Mute (22 page)

“You been fucking up my whole life,
you little whore! All you do is screw up!”

This
time he didn’t reach for Moni. He grabbed the smaller one. His bearish mitt
seized her fragile thigh like a plump chicken wing. Mariella couldn’t scream.
Moni heard her scratching and clawing at the walls as she tried to stay in the
closet with her best friend, her only hope. Moni saw the girl’s tiny hand
reaching out toward her.

“You
can’t have her! You gave her to me and now she’s mine!” Moni shouted as she
jumped out of her seat on the psychiatrist’s couch. As the girl jerked up with
her, she suddenly realized she had been holding Mariella’s hand the whole time.

“That’s
not your call. That’s up to the judge,” Roberts said. “And right now, I have a
good idea what my recommendation will be tomorrow in court.”

Moni
felt like sitting down, but the determined girl squeezed her hand tighter. Her
spine stiffened. Mariella had cast her vote.

“You
wanna talk about endangering other kids? That’s exactly what you’ll be doing if
you put Mariella in a foster house,” Moni said. “Our prime suspect is this guy
known as the Lagoon Watcher. We believe he’s after all the witnesses—especially
this one.”

Moni
gazed down at Mariella as she unveiled to the girl the deadly threat against
her for the first time. She didn’t appear fazed at all. The kid had good
instincts. She must have known that her life had never been safe, which
explained a lot about her behavior.

“If
you put her in foster care, you’re putting every child and every counselor
there in danger,” Moni continued. “I can fend that freak off. That’s what I’m
trained for. And there are security guards in the elementary school ready for
it too. We’ve even assigned an extra officer there to keep watch. What’s your
plan for protecting Mariella in foster care? You wanna put guns around all
those overly medicated kids? Yeah, let them shoot it out.”

Lacking
an answer between them, the DCF agent and the child psychologist exchanged
deflated stares. Their plan had clearly been foiled, but Moni knew they hadn’t
concocted it by themselves. Sneed must have put them up to it. He wanted Mariella
in foster care where they’d drug her up and crack her brain open like an egg
splattered on the pavement. She couldn’t let anyone take the girl from her ever
again because, next time, Sneed might swipe her for good.

“Go
home and get some rest, you two,” Agent Roberts said. “But don’t let me hear
about any more trouble. If you mess up again, and I mean a single time, you’re
gonna say goodbye to that girl for real.”

As
Moni led Mariella out of that dungeon of an office, she wondered how she could
possibly keep Mariella out of trouble and out of the DCF’s eye. Every day
something worse happened and it all centered around the lagoon. It wasn’t a
matter of trying her best, Moni realized. She couldn’t make one misstep or
she’d lose everything.

Chapter 22

Mario
Jimenez had just kicked off his heavy boots inside the fire station’s garage
when the alarm rang again. His boots were practically still smoking from the
wildfire he had just quelled with his crew, but duty called again. That’s what
happens when it doesn’t rain for five weeks.

Jimenez
grabbed his boots, and despite the protests from his aching, itchy feet,
slipped them back on. Looking in the mirror, he saw black soot all over his
shaved head and under his chin. He only wiped off the dirt that covered the
crucifixion tattoo on his neck. No sense cleaning what’s about to get filthy in
a few minutes, he figured.

“This
one better not be too big,” Jimenez told the fire engine driver. “I gotta sit
down for a nice steak and beer some time, man.”

“It
shouldn’t take too long. It’s the Melbourne Harbor Marina. Some idiot probably
set his boat on fire,” the driver said. “And if you’re looking for somewhere to
eat, I know a place where the steak is shitty but the tits are huge.”

“Yeah,
I know a couple of those places,” Jimenez laughed. “I went in with my helmet on
one time and got a free lap dance.”

Enlightened
by that bit of wisdom, the driver pulled the fire engine out of the garage and
whipped it around the corner with Jimenez and his crew clinging to its side. Cars
darted out of their way as they barreled up U.S. 1 with the siren blaring.
Jimenez stuck his head out into the wind, allowing it to blast the beads of
sweat off his face. He saw the pillar of smoke rising from alongside the lagoon
at the base of the Melbourne Causeway.

