Quivering like a tuning fork, Moni’s hand nearly dropped her phone.
“I’m on my way over.”
“But we’ve still got 80 minutes to go,” Mrs. Mint said. “You don’t have to pick her up earl…”
“I’m coming-now.”
Chapter 10
Moni woke up in her pitch black room to the ringing of her cell phone. The time flashed four-thirty in the morning. Before answering, she rolled underneath the blanket and peeked through the window shades with an aggravated moan. She didn’t see Darren waiting outside her window for his booty call or her father crouching there demanding money. As her eyes came into focus, Moni saw the empty road under the dim street lights.
She turned her sleep-blurred vision on her phone. Oh joy: Tom Sneed.
“Mm, hello?” she answered drearily.
“What do ya know? We’ve got another body,” Sneed said in a tone dripping with blame. “Found him floating in the lagoon. Same as the others, save a bite taken off his arm.”
Moni ran her fingers through her tousled braids. Grabbing a handful of them, she yanked so hard that she nearly ripped them out by the roots. She bit her lip so she wouldn’t scream, because that would have reached the other side of the house and jolted Mariella awake. The girl didn’t need any more drama today.
Moni realized that this attitude-protecting Mariella at every step-left the killer free so he could slice another person’s head off his body. Moni couldn’t manage a reply more intelligible than a whimper before Sneed hit her again.
“There’s a witness this time,” he said. “It’s the victim’s brother. I don’t think he saw the murder take place. His story, well, the Coast Guard relayed it to me. This ain’t the kinda case you learn about in the police academy, that’s for damn sure. Come on in the office and let’s grill him together. I wanna see how you handle a witness that can actually talk.”
Moni wasn’t sure whether he meant that as an offer to her for a permanent spot on his homicide team or a dig at Mariella’s silence. Either way, she couldn’t leave the girl home alone in the middle of the night, and Sneed knew it.
“I’ll drop Mariella off at school at seven-thirty and be there first thing,” Moni said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
He hung up.
Mariella acted more clingy than usual that morning. She insisted on sitting on Moni’s lap at breakfast and sharing the food on her plate. She hadn’t told Mariella about the potential stalker in the blue pickup or the sixth murder in the lagoon. Moni did a poor job masking the distressed look on her face and her hectic movements that nearly knocked the coffee mug right off the counter. The girl picked up on it rather easily. Moni couldn’t tell whether Mariella stayed close because the child needed comfort, or because the child detected that her foster parent needed a tiny shoulder to lean on.
When she dropped Mariella off at school, the girl followed her halfway back to her car before Moni realized it. She led her back to class.
“It’s okay, baby,” Moni told her. “I’ll speak to the security officer and make sure everything is safe here. If you need me, ask Mrs. Mint and she’ll give me a call.”
She kissed the girl on the forehead. Mariella shot her one more glance before she entered the classroom. Mariella looked remorseful-like she felt responsible for the bloodshed because she couldn’t stop that monster from killing her parents.
Moni propped the door open and took the girl’s hand.
“What’s happening isn’t your fault, Mariella. When I was a young girl, I used to blame myself for my father beating me and hurting my mother. I thought that if I was a better kid, he would stop and become like all the other fathers. He never did… you’re a victim like me. Don’t be ashamed.”
Sharing her deepest darkest secret with the eight-year-old girl untied the knot in Moni’s heartstrings. The child embraced her.
Moni needed all the love she could get. The rest of the day would drain just about every ounce of it out of her.
Chapter 11
Randy Cooper looked more like a criminal than a witness to Moni, but he sat in the witness chair without handcuffs just the same. He had yellow-brown eyes that seemed as hyped up as a cheetah’s before it springs in for the kill.
This was one wounded cat. Cooper’s neck glowed raw red with a matted pattern like someone had nearly strangled him with several pieces of wire. One of the red grooves cut through the cursive tattoo of “Don’t Treat on Me” on his neck. His arms were dotted with tats, including a drooling bulldog, a rabbit’s foot and a snake around his wrist. His right hand had a heavy white bandage wrapped around it.
He even smelled like a zoo, or more like a saltwater aquarium. His black t-shirt and camouflage pants stunk of the lagoon. They were stiff with salt after drying from the middle of the night until morning.
Sneed hadn’t let Randy Cooper change a thing, from his dirty-blond buzz cut to his hunting boots, since the Lagoon Watcher had fished him out of the water and handed him over to the Coast Guard. That much of the story, they knew. The rest, Randy would have to recount.
Even for a seasoned hunter who worked in an outdoor shop and blasted bucks’ heads off, telling this hunting tale didn’t come easy.
“Aw, Robbie. He was my brother, man. He was my brother.” Randy shook his head and bit his lip. He wouldn’t let himself cry, not in front of police, but Moni recognized the red circles around his eyes as evidence that he had let the tears flow in private.
Randy sucked the moisture out of his sinuses and wiped his nose.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he told Sneed. “I wanna help you. I really do. I’m afraid you won’t believe this shit.”
Sneed told Moni before the interview that they should take Randy’s words with a grain of salt. He had a couple of DUI’s and an illegal hunting fine on his record.
“You just tell me what happened,” Sneed said. “All we wanna do is catch the guy who deprived you of your brother.”
“I didn’t say it was a guy… I think it was a gator. That’s what started it, at least. But what finished it, hell… I couldn’t imagine.”
Moni and Sneed traded looks of disappointment. She felt it much worse. Mariella remained the only witness who had probably seen the murderer in action. She still had the biggest target on her.
Not to say that Randy hadn’t seen enough carnage to send an experienced hunter into a padded room.
“I got home from a fishing trip and left my skiff in the canal behind my house,” said Randy, who lived in Palm Bay. “I went inside, grabbed a beer and when I went out back fix’n to lift it outta there, I saw a gator making off with my boat.”
“Hold up, son. Do you mean to tell me that a gator-a reptile dragging its belly-stole your boat?” Sneed asked.
“That’s what I fucking said, alright.” Randy wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Sneed nodded him on. “I saw this beastly thing, must have been a nine-footer, chomp off the tether and drag my boat down the canal. I followed it on foot for miles all the way to the lagoon. That’s when I called Robbie.”
“Your older brother, Robert D. Cooper?” Moni asked.
“Yeah, Robbie. He has-he left behind a wife and a four-year-old boy.” With his lower lip quivering, he paused while those words resonated. Randy crossed his arms and stared at the floor. “He had a family. He had a damn good job as a computer tech. Robbie had it all. I shouldn’t have brought him into my troubles.”
“They aren’t just your troubles. It’s everybody’s beef now ‘cause we’ve got a killer running loose,” Sneed said. “So your brother had a boat? We didn’t find it in the water.”
“You won’t find it no more.” He bowed his head for a few seconds. “But, he had it. You can check on it, man. Robbie had a pontoon boat-an 18-foot booze cruiser. He kept it docked behind his home on the lagoon side of Indialantic. He used to take his wife and boy out on it. It wasn’t supposed to be for hunting. But I needed it to nab me that gator and get my boat back. I knocked on Robbie’s window ‘round one in the morning. I tell ya, he nearly blew my head off with a shotgun.”