The Lagoon Watcher’s truck cut the corner of Sarno Road and U.S. 1 by ducking through a parking lot. It emerged onto the highway with a southern heading. Moni got on the radio and updated the second wave of patrol cars on his direction. She had a feeling where he was headed, and she knew backup wouldn’t make it in time. They were one mile away from the stretch of U.S. 1 that ran right up against the bacteria infested Indian River Lagoon.
Moni grabbed her radio. “He’s headed for the lagoon. That’s his refuge. You hear me, Nina? You gotta cut him off.”
“Then come on! Box and stop.” Skillings replied over the radio. Moni didn’t respond. “You need me to spell it out for you? I’ll pull ahead of him to slow him down. I need you to get behind him and box him in on my tail. That should buy us time until help arrives. Got it?”
“But why don’t you just clip him and spin him out?” Moni asked.
“This is the highway, not some backwater street. He could spin into someone-like you almost made him do back there.”
Moni clamped her teeth. Her tongue simmered in her mouth from the fiery words she refrained from releasing. Everyone could hear what they said on the radio, especially the part about how Moni had screwed up.
“While you were getting faked off the road, I got some good licks on him,” Moni said over the radio. “But I better stop now. It’s getting too dangerous for Mariella here with me. It’s your turn to step up, Nina.”
“Oh sure, it’s too dangerous for her,” Skillings said. “Big surprise-Mariella helps the Lagoon Watcher get away. What else do you think she’s been doing for him?”
Moni could imagine Sneed’s ears perking like a K-9 catching the scent of blood when he heard that remark. If she didn’t catch the Lagoon Watcher and prove that he had been stalking Mariella and not colluding with her, Sneed would rip the poor girl limb from limb until she talked.
Gripping the steering wheel so hard that she nearly broke it off, Moni made a looping turn onto U.S. 1. She saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings rounding a curve in the road. Moni floored it. Seconds later, Moni’s foot suddenly numbed over and eased off the gas. She realized that Skillings hadn’t shown Mariella’s picture of the burning man to anyone else. Without that, Sneed wouldn’t know that lightning had struck twice with those pictures. Skillings wouldn’t let the suspicious drawing stay secret for long.
“We’ll catch this guy,” she told Mariella, who clutched the back of Moni’s seat so she wouldn’t bounce around. “And then we’ll have a little talk with our friend Nina.”
By the time she came out of the curve in the road, she saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings crossing a flat bridge over an offshoot of the Eau Gallie River. The patrol car edged its nose toward the pickup’s right rear tire. If she connected on target, the truck would whip around and thump right smack into the bridge’s guardrail, and maybe over into the water. The Lagoon Watcher must have seen it coming because he swerved left. Instead of connecting on the side of the truck, the patrol car clipped its rear bumper. While the truck weaved in and out of its lane a few times until it steadied, Skillings’ patrol car straightened out but lost much of its velocity. Moni quickly pulled even with her. She shot Skillings a glance through the window. Skillings greeted her with an accusatory stare that said this would have been over already if Moni had done her job.
“I haven’t worked with you before, bitch, and I ain’t starting now,” Moni said, but not over the radio.
By the time they were approaching the major intersection with Babcock Street, Moni saw flashing red and blue lights far back in her rearview mirror and up ahead. She also saw red traffic lights above the intersection and a smattering of cars racing by at speeds only driven late at night when people think they’re the only cars on the road. The Lagoon Watcher’s pickup didn’t slow one bit. Instead he slammed on his horn in a long wail. It jumbled with the blaring siren of the police car approaching the intersection from the oncoming lane. Somehow, the noise didn’t rattle a car streaking left to right across the truck’s path. The oncoming patrol car created another obstacle by looping around and covering most of the three lanes on the other side of the intersection. Unless the Lagoon Watcher slammed the brakes before crossing, his bones would get crushed inside his truck like a bag of potato chips under boot.
Anticipating a horrible smashup, Moni held her breath. He didn’t slow down. The Lagoon Watcher whipped his truck to the left just as the car crossed his path. His pickup delivered a hard lick across the car’s rear tire that spun it out-straight into Moni’s lane. As the Lagoon Watcher’s truck avoided the parked police car by jumping the curb on the left side of the road, the struck car hurtled toward Moni with its broadside. Her heart seized up. A chill shot through her body as her headlights showed the rapidly approaching mass of glass and steel. Moni thought of Mariella sitting in the backseat. The innocent child had lost her parents. Now Moni would lead her straight to her death. She hit the brakes and swerved right. They missed the oncoming vehicle, but smacked into the side of Skillings’ patrol car. The blow bumped the patrol car halfway off the road, where a light pole sheared off its right side mirror. If Skillings hadn’t been there, Moni and Mariella would have hit that same pole with much more force.
“Sorry ‘bout that, darlin’,” Moni said sweetly without Skillings hearing her.
The next second, Skillings answered her over the radio anyway. “What the fuck was that? Who are you trying to catch, him or me?”
Moni wouldn’t legitimize such an obnoxious question with a reply. She carefully weaved through the intersection and around the other patrol car as Skillings followed close behind. The Lagoon Watcher had recovered from his off-road jaunt and once again had some distance on them. Not eager to put Mariella’s life in danger once more, Moni hung back while Skillings closed in. With the superior speed of Nina’s patrol car, plus three pairs of flashing lights growing larger in Moni’s rearview mirror, the Lagoon Watcher would soon have a net of officers surrounding him. Then they arrived on his turf. The left side of the road opened up into a small clearing. Out past the line of palm trees, Moni saw the black pool of the Indian River Lagoon. The highway curved closer to the waterline. Soon they were driving about a dozen feet from the home of the bacteria that ate iron, fuel and any living creature that strayed too close.
The stench of over-salted rotten eggs hit Moni’s nose. It usually smelled of salt, but it shouldn’t reek so putridly. Randy Cooper had described such a stench from the lagoon before the infected gator snared his brother in its jaws and dragged him into an acid bath. Moni pulled her car into the far right lane so she drove as far away from the lagoon as possible. Even with the man who had been stalking Mariella straight ahead of her, Moni couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting off the road and over to the lagoon. They called her. They begged her from beneath the black water. Her head rang as if there were a hive of buzzing bees inside her skull. She could no longer feel her body. She felt the lagoon. She felt its insatiable appetite pulling her and the girl toward it. Moni remembered her father’s words.
“The lagoon man has a hunger and I smelled it out there today. That girl belongs to his lagoon and he’s coming to take her back. You can’t stop it, so you best get outta the way.”
Her senses rejoined her body and she quickly realized that she had eased off the gas and let the car drift left. She had been slowing down on the side of the road closest to the lagoon.
“What am I doing?” Moni exclaimed as she smacked herself in the forehead. She shot a glance toward Mariella. “I’m sorry about that, baby.” The girl didn’t seem bothered in the least.