Moni laid Mariella in her bed and shut the door. The girl didn’t look sleepy after getting woken up by a little car chase. Still, Moni figured Mariella needed all the rest she could get before another trying day at school.
She should have hit the sack too, but Moni’s rush of adrenaline wouldn’t settle down. She replayed every swerve and bump of the chase in her mind. If she had clipped him harder on that first hit, he would have spun out. Or if she had listened to Skillings and boxed him in, they might have slowed him and help would have arrived before he reached the lagoon. He would be behind bars right now and not out there as a threat that could spring at Mariella from any direction. Moni’s hands trembled as if they still held the wheel that guided an engine blasting over the asphalt.
She grabbed her wrist and steadied it. Moni opened the refrigerator door and gazed inside for a few long moments. She felt like cramming everything on the shelves down her pie hole. Instead, she settled on frying up a couple of eggs for some late night breakfast.
Moni sat down with her plate and grabbed the remote control. She couldn’t turn on the TV. She feared that the first thing she’d see would be a newscast of the crash scene. The cameras must have caught Sneed chewing her out. That’s why Darren had called hoping he could take advantage of her, Moni thought. He always waited for her to throw herself into his arms for refuge any time something went wrong in her life. Not this time.
Moni called up Aaron. She hoped he slept near his phone. He answered on the fifth ring with a groggy voice. “Hello?”
“What do you mean, ‘Hello?’ Don’t you know it’s me on the caller ID?”
“Moni? Aw, I’m sorry. My eyes are still adjusting. Is it morning already?”
“Well technically, yes. It’s four in the morning.”
“Oh shit. What happened?” He suddenly sounded more alert. “Are you okay? What about Mariella?”
She told him everything about the chase, save for the drawing of the burning man, and the strange feeling in her head when she approached the lagoon. She couldn’t even remember how it felt anymore. It seemed like a fleeting dream. Aaron asked her whether she knew for sure that Harry Trainer had been in that pickup. She told him that she didn’t get a clear look at his face, but the vehicle had Trainer’s license plate. He accepted the evidence. She knew his professor would seek another explanation, just as he would if they had caught the Lagoon Watcher with a machete in one hand and a severed head in the other.
When Aaron learned about Skillings’ serious injuries, he stopped asking anxious questions about the pursuit. He went silent. This time, someone he knew had gotten hurt. Moni recalled the first time she learned that police work was no rumpus adventure. She had stood over the flag-draped coffin of a 24-year veteran and then watched his sobbing wife and kids receive the flag. Luckily, they wouldn’t need that for Skillings now, but Moni knew either one of them could have been body-bagged after that chase. The pelican might have struck the wrong car.
With the Lagoon Watcher still lurking in the dark, body bags with the names Moni and Mariella on them might yet get filled with their cold, stiff contents.
“Will you come by again after I pick Mariella up from school?” Moni asked.
“Sure. Why don’t I come in the morning and meet you after you drop her off? You sound a little shaken up. Maybe you should call in sick.”
“Wait a minute. Don’t you have class in the morning?”
“I have lab with Dr. Swartzman. I can blow it off.”
“Hold on there, slacker. Don’t make me bring you in for cutting class,” she said playfully. It didn’t escape her that if he came by after she dropped the girl off, they would be in her house alone. That playa better check himself. “But for real, there’s a ton of evidence you and your professor need to go over. I’m sure the pelican that attacked Nina was infected, but you better make sure. And there’s more stuff from the marina explosion, so, put your work in and then come by.”
“Alright.” He sounded bummed that he didn’t have an out from his studies. “But this time, I’m stopping for pizza first. And with extra pepperoni.”
“Okay, I can live with that. I’ll see you… tonight.” She ended the conversation with a smile-a total 180 from where she began it.
Moni kept Mariella under her watchful eye that afternoon. The girl tried going outside to the back porch, but she wouldn’t let her anywhere near the water. She felt a chill every time the girl walked by the rear sliding glass door. She still hasn’t replaced the screen that the infected snake had destroyed.
She had Mariella sit on the coach, where she breezed through her math homework in a few minutes.
