Mute (8 page)

Aaron
nodded. Heingartner stood up. She looked like she’d rather jump out of an
airplane than dip her toes in the lagoon again.

“You
should really come back on the boat,” she told him. “The seagrass down there is
ailing. Something in that water isn’t right. It might have been a sharp dip in
pH, like an acid discharge.”

That
would explain the withered seagrass and the corroded shell. But it didn’t
explain how the acid got there. Unless someone dumped ten-thousand car
batteries into the lagoon, no other viable source popped into Aaron’s head.

He
wished he had brought a hood and mask for his wetsuit. An acid shampoo and face
wash combo would be most heinous.

“No
worries,” he assured her with a cocksure smile. “I got this.”

Once
again, Aaron paddled out over the seagrass bed. This time, he kept his goggles
below water most of the way in case something tried sneaking up on him from
below. The lady had become paranoid after hearing about the murders, he
thought. Maybe Swartzman had it right. She must have mistaken a tire for a
bloodthirsty, head-eating monster. That didn’t stop Aaron from keeping his head
on a swivel as he took photos that lit up the water directly underneath him,
but not out ahead of him. With only a few feet of visibility ahead, a mean old
brute in his path could bite his face off before he could blink. Both gators
and sharks have a magnetic field sense of their prey that works much better
than eyesight in murky water.

First
he felt the displacement of the water. Then he saw it. Something broad and flat
barreled through the water in front of him. It disappeared into a sand cloud
along the bottom. Aaron nearly swallowed a gallon of water through his snorkel.
He blew it out before it reached his lips and poked it above the surface so he
could suck some wind into his scorching lungs. It was as if the air on the
other end of his snorkel was a giant soda and he felt like slurping it all
down. Aaron would have stuck his head above water and called for help, but
turning his gaze away would leave him easy pickings for whatever lurked down
there. It was probably gazing up at him that very moment.

Aaron
held the camera before his face, as he didn’t have anything better for a
shield, and snapped a bunch of photos. As the flash illuminated the water for a
second at a time, he saw that long broad shape again. It was a loose piece of
wood—or nearly loose. It hadn’t come completely free from the busted lobster
trap.

The
trap should have resembled an airplane hangar made of a wooden cage and rope
mesh, which had a hole that lobsters and crabs could crawl into, but not exit
from. This one rolled with the current along the sandy bottom like a tumble
weed of wood and rope. It had been stripped of its metal nails. Aaron didn’t
see a single one left. A wide swath of its net mesh had been broken, not by
tearing or cutting, but by something that had burned right through it. Since
fire didn’t work so well underwater, Aaron figured acid had once again done the
trick.

The lobsters staged a prison break.
That is freaking awesome. I better alert the seafood restaurants to put bars on
their lobster tanks.

Despite
its near annihilation, the trap had succeeded in catching one of the spiny sea
bugs—part of one, anyway. Aaron found a lobster’s hind leg tangled in the
netting. It must have broken off when the crustacean dude made a break for it,
he thought. He snatched it from the busted trap and surfaced for a better look.

Sliding
his goggles over his forehead, Aaron examined the thing. He gasped and dropped
it. The lobster leg had revolting purple lumps on it. If someone had served
that up for him in a restaurant, he would puke right on the plate.

Nasty purple shit. Just like the
sea turtle tumor!

“What’s
going on?” Swartzman hollered at him from the skiff as it motored closer.

“Uh,
wait a minute,” Aaron said.

He
secured his goggles and dove again. This time, he swept his arms through the
water and patted down the sand as if he were looking for a lost wedding ring.
He felt something slimy with spiny hairs and he knew he had it. Aaron surfaced
with it above his head in triumph.

“Yeah!
I got it!”

The
two scientists on the skiff exchanged perplexed glances. Swartzman rolled his
eyes.

“You’ve
got what—one-tenth of a lobster leg platter?” Heingartner asked.

