacteria clears up. The announcement wouldn’t connect the bacteria to the murders because Sneed didn’t want to let the killer know how they’re catching his scent. He said an overconfident suspect would be more likely to make mistakes.
Brig. Gen. Colon had his own words for Sneed, but no one else could hear them because the military man whispered them in the lead detective’s ear. Sneed nodded. Moni couldn’t read his stoic expression. Judging by the giddy-up in his step on the way out the door, Colon had heard something in that meeting that rocked his world.
The dreaded ring buzzed her cell phone as Moni strolled back to her office. Her mind overstuffed with worry about everything she had heard during the meeting, Moni answered just before her voicemail stole it away.
Checking the caller ID this time, she saw: Challenger 7 Elementary.
“Hello, Mrs. Mint?” Moni asked.
“Hi, Detective Williams,” the teacher answered. “I hate bothering you. I know you’re working hard solving this case.” Moni made a guilty shrug that thankfully the teacher couldn’t see. “A little something happened today. It’s really minor, but I figured you should know.”
The teacher did such a good job of downplaying it that Moni’s heart skipped a beat. She thought of the vengeful Buckley twins cornering Mariella and pelting her with rocks until blood streaked down her smooth black hair.
It turned out that Mariella hadn’t gotten hurt, but the ramifications of the incident unhinged Moni even more. Mrs. Mint said the school security officer saw a blue pickup truck circle the school at least five times during the day. The driver was a white male with a black Marlins baseball cap and dark glasses. While Mariella stood quietly by herself during recess, the truck parked on a lawn across the street from the fence. When the officer thought he saw the driver peering at the kids through a pair of binoculars, he marched toward the truck. It took off and hasn’t returned-so far.
“Did the officer get a photo? A tag number?” Moni asked the teacher.
“He didn’t get close enough,” Mrs. Mint said. “But I wouldn’t worry. There’s a fence around the school and we’ve got cameras all over the place. Kids don’t wander off and strangers don’t wander in.”
They weren’t dealing with an anonymous stranger, Moni thought. The person stalking Mariella wasn’t a cowardly child snatcher. He was a remorseless killer with a thirst for her young blood and organs. The moment everybody forgets about the little girl that doesn’t speak and tries so hard to be invisible, that’s the instant the killer will glide in between the shadows and slice off Mariella’s head.