Mute (27 page)

“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.”

Chapter 27

He nearly handcuffed himself inside his own
unmarked patrol car when he saw Monique Williams invite her child abusing old
man into her home.
Clyde
Harrison couldn’t believe that she would expose the little girl she guarded so
vigorously to a kid beater. This is the woman who let Nina Skillings, his
partner on the homicide investigation team, get cannon-balled into a wall
during a car chase because she wouldn’t put Mariella at risk.

If she had started taking gambles
like this with the girl yesterday, Nina would be walking around fine. Why’d she
have to pick today to shoot craps with the child’s life?

He
turned his radio off and listened closely for shouting. Then he remembered that
the girl couldn’t shout or scream. She couldn’t call for help. Harrison grabbed
the door latch. He stopped himself. Lead detective Sneed had put him on
surveillance so he could gather evidence on Moni’s treatment of the girl. He
shouldn’t make his presence known unless the Lagoon Watcher shows up for the
last living witness to his murders, Sneed had told him. As the minutes rolled
by and the child abuser didn’t leave, Harrison doubted those orders would chain
him down much longer.

Gazing
down the street from behind the tinted windows of his Buick sedan, Harrison
eyed the old taped together Camaro that Moni’s father had parked halfway on her
overgrown lawn. He plugged in the license plate number and confirmed that Bo
Williams shouldn’t be within a thousand feet of children—and for good reason.
After bloodying up a 13-year-old, he raised hell in jail and got cited for more
than a dozen fights. Most of them were with skinny kids barely old enough to be
behind bars.

Cracking
his knuckles as he stared at Bo Williams’ ugly mug on the computer, Harrison
knew he’d enjoy turning the tables on that shithead. Since he already had
enough proof of Moni’s mistreatment to make a judge remove the girl, he saw no
need for waiting by while the kid got smacked around.

I’ll give them five more minutes.
If he doesn’t come out of there, I’m dragging his ass out.

Harrison had 30 seconds left on his countdown when
the surf rat showed up at her house. He recognized Aaron Hughes from the task
force meetings.

“A little extra-curricular activity between you
two, eh,” Harrison said to himself. “Well, you’re in for a surprise kid.”

Much to Harrison’s amazement, it was the ex-con and
not the beach bum who limped out of there. It looked like the Williams family’s
crown jewels had been smashed. So much for fighting like a man, Harrison
thought. At least the kid had made his job a whole lot easier. Harrison snapped
photos of Bo Williams hobbling into his car and leaving. Combined with the
photos of the child abuser strolling straight in to meet the girl, Harrison
figured he had built a pretty damning case again Moni. He e-mailed the photos
to Sneed and then dialed him up.

“These are perfect, Clyde. Absolutely delicious,”
Sneed said as if he were chewing into savory barbeque ribs. “When I show these
to the DCF agent, she’ll yank Mariella outta there so fast Moni will think a
tornado swept through.”

“I don’t much like bouncing Mariella between homes
like a ping pong ball,” Harrison said. “But Moni hasn’t done a thing to help
the girl snap out of this. She hasn’t made a break in the case all this time
and the bodies keep piling up. She’s protecting the girl and a lot of people
are paying for it…”

Harrison didn’t need to mention Nina. Sneed
understood that he constantly worried about his partner.

“She’s not awake yet,” Sneed said. “They’re keeping
her out until the swelling goes down and they can perform the surgery. Her
spine is cracked, but it ain’t broken all the way. When she gets back, we’ll
have to anchor her behind a desk.”

Harrison stared at the empty car seat beside him.
Nina wouldn’t fill it again. No one could kick a running suspect’s knees out or
subdue a piece of trailer park trash like her. He couldn’t think of another
soul he’d rather bust up a dope house with.

“Nina’s not gonna be the same in a cubicle,”
Harrison said. “How could a fucking pelican take her down?”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea, son. Only the
Lagoon Watcher knows, and without Mariella’s testimony about how he killed her
parents, we don’t have enough evidence for a conviction.”

“You think she saw him do it?”

“She must have, but we can’t know for sure until we
make that girl put all her cards on the table,” Sneed said. “If you wanna make
yourself useful, you could join the DCF agent as she removes Mariella from that
house of horrors and takes her in for questioning.”

As Harrison considered the offer, he watched Moni’s
house. He saw Mariella peering out the bright window into the night. It
appeared like she looked right at him for a minute, but that must have been a
coincidence, he thought. She couldn’t see through his tinted windows into his darkened
car, especially at night. Harrison felt a chill down his spine and a sudden
urge to get the hell out of there. He obeyed his gut and rolled the car down
the street.

“Was that an offer or a command?” Harrison asked
about the DCF raid.

“More of the latter,” Sneed replied.

“That’s what I thought.” Harrison couldn’t hide the
disappointment on his voice.

* * * *

The killer couldn’t hide much longer. Once Sneed
made Mariella crack, and he jarred the evidence loose, he’d have all the
ammunition he’d need.

Examining the photos of that child abusing ex-con
entering Moni’s house, Sneed rubbed his round belly. It felt satisfied from a
ham sandwich on top of the impending scrumptious triumph in this case. How
about it, he thought, that Moni said she didn’t push Mariella hard so she could
protect her, but she ended up exposing her to the most dangerous person in her
life.

The forthcoming “I told you so” moment would have
tasted sweeter if it didn’t have a barge full of corpses tagging along with it.
After a phone conversation with Brigadier General Alonso Colon, Sneed realized
that the body count would climb even higher if he didn’t wrap this up soon.

“I’m telling you this with the upmost confidence
that word won’t get out to the general public,” Colon said. He waited for
Sneed’s agreement before continuing—making sure the police officer knew who the
higher authority was. “Late last night, some explosive ordinances were taken
from Patrick Air Force Base. I don’t think I have to tell you that the
circumstances were unusual.”

“And probably related to this case I’m working.”
Sneed stressed that he’s working on the case, and not the military or the fed.
Both of them have kept their ears on things without acting or, it appears from
this little incident, sufficiently ramping up security.

Noting that Colon didn’t respond to his last
comment, Sneed pressed on. “When you say ‘some’ explosives, what exactly are
you talking about here?” Given that Patrick hosted bombers that flew around the
world dropping haymakers, anything coming from there would dwarf any explosives
domestic terrorists could assemble in their basements.

“One of these bombs would be enough to level a
four-story building. You might know them as bunker busters,” Colon said. “They
got away with sixteen.”

“Sixteen! Are you shitting me?” Sneed nearly burst
a heart valve. “How do you lose sixteen high grade bombs?”

“We suspect they were dragged towards the lagoon.
Whether they were submerged or transported by boat, we don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? If you couldn’t
guard them, you should at least have the heist on camera. Hell, even gas
stations get that right. You’re a fucking air force base!”