“That
looks like more than a boat,” Jimenez shouted to his crew over the roaring
wind.

When
the fire engine pulled into the parking lot of the private harbor, the flames
were engulfing an entire row of yachts along a concrete pier. The fire lapped
up the mast of a sailboat until its network of ropes formed a web of fire. A
speedboat at the base of the pier exploded and plowed into the side of a yacht.
The hole it ripped in the larger vessel quickly flooded it with flaming water.
Making a quick sweep of the harbor, Jimenez witnessed the fire dancing across
the water on the back of a chemical spill. The flaming tentacles lashed across
a pier on the opposite end of the harbor and the fire latched onto several more
boats.

“It
smells like burning gasoline,” Jimenez told his crew. “Blast it with foam!”

He
spotted several places where the concrete pier had been cracked at its base so
hard that it looked like a wrecking ball had pummeled it. Looking up toward the
end of the pier, Jimenez saw the fuel pump. Whatever damaged the pier had
caused a break in the fuel line underneath the concrete. He didn’t know
anything short of a torpedo that could ignite so much devastation underwater.

The
heat nearly melting his skin, Jimenez lowered his face guard, planted his feet
with the hose in both hands and blasted foam onto the base of the burning pier.
He stumbled backwards, but not from the recoil or the fire. He felt someone
clutching his jacket and spinning him around.

“Get
off me!” Jimenez shouted.

“You
gotta run!” the man screamed as he tugged on his jacket.

The
firefighter widened his stance so the scrawny old man in the polo shirt with
the anchor insignia didn’t have a chance at pulling him an inch. The ends of
the man’s gray hair had been singed. His face glowed beet red. That would sting
like a motherfucker later. Jimenez couldn’t tell whether he had lost his
eyelids or the man simply couldn’t blink.

“I’m
getting you to the ambulance,” Jimenez said as he grabbed the man under the arm
and hustled to the parking lot.

“Listen
to me. I’m the harbormaster,” the man said as he hobbled along gasping for air
amid the billowing smoke. “There were three teenagers on the pier when the fire
started. Two of them fell into the water. The third… Oh God, he burned. He
wanted to burn.”

“Are
you saying this was arson?” Jimenez asked.

“Never
mind that now. Get your men away from the base of the pier. The fuel tank is
underground. I couldn’t seal it off before the fire blocked the controls.”

“The
fuel tank… Oh shit!” Jimenez tossed the old man to the medics and sprinted to
the edge of the parking lot where his men could see him. Waving his arms
frantically, he shouted into his radio, “Abandon the dock. The fuel tank is
unstable. Get the hell out of there!”

Three
men turned and started running. The fourth kept blasting the foam. The crackle
of the fire must have drowned out his radio. Jimenez yelled at the top of his
lungs. He saw the fellow firefighter turn his head. His eyes went wide as he
saw everybody running. That was Tommy, a second-year man with his wedding
coming up in a month. The firefighter dropped the hose and took a few steps in
his burdensome gear, but to Jimenez it looked like he moved in slow motion.
Looking behind Tommy, Jimenez saw the concrete bend and crest like a growing
wave creeping up at his friend’s back. A fiery plume erupted from the gash in
the concrete. As the fissure stretched into a pit, a wall of flame slammed into
Tommy’s back and launched him through the air. Jimenez saw Tommy land in the water
amid the burning fuel. He lunged forward, but the storm of scalding air blasted
Jimenez so hard he even felt it through his face guard. Jimenez turned and
shielded his face as he backed off. He spotted Tommy’s arms flailing through
the flaming sea of gasoline. Suddenly, he vanished. Something had dragged him
under.

“Tommy!”
Jimenez screamed into his radio in a futile final call. “I can’t believe that
just happened. What was that thing?”