“No
way,” Aaron said. He tossed his prized lobster leg on the skiff. Swartzman
knelt down and pushed it aside dismissively. Then he did a double-take. “Not
unless you like the rare delicacy of purple lobster. But I wouldn’t suck the
meat outta that leg. I think it’s got the same bug our sick sea turtle has.”

Aaron
started climbing into the boat. Consumed by the purple leg, his professor
didn’t offer him a hand. Heingartner helped him aboard.

“The
chances of a disease spreading from a reptile to a crustacean are pretty
remote, but not impossible,” Swartzman said. “That and all the acidity in the
lagoon merits further study.” The professor faced Aaron with a hint of a grin,
which would have been a beaming smile on most people. “You weren’t half bad
today. I think you’ve earned a trip to the sheriff’s office with me. But first,
we’re pulling an all-nighter in the lab until we understand what we’ve got
here.”

The
last time Aaron pulled an all-nighter, he had been working on an intense study
of beer pong physics. By the time he would figure out what that purple really
meant, he couldn’t find beer that carried enough kick to help the startling
reality sink home.

Chapter 6

She
spent the last few days preparing emotionally for the moment when Mariella
Gomez would finally walk through her classroom door. It didn’t work. Mrs. Robin
Mint still shed a few tears in front of her second grade class.

“Welcome
back, Mariella,” the teacher said as she wiped the droplets away with her sleeves.
She knelt down and opened her arms for a hug.

Instead
of skipping into her arms like she had always done, the Mexican girl sent her
nothing more than a blink. She quietly followed the mocha-skinned
African-American policewoman to an empty desk.

“Don’t
worry about it,” the officer said. “She hasn’t said a word since we found her.
I’m sure seeing all her oldfriends will cheer her up.”

“It
is good for traumatized children to be in a familiar, non-threatening
environment,” Mrs. Mint said. “I’ll see you at three, officer…”

“Detective
Monique Williams, but you can call me Moni.” Despite the clear hint from the
teacher, she remained standing in the middle of the classroom. The boys were
pointing at the gun on her hip and firing off their imaginary finger pistols.
The officer didn’t even notice all the fuss. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like
to stick around today. I haven’t left the girl’s side since the event.”

Of
course she’d mind. As if the teacher’s tears did make enough of a scene for her
class, having an officer in full uniform really placed the spotlight on the
returning child. But she couldn’t exactly argue with a woman who carried a
badge and a gun.

“That’s
fine for today, while she adjusts,” Mrs. Mint said as she brushed her frizzy
brown hair away from her glasses. “Just please, try not to disrupt my class or
be overbearing while protecting the girl. If you give a damaged child some
space and be patient with her, she’ll eventually recover.”

The
officer nodded and took a seat at a table in the back of the classroom.
Mariella immediately ran to detective Williams. She patted the girl on the
shoulder, kissed her on the cheek and aimed her toward her desk. Mariella
walked over and sat down, but kept one eye on the officer the whole time.

“That
must be her immigration officer,” Kyle Buckley told his brother, Cole Buckley
loud enough so the whole class could hear. “Her daddy got caught running across
the border with a sack of tomatoes on his back.”

Their
curly mops of blond locks bounced as the brothers whooped it up. Their friends
smiled at the racial humor, which the brothers must have picked up from their
obnoxious older brother. The bigger Buckley boy tore his way through her class
eight years ago and now sat in a juvenile detention center. He sure had paved
the way for them—him and their grandfather, a “former” card-carrying member of
the KKK.

“That’s
the last dirty thing I want to hear out of your mouth today—both of you,” Mrs.
Mint told the twins. “We’re all very lucky that we have Mariella back. We should
treat her nicely so she stays.”

She
hoped they’d go easy on Mariella, who the bullies had found an easy target from
Day One because of her ethnicity and heavy accent. What did most children know
of loss and grief? Nothing—unless they had lived through it. Yet they could
detect a grieving kid getting special attention, which hyperactive children
crave above all else.

