Mute (33 page)

The teacher trotted up and down the rows along the
short ends of the trailers, and peered underneath their hitches and behind
their air conditioning units. As she leaned over for a look at the crawl space
behind a clattering A/C unit, an arm cloaked by a black coat wrapped around her
throat. It yanked her against a hard body that stunk of salt water and rotten
eggs. She reached into her pocket for the alert pen. The man grabbed her wrist
and squeezed it until she couldn’t feel her fingers.

“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,”
the Lagoon Watcher said with his steaming breath on the back of her neck.

Chapter 33

The man stuck his gloved hand down Mrs. Mint’s
pocket and his fingers clawed at her upper thigh.
Oh Jesus, not there!
She
squeezed her legs together. His forearm wrenched her chin upward until she
exhausted all her muscles struggling for air. His hand penetrated deeper until
her pocket nearly tore. The Lagoon Watcher finally ripped his hand out of her
pants and tossed the alert pen away.

“Everybody has the wrong idea about me. I’m not the
one who’s dangerous,” the Lagoon Watcher said as he eased his grip around the
teacher’s neck. She sank into the folds of his dark coat as if it where
swallowing her whole. Her chest heaved as she feared that any breath could become
her last. “The girl is dangerous. But I’m not here to hurt her. I’m here to
figure out what’s wrong with her, and help her get better. The best thing you
can do is walk away and leave us alone.”

She doubted that a man this creepy really intended
on helping Mariella, but Mrs. Mint couldn’t argue that, if she walked away, at
least she wouldn’t get hurt. She hadn’t become a school teacher so she could
battle serial killers with her clip-on nails.

“Give her back, and then I’ll walk away,” Mrs. Mint
said. Her tone lacked the force that she had intended. Instead of reeling from
intimidation, the man chuckled as if he had been threatened by a squirrel.

“If I can make her better, you’ll get her back,”
the Lagoon Watcher said. His breath stank of over-fried crawfish. “I wish I
could promise you that she’ll be fine, but I haven’t been able to fix much
that’s gone wrong with the lagoon. We finally killed nature’s precious
treasure.”

He sounded almost teary as he spoke of the lagoon,
as if it were his child.

“I love the lagoon too,” she said. She hoped that
having a common interest would ingrain some sympathy with him. “I’d like
nothing more than to preserve it for the children.”

“If this works, maybe we will,” he said. “Now go.
I’ll take care of the girl.”

The Lagoon Watcher brought his hand down and let
Mrs. Mint take a step away from him. Wondering whether his sincerity sprang
from madness or genuine concern, she spun around for a look into his eyes
before he disappeared. His gray-blue eyes peered out at her from beneath a long
sun-scorched scalp and a shock of thinning blond hair that hung down his neck.
He reminded her of a drunken middle-aged man living on a roaming house boat,
not a serious scientist who could help a disturbed little girl.

He reached out to her with a gloved hand that
looked deceptively comforting. Mrs. Mint whirled around and dashed out of
there. She didn’t even recognize the stabbing pain in her ankles and knees
until she reached the parking lot and saw the SUV with the tinted windows.

“The Lagoon Watcher has Mariella! They’re in the
trailers.”

* * * *

Moni yanked on the door handle so hard that she
cracked a fingernail when it didn’t open. When she saw DeWitt’s smug grin as he
held his finger over the master lock, she socked him on his lard-loaded arm.
“Open the fucking door!”

“We’re not supposed to leave until we get word from
Sneed,” he said. “You would never disregard an order, would you?”

Moni grumbled bloody murder as she dialed into the
secure line. “Detective Sneed, I have confirmation from Mrs. Mint that the
Lagoon Watcher has Mariella captive in the trailer area. May I have your
permission
to pursue the suspect?” That last sentence burned her tongue like battery acid.

“We’re having three officers converge on the
suspect’s location,” Sneed said. “I’ll go while my partner here keeps an eye on
the video. Officer Connors from the playground will go and one more, hmmm…” She
grabbed her seat’s armrest and nearly peeled the cover off. The teacher pounded
on her window about the kidnapped girl while Sneed took his sweet-ass time.
“Moni, you can come too. Everybody else will watch the perimeter and make sure
no one leaves. And call for backup to get firepower along that perimeter. Now
move!”

