“We’ve got a real pack rat here,” Sneed said as he sifted through Polaroid photos of various seabirds. “I wonder what else he collects. Heads and organs, maybe?”
He tossed Skillings a glance. She nodded, headed for the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. “Holy shit!”
“What? What is it?” Swartzman tripped over a box on his way there and barely regained his balance.
“What man doesn’t own meat? He’s an organic food nut. He must be a vegan too,” Skillings said as if that fit the profile of an environmental activist serial killer. “By the look of these fresh vegetables, he’s gone shopping in the past week.”
“So something happened recently that made him abandon ship,” Sneed said. His roving eyes settled on Swartzman.
Aaron could think of a couple reasons why the Lagoon Watcher would take off. The man he pulled from the lagoon had gotten killed. That could mean Trainer did it, or thought he’d get wrongly accused of it. Or maybe he feared his name had made it onto the killer’s hit list. Either way, he had something to hide.
They cleared all but one room. The den had its windows boarded up and a padlock on the door-the only place where Trainer didn’t have an open door policy. When the officers pried off the lock and threw that last door open, they found the source of that fishy smell. The bookcases on the walls were stacked with jars full of marine life suspended in fluids-fish heads, manatee flippers, dolphin lungs and all kinds of internal organs. Some of them were large enough to be human, but Aaron couldn’t tell for sure without examining them closely. As he drew near, Aaron found that some of the specimens had purple bacteria tumors.
“The Lagoon Watcher has his eye on the thiobacillus strain too,” Aaron said as he pointed out the samples to his professor. “Some of these look months old. He knew before we did. He’s playing us, man.”
“Harry probably doesn’t understand what he’s looking at here,” Swartzman said. “We’ll examine his notes on the subject and then you’ll see.”
“That won’t happen today.” Skillings pointed out the empty desk, which had a frame of dust on its surface in the outline of the computer that had recently sat there. “Looks like he cleared his work station.”
“Oh, he sure didn’t have anything to hide,” Sneed told the professor. “Your boy didn’t know what the hell he was looking at in the lagoon, right?”
Swartzman stared at his feet, but an answer didn’t crawl out of his socks. Turning his back on Sneed, he hunched over a microscope with a sample of the bacteria in its sights.
“Harry would know enough to identify this as a type of thiobacillus, but that’s it,” Swartzman said while shielding his eyes from the detective behind the microscope. “He couldn’t do more without a DNA sequencer, and I don’t see one around here.”
“Maybe he took that with him along with his computer and the rest of his good equipment,” Sneed said. “If he knew we were coming, he wouldn’t leave behind the smoking gun, like whatever he uses to make that purple gook.”
Yet, the Lagoon Watcher hadn’t taken all the good stuff.
While everybody gazed at the jarred animal parts, Aaron headed for the industrial-sized freezer in the corner. He craved a beer, but doubted he would score one there. When he swung the heavy door open a clawed, scaly hand swooped out at him. Aaron leapt back. The decapitated gator carcass fell at his feet. The Lagoon Watcher had stashed it in the fridge like a scaly bloated turkey. The cut that severed its head had been done with more precision than any butcher’s knife could render. Its stubby neck had been separated along a line as smooth as the collar of a leather jacket.
A puffy purple tumor flourished in the cradle of its armpit. Before Aaron could say a word, Sneed bulled him out of the way and snapped a picture of it.
“I’ve got Exhibit A right here, your honor,” Sneed said. “This is your killer taking a practice run.”
“If he could slice through a gator’s leather neck, there’s no way a person would stand a chance,” Aaron said.
After examining it, Swartzman shook his head like a little kid refusing to admit he stole something. “He must have found this corpse after it had already been mutilated-just like how we found the human corpses. This doesn’t explain how Trainer could have committed these murders.”
“I think this explains it pretty well.” Skillings wrapped her arm around the professor’s head and shoved electric bone saw in his face.
“Agh, stop that!” Swartzman ducked.
With a cackling laugh, Skillings placed the bone saw on a metal tray with a collection of cutting tools, including a surgical scalpel and a pair of sharp tongs. The Lagoon Watcher even had an endoscopic tube that could probe deep into bodies with a camera and tiny surgical utensils. In the right set of hands, they could extract an organ while making only a small incision.
“Exhibit B, your honor,” Sneed said.
“No… These are standard tools for dissecting large animals and performing operations,” the professor said with sweat drenching his clammy forehead. “Trainer told me he did that here. He helped sick dolphins.”
“He didn’t tell you that he dissected people as well?” Sneed asked.
“No, he didn’t tell me… I mean, no! He wouldn’t do that,” Swartzman said. “A marine biologist has no need for human organs.”
“We’ll see. My boys will sweep this lab for any sign of the victims, down to a single strand of their DNA. In the meantime, I’m putting out a warrant for Harry Trainer’s arrest. Next time you talk to your buddy, tell him to check in at my station pronto.”
Swartzman hung his head with a heavy sigh. Aaron didn’t offer any comfort beyond patting his professor on the back. He couldn’t maintain a straight face while saying that the Lagoon Watcher probably didn’t do it.
At least he could tell Moni about the person she should protect Mariella from. Recognizing the threatening animals wouldn’t be as easy.
Chapter 20
Mariella’s eyes lit up like two full moons when she saw the horses. A dozen of them were huddled together with flies buzzing around their perky ears in the muddy stables on the West Melbourne ranch. The ranch hands looked like they had stepped out of an old Western movie, save for the cell phones on their belts.
Striding toward Moni’s car in artificially-faded jeans, Aaron didn’t exactly fit in. His T-shirt was more hang ten than Brooks amp; Dunn. Moni figured that he hadn’t ridden something with four hooves in a long time, if ever. But he had delivered on his promise that he’d take Mariella horseback riding.
“Fancy seeing you here, pard’ner,” Moni told Aaron in a hillbilly voice as she helped the awestruck girl out of her car.
“Howdy, little lady,” Aaron said with a tip of his imaginary hat. He ran his eyes over her tight slacks and spaghetti strap purple top that put her smooth mocha shoulders on display. “You don’t look ready for a ‘round up.”
“Considering all that has gone down in the past two days, I’ll take a pass on riding. I need to stay alert just in case.” She patted the sidearm strapped to her hip and underneath her shirt.
“Your friends in blue are on that, right?”
“The sheriff is on it, but if I see a certain Mr. Trainer pop up, he’ll be as dead as that gator you found in his fridge.”
They had the whole department looking for the Lagoon Watcher, but Sneed didn’t throw one more resource toward protecting Mariella. He hoped that the kid would help build their case against him and he even gave Moni some photos of Trainer to show the girl and see her reaction. Moni kept the photos of that creepy bastard in her bag. Mariella didn’t need something that would trigger another flashback to that horrible night. She had found the restless girl tossing and turning in her bed so many times. Mariella never screamed or cried. She scratched her nails against the wall and window until they were bruised purple.