“Your girl’s quite the little artist,” Officer Nina Skillings said as she stood behind Moni holding the drawing of the burning teenager in her face. Even though she stood four inches shorter than Moni, it felt like Skillings towered over her like a bear.
“You’re lucky I have a child in my arms, ‘cause next time you jump out on me like that, I might have an involuntary reaction with my trigger finger that you wouldn’t appreciate,” Moni said as she spun around carefully so she wouldn’t wake Mariella. “Now where’d you get that from?”
“I did a little searching in your girl’s backpack. You left it in the car and I was about to return it to you.” Skillings flashed the mischievous smile of a brat who could do whatever she wanted and get away with it. It helps having the lead detective in her pocket. “So she drew a decapitated dog and it happened. Then she drew a burning man and it happened. What are the odds of that?”
Mariella rolled her head across Moni’s shoulder and hung it stiffly off her side. She gently nudged the girl back into a more comfortable position. Moni’s wrists began aching from hoisting her up for so long. If only she could put her in the car and drive out of there, but that pest Skillings wouldn’t get out of her way.
From the academy on, Skillings had always shot straighter and fought harder than Moni. Top brass had put Skillings on the biggest cases because she would knock a few heads to get results. Moni had striven for years to win the confidence of her superiors so they’d trust her with the big cases like they did with Skillings. Instead, Moni got the “kiddie” beat.
The one time her skills with juvenile victims made her a vital part of a key investigation, Skillings made sure Moni knew she couldn’t play in her league.
“Kids draw a lot of funny things, but you wouldn’t know, because you terrify them with that sunny personality of yours.” Moni said. “Now, excuse me. I’m taking Mariella home.”
Moni tried slipping around her, but that stack of muscles with a ponytail blocked her off from the car.
“You’re letting your feelings for that kid blind you to the facts of this case. That girl is more than a victim. She’s part of the problem.”
“The problem!” Moni recalled all the times her teachers had saw her sulking and irresponsive in class as she recovered from the beating her father gave her the night before. Those teachers had called her a problem child. “This child just lost both her parents. Nothing could be more devastating. I can’t believe you would dare accuse her of doing anything wrong.”
“I’m not accusing her. I’m accusing what’s inside her and what was inside him.” Skillings pointed to the burning teenager in the drawing. “He was possessed by the bacteria from the lagoon. That’s why he blew himself up with the pier. Why would the bacteria make only animals attack and not people?”
“Possessed? That fool wasn’t possessed. He was a teenager drunk off his ass and scared of the dolphins with human arms that took his friends. Of course he wasn’t thinking straight when he fired that shot.”
“But how did Mariella know he would do that? How did she know about the attack on her classmate’s dog?” Skillings asked. She answered her own questions before Moni could reply. “The girl’s connected to all of this. She spent a whole night on the shore of the lagoon. It must have infected her. That’s why she’s so damn weird.”
“No,” Moni muttered, but the accusations found a foothold in her brain.
She had never questioned Mariella’s behavior. She accepted everything as grieving. From the moment Moni had pulled her from the mangroves, the girl acted as if she had never set foot on this planet. Everyone who knew Mariella before the incident said she emerged as an entirely different person. When she couldn’t explain the girl’s keen reading of her emotions, or her haunting drawings, she simply let it roll off her as smoothly as rainwater. Before she knew it, she found herself standing in a deep puddle.
“You need to get the girl tested for bacteria-for real this time,” Skillings said. “Let’s take her in now before something else happens.”
Mariella’s once limp hand slid up and gripped Moni hard around the back of her neck. The girl unconsciously pulled herself up around Moni. Mariella depended on her, Moni thought. Skillings cared about her career, not protecting the girl. Her rival sought to embarrass her in front of Sneed and steal the most precious thing that had ever come into Moni’s life. Mariella couldn’t be infected, Moni thought. She knows the girl. She loves her. She doesn’t love some bacteria or an experiment by a deranged scientist.
“Get out of our way,” Moni told Skilling.
She put her hands on her hips and stood there as if she were cast in granite. “Bring the girl in.”
Without a second of thought, Moni drew her pistol. She brought it halfway up to Skillings’ chest. Then she stopped. In one flick of her wrist and tug of her finger, all her problems would get blown away. Usually so hesitant to use her weapon, Moni felt an insatiable urge to send a bullet through Skillings’ throat so she’d shut the hell up and leave poor Mariella alone.
“You really wanna go down this road with me?” asked Skillings, who didn’t appear intimidated in the least. She obviously didn’t believe Moni would shoot because she had heard the stories. The last time one of her partners got in a shootout with a suspect, Moni had ducked behind a wall and let the other officer take care of it. He nearly got his head blown off but the suspect ran out of ammo and surrendered.
Moni knew she should put the gun away. She couldn’t-not until Skillings backed off from Mariella.
What am I doing? What am I doing? She might be a bitch supreme, but I can’t shoot her.
Suddenly a patrol car pulled into the sheriff station’s parking lot and its headlights grazed past them. Moni quickly put her gun away and turned around so the light wouldn’t hit Mariella in the eyes and wake her up. That move solved one dilemma for her, but it created another one. When Moni glanced across the street as the headlights briefly illuminated the parking lot of a retail plaza, she saw a blue pickup truck with two reflective circles in the driver’s seat. Moni knew right away that those were binoculars. They were pointed right at Mariella and her.