Mute (14 page)

While Randy grabbed a tissue and dabbed his face,
Moni pondered how his brother had been passed from a gator’s jaws to the
surgical serial killer. Robbie’s corpse had the usual grocery list of organs
taken from it. The head had come off along a line as straight as an
architectural drawing. The only injuries that didn’t match the previous victims
were the deep gator bite on the arm and the second-degree burns that had
reddened most of his skin. The acid had roasted Robbie, but not for so long
that his flesh dissolved down to the muscle. The gator—or something else—had
pulled him out of the acid slick. They couldn’t tell whether it happened before
or after the beheading. They wouldn’t know without seeing his head, and by now
everybody knew that wouldn’t turn up.

How
could the killer make the gator cooperate? What other animals work for him?

Moni offered Randy a tissue. He proudly brushed her
hand aside and wadded the original tissue, which he had soaked, into his
pocket. When he finally redeployed his tough guy scowl and looked her in the eyes,
Moni fired back with the question that had been gnawing at her.

“What about the hawk? Was something evil about it
like with the gator?”

Lines creased across Randy’s forehead as if he were
aging by the decade right before her eyes. “The damn bird… It lured us into
that trap. Then it called me over with its purple eyes so I could see my
brother’s body. The site will haunt me for the rest of my life. The moment I
shined a flashlight on the hawk, it took off like I startled it, but it didn’t
make a sound. It flew as clumsily as a winged donkey. I would have sworn it had
been shot, but I know I didn’t hit it.”

As her memory flashed, Moni’s heart raced so fast
that the pulses through her blood vessels could barely keep up. She remembered
how the raven had flown crookedly after she had pulled it off her windshield.
It didn’t have purple eyes, but the hawk didn’t either the first time Randy
spotted it. The bird had set him and his brother up for an attack. Moni
wondered whether the killer had dropped the raven on her car for the same
reason. Did she narrowly avoid death when she touched the raven? Or did the
murderer leave it for Mariella instead?

Moni had no idea who could manipulate animals like
that. But Sneed had a strong notion.

“How did the Lagoon Watcher react when he saw what
was left of Robbie?” Sneed asked. “I can’t imagine an honest scientist would
have seen such a sight before.”

“I was too, uh, emotional to pay that guy much
mind,” Randy said. “Eventually, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me we should
bring the body on board before a gator or shark rips it apart. Now when he saw
it, the Watcher didn’t seem disgusted at all. Hell, he was fascinated by it. It
reminded me of the first time I watched my dad gut a deer.”

“So you think the behavior of the Lagoon Watcher,
Harry Trainer, was unusual?” Sneed asked as he leaned close to the microphone.
When Randy agreed, he pressed on. “I suppose that’s not a stretch. His role in
all of this is questionable, if you ask me. He got there eighteen minutes before
the Coast Guard. You didn’t see any other boater on the water. So he was the
only person in your proximity when your brother went under. Now I don’t know
how the killer slices up his victims, but I’m sure your timeline of events
would give the Watcher plenty of time to do some carving.”

“You think that he…” Randy gasped. His face
whitened.

“Hold on.” Moni blocked the conclusion from leaving
his lips. “If this guy with the corny name was the killer, why would he rescue
you, Randy? You said yourself that you were vulnerable out there on the skiff.”

While Randy shook his head and shrugged, Sneed
answered for him.

“Maybe it’s because he knew the Coast Guard was on
the way. The Watcher had time for one victim, but he figured he couldn’t put
both through the meat grinder before the searchlights came out.

“And this wasn’t the first time he’s been
conveniently near one of these murder scenes,” Sneed continued. “My old pal
Matt Kane, may God bless his soul, he saw the Watcher just before he found
those two Mexicans dead. And then Kane became the next victim.” Sneed pounded
his fist into his palm. “I best have a word with him.”