In
her nineteen years of teaching, Mrs. Mint had comforted a handful of students
who lost a parent and one student who had lost both parents in a car accident.
She had helped students from abusive homes that showed up for school with
bruises underneath their shirts. The teacher had nurtured students who bounced
between foster homes and didn’t know a single adult they could trust.

Then
in walked Mariella, who had been afflicted with all of these plagues at such a
tender age. And on top of it, the police were pressuring her to hurry up and
identify the monster that ruined her life. Mrs. Mint had spoken with detective
Sneed over the phone that morning and she got the impression that he cared more
about catching the killer than easing Mariella back into class smoothly. Still,
she promised the detective that she’d let him know if the girl dropped any
clues in class.

At
first, Mariella didn’t do much of anything. Mrs. Mint set the paper and pencil
on her desk as the class began copying words from the blackboard. The girl
watched her classmates write without even touching her pencil.

Eva
Hernandez, the only other Mexican girl in the class and Mariella’s best friend,
waved at the girl from a few seats away and said, “Hola.” Mariella gave her a
quick glance and then averted her eyes. She picked up her pencil. She pressed
down so hard that the lead snapped. Mariella stabbed the hollow point against
the page a few times before finally setting it down.

The
girl had been so friendly before this happened, Mrs. Mint thought. She loved
Eva. She could write and sharpen her pencil by herself.

A
horrendous loss can change children completely. Mrs. Mint had seen it in some
of her less fortunate students. She had felt it herself in the weeks after her
father’s death. Socializing becomes too painful because every word and every
gesture reminds them of the person they lost. The numbing grief impedes every
function like grimy tar clogging up an engine. It shouldn’t alarm her that
Mariella acted like an entirely different girl.

But
it did. Her thin lips had once glowed around her smile. As she twirled her
black hair around her finger, Mariella had asked her about unicorns and
princesses with such innocence. Seeing those lips gone silent and cold
profoundly disturbed the teacher. Someone so young should never experience such
brutality. She reminded Mrs. Mint of the black and white photos of the
hollow-eyed children who had survived the Holocaust.

Mrs.
Mint offered Mariella a new pencil. Staring at her outstretched hand
apprehensively, the girl didn’t take the pencil until the teacher set it on her
desk and backed off. She took a walk around the room and inspected her students’
papers until she came back behind Mariella. She had written the first word on
the board, “Jump”, perfectly. Meticulously tracing the letter, “R”, the girl
started on the next word. Without speaking, Mariella had demonstrated that she
harbored the desire for interaction. She had made the first step toward
recovery.

“Great
job, Mariella,” Mrs. Mint told her. “You wrote it beautifully.”

Mariella
responded with a momentary glance, but Kyle and Cole Buckley gave their teacher
a bitter stare. Each of them had written four words and Mrs. Mint realized she
hadn’t said a word. She figured they didn’t need it, as their egos were already
plenty big enough. But, as usual, the Buckleys would demand attention another
way.

It
happened in recess. Mariella leaned against a fence with a bush on her side
that blocked her off from viewing half the playground. It also kept her hidden
from many of the students. Eva found her and kicked a ball her way. Mariella
sidestepped it as if the ball had been covered in paint and let it bounce off
the fence. Laughing as it rolled back to her, Eva punted it toward Mariella
again. This time, Mariella snatched it up, cradled it in her arms and curled up
against the fence. Seeing that the girl who had been her friend all year
wouldn’t give the ball back, Eva started pleading with her in Spanish. Even as
the girl yelped in her face, Mariella watched her without making a sound.

Detective
Williams started marching over. Mrs. Mint nearly twisted her clumsy ankles
catching up with her. No wonder the teacher had gotten so plump despite chasing
the kids all day. She had a much harder time keeping pace with a long-legged
adult.