The parking lot across the street darkened when the patrol car moved on, but Moni knew the man inside the pickup truck still watched her and the girl as they stood underneath the bright lights around the Melbourne sheriff’s station. When Moni stared back at him for too long, the truck sprang alive like a lion roaring in the middle of a jungle night. It jumped the curb from the parking lot onto the street and burned rubber down Sarno Road. It sped east in the direction of the Indian River Lagoon.
Moni’s skin crawled as she thought of how the man had been observing her and the girl the whole time. and lord knows how many other instances. If she had left Mariella alone for one minute, she might have lost her girl forever.
“It’s a blue pickup truck like the one the Lagoon Watcher drives,” Moni told Skillings, who finally set her hawkish gaze elsewhere. “He was outside Mariella’s school one day too. He’s stalking her. So there’s your suspect.”
Skillings growled as she sprinted towards her car. “This doesn’t change anything I said. We’ll finish this after I bring him in.”
“No, after I bring him in,” Moni corrected her as she finally unlocked her Taurus so she could give its six-cylinders a workout. “That asshole’s gonna pay for the hell he put my baby though.”
Moni swung open the back door and placed Mariella in the seat as gently and quickly as she could. Her nerves must have rattled her hands, because when she finished strapping the girl in she noticed Mariella staring at her-not with sleepy eyes but fully alert and razor sharp. She sensed Moni’s urgency.
“I’m gonna catch the man who did bad things to your parents,” Moni said as she jumped behind the wheel.
She peeled out of her parking space and leapt the curb. Skillings’ patrol car had a good lead on her. She saw the red taillights of the Lagoon Watcher’s truck farther down the road. After11 p.m., there weren’t many other cars on the quiet Melbourne streets. Moni radioed for backup. She didn’t count on it getting there before the stalker had plenty of chances to escape..
A sedan pulled into the road ahead of her. Ignoring the brakes, Moni swerved into the oncoming lane and back again as she zipped around it. Suddenly, the suspect’s truck barreled onto the grass on the right side of the street. It headed straight for an elementary school. Skillings’ patrol car raced behind him. He spun up chunks of turf-with one a big clump splattering off Skillings’ windshield. The truck shredded some bushes and then rumbled into the school’s empty parking lot. The Lagoon Watcher turned toward a building, then swerved the truck the opposite way and burst through a chain link fence that led him back onto Sarno Road. Skillings’ car was slowed down by the muddled grass and whacked by the fence as it reentered the roadway. That gave the Lagoon Watcher plenty of distance from her.
Moni hadn’t fallen for the bait. She had stayed on the road the whole time and found her car right on the truck’s tailpipe. She could only imagine the look on Skillings’ face when she saw that the “kiddie cop” had out-maneuvered her.
Of course, following the Lagoon Watcher like a tick on a dog’s ass wouldn’t get the job done. This wouldn’t end until she stopped that truck and yanked him out by the hair on the back of his neck. Moni pumped the gas. Her car rammed the pickup’s bumper on the right side. It drifted slightly left, toward the oncoming lane, but quickly straightened out.
It would take a much harder blow if she wanted his truck spinning across the road. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Moni saw Mariella on edge in her seat like a cat spooked by a thunder storm. She couldn’t play bumper cars at 90 miles an hour with her girl in the backseat.
Looking for a glancing blow that would slow him down, Moni pulled even with the truck along its right side. She nudged her car into its door. Sparks flew. The pressure forced the truck toward the opposite lane, where a pair of headlights sped toward them. Seeing the oncoming car, Moni disengaged the truck, and pulled back into her lane. The truck pulled left-straight at the car racing toward it. Moni flinched. The oncoming driver, who got a rude surprise on his twilight drive, sounded his horn. The Lagoon Watcher swung his truck back into the right lane, sideswiping Moni’s smaller car.
“Hold on!” Moni cried as her car shot over the sidewalk and onto the lawn of a church. She struggled for control over the vehicle. Her headlights caught sight of a large gazebo; it was the kind used for a wedding, or maybe a memorial service. Rejecting the brakes for fear of skidding through the grass, Moni banked the wheel hard left, and revved the gas. Her car responded so well that it brought her back onto the road, and straight into the oncoming lane. She saw the glare of headlights ahead. A horn shrieked. Moni weaved back into the right lane an instant before the tow truck sped by. She hoped she would need its services later, but not for her car.