Moni couldn’t deny that it made tremendous sense.
The Lagoon Watcher had been some type of environmental scientists who went a
little whacko. Maybe he developed the mutated bacteria and set it loose, Moni
thought. Yet, if the psycho scientist had beheaded Kane because he saw
something at the murder scene, what mutilation did he envision for the young
girl who had witnessed the closely-guarded secrets of his killing method?

The pickup truck that lingered outside Mariella’s
school yesterday—who had been behind the wheel with binoculars? Whether it had
been the Lagoon Watcher or some other kind of watcher, Moni knew exactly what
he wanted.

“What types of vehicles does Trainer own?” Moni
asked Sneed.

“I gotta check up on it,” he replied.

She didn’t need an answer. Moni just knew.

Chapter 12

Aaron felt as smooth as James Bond when Professor
Swartzman rang him up at six in the morning and told him they were wanted at
the sheriff’s office for some top secret caper. When he got there and poured
through the police report about the purple-eyed gator, Aaron’s bravery flew out
the window.

His head kept replaying his last dive in the
lagoon. The water management lady said she saw something huge, but he had
brushed it off and stayed in there. If he had swam a little longer that day,
maybe they’d have crime scene photos of his body all burned red by acid with a
gaping hole in his neck.

“We better be more careful around the lagoon from
now on,” Swartzman said as he pointed out the witness’ description of a
monstrous gator.

Aaron realized that saying they’d be more careful
didn’t mean the professor would refrain from ordering someone—namely his
least-favorite student—into the water in the name of ground-breaking research.
The admissions officer should have told him that the tuition payment included
his life. Too bad his dad wouldn’t buy that as an excuse for quitting.

Lead detective Sneed summoned them into his office
for a briefing on the biological jigsaw puzzle of this case. They weren’t the
only scientists he invited.

Harry Trainer looked totally wiped out—like he had
just nosedived off his long board from a 20-foot breaker. His thin blond hair
barely clung on the peripheries of his dome. His forehead glowed red, but not
with his usual over-the-top tan. The Lagoon Watcher had lost his cool.

“Harry, have you gotten any sleep since you rescued
the boater?” asked a noticeably concerned Swartzman.

“Rest? These people don’t believe in rest,” he
replied with the veins in his neck flaring. “They think endless cups of cheap,
bitter coffee are a proper substitute for sleep.” He faced Sneed. “I beg to
differ.”

The detective let the man’s griping roll off him
with a regal jutting of his chin. Much like a lion rules its terrain, Sneed
ensured that his dominance resonated through his personal office. He sat behind
a manly oak desk with broad legs. On it sat four glass-encased antique
revolvers. One looked Civil War era and had a Confederate flag imprinted on the
white handle. Aaron wondered how many men that baby had blown away on the
battlefields.

The detective had lined his walls and shelves with
framed press clippings from Georgia papers about murderers getting arrested or
convicted. The photo that really caught Aaron’s attention featured two young
police officers with bad ‘70s mustaches standing with their guns drawn like a
poster from an old Western movie. Upon second look, Aaron recognized one guy as
a much younger detective Sneed. Both men had the same last name on their
badges, through.

“Is that your little brother?” Aaron asked Sneed as
he pointed out the photo. “Is he still an officer in Georgia?”

The bitter glare Sneed pelted him with nearly
knocked Aaron out of his chair.

“This is not a damn barbecue. We ain’t here to
reminisce about family times,” Sneed said. Swartzman started apologizing on
behalf of his student, but the detective buried his gesture. “We’re here
because there’s a killer on the loose and it’s pretty clear that the bacteria
in the lagoon and the crazy shit it’s doing to the animals are his signatures.
All of you have seen it. You’re supposedly the experts. So you tell me how
someone could pull this off.”

The three scientists exchanged perplexed glances.
Swartzman hadn’t made up his mind and Trainer clearly didn’t want any part of
this. After a sleepless night out on the lagoon and a morning getting batted
around the sheriff’s office, Trainer wouldn’t hear any complaints from Aaron.
He figured that if anybody should take the fall, the rookie might as well stick
his arm out before the hungry jungle cat.

