“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.
Skillings paused the video and pointed out the crack in the concrete pier. “That’s where the fuel leak started. The kids must have smelt it, and the geniuses still jumped into the water.”
“They wanted to save the girl,” Aaron said. “Hey, I’ve done worse to impress the ladies and I’ve got the scars from sea rocks to prove it.”
“Yeah, but these kids got more than just scars,” Moni told Aaron. She already saw that Aaron would stand up to her ex-boyfriend to catch her eye. She hoped he didn’t have to put his life on the line for her again.
The kid with the long hair caught the girl before Ricks did, but then the dolphins surrounded the two of them. The girl reached out to the marine mammals, expecting some friendly fairy tale dolphins. She got a slap across the face from its tail that spun her head around. A pair of hands emerged from the water underneath the dolphin’s belly, grabbed the girl and dragged her under. Before the long-haired teen knew what had happened, another dolphin seized him in its hands and pulled him down.
The task force watched the abductions over and over again. Each time they looked for another explanation, such as an opening where a diver could have hidden underneath the dolphins. But with the angle that the arms had thrust out of the water, that couldn’t have worked unless the diver had his head inside a dolphin. As nonsensical as it seemed, no one could avoid the conclusion: Those dolphins had arms on their bellies.
“If you can’t help me solve these murders, at least you can say you found a new species, right professor,” Sneed said.
“That’s not the byproduct of evolution,” Swartzman said with his face drained of all color as he stared at the freakish creatures.
“But it might be the byproduct of your buddy’s little laboratory,” Sneed said.
“You’re giving him way too much credit,” Swartzman said. “Tell me, do you think Trainer could cause what happens next?”
Seeing his friends disappear underwater, the Ricks kid dove beneath the surface. With all the gasoline in the water, it must have been a toxic hell down there, Moni thought. Almost a minute later Ricks came up gasping for air and frantically wiping his face. He kept plucking at his eyes like they were full of bees. Whatever he had found down there, it made him abandon his rescue effort and swim for the pier. The mutant dolphins didn’t bother him. They must have cleared out of the way because then another projectile sprayed underneath the water. It bashed into the pier and cracked a pair of yachts into each other. Ricks climbed the ladder onto the pier as the fuel spill worsened. Instead of running to safety ashore, the teen stumbled into his father’s yacht. He staggered out a minute later with his father’s shotgun. From another camera, they saw the harbormaster shouting at Ricks. Even without sound, they knew from his hospital bed testimony that he had told the teen to get off the pier and, when he saw the gun, he warned him about starting a fire. Ricks didn’t pay the shouting man any heed. He cast a long gaze into the fuel-filled water, where the mutant dolphins where spinning in a tight circle like an underwater carousel. He aimed at them for a long time, like he knew the consequences but just couldn’t help himself. Ricks fired. The fuel in the water ignited. The pier soon followed. When the fire crept toward him, the boy didn’t run. He stood there like that burning figure those ravers light during that festival in the desert. Sneed turned off the video before it got too gruesome.
“That ain’t what you call a healthy, well-adjusted young man,” Sneed said.
“Something sick got into his head,” Skillings said. “How else could he go from trying to rescue his friend to lighting up the whole pier in his suicide? Once he went underwater, he changed. Did you see his eyes?”
Skillings went back to the part right before Ricks fired the gun. As he aimed into the water, she froze the frame and zoomed in on his ey
es. The footage was grainy and the color not well defined, but his pupils had clearly disappeared. The boy’s eyes went solid purple for a split second before he fired.
“You should do a more technical video analysis,” General Colon said. “It was probably glare.”
“You can analyze it all you want, but I know what I saw,” Skillings said. “Purple—just like the infected gator and the infected bird that Cooper described before he became rat food.”
“That’s nothing but a drunken tale,” Swartzman said. “There are no confirmed reports of animals with purple eyes.”
Moni had fought an infected snake and its eyes didn’t glow, but maybe they never got the chance. The survivor of the gator attack had seemed so sure of every detail about the creature, especially the piercing purple eyes.
“I’ll tell you one thing; it would sure help if another witness stepped forward,” Sneed said with his gaze firmly affixed on Moni. “I bet that girl of yours got a good look at the killer’s eyes and whole lot more. Too bad she’s not more cooperative.”
He always threw the blame back in the same place, Moni thought. He put it all at the feet of the only black woman in the room. It reminded her of junior high when anytime something went missing, the black girl took it, and when half the class carried on, the teacher told only Moni that she better quiet down or face detention.
No matter how many criminals she busted and how many children she rescued from abusive homes, Moni couldn’t change the way people perceived her.
“I’m doing wonders for that child. You have no idea,” Moni told Sneed. “I should be asking, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ This case has you stumped so bad that you need an eight-year-old girl’s help to solve it.”
“Put me in a room with that girl for five minutes and I guarantee you she’ll start squawking!” Sneed slammed both fists down on the table so hard that his coffee leapt out of its cup. Moni flinched at the thought of him getting those meat mallets on Mariella. “We have a video showing people getting taken underwater, but we don’t know what happens from there. That girl of yours saw it. She must have. I don’t know if it’s the Lagoon Watcher or one of his accomplices that’s doing it, but somebody’s lopping off heads up and down the lagoon. If we can stop that, I bet we’ll stop catastrophes like this.”
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