“Good job, baby.” Moni smiled warmly. “Every time I finished my homework, my momma used to give me a Popsicle. Would you like one?”
The girl nodded eagerly. Moni took one each of the four flavors out of the freezer and let her choose. To her relief, Mariella picked strawberry and not grape. Not that it would have meant anything if the girl had showed a tendency for purple since she has nothing wrong with her, Moni thought. Tropic the cat stretched with his back arched and placed his front paws on Mariella’s lap as he begged for a lick of the treat. A cat can avoid its owners all day, and then it sees them eating and all of a sudden it’s their best friend. The girl extended a gooey red finger for the purring feline.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Tropic bolted to Moni’s bedroom before he scored a taste.
“Save some room. That must be our friend, Aaron, with the pizza,” Moni said. The girl didn’t seem all that thrilled, but at least she didn’t run away like Tropic.
Keeping her eyes on the sliding door, Moni undid the chain and swung open the front door. “I’m glad you could…” When she saw those deceptively charming brown eyes and that dimpled chin, she nearly swallowed her tongue.
“Make it? Well I sure am too,” said Bo Williams. Inviting himself in, Moni’s father stepped through the doorway before she could regain her faculties, and slam it in his face. He spun around and guided the door firmly closed. “You’re looking mighty fine for someone who’s been in a car wreck.”
She shrank from his gaze and avoided meeting his eyes. “I got cut up a bit pulling the other officer out.” Moni held up her bandaged hand in the hope that he wouldn’t beat on an injured woman. Her memories of her bruised mother’s pleas for mercy told her that it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. When her mother had blocked the entrance to Moni’s room, he had shoved her. Moni remembered hearing her mother’s head thud against the wall and then her mother’s soft sobs as her father penetrated her room. Then he came to her closet.
“I saw you bleed’n on TV and figured I oughta come over and make sure you’re okay.” Her father’s bushy eyebrows arched into his crinkly forehead in an expression of sincerity fit for a vulture.
“I’m fine. Thank you.” She started backing toward the couch so she could shield Mariella from the man who had left a scar on her life; Mariella had enough lasting wounds.
“I see you’ve got company.” His eyes shifted toward Mariella. He strolled toward her. Even at 51, Bo Williams had retained much of his burly frame from his days as a linebacker. His skin had gotten as wrinkled as an old leather sofa, but he still had sturdy muscles under there. The man walked with a slight limp from a sore hip. Too bad Moni couldn’t outrun him with her back against the wall-a position he always caught her in.
“I reckon this is my new granddaughter.” He leaned over and put his hands on his knees. A smile crossed the prickly hairs of his unshaven face. “I’m Grandpa Bo. What’s yer name sweetheart?”
The way he eyed her like a tasty new chew toy made Moni’s stomach curdle. She stepped in front of Mariella and shielded her from his gaze. The girl grabbed a hold of her leg.
“You’re not supposed to come within a thousand feet of children,” said Moni, reminding her father of the terms of his release. “Your parole officer would nail you if he knew you were out here.”
“You’re probably right. Why don’t you give him a call?” He gestured with both hands toward her phone on the counter. Then he crossed his arms and flexed his biceps. “Go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”
Seeing the threatening message behind those words, Moni wished prisons didn’t have weight sets. She didn’t move a toenail.
He father nodded in satisfaction. He trotted over and sat on the couch besides Mariella. Instead of using common sense and fleeing, the girl stared at him curiously with her hands in her lap.
“I asked for yer name.” he said. “Are you fix’n to answer?”
Mariella provided her usual response. She looked at Moni hoping that she’d answer for her. No. She couldn’t let her father know anything about the girl. Even the newspapers haven’t printed her name. She didn’t need him showing up at her school and asking for her.
“Not much for jabbering, are ya? That’s not such a bad thing.” He struck Moni with a gaze that made her feel covered in earth worms. “My kid was way too loud. She didn’t know when to shut up.”
Her father had told her to shut up when he whipped her over and over across her bare arm with his leather belt. He nearly crushed her wrist with his grip so she couldn’t get away. She couldn’t stop screaming and crying. He had told her to shut up again, but Moni didn’t stop until her throat burned so bad that she couldn’t utter a sound.