“I’ll tell you, between the manatee, the hawk and
the gator, I’d say the bacterial infection makes animals aggressive,” Aaron
said. “And it takes way lots to hurt them. The manatee brushed off a propeller.
The gator took a shotgun blast like a mosquito bite. In both cases, the water
turned acidic, but it was a hell of a lot more potent in this last case. I
doubt there’s a living thing left in the waters of Palm Bay besides the
bacteria. So if you boil it down, someone has introduced this freak show
bacteria into the lagoon so they can make infected animals bring victims to
them. It’s all about dissecting them and harvesting the organs.”

With an incredulous gasp, Swartzman swiveled his
chair toward his student and let him have it.

“You just leapt so high to reach that conclusion
that you’re standing on the moon. If this gator was infected, and we have no
confirmation that it was without a sample, it still doesn’t mean the bacteria
made it attack those men. Gators are naturally aggressive. That’s what they do!
And to think someone could train a gator to fetch and catch like a hunting dog—that’s
a complete joke.”

Aaron shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. He
had taken one for the team and the coach still chewed him out in front of
everybody.

Sneed ignored the grilling. He had focused on
Trainer’s reaction the whole time. The Lagoon Watcher didn’t appear outraged at
Aaron’s theory. He looked amused by it. Sneed’s eyes widened when he spotted
the Watcher sending Aaron a nod as if he knew he had caught onto something.

“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve seen
an animal with a purple mark act out,” Sneed told Trainer. Furrowing his
sunburned brow, the scientist crossed his arms and offered nothing. “Come on,
Watcher, you’re out there more than anybody. Don’t hold back on me, now.”

“Hold back?” he asked. “What more do you want? I
told you everything that happened there three times. I’ve done plenty.”

“Everything, huh?” Sneed huffed. “I still ain’t
heard a good explanation why you were out checking for sea turtle nests in the
middle of the night.”

“Because I care about the creatures that share this
earth with me,” the Watcher said. “You protect people—supposedly you do. I
protect the inhabitants of this planet. In case your officers haven’t noticed
while they’ve set up speed traps along every causeway over the lagoon, Central
Florida’s treasured estuary is on the verge of ruin.” Trainer ran through every
pollutant in the environmental science textbook, and a few that had Aaron
scratching his head. He gave the old-timer speech about how the lagoon used to
be so clear that they could see the bottom and dive after lobsters. “I’ve been
telling people for years that they should close all the wastewater dumping
pipes and clean up the farm runoff. Have they listened? Not one bit. And now,
surprise, surprise, we have highly deadly mutated bacteria. Sort of poetic
justice, isn’t it?”

He didn’t get a single nod from the men in the
room. They weren’t on the same wavelength as the Lagoon Watcher. He operated on
a channel straight out of Neptune.

Aaron stocked his DVD player with flicks like
Endless
Summer
instead of crime thrillers, yet even he saw the Lagoon Watcher’s
motive. Sick and dying animals wouldn’t sway politicians—after all, dolphins
couldn’t pay lobbyists with sardines. But an ecological catastrophe killing
several people a week would light a fire under their asses. If the media picked
out pollution in the lagoon as a reason for the headline-grabbing deaths,
they’d cork every toxic spigot the next day.

He studied his professor’s expression for a sign of
the same revelation, but Swartzman had his forehead in his hand as he shook his
head. He looked bummed that his old friend had pretty much handed the detective
the key to his cell.

“So you wanna tell me how you killed all those
folks?” Sneed asked. Trainer hollered denials, but the detective pressed on
like a steam train running the frantic scientist over. “You made the bacteria
to terrorize this community so bad that we’d leave your precious lagoon alone.
You think some fucking fish are more important than people?”

“I made it? That’s impossible!” He sprang from his
seat. Sneed rose with him so their eyes stayed level. “I had nothing to do with
that purple gunk. I’m being framed over my political views!”