Mute (2 page)

Kane
put the knife away and held out his hands. She backed deeper into the tangle of
mangroves.

“It’s
okay darling. I ain’t gonna hurt cha,” Kane said. “That little knife was for my
protection—and yours—in case the bad person comes back. You want me to help you
outta here to some place dry?” She remained absolutely still. He figured she
might not understand English. He could handle that. “What’s your name girl?
Como te llamas?”

His
Spanish sounded, well, like a redneck speaking the only line of Spanish he
knew. Maybe his horrible accent had deeply offended her because the girl didn’t
respond. Kane hated when kids ignored him. The Bible says kids should respect
their parents, but his daughter ordered him around like a damn farmhand. “
Buy me that movie! Take me to Disney!”
When
he finally put his foot down, the girl went on a tantrum. That’s when Kane
would scoop the stubborn kid up and stick her in her room. Since he didn’t feel
like standing in the mangroves all morning with his fishing time wasting away,
Kane figured he’d move the process along a bit.

Kane
lunged for the girl and reached for her shoulders. She slipped through what he
thought had been an impenetrable thicket of mangrove branches and darted behind
the plants. She didn’t scream or cry. She moved as nimbly and confidently as a
squirrel scurrying up a tree as it evades a lumbering hound. This old dog
wouldn’t lie down yet. Kane plowed through the branches after her.

“Would
you stop running? I’m trying to help you, kid,” Kane shouted. His wife always
scolded him for scaring the kids when he shouted, but sometimes they needed a
good scaring to set them straight. “You’re best off leaving here with… oh,
shit!”

A
black water moccasin fell from a branch right onto his arm. Its wide, flat head
aimed right at Kane’s nose. The snake eyed him with coal-black pupils while
baring its poisonous fangs. Even without a single hiss from the snake, Kane got
the point. He shook the snake off his arm and shuffled backward. The water
moccasin landed on the ground and coiled up between him and the girl. She
didn’t retreat from it one inch. If he had a dozen more beers in him, Kane
would have sworn the girl was hiding behind the snake. Couldn’t be! After
seeing somebody murder her parents and then having this knife-wielding redneck
chasing her around, he reckoned that she rightly feared people more than she
feared a water moccasin.

“If
that’s how you want it, see ya, senorita.” Kane didn’t feel like wrestling a
snake for a girl who didn’t fancy being saved anyway. He backed his way out of
the mangrove swamp toward his boat, where he could call in Sneed and his team.
They’d have a hell of a time with this one.

Chapter 1

Monique
Williams pulled into the parking lot of the lagoon-side park in her Ford
Taurus, which brandished a Brevard County Sheriff’s Office logo on its side.
Her finger on the door handle, she sat there watching the officers scouring through
the old, beat-up Honda that belonged to the victims. It had a sticker on the
back windshield of a man, woman and girl holding hands with smiles drawn across
their faces. If only life could be so simple and families never shattered like
a tray of glasses on the club floor.

Monique,
or Moni, as everybody called her, closed her eyes and shook her head. She had
been a police officer for sixteen years and a detective for half that time. It
never got easier, especially with murder scenes involving children.

Moni
sucked in a deep breath and finally got out of her car. She tugged at her hair
band and made sure one of her thin braids hadn’t slipped out. As she headed
down the boardwalk toward the murder scene, she noticed all the other officers
were white and gave her the all-too-familiar “What the hell is she doing here?”
look. Lead Detective Tom Sneed put his team on this case, she thought. She had
never worked a case as part of his homicide investigation unit—and neither did
any of the other black officers. Being half white didn’t earn Moni half of the
assignments with him either. It was all or nothing with Sneed.

He only takes the best qualified,
he says. My ass.