The moment that prick DeWitt unlocked her door, Moni
bolted from the SUV. She ignored the teacher and raced between the cars toward
the trailers. Even though she ran faster than she ever had, the mental torture
of worrying about Mariella stretched out each step into a month’s worth of
agony. In the time she took one stride, he could snap the girl’s fragile neck
and let her head dangle with lifeless eyes. He could thrust a knife into her
heart until it stopped beating. He could pinch her flute-like windpipe between
his fingers and crush it. Maybe he had brought his precision slicer. Moni
couldn’t bear guessing how long that would take him, but she knew that Harrison
hadn’t been dead for long when the police arrived at her house and found his
headless corpse.

Moni pumped her legs so hard that her thigh muscles
throbbed as if they were about to rupture. She didn’t care if she wound up on
crutches: Mariella’s life literally hung on every second.

She drew her pistol as she dodged between the
trailers. Moni heard a door open on the other side of a trailer. She dashed
around it and pointed her gun. A pre-teen boy screamed and nearly fell off the
steps leading up to his classroom. Without apologizing, Moni hurried on and
circled around more trailers. She didn’t see anything. Mariella couldn’t even
yell for her. The girl couldn’t cry out in pain from the horrible devices that
the Lagoon Watcher inflicted upon her.

The pressure welled up inside Moni’s head. It
pushed on the inside of her skull as dread invaded her thoughts. Had she
already taken too long? Those piercing eyes that had stared at Mariella from
across the dark parking lot that night had but one intention behind them. It
wouldn’t take them much time once they caught her. If she hadn’t found the girl
by now, she might not find anything besides a petite decapitated body. Moni
would never gaze into the brown jewels of her eyes again.

As the fluid in Moni’s brain lapped around
violently like a storm inside a snow globe, she jammed her thumb into her
temple and beat back the pain. She wished she could jab her eyes out, and rub
the agony away, but she couldn’t stop looking for Mariella for a second. Moni
kept scampering around the trailers until the tremors rocking her head
literally brought her to her knees. She steadied her hand on the wooden skirt
of the trailer. Moni fought to regain her balance. Then she realized that the
wood moved easily when she pressed it. She hobbled behind the trailer and
scanned the narrow column near the A/C unit. She saw one skirt halfway off.
With the pressure in her head mercifully fading, Moni dashed through the
opening.

When she ducked underneath the trailer, she
couldn’t see a thing in the darkness beyond the narrow angular path of light
that spilled from the opening. Realizing that the light reflected off her face,
making it a clear target, Moni sidestepped into a dark corner. She hunched down
so her head didn’t hit the floorboards. Moni heard the kids in the classroom
above her scuffing their feet and shuffling around their desks. They yammered
on gleefully without any idea that a mutilator of human beings lurked below
them. Moni didn’t see him; she knew it by the way the putrid scent of salty
fish intestines stung her nose and made her eyes water.

Some part of her also felt Mariella, waiting for
her underneath that trailer. She couldn’t hear the girl breathing or moving
with all the commotion from above. But the Lagoon Watcher wouldn’t let his
catch stray far from him. He would keep her right in his paws, where he could
slice her open at any moment.

With a trail of sweat rolling down the back of her
neck as she suffered under the sweltering heat, Moni fumbled for her
flashlight. It would reveal her location, but she’d rather have the killer
target her than focus his wrath on the little girl. She hoisted her pistol, and
turned on the light. In just a few seconds of sweeping the beam through the
dusty compartment, Moni spotted the shiny black hair of Mariella in the far
corner. The girl stared at her not in surprise, but in relief. Beads of sweat
glistened on the girl’s trembling lips. She sat scrunched into the corner with
her legs against her chin. She had been so petrified by him, that she couldn’t
even reach out her arms. Her sleeves were soaked in blood.

I’ll
kill that motherfucking pig.