She stared at the fist-sized bull head belt buckle her father had strapped over his jeans. Moni reached for Mariella. The girl took her hand and followed her away from the couch toward the kitchen.
“Where you think you’re going?” He sprang off the couch and took center stage in the middle of the living room. They couldn’t make a break for either door without running into him. She couldn’t get her gun either because she had left it atop the bookshelf full of African warrior art. “After all I did for you-you treat me like some kind of leper. You wouldn’t have gone to that fancy police academy without my money. I put you up your whole life. I put a roof over your head by bust’n my ass every day in a sweaty garage. I’ve been working since my pa died. I supported my little sisters. It never stops with you women. How long I gotta keep break’n my back?”
If only he had meant the part about his back breaking literally, Moni thought. Recalling that his griping usually preceded a severe beating, she sheltered Mariella behind her.
“With all the money I’ve given you for rent, I’ve repaid my debt to you ten times over,” Moni said.
“By doing what? Pretending to be a cop as an excuse for babysitting? That’s not real work. I work in the auto shop, but they keep me in the back like a damn cockroach. They don’t want anybody recognizing me from my mug shot. I wouldn’t have to deal with that shit if your fucking friend didn’t go squealing on me. She shoulda taken it like a trooper.”
After her father had abused her best friend, she didn’t talk to Moni again. Her friends abandoned her because she lived with a monster. Even when they locked him up, her friend blamed Moni for not warning her and keeping her away from her father. Moni knew her friend had been right.
She wouldn’t let him make Mariella the next casualty. Moni had so many vicious barbs inside her she yearned to launch at her father. They fell flat inside her mouth when he locked eyes with her. “You’re not welcome in my home. Please leave,” was all she mustered. Mariella reached out from behind her and squeezed Moni’s hand.
“You’re asking me to leave? You’re asking me? ” He shouted in her face and pointed his thumb at his rock solid chest. Moni flinched and stumbled backwards. “I should be telling you to leave. If it weren’t for you, my landlord wouldn’t be threatening to put an eviction notice on my door.”
“But I paid your rent for this month.”
“Yeah well, the money ran out before I could pay it. And it’s your fault, ya hear. Three nights a week I used to fish underneath the bridge and catch enough for dinner. Then the murders started and they taped off the walkway. They say the fish in there are poisonous. And I’ll be damned if it isn’t ‘cause of your case. The same guy in the lagoon who wants that girl of yours doesn’t want me to eat. He’s starving me until you give her back.”
“That’s completely ridiculous. Why would he starve you and not me?”
Ignoring her logic, her father threw his hands up. “He’s gonna starve everybody. And then he’ll do worse to you. You get it yet? Just give him what he wants.”
He nodded toward the little girl hiding behind Moni. Some grandfather he made.
“That won’t happen. Mariella is staying here with me.”
“Well, if I can’t eat by the river, then you’re gonna pay me for my troubles, but first you’re gonna feed me. What you got to eat?”
Moni’s heart dropped like a stone inside her chest when she saw that her father wouldn’t take her money and leave. He had set his mind on staying for dinner, and maybe longer. She could never stop him from getting what he wanted. She felt so embarrassed that she looked helpless in front of Mariella. The girl squeezed her hand tightly, as if she thought it would strengthen Moni and transform her into the hero the young one deserved.
Her father shoved his way past her into the kitchen. Along the way he nearly knocked Mariella into the wall.
“Watch where you’re going!” Moni yelled as she knelt down and cradled the trembling girl against her chest. “This is a fragile child.”
“Oh don’t worry,” he said coldly as he towered over the two of them. “I know how to handle fragile children. You remember, don’t you darlin’?”
Unable to bare the trauma of seeing his face, Moni shut her eyes. She felt herself in the darkness of her closet. She could hear his heavy breathing. It made the thin door vibrate. Sometimes she grabbed the handle and tugged with all her might. She could never prevent him from opening it.
The doorbell rang. Moni’s eyes shot open. She had totally forgotten about Aaron. He had stood up to Darren despite having a gun in his face, so he shouldn’t be afraid of her father.
