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“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.

  Moni felt a small hand on her shoulder. Opening her eyes, she saw the little dark-haired girl before her at eye level as she knelt down. Without a word exchanged between them, Moni absorbed the empathy in the girl’s touch. This child, who had watched her parents brutally beheaded hours ago, grasped Moni’s pain. Their mutual suffering had drawn them together like two alley cats riding out a hurricane under a single palm frond. Moni wrapped her arms around the girl’s dirt laden body and squeezed its cold dampness against her chest. Hugging her back, the girl buried her head into Moni’s shoulder.

  As Moni scooped the girl up and carried her like a backpack strapped across her chest, she sent a smirk Skillings’ way.

  “Mm-hm. You were saying?” Moni asked.

  “Try pulling that crying junk on a crack fiend,” Skillings said. “I’ll stick to a hard knee to the jaw and a pair of handcuffs.”

  Moni decided against asking her how many kindergarteners she had brutalized. She
didn’t need this girl finding another person she should fear. Skillings trailed her as Moni carried the girl toward Sneed in the center of the boardwalk.

  “I’m Monique. But everyone calls me Moni for short. What’s your name, baby?”

  She didn’t answer. Moni repeated the question in Spanish. She still didn’t respond. Must be the post-traumatic stress, she figured. Give it time.

  When Sneed saw her coming with the child, he rushed toward her as if she had bought him a new Hummer. She marveled that a board didn’t snap under his rumbling girth.

  “Well done, Williams,” said Sneed, who allowed her that moment of satisfaction. “Now what’d she say? What’s our suspect look like? Was it more than one?”

  “Uhhh…” Moni stared at the girl. Nestled against her breasts like an infant, she gazed up at Moni. She could barely stand much less describe her parents’ murders. If they tried extracting the terrifying memories out of her too quickly and forcefully, she might never recover. Moni felt as if she were walking across slick tile carrying a porcelain vase atop her head.

  But, at the same time, the person who had killed four people still lurked out there. The murderer would strike again—maybe soon. Those future victims needed Moni’s help too.

  “Did you see what happened here?” Moni asked her. “Did you see what happened to…”

  The girl’s face contorted in agony. Her brown eyes cringed like plump grapes drying into scrawny raisins. She curled back her lips and clenched her teeth. She didn’t say a word or even whine. She couldn’t, because her breathing accelerated into near hyperventilation.

  Moni couldn’t put her through this. No one should be forced to re-live their darkest memories, especially one so young.

  “I… I can’t,” Moni told Sneed. “She’s not ready now.”

  “Yer shitting me,” said the red-faced detective. “We’ve got zero forensic evidence on a suspect, zero motive and we don’t have the faintest idea how they’re getting killed. If we have any prayer of catching this guy before he traces another chalk line for us, she’s it. So sweet talk her, buy her a fucking pony, whatever the hell you’ve gotta do, I want me some leads.”

  Turning around, Moni shielded the girl from his rage. Sneed didn’t fret over his blatant discrimination against Moni, so he wouldn’t mind tossing a little girl into the flames to cook a suspect. The officers standing behind him must have understood his intentions for the child. Not one of them rose to the girl’s defense. Moni was it.

  Skillings stepped alongside her boss and stuck her nose in Moni’s face as if she were a hypnotized snake coiled around Sneed’s arm.

  “This isn’t a pre-teen shoplifting case and it sure-as-hell isn’t domestic abuse,” Skillings said. “The stakes are life and death. If you can’t handle being part of our team, why don’t you step aside and hand over the girl to the professionals?”

  The girl’s fingers dug into Moni’s back so hard it would have taken a crowbar to pry them off. She definitely understood English, Moni thought.

  “According to protocol, this girl is under custody of the DCF until a judge can weigh in,” Moni said. She scooted around Sneed and Skillings and headed for the parking lot. Sneed tagged along with her. She should have told him to back off, but he’d never let her on his investigation team if she stepped that far out of line.

  In the parking lot, Moni ran into the DCF agent, a chunky dark-skinned black woman with a curly weave. She wore a black pants suit with a purple undershirt that could barely contain her double-Ds. She reached out for the girl with her beefy arms. Moni didn’t even try handing her over before the girl tightened her grip on her to make it nearly impossible.