The truck she had a fix on wrecking opened a sizable lead on her. He didn’t have it all in the clear, though. Moni’s ass-busting work had helped Skillings and her patrol car slide right onto the Lagoon Watcher’s tail. They crossed the train tracks within moments of each other. Moni lagged behind. She didn’t mind trailing so much anymore. She could nearly feel Mariella’s tremors of terror from the backseat. Moni’s assault had nearly gotten her killed. It frustrated the hell out of her, but she couldn’t take any more risks with the girl in the car.
That’s exactly what everyone says about me; that I always find an excuse to back down. Damn it. I have no choice this time. If I get Mariella killed trying to arrest him, then the Lagoon Watcher will have gotten exactly what he wanted. He might even have baited me into this chase so I would risk her life. That lagoon-loving vegan son of a bitch.
The Lagoon Watcher’s truck cut the corner of Sarno Road and U.S. 1 by ducking through a parking lot. It emerged onto the highway with a southern heading. Moni got on the radio and updated the second wave of patrol cars on his direction. She had a feeling where he was headed, and she knew backup wouldn’t make it in time. They were one mile away from the stretch of U.S. 1 that ran right up against the bacteria infested Indian River Lagoon.
Moni grabbed her radio. “He’s headed for the lagoon. That’s his refuge. You hear me, Nina? You gotta cut him off.”
“Then come on! Box and stop.” Skillings replied over the radio. Moni didn’t respond. “You need me to spell it out for you? I’ll pull ahead of him to slow him down. I need you to get behind him and box him in on my tail. That should buy us time until help arrives. Got it?”
“But why don’t you just clip him and spin him out?” Moni asked.
“This is the highway, not some backwater street. He could spin into someone-like you almost made him do back there.”
Moni clamped her teeth. Her tongue simmered in her mouth from the fiery words she refrained from releasing. Everyone could hear what they said on the radio, especially the part about how Moni had screwed up.
“While you were getting faked off the road, I got some good licks on him,” Moni said over the radio. “But I better stop now. It’s getting too dangerous for Mariella here with me. It’s your turn to step up, Nina.”
“Oh sure, it’s too dangerous for her,” Skillings said. “Big surprise-Mariella helps the Lagoon Watcher get away. What else do you think she’s been doing for him?”
Moni could imagine Sneed’s ears perking like a K-9 catching the scent of blood when he heard that remark. If she didn’t catch the Lagoon Watcher and prove that he had been stalking Mariella and not colluding with her, Sneed would rip the poor girl limb from limb until she talked.
Gripping the steering wheel so hard that she nearly broke it off, Moni made a looping turn onto U.S. 1. She saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings rounding a curve in the road. Moni floored it. Seconds later, Moni’s foot suddenly numbed over and eased off the gas. She realized that Skillings hadn’t shown Mariella’s picture of the burning man to anyone else. Without that, Sneed wouldn’t know that lightning had struck twice with those pictures. Skillings wouldn’t let the suspicious drawing stay secret for long.
“We’ll catch this guy,” she told Mariella, who clutched the back of Moni’s seat so she wouldn’t bounce around. “And then we’ll have a little talk with our friend Nina.”
By the time she came out of the curve in the road, she saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings crossing a flat bridge over an offshoot of the Eau Gallie River. The patrol car edged its nose toward the pickup’s right rear tire. If she connected on target, the truck would whip around and thump right smack into the bridge’s guardrail, and maybe over into the water. The Lagoon Watcher must have seen it coming because he swerved left. Instead of connecting on the side of the truck, the patrol car clipped its rear bumper. While the truck weaved in and out of its lane a few times until it steadied, Skillings’ patrol car straightened out but lost much of its velocity. Moni quickly pulled even with her. She shot Skillings a glance through the window. Skillings greeted her with an accusatory stare that said this would have been over already if Moni had done her job.
“I haven’t worked with you before, bitch, and I ain’t starting now,” Moni said, but not over the radio.