“Now’s not a good time for company,” her father said. “Tell the dipstick to take a hike.”
With a nod, Moni led Mariella on a jittery gait toward the door. When she got away from her father’s reach, she swung it all the way open so Aaron got a clear view of the unwanted guest.
“Whoa. Looks like you ladies have the munchies,” Aaron said as he balanced a couple of pizza boxes in his arms. She noticed a fresh tomato sauce stain on his shirt-evidence that he had stolen a piece on the way over. “Hey, is that your…”
“He’s my father,” Moni cut in. She made sure Aaron saw her shoot her old man a wary glare.
“Hey, man,” Aaron called to him. “I hope you like hot pepperoni. But who doesn’t right?”
Marching toward the young man with a bull rider’s swagger, Bo Williams had lost his appetite for food. He looked ready to sink his teeth into something else.
“She’s not taking company right now, so git.” He pointed a greasy fingernail toward the road.
Aaron didn’t budge. “But, dude, she invited me.”
“I’m not gonna warn you twice, boy.” He made a fist armored with two fat and bumpy gold rings. They could easily cave in a nose.
Aaron looked right past him to Moni. “Hey, I live with my parents and they aren’t this harsh. What gives? Is he sauced up?” He made a drinking motion and gulping sounds. Like so many young men, Aaron didn’t think a man more than twice his age could hurt him. If he had a sense of the violence Bo Williams could unleash, he didn’t show it.
Her father directed his disapproving frown on Moni. “So this is the kind of loser you’re dating. You deserve his dumb ass, I’ll tell you that much.” Then he turned on Aaron with double the fury as his face swelled like a microwaved tomato. “You wanna see some sauce? When I was in the joint, I learned how to cut open a man’s throat by digging a key into his neck. I got a whole keychain full in my pocket.”
“Jail, huh? That’s pretty hardcore.” Aaron said without sounding startled in the least. Her father gnashed his teeth and reached into his pocket.
“Okay, that’s enough getting acquainted for one day.” Moni interjected before Aaron earned a fist through his head. “Now dad, I’ll give you that little loan and then you can be on your way.”
Her father shook his head. “You want me to leave ‘cause that punk’s here? Don’t bet on it.”
“What?” The moment he caught on to the extortion, Aaron set the pizza boxes down and fronted up on Bo Williams with his arms wide and his chest pumped up. It would have looked intimidating if Aaron had more than chicken scratch for muscles. “You’re hitting your daughter up for cash? That’s low, man. You’re gonna leave here as penniless as you came.”
“You got plenty of yap, don’t cha little doggie?” Bo Williams got nose-to-nose with him. Moni tugged at Aaron’s arm, but he didn’t back away. “If you stick your nose in my family, yer gonna get it bit off.” He flashed a grin of yellow-stained teeth with a few gaps in them. No doubt he had knocked out more teeth than he had lost.
Darren had kept her father at bay since his release from prison and her street-tough ex could probably tackle a bull. Aaron fought walls of water and flopping fish-not exactly good practice for an ex-con with a reputation for fighting dirty. He got the family kicked out of Disney World on Moni’s first time there because he got into a fight with another dad in line. He had gouged the man’s eyes bloody. The experience had freaked the victim out so much that he didn’t fly back to Florida for the court appearance, so her father walked free.
Aaron showed no signs of skirting this fight. Moni wondered whether he had fallen head over heels for her in a little less than a week or whether Aaron had a delusional macho complex that wouldn’t let him pass up any challenge. Either way, she held Mariella tight while she shuffled away from her father.
“She asked you to leave,” Aaron told him. “You better listen. Or is your hearing aid low on batteries?”
“What’s that, sonny?” Bo Williams cupped one hand to his ear. “You said I should stay?”
“I said that… Oof!”
He socked Aaron in the gut, driving two large rings into his belly. With his innards nearly coming up his throat, Aaron doubled over. Bo Williams hammered his other fist into the small of his back. Aaron dropped on all fours like a humbled dog.
“Some choice of man you got. I tell you what, if he were in prison, he’d be on his knees like this all day,” he told Moni with a hearty laugh.