She
should have expected Sneed here. He always got the big cases and there were
none bigger than the serial killings along the Indian River Lagoon. The first
victim was a man in his 50s on a jogging trail. The second was a college girl
who had gone kayaking by her lonesome. And now two at once. Neither of the
first two murders had any leads or witnesses. They couldn’t even say how the
murderer had snatched their heads off so smoothly. With this child as the only
person who might have seen the killer in gruesome action, Moni and her special
training dealing with juvenile victims served as the best hope Sneed had. She
had coaxed children into telling her about relatives who abused them or their
siblings. Lives had been saved because she helped remove children from
horrendous parents. The lead detective better swallow his racial pride before
asking for her help, she thought.

She
found Sneed huddled with a blue wall of officers on the edge of the boardwalk,
where it gave way to the sandy path to the lagoon. Upon spotting her, he
promptly steered his gaze on her as if she were a serpent on a branch. Sneed greeted
her with his broad shoulders and his back, with a husk of fat hanging over his
belt. He jawed at his officers in his gravel-grinding, Georgian accent. Now
showing her an ass large enough to make an elephant blush, he hammered home how
they better scour every inch of this crime scene for evidence. He made a good
point, as he usually did. A detective doesn’t work for 26 years busting gangs
and solving murders in Atlanta without knowing more than most cops on the
street. That was why, as much as Moni couldn’t stand his attitude or his corny
handlebar mustache, she’d rather work with Sneed than for any other detective
on the force. Not that the feeling was mutual.

“There
you are, Moni!” Sneed hollered as she contaminated his circle of white buddies.
“What took you? Did you stop to get your hair weaved?”

She
had heard worse, from him and from others. One day, she swore, she’d smack him
upside his oversized head, but that wouldn’t be a very tactful move for her
first time on his team.

“As
soon as I heard there was a child here, I hurried over,” Moni said. “It was my
day off and I was in bed when I got the call.”

She
braced for Sneed’s snide remark about her eating chitlins and grits or staying
out late booty dancing, but it didn’t come. Yet, she saw from the scoffing look
in his blue eyes as he elevated his eyebrows into his wrinkly forehead that he
had kept those thoughts to himself. He had as much respect for Moni as he had
hairs on that hen-plucked balding head of his.

“Well,
now that you’ve graciously decided to join us, I need you to work your magic on
the girl,” Sneed said. “The first witness on the scene scared her away. I
always told Kane he was butt ugly. I sent Officer Skillings to coax her out of
the bushes, but the kid won’t come. I think she might want to see a more
familiar face.”

Knowing
that he meant a similarly dark face, Moni grimaced. Even if he had been right,
he didn’t need to treat them like a different species. The girl didn’t respond
to Officer Nina Skillings because no child would. That hard-ass cop would make
a Rottweiler cower in terror.

“I
can handle this. For real. Don’t you worry, now,” Moni told him. “Just make
sure the DCF is on its way,” she said, referring to Florida’s Department of
Children and Families.

“I
ain’t stupid,” Sneed said. “We’re not taking her to Disney World, you know. You
calm her down and then I wanna hear some answers. This is the third time the
killer has struck in a month. He’s picking up the pace. This girl could crack
the case for us before we need to order up more body bags.”

Moni
nodded. She treaded across the sand and into the mangroves. If she delivered
here, he had better show her some respect. He could hate her all he wanted, but
he couldn’t argue with performance. Moni had gently persuaded many children
into revealing who had hit them, or who had fondled them. But, those weren’t
the kind of cases that earned officers top brass. This case offered Moni her
best opportunity. She couldn’t have imagined that it would also offer something
that would make no police department trust her again.

She
found the stout Nina Skillings hunched over with her head stuck in the
mangroves. She resembled a lady rhino munching on the bushes with a black
ponytail clipped onto her head as a practical joke. It didn’t surprise Moni
that this was the only sort of woman Sneed allowed on his investigation unit.

“Out
of there!” Skillings barked into the mangroves at a figure Moni couldn’t see.
“You’re wanted for questioning.”

“Nina!
Is that any way to talk to a child?” Moni asked. “Were you raised in a police
academy from birth?”

