Mute (7 page)

“It’s
okay to do this, for now,” Moni told her as she slid into the driver’s seat and
started her Ford’s engine. “But I can’t be there every second, baby. You’ll see
that you’ll be okay even with…” Moni saw the beady black eyes in the rearview
mirror and screamed. Mariella didn’t join in. The girl ducked underneath the
dashboard. The officer turned around all the way and faced the raven pressed against
her rear window with its neck twisted at a wretched angle. Its wings were
flayed and torn. It looked like the bird had been steamrolled by a pickup truck
and tossed on her car.

Moni
stumbled out of the car and drew her gun. She didn’t see anyone besides the old
man next door. He gazed at her all bug-eyed because, after all, the old white
man saw a black woman with a gun. Moni lowered her firearm. After snapping a
few photos with her cell phone camera in case they needed it for the crime lab,
Moni reached for the tip of the raven’s wing. She pinched the fragile bone
between her fingers and started peeling the stiff bird off her windshield. Its
beak hit the glass. She figured its head had gone limp when it snapped its
neck. The beak tapped the glass again—harder. The raven whirled its head around
at her. It opened its mouth without making a sound and hacked up purple ooze
onto her trunk.

“What
the fuck?” Moni backed away and reached for her gun. The wings and talons that
had been stiff seconds ago sprang alive. The raven rose from her windshield.
She aimed the gun at its head, which still hung at an awkward angle. Before she
could squeeze off a shot, the raven bounded from her car and launched into
flight. It flew away crookedly—narrowly clearing the trees on the other side of
the street. She would have assumed it had a broken wing if she hadn’t seen it
up close. Only a few feathers remained atop Moni’s trunk and in her driveway.

Moni
fitted her gun back into the holster. If that thing had really meant her harm—like
pecking her eyeballs out—she wouldn’t have drawn in time. Much like Darren had
left his message against her door earlier, someone else had left a message for
the girl. Darren wanted Moni back. Someone even more sinister wanted Mariella.

Chapter 5

Fish
don’t have eyelids, but their eyes can still grow wide, and bug out all red.
That described the look of the several hundred fish that floated lifelessly on
their sides in the Indian River Lagoon. Their mouths and gills were extended
painfully in a final gasp for oxygen rich water. Some of them had shiny red
burns on their scales and fins.

“Total
bummer,” Aaron Hughes said as he surveyed the fish kill from the skiff motoring
by. “At least the birds won’t go hungry.”

Piloting
the craft with his glasses on, Professor Herbert Swartzman didn’t dignify him
with a response. After he lost the sea turtle with the purple tumor, his
professor had been on his case like sand between the cracks at a nudist beach.
He asked half the students in the institute to join him and the Water
Management District researcher on this mission, but only Aaron had the cahones
for it once word of the lagoon serial killer spread.

“This
is the second fish kill this month, and it’s twice as bad as the last one up in
Cape Canaveral,” said Laura Heingartner, a freckle-faced blond who surveyed the
water quality in the lagoon for the Water Management District. As they sailed
between Melbourne and Cocoa, the air control tower of Patrick Air Force Base on
the beachside was visible on the far side of Merritt Island, which sat smack in
the middle of the lagoon.

“It’s
weird because the fish kills are so rare in the lagoon,” said Heingartner, who
came suited for action in a wetsuit. She must have been ten years younger than
the 50-something Swartzman, who came in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. Aaron
figured that 50 must be the cut-off point for getting muddy finger nails for
scientists. “I can usually tie it to an algae breakout or a sewage leak. I
haven’t found any of that yet. But the lagoon’s pH is reading out far from
normal.”

With
pockets of low pH making the water more acidic, she warned that shell fish,
clams and seagrass could suffer damage. Since sea turtles love chomping down on
seagrass and that green treat could potentially cause their illness, Swartzman
decided they’d accompany Heingartner on her seagrass survey dive.