Aaron coughed and wobbled back to his feet. He weakly raised his hands into a boxing pose, but he left his hands so wide that Moni’s father could have driven a truck down the middle straight to his jaw.
“Aaron, you don’t have to do this,” Moni pleaded. If he couldn’t stop her father, at least he could save himself. Moni couldn’t carry another victim of his abuse on her conscience.
“Aw, come on girl. Give the boy a chance,” her father said as he pulled out his keychain. He held a key in his fist like a spike. “I haven’t done one of these in a while.”
Her father jabbed the key toward Aaron’s throat. The young man fell backward with his feet flailing. He smacked down on his back. With his leg extended above him, Aaron’s foot landed square on Bo William’s nuts. Moni’s father doubled over and groaned. He tried cursing him, but his contorted purple face couldn’t squeeze any words out.
Finally someone shut that oaf up. Thank God.
Moni took a step toward the bookcase with her gun on it, but stopped herself. Her father wouldn’t let this keep him away forever. He would remember what she did when he returned.
“You should probably go and have that checked out, dad,” Moni said while her father clasped his package with both hands as if he were smothering a fire.
“And I think you better check out of here before I dish out another round of whoop ass.” Aaron sprang up and posed like a guy who had won a fight with a manly strike rather than desperate blow any four-year-old could have landed.
Her father tried straightening his posture into a fighting stance but his aging body couldn’t recover so quickly. His vulnerability depressed Moni. She wished he had such a weakness years ago when she was a girl. Her slaps and kicks had never hurt him. They only made him cackle and hit her back harder.
This time, Moni’s father had been sapped of his fight-for one day at least. He slinked out the doorway and away from the house, but left his daughter with a chilling farewell. “If I have to live on the street, I’ll have plenty of time to think. You’ll be on my mind, Moni, and so will that darlin’ granddaughter of mine.”
Moni couldn’t slam the door behind him fast enough. She threw her arms around Aaron. She had found a loyal soldier. Not a smart one, but one that would stand by her and, as an added bonus, was plenty cute. She combed her hand through his golden waves of hair and rubbed her nose on his neck.
Aaron giggled from her touch. “I guess that means thanks. What is that, cat language?”
“Meow. Meow.” Moni purred as she ran her fingers delicately down the back of his neck. “That means, ‘You were like a lion out there, big boy.’”
“Meow,” said Tropic the cat for real as he snuck out of the bedroom on the prowl for the source of the pizza smell. They traded smiles.
“Come on, against that old man? Mr. so-called Prison Brawler with his scary set of keys. Oh no, he’s going to unlock me!” Aaron crossed his hands over his neck and stuck out his tongue.
Moni backed off from him with her face as serious as a Norman Rockwell painting. “My dad served time. And he’s put more than a few people in the hospital.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Moni shook her head. Aaron’s eyes widened. He rubbed the spot on his belly where her father had punched him. “No wonder he hits so freaking hard. Thanks for warning me.”
“If I would have warned you, would you have run away and left us?” asked Moni with a glance toward Mariella, who stood with her back to the bookshelf watching them curiously.
“Now I know you’re jiving with me,” Aaron said in his best street talk as he crossed his arms all thuggish. “You know I wouldn’t bail on you and the little boo. I stayed for your gun-toting ex and a killer snake. Why would I leave for pops the ex-con? For real Moni, you may want to tone it down a bit. Your posse is totally whack.”
“Whack? That word is so nineties,” Moni said. Aaron shrugged as he apparently realized he hadn’t swept her off her feet just yet. If only he knew that she didn’t care about the way he spoke or how tough he looked. His actions spoke loudly enough. “Believe me, I didn’t ask for all this trouble. It just finds me. And it finds Mariella too. Put the two of us together and, well, you know.”
They simultaneously looked at the girl for a reaction. Mariella kept shifting her eyes between them and scanning the outside of the house through the window. It looked like she had a feeling that trouble still had a beat out on them.
“I better hang around for a while tonight,” Aaron said as he gazed out the window into the darkness. Moni took his arm and leaned her head on his shoulders, where she felt the tight muscles that he had honed from swimming in the choppy sea. “You never know what’s out there.”