“Just stay there, baby,” Moni said softly, as if a
loud word would set off a stick of dynamite. “I’ll be right there.”

Moni crept toward her with her beam squarely
focused on the girl. Mariella’s eyes darted around, casting a wide net through
the darkness. The Lagoon Watcher wouldn’t make this so easy. Moni kept an iron
grip on her pistol, and her eyes shifted in both directions. It didn’t do much
use. She couldn’t see a thing outside of the narrow beam of light bathing
Mariella. Suddenly, she heard a footstep that didn’t come from the floor above
but from a few feet away. Moni swiveled to her left—directly into a gloved fist
that pummeled her cheekbone. Her head snapped around as she stumbled backwards.
She dropped her flashlight. Yet she kept her pistol, which she raised in the
direction of the blow. Before she squeezed a shot off, a damp jacket brushed
over her face, followed by a knee crashing into her ribcage. A gloved hand
snared her wrist and another hand swatted the pistol free. Her only weapon fell
under cover of darkness. The Lagoon Watcher shoved her into a wooden board that
bruised the back of her rib cage.

“The girl doesn’t belong with you,” the Lagoon
Watcher said. A breath that stank like rotted squid wafted into Moni’s nose.
“It’s inside her, but it’s not my fault. She’s a victim of the money-grubbing
agri-processors and politicians that started this mess. Forces beyond nature
are making it a hell of a lot worse. I’ll try my best to fix her. If you don’t
leave her with me, you’ll lose the girl.”

“I ain’t leaving my baby with you, you pervert!”
Moni hollered as she clawed her nails at his face. They nicked his flesh, but
he caught her wrists. He bent them backwards. Her joints couldn’t take any
more.

“My love for the lagoon is no perversion. There’s
nothing wrong with caring about nature.”

“There is if you care about nature more than you do
about human life.”

Moni stomped on his foot and squirmed out of his
grip. She bounced off the wall, and raced for Mariella. The Lagoon Watcher’s
gloved hands pinched her under her arms and hoisted her up. Moni’s head bonked
off the underside of the floorboard. She saw stars that didn’t belong in such a
dark place. When he let her go, Moni collapsed on the pavement. The Lagoon
Watcher scooted around her with his sights on Mariella. Moni kicked him in the
shin. He growled and hurled his body on top of hers, squishing her back against
the unforgiving ground. Moni wrapped her legs around his body like she had
learned in jiu-jitsu training, but her hands weren’t strong enough to control
his fists. He blasted his knuckles into the side of her neck. Moni wrenched her
neck in pain as its tendons contracted. The next blow hammered her on the jaw
and even the slightest move of her mouth caused her agony. Even worse, a sticky
liquid oozed from the Lagoon Watcher’s head onto Moni’s face. She couldn’t see
it, but she remembered how the infected snakes had purple venom dripping from
their fangs. Moni swatted the goo off her forehead. She rocked her head from
side to side as she tried to avoid getting infected. A steady stream of it kept
pouring down on her. She felt the Lagoon Watcher rear back and throw another
punch. This time she caught his arm in both hands and clamped it down against
her chest. Moni slinked one leg over the trapped arm and pressed her opposite
leg atop the man’s head. She bent one leg, locked her ankle behind her knee and
pulled down on his head with both hands. That brought the Lagoon Watcher right
into her triangle choke. Her flexing thighs cut off the blood flow to his brain
before he could utter a word. Like a novice, he pushed against her legs, which
only increased the pressure on his neck. In less than a minute, his arms went
limp and he passed out.

Moni would have loved nothing more than to keep the
choke locked on until the Lagoon Watcher went brain dead, but she couldn’t let
Mariella worry for a second longer. She tossed the man’s dead-weight body to
the side, scooped up her flashlight and pistol and searched for the girl. She
hadn’t left the corner the whole time. Since she couldn’t have seen anything,
the girl couldn’t have known how close Moni had come to meeting her end. She
would have heard her die. Moni thanked God the girl didn’t have to witness
another parent killed.

“You can relax now, baby,” Moni said. “He can’t
hurt you anymore.”