Before
they could strap on their snorkels, Aaron found some peculiar scenery above
water. They approached a Coast Guard vessel with its tow line hooked around a
capsized skiff. Its propellers were all bent and bloody. As Swartzman steered
his boat wide of it, the white-suited officers cranked the line and flipped the
skiff upright. The vessel had been cleaned out. Even the metal seats, which
looked like they had been bolted down, were gone.

“No
way!” Aaron exclaimed. “Is that the…”

“Yes,
yes. That’s the boat of the murder victim they found yesterday morning,”
Swartzman said. “They would have removed it earlier, but the afternoon
thunderstorm prevented them.”

“And
you know that because?” he asked.

“The
lead detective called me about it. He couldn’t figure out what animal had bit
the man before he died. I could.” Swartzman sounded so full of himself that his
head nearly floated off. “Not that I blame him. You don’t see many manatee
bites.”

“A
manatee? That’s a good one,” Heingartner said with a chuckle.

“Dude,
manatees don’t bite,” Aaron said. “You could ride one like a surfboard and he’d
be like ‘Uh, whatever, amigo.’”

“The
detective didn’t believe it either, so I’m going down there tomorrow with a set
of manatee jaws to show him,” Swartzman said. “I’ll take a look at that boat
later and see if the victim struck a manatee.”

“Let
me get this straight: the guy mows over a manatee so the riled up sea cow
flipped his boat, took a bite outta him and then cut off his head?” Aaron
asked. “Sounds like that manatee came from the Bronx.”

“I
said a manatee bit him, I didn’t say how it happened,” Swartzman said. “Maybe
after hitting the manatee, the boater dove into the water to save the animal
and it bit him in a blind rage. Then the killer found him.”

Heingartner
shivered in her wetsuit at the mention of the beast that had been preying on
people near the lagoon. Glimpsing the panic in her light blue eyes, Aaron
realized that she wouldn’t have gone on this survey mission without a couple of
guys with her.

“So,
what kind of shape was the manatee’s body in?” she asked.

With
a grim look on his face, Swartzman shook his head. “They haven’t found the
manatee. There’s no trace of it.”

Heingartner
clasped her hand over her mouth. Aaron’s stomach began creeping up on him. No
manatee could travel far after being mauled by a boat. If it had died, its body
should float. It didn’t add up. In three days, there had been three murders,
one abandoned girl, one freakish turtle tumor, a manatee attack and a massive
fish kill all within this stretch of the lagoon. Had someone shifted the
Bermuda Triangle a little north?

The
skiff drifted to a stop. The craft gently bobbed up and down on the inviting
cool waters of the lagoon. It welcomed them—practically daring them to dive in
and escape the sweltering sun. It couldn’t have been more than six feet deep,
but they couldn’t see even a foot into the murky salt water. Normally, Aaron
dove down there without a care. Sharks were much more common in the ocean and
gators preferred creeks and lakes to the lagoon. This time, it took him a
couple minutes of staring the lagoon down before he strapped on his goggles and
snorkel. He imagined himself diving into the lagoon and coming up a few minutes
later floating stiff on his side with his eyes bugged out like all those fish.
Or maybe only his body would surface—minus his head.

Aaron
jumped at the touch of a hand on his shoulder. It was only Swartzman.

“Take
some precautions down there this time,” his professor said with what sounded
like actual concern for a human being he didn’t want beheaded. That’s a start.
“If you encounter any animals behaving aggressively or if the water feels
uncomfortable, I won’t think any less of you for coming back.”

But
he wouldn’t think any more of him either. Aaron knew that if he stuck his neck
out and found a link between all the craziness, no one, not Swartzman and not
Aaron’s father, would question whether he belonged at the institute.

Heingartner
handed Aaron an underwater camera and a global positioning system tracker with
the coordinates of the seagrass bed programmed in. She’d compare the new photos
with the ones taken six months earlier. She also gave Aaron several containers
for taking samples.