By the time they were approaching the major intersection with Babcock Street, Moni saw flashing red and blue lights far back in her rearview mirror and up ahead. She also saw red traffic lights above the intersection and a smattering of cars racing by at speeds only driven late at night when people think they’re the only cars on the road. The Lagoon Watcher’s pickup didn’t slow one bit. Instead he slammed on his horn in a long wail. It jumbled with the blaring siren of the police car approaching the intersection from the oncoming lane. Somehow, the noise didn’t rattle a car streaking left to right across the truck’s path. The oncoming patrol car created another obstacle by looping around and covering most of the three lanes on the other side of the intersection. Unless the Lagoon Watcher slammed the brakes before crossing, his bones would get crushed inside his truck like a bag of potato chips under boot.
Anticipating a horrible smashup, Moni held her breath. He didn’t slow down. The Lagoon Watcher whipped his truck to the left just as the car crossed his path. His pickup delivered a hard lick across the car’s rear tire that spun it out-straight into Moni’s lane. As the Lagoon Watcher’s truck avoided the parked police car by jumping the curb on the left side of the road, the struck car hurtled toward Moni with its broadside. Her heart seized up. A chill shot through her body as her headlights showed the rapidly approaching mass of glass and steel. Moni thought of Mariella sitting in the backseat. The innocent child had lost her parents. Now Moni would lead her straight to her death. She hit the brakes and swerved right. They missed the oncoming vehicle, but smacked into the side of Skillings’ patrol car. The blow bumped the patrol car halfway off the road, where a light pole sheared off its right side mirror. If Skillings hadn’t been there, Moni and Mariella would have hit that same pole with much more force.
“Sorry ‘bout that, darlin’,” Moni said sweetly without Skillings hearing her.
The next second, Skillings answered her over the radio anyway. “What the fuck was that? Who are you trying to catch, him or me?”
Moni wouldn’t legitimize such an obnoxious question with a reply. She carefully weaved through the intersection and around the other patrol car as Skillings followed close behind. The Lagoon Watcher had recovered from his off-road jaunt and once again had some distance on them. Not eager to put Mariella’s life in danger once more, Moni hung back while Skillings closed in. With the superior speed of Nina’s patrol car, plus three pairs of flashing lights growing larger in Moni’s rearview mirror, the Lagoon Watcher would soon have a net of officers surrounding him. Then they arrived on his turf. The left side of the road opened up into a small clearing. Out past the line of palm trees, Moni saw the black pool of the Indian River Lagoon. The highway curved closer to the waterline. Soon they were driving about a dozen feet from the home of the bacteria that ate iron, fuel and any living creature that strayed too close.
The stench of over-salted rotten eggs hit Moni’s nose. It usually smelled of salt, but it shouldn’t reek so putridly. Randy Cooper had described such a stench from the lagoon before the infected gator snared his brother in its jaws and dragged him into an acid bath. Moni pulled her car into the far right lane so she drove as far away from the lagoon as possible. Even with the man who had been stalking Mariella straight ahead of her, Moni couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting off the road and over to the lagoon. They called her. They begged her from beneath the black water. Her head rang as if there were a hive of buzzing bees inside her skull. She could no longer feel her body. She felt the lagoon. She felt its insatiable appetite pulling her and the girl toward it. Moni remembered her father’s words.
“The lagoon man has a hunger and I smelled it out there today. That girl belongs to his lagoon and he’s coming to take her back. You can’t stop it, so you best get outta the way.”
Her senses rejoined her body and she quickly realized that she had eased off the gas and let the car drift left. She had been slowing down on the side of the road closest to the lagoon.
“What am I doing?” Moni exclaimed as she smacked herself in the forehead. She shot a glance toward Mariella. “I’m sorry about that, baby.” The girl didn’t seem bothered in the least.
Whatever had districted Moni didn’t show any signs of impacting Skillings’ dogged pursuit of the suspect. Her patrol car had once again closed the gap and got into position for another run at him. Out of the corner of her eye, Moni saw a black figure swoop out of the sky above the lagoon. She saw them. They were unmistakable. The thing had purple eyes that gleamed in the night. It smashed through Skillings’ windshield. Her patrol car careened off the road and lost its grip on the ground. It buckled over the curb and rammed straight into the wide pillar of an office building. Shards of glass erupted from the car. Its frame bent as easily as aluminum foil.