She
half expected the officer to answer yes. Skillings stood up on her
thick-as-barrels legs and faced Moni. Playing the anvil to Moni’s shapely vase,
Skillings hit as hard as a sledge hammer in their sparring sessions.

“I
tried sweet-talking her, but she is uncooperative,” Skillings said. “Kids today
don’t respect the badge anymore.”

“Don’t
you realize what this poor girl has been through?” Moni exclaimed. “You can’t
treat her like a drunk in a bar. She’s endured more pain today than most people
have in a lifetime.”

“You
think you can do a better job?”

Thinking
that a rabid pit bull could do a better job, Moni nodded. She knelt down in the
muck and got on the same level as the child. The girl cowered behind the
enveloping roots of a mangrove tree about fifteen feet away. She couldn’t see
her eyes behind that mane of black hair. If Moni made a move for her, she could
swiftly slip away. So Moni settled back over her heels in a non-threatening
position. The girl swayed with the breeze and didn’t look at her. When Moni
said, “Hello,” the girl tilted her head up, which pulled the curtain of hair
back from her eyes. They focused on Moni as intently as the gaze of a crippled
angel searching for the ladder back to heaven. Moni saw that horrible
realization that she would never return to the warm life she had known
besetting the young one’s eyes. She had stepped out of a perfect home that had
sheltered her from every hint of pain, and been stunned by the cruelty in this ruthless
world that had slaughtered her family. In this damp corner of the mangrove
swamp, the befuddled girl sat and stared intently at Moni.

“I
know you’re afraid. I’ve been afraid too,” Moni said. “You’re not alone
anymore. When you feel ready to come out, I’m here for you. I’ll protect you,
baby. Don’t worry.”

The
girl smothered her face with her hands. She must have a strong self image to
try hiding those tears, Moni thought. When she lowered her hands, the girl’s
eyes were dry. The stifling grief must have left those tear ducts barren. So
desperate to quell the unbearable pain, she had drained her emotions, Moni
thought.

As
Moni stared into the girl’s tortured eyes, she remembered the feeling. It
rushed over her more vividly than it had in years—the terror—the isolation.
Every time she saw an abused child, the memories of her childhood beckoned. She
closed her eyes and beat them back. If this happened every time she saw a
victim, she couldn’t function as an officer. The ghoulish memories always
knocked, but Moni had kept them fenced off for years. Not this time. The sight
of that poor orphaned girl who shunned the world out of grief burst the gates
open.

Little
Moni had cowered in fear in her bedroom closet. Scrunched into the corner, she
spent hours doing nothing more than breathing so softly that not a soul would
know she was alive. Otherwise, her father would hear her. No matter how long
she hid, he would always open that door. The man cast his crooked shadow over
the young one. His gargantuan hands twisted her petite wrists. Her head rang as
his heavy boots punted it into the wall. She didn’t dare ask him for a bandage
to stop her bleeding nose and lips because he took it as an invitation to
inflict more pain on his,
“Whiny little
bitch.”
There were nights when she awoke with her sheets and mattress awash
in her blood. Her nose simply wouldn’t stop gushing. No matter how much she
wailed, he wouldn’t give her anything besides tissues, and even then he’d
accuse her of wasting his hard earned money with each sheet she stained
crimson. As much as it hurt when her father struck her, the wounds that scarred
her mind and still made her tremble were from the words on his alcohol-soaked
tongue.

“You been fucking up my whole life,
you little whore! All you do is screw up!”

It
had started when Moni was slightly younger than the orphaned girl in the
mangroves and had continued on for years. That monster finally went to jail—through
no fault of her own. She should have turned him in, thought Moni, who squeezed
her eyes closed and bottled up the tears. As she kept her mouth shut into her
teenage years, her father started abusing one of her friends. The oaf twisted
her arm until it broke. Moni had let it happen.

I should have protected my friend—and
the world—from my father. I should have protected mom.