While
Aaron studied his new gear, Heingartner stammered around frantically looking
for something. “Shit!” she spat as she rummaged through a chest and slammed the
lid. As Swartzman flinched at the burst of foul language, Heingartner finally
found what she wanted. Her goggles had been atop her head the whole time.

“I’m
sorry,” she said as Swartzman gave her a long look. “I’m not usually this way.
It’s just with the fish kill; the conditions down there may not be so good.”

“It’s
cool. I get it,” Aaron chimed in before his professor could respond. “Don’t
sweat it, alrighty? I’ll be in there with you. If all else fails, you can
always flag the heroic Captain Swartzman on our great battleship.”

The
professor didn’t join in with Heingartner’s giggles.

Aaron
dove in first and she followed a few seconds later. Splashing along with their
flippers, they spread out toward where the two beds of seagrass should be. When
the GPS told him he had the right spot, Aaron bit down on the snorkel and took
a peek below. He saw the tips of seagrass blades poking up at him through the
hazy water. They gently swayed in the wishy-washy current like an underwater
forest, which they pretty much were. Fish, crabs, lobsters and all kinds of
critters normally called the seagrass home.

It
really sucked that Aaron could barely see it. Not only did the soupy water give
him trouble photographing the size of the seagrass bed, it choked off the
plants from the sunlight they needed to thrive.

Holding
his breath, Aaron submerged for a closer look. He brushed his arms over the
stringy blades of shoal grass, one of the most commons types in the Indian
River Lagoon. He saw a hermit crab shell. Not only was it empty, it looked
partially dissolved. The seagrass from about two feet around it suffered from
withering and flakiness. When Aaron touched the blades, they tore off as easily
as wet tissues. That shouldn’t happen, he thought. Aaron plucked the shell up
and stored it in his sample container along with some blades of damaged
seagrass.

Aaron
surfaced for a quick gulp of air. He heard a woman’s scream. Swiveling his head
around, he saw a flustered Heingartner swimming toward the skiff. Her blond
hair whipped through the water with each frantic stroke. She grabbed the boat
as if it were a cliff’s edge and pulled herself aboard before Swartzman could
help her.

“What’s
going on with you?” the professor asked incredulously. He probably hadn’t seen
many of his esteemed research colleagues completely whacked out of their
skulls.

“I
saw something,” Heingartner said through chattering teeth. Her chest heaved
like a balloon getting filled with so much air it might burst. “It was big.
Dark. Scaly, I think.”

With
his heart pounding furiously, Aaron started paddling toward the skiff. “Did it
come after you? Did it chase you?” he asked as he peered over his shoulder.
Aaron didn’t see anything—on the surface, at least.

“I
don’t think so,” she said. “It was hiding in the seagrass. It didn’t move. I
hope to God it didn’t see me.”

The
professor handed her a bottle of water, which she immediately started chugging
down. He shook his head. “It was probably a tire or an old, moldy boat. People
dump a lot of garbage here nowadays. They have no shame.”

She
tossed the bottle down. “I’ve checked this seagrass bed every six months for
the past twelve years. I’ve seen every type of junk you could imagine.” Her
freckled cheeks turned red, and not from the sun. “That thing was alive.”

Swartzman
had been married so long that he had forgotten how to treat the ladies nicely, Aaron
thought as he neared the boat. At least he showed her more respect than he
offered his diving monkey auditioning to be a student.

“People
are adding to the trash pile down there all the time,” Swartzman said. “We
won’t let it stop our mission, will we?”

He
beamed Aaron with a stern gaze. So much for, “
I won’t think any less of you for coming back.”
The professor had a
police detective he aimed on impressing. If Aaron helped him out, they could
both bask in the glory of catching a killer.

“No
prob, Swartzman. I can mop this up,” Aaron said. “And you’ll let me tag along
on your visit to the police station, right? I’ll help you present the evidence.
I’m an expert in crazy ninja manatees.”

“Alright,
alright,” Swartzman grumbled. “Finish the photos and grab some more samples.
But at the first hint of danger, you wave me over.”