“I’ll tell you one thing; it would sure help if another witness stepped forward,” Sneed said with his gaze firmly affixed on Moni. “I bet that girl of yours got a good look at the killer’s eyes and whole lot more. Too bad she’s not more cooperative.”
He always threw the blame back in the same place, Moni thought. He put it all at the feet of the only black woman in the room. It reminded her of junior high when anytime something went missing, the black girl took it, and when half the class carried on, the teacher told only Moni that she better quiet down or face detention.
No matter how many criminals she busted and how many children she rescued from abusive homes, Moni couldn’t change the way people perceived her.
“I’m doing wonders for that child. You have no idea,” Moni told Sneed. “I should be asking, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ This case has you stumped so bad that you need an eight-year-old girl’s help to solve it.”
“Put me in a room with that girl for five minutes and I guarantee you she’ll start squawking!” Sneed slammed both fists down on the table so hard that his coffee leapt out of its cup. Moni flinched at the thought of him getting those meat mallets on Mariella. “We have a video showing people getting taken underwater, but we don’t know what happens from there. That girl of yours saw it. She must have. I don’t know if it’s the Lagoon Watcher or one of his accomplices that’s doing it, but somebody’s lopping off heads up and down the lagoon. If we can stop that, I bet we’ll stop catastrophes like this.”
“I’m telling you, the Lagoon Watcher couldn’t…” Swartzman started until Sneed cut him off with a “Shut up!” The flustered scientist recoiled from the table and hid his nose behind his mobile phone.
“I’m getting sick of this shit,” Sneed rumbled on. “Every day there’s another attack and, before we can finish sorting through all the evidence, there’s another one. It’s like gangs waging a turf war. And the thing that always pissed me off about busting up a gang is that people would witness a shooting and not say a word. They stayed silent and others died-sometimes their own brothers or sisters. And here again, we have our best witness keeping her mouth shut.”
“I told you…” Moni started.
“Cut the bullshit! How many more good people do I need to bury? How many more times do I have to call a firefighter’s fiance and tell her that her groom won’t make the wedding because he’s dead? If there’s anything you can do to help me put an end to this madness, Moni, you better step up with it.”
A raging retort bubbled up in her throat. She cut it off. Moni knew Sneed was right. She had protected Mariella above all else-above even the investigation into a murderer who had taken eleven lives so far. So many people died so that one girl didn’t get forced into dwelling on her demons. Moni had lied when she told herself she couldn’t do more to encourage Mariella’s cooperation. She had barely done anything.
If she didn’t get something out of Mariella and catch the killer soon, his next strike might hit too close.
Moni didn’t say a word for the rest of the task force meeting. Aaron said a few nice things to her afterwards about how she had done so well with Mariella, but she couldn’t honestly look him in the eyes and accept those compliments.
She found the girl asleep on the couch in her office. A drawing of a horse lay on the coffee table across from her. Moni scooped the girl into her arms and cradled her head against her shoulder so she didn’t awaken. As she carried her out into the parking lot, it surprised Moni how dark it was. She didn’t realize the meeting had run so late. No wonder Sneed’s rants felt like they had gone on forever.
Moni slipped past the bushes and approached her car on the outskirts of the sheriff station parking lot. She reached into her pocket for the keys when she heard someone jump behind her. A paper got shoved in her face. Moni saw a drawing of a burning figure-just like the boy who had roasted in the marina.
Chapter 24
“Your girl’s quite the little artist,” Officer Nina Skillings said as she stood behind Moni holding the drawing of the burning teenager in her face. Even though she stood four inches shorter than Moni, it felt like Skillings towered over her like a bear.
“You’re lucky I have a child in my arms, ‘cause next time you jump out on me like that, I might have an involuntary reaction with my trigger finger that you wouldn’t appreciate,” Moni said as she spun around carefully so she wouldn’t wake Mariella. “Now where’d you get that from?”
“I did a little searching in your girl’s backpack. You left it in the car and I was about to return it to you.” Skillings flashed the mischievous smile of a brat who could do whatever she wanted and get away with it. It helps having the lead detective in her pocket. “So she drew a decapitated dog and it happened. Then she drew a burning man and it happened. What are the odds of that?”
Mariella rolled her head across Moni’s shoulder and hung it stiffly off her side. She gently nudged the girl back into a more comfortable position. Moni’s wrists began aching from hoisting her up for so long. If only she could put her in the car and drive out of there, but that pest Skillings wouldn’t get out of her way.
From the academy on, Skillings had always shot straighter and fought harder than Moni. Top brass had put Skillings on the biggest cases because she would knock a few heads to get results. Moni had striven for years to win the confidence of her superiors so they’d trust her with the big cases like they did with Skillings. Instead, Moni got the “kiddie” beat.
The one time her skills with juvenile victims made her a vital part of a key investigation, Skillings made sure Moni knew she couldn’t play in her league.
“Kids draw a lot of funny things, but you wouldn’t know, because you terrify them with that sunny personality of yours.” Moni said. “Now, excuse me. I’m taking Mariella home.”
Moni tried slipping around her, but that stack of muscles with a ponytail blocked her off from the car.
“You’re letting your feelings for that kid blind you to the facts of this case. That girl is more than a victim. She’s part of the problem.”
“The problem!” Moni recalled all the times her teachers had saw her sulking and irresponsive in class as she recovered from the beating her father gave her the night before. Those teachers had called her a problem child. “This child just lost both her parents. Nothing could be more devastating. I can’t believe you would dare accuse her of doing anything wrong.”
“I’m not accusing her. I’m accusing what’s inside her and what was inside him.” Skillings pointed to the burning teenager in the drawing. “He was possessed by the bacteria from the lagoon. That’s why he blew himself up with the pier. Why would the bacteria make only animals attack and not people?”
“Possessed? That fool wasn’t possessed. He was a teenager drunk off his ass and scared of the dolphins with human arms that took his friends. Of course he wasn’t thinking straight when he fired that shot.”
“But how did Mariella know he would do that? How did she know about the attack on her classmate’s dog?” Skillings asked. She answered her own questions before Moni could reply. “The girl’s connected to all of this. She spent a whole night on the shore of the lagoon. It must have infected her. That’s why she’s so damn weird.”
“No,” Moni muttered, but the accusations found a foothold in her brain.
She had never questioned Mariella’s behavior. She accepted everything as grieving. From the moment Moni had pulled her from the mangroves, the girl acted as if she had never set foot on this planet. Everyone who knew Mariella before the incident said she emerged as an entirely different person. When she couldn’t explain the girl’s keen reading of her emotions, or her haunting drawings, she simply let it roll off her as smoothly as rainwater. Before she knew it, she found herself standing in a deep puddle.