“No!” Moni yelled. She slammed on the brakes and headed for the wreck, which let the Lagoon Watcher turn down a side street without anyone following him. She jumped out of her car and ran to the driver’s side of the battered patrol car. She saw a mess of feathers. The pelican whacked an unconscious Skillings over and over with its long bill. The officer wore a mask of blood and a badly twisted nose. Moni reached through the shattered window, grabbed the bird around the back of its neck and hurled it out of the car. Its feathers flew as it rolled across the pavement before it finally caught its feet under it. The pelican stood and stared down Moni with its glowing purple eyes. She drew her gun and put a bullet between them. The infected creature fell motionless.
It barely registered that Moni had a cut on her hand from the broken glass when she reached for the window. Sticking her hand in once more, she unlocked the door from the inside and felt Skillings’ neck. She hadn’t broken it and she had a pulse, but it wouldn’t last for long with her gushing blood from that gash on her forehead. Moni wrapped her arms around Skillings’ chest and started pulling her out of the wrecked car. A hulking figure swooped in and grabbed the officer’s feet. Clyde Harrison, Skillings’ usual partner, carefully helped set her down on the grass. He knelt over her in a concerned pose. Then he peered up at Moni-all but strangling her with his eyes. They had embarked on this chase together, but instead of watching her fellow officer’s back, Moni had played it safe and let her take the shot that could end her life.
Dozens of officers showed up over the next few hours. They all looked like they wanted Moni thrown headfirst into that building, but none more so than lead detective Tom Sneed. He didn’t care about the TV cameras hovering over the smashed patrol car and closely watching the officers on the scene. The moment he saw her, Sneed tore into Moni with a thunder that resonated for blocks away.
“There’s a damn good officer nearly dead because of you!” Sneed shouted as he lumbered his bulky frame toward her with his finger jutting in her face. “Why did you refuse her order to box him in?”
“She’s not my superior officer. I don’t take orders from…”
“The hell you don’t!” The torrent of hot air from his mouth nearly knocked her over. “Skillings has tactical training in automotive pursuit and tons more experience than you in that field. You know that damn well. If you had listened to her instead of playing dolls with your little friend in the back seat, Nina would be leading our killer into a holding cell right now.”
“I was trying. Look at my car.” Moni pointed out her trusty Taurus, which looked like somebody had gone to town on it with a sledge hammer. “That’s all from my efforts. I nearly got him.”
“So you ‘nearly’ caught him and got your ass kicked. That’s something to be real proud of,” Sneed said with a snarky smirk. “I pray to God that Nina wakes up, because when she does I wanna hear you give her that answer and see what she has to say about that bullshit. You could have easily ended this without any police casualties if you had done what any good officer would do.”
Moni knew he really meant, “What any white officer would do.” She bit her tongue and balled up her fists.
“Maybe I should put you on patrol of the nursery school,” Sneed said. “Or maybe not. You can’t even control that girl of yours. She has you on a leash like you’re her bitch. She’s the one who’s supposed to be doing the barking, but, instead, you are.”
“I did what any sensible parent would do, but you wouldn’t know that because your ugly ass doesn’t have any kids.” Moni shot a repulsed glare at Sneed’s bulging belly. “Don’t you think the DCF would have a problem with me if I got all Bad Boys on a police chase with an eight-year-old girl tagging along?”
“Girl, the DCF already has a problem with you, believe me.”
Something told Moni that he meant those words as a threat more than a warning. She sucked in her breath and finally disengaged from him. As she trotted back toward her car with Mariella peering out the window at all the frantic activity, Moni’s cell phone rang. She wished it was Aaron calling in the middle of the night to check on her. Instead, she got another man. Moni sent Darren straight to voice mail and then made her phone block his number. She had been damaged enough for one day without her ex-boyfriend pretending he gave a damn about her so he could peel her panties off.
“Douche bag,” Moni mumbled as she smiled for Mariella, who remained inside the car.
She welcomed the girl into the front seat with her. Moni put her arm around Mariella, who nestled her little head against her shoulder. As she stroked her bandaged fingers through the girl’s silky hair, Moni lamented how close she had come to harm.
Even though she couldn’t catch the man stalking them on that night, at least she had protected the most important thing in the world, Moni thought. She wished Skillings hadn’t gotten hurt in the process, but now she couldn’t tell anyone about the drawing of the burning man. When the other officers weren’t looking, Moni had fished the picture out of the wrecked car and pocketed it.
What am I thinking? It’s not a good thing that Nina got hurt. It’s a horrible thing.
As she drove home with Mariella on her arm, Moni knew she should feel terrible. She didn’t.