“There
are all kinds of things in the water,” the harbormaster said as he trembled in
a wet blanket. “They got the kid’s friends and then that idiot fired his gun
into the water. I warned him about the fuel spill. He did it anyway. He didn’t
even run from the fire. He stood there… stood there and burned. Oh God, he
looked at me, just stared at me as his flesh melted away.”

Jimenez
studied the old man. He wished he could brush his story off as a hallucination
brought about by the intensity of the fire, but after seeing something drag
Tommy underneath the flaming fuel spill, he didn’t question any tale.

What
happened next shocked him even more. The spigot of fire shooting from the
breeched fuel tank got sucked back down the hole—as if someone made it defy
what a fire should do by sticking a giant straw into the fuel tank and draining
the burning liquid into the harbor. The flames were whisked away from shore and
then erupted over the water. It burned white hot. The boats on the far side of
the harbor exploded, sacrificing their fuel and tinder to the orgy of
destruction. It would burn until every last drop of fuel had been consumed.

“Guard
the perimeter and don’t let it come ashore,” Jimenez told his crew even though
he felt the fire didn’t
want
to come
ashore. He got the feeling, not from his gut like he usually did but from somewhere
even deeper, that the fire got what it wanted and it wouldn’t take any more—for
now.

Chapter 23

The
explosive fire at the Melbourne Harbor Marina had exacted a toll of four lives
and 56 boats. The sheriff told the media he suspected arson, but the members of
the lagoon serial killer investigation task force knew it went further than
that. The fire hadn’t been set merely for destruction’s sake. Professor
Swartzman described it as a feeding binge for the bacteria.

“The
thiobacillus
bacteria thrive off
oxidizing sulfur and iron,” the professor told the other task force members as
they met around the conference table a day later. “The sulfur produced by
burning all that gasoline in the lagoon is much more potent than the sulfur
from agricultural waste. It literally converted our fuel into the fuel for its
growth.”

“Excuse
me, professor,” said
Brigadier General
Alonso Colon. “You’re talking about these microorganisms like they have a
motive and a purpose. I think it’s more likely that this is an act of terrorism
and the byproduct is helping the bacteria.”

“Terrorism? By who?” Aaron asked. “Is the Taliban
hiding out in Melbourne?”

“Not unless you know something I don’t,” the
military officer said with a raised eyebrow. Aaron ducked back in his chair.
“I’d call this domestic terrorism. This Lagoon Watcher opposes commerce in the
waterways. That would make any marine vessel a target.”

“Mr. Colon, I… I…” the professor started until the
military man stared him down with a stern eye. He shook off the stuttering and
continued. “General Colon, I know Harry Trainer and he’s a scientist, not a
terrorist. When we searched his house, all the biological material came from
animals, not people.”

“Yeah, all that means is he’s no idiot,” Skillings
said. “I’m sure he has another lab where he does his real research.”

“I’ll admit he’s more than a little off the beaten
path in his political views, but he’s not dangerous,” Swartzman continued.” He
certainly couldn’t have pulled off all of this. I mean, if he did it, why don’t
we see him on the marina video?”

The task force had viewed the surveillance video
twice and no one could spot the Lagoon Watcher, his truck or his boat. They did
see a bizarre creature that looked like it had sprung loose from the lab in the
rouge scientist’s den.

Luckily, the shipyard backed up its video footage
offsite. That was about all they had left of their business. The video started
with three teenagers pulling into the parking lot in a silver Mercedes coup,
which was registered to the father of the young driver, Martin Ricks, Jr. The
yacht they entered also belonged to the elder Ricks. He must have kept his
liquor there too, because when the kids reappeared on the pier a couple hours
later, they were stumbling around all sloshed.

“Bunch of snot-nosed, spoiled punks,” Sneed said as
they watched the two teen boys flirt competitively with the teenage girl. “The
harbormaster should have done his job and tossed them off the property. Then
they’d still be alive.”

The calamity started when three dorsal fins
appeared in the water. That normally meant friendly dolphins and that’s how
they appeared at first. The girl leaned over the side of the pier for a closer
look when something sprayed through the water and struck the pier so hard that
the camera shook. The girl fell into the water.