  “That’s a lovely coat you’ve got there. Does it ever come off?” the agent asked.

  “For now, I think it’s better that I leave it on,” Moni said.

  “Oh, that’s great!” Sneed exclaimed. “Treat my only witness like a coat. Why don’t you just make a scrap book out of the crime scene photos?”

  “Excuse me.” The agent got right in the detective’s face like nobody’s business. “I’m DCF Agent Tanya Roberts and you’re on my case now. My first priority is the well-being of that child. She is more than a witness in my eyes.”

  The grumbling detective crossed his arms and glared at Moni something fierce. She had led him into a realm where his words weren’t the final say. He couldn’t compel a child to testify unless a juvenile judge signed off on it.

  When Moni finally had the girl safe with her in the back seat of the DCF agent’s car, she sat down beside her. The child immediately leaned her head against her shoulder. Keeping her eyes down, she didn’t look out the window for a second as they left the place where her parents had died.

  “No day will ever be worse for you than this,” Moni told the girl softly. “That means there will be better days. I promise that I won’t let anybody hurt you, ever. I promise, baby.”

  Chapter 2

  Aaron Hughes shook his head of golden locks as he watched the sea turtle row its flippers through the air in vain. The poor guy was so sick he didn’t realize they had plucked him out of the Indian River Lagoon for a ride in their skiff. Or maybe he had devoted his last ounce of turtle strength towards escaping.

  “Looks like the dude’s freaking out,” Aaron told his professor.

  “What did you expect? He’s sick and he doesn’t know we’re helping him,” said Dr. Herbert Swartzman, the head of marine biology at the Atlantic Marine Research Institute. Although they were based out of Fort Pierce, the professor and his grad student had taken the 12-foot skiff up the lagoon to a spot not far from Kennedy Space Center.

  Hiking up his board shorts, Aaron leaned down and examined the white tumors covering the green animal like mushrooms popping out of the grass after a rain. They were painfully wedged between its flipper and its shell, stuck on the corner of its mouth and atop its head. One especially cruel tumor covered half of its left eye.

  “That’s nasty,” Aaron said. “The poor guy can barely swim.”

  Aaron combed through his memories for the name for the tumors, but couldn’t dig it up. Swartzman didn’t need another reason he should consider his student a beach-brained slacker. He already had plenty, like his penchant for surfing during breaks between classes and then showing up with his wetsuit under his t-shirt or how he signed up for every outdoor assignment and avoided the lab coat as if it were a straight jacket. If he could help this sea turtle, instead of just hoisting it from the water like a deck hand, Swartzman would have a new-found respect for him. But he couldn’t remember that damn name.

  “We talked about these tumors before,” Aaron said. “You called them…” Pausing, he waited for his professor to finish off his sentence before it became a question.

  “Just in case you had your head in the sand that day, I’ll remind you that those tumors are called fibropapillomas,” Swartzman said, as he programmed the tracking beacon he had selected for their shelled subject. “As they spread, they hinder the turtles’ ability to function and can get infected. I’ve seen a lot of them in the lagoon over the past month, mostly from Cape Canaveral through Melbourne. The turtles in the ocean are barely affected.”

  “So whatever caused this started in the lagoon and hasn’t spread across the Sebastian Inlet,” Aaron said. About 20 miles south of Melbourne, the Sebastian Inlet connects the lagoon to the Atlantic Ocean. It also spawns some gnarly waves.

  “What do you mean something ‘caused’ this? It’s just a disease. It’s probably spread turtle to turtle.”

  “But you don’t know how. You didn’t tell us what caused it, right? So nobody knows?”

  “Nobody knows for sure,” said Swartzman, who wouldn’t jump out on a limb if it were ten feet wide. “But fibropapillomas wasn’t started by something in the lagoon. It’s been found as far back as 1958 in the Pacific. The only thing new is how rapidly it’s spreading here.”

  “You sure that’s the only thing new? What about this?” Aaron point
ed to a tumor on the underside of the turtle’s neck, near its jugular. While all the rest were white and lumpy, this tumor was purple and smooth as a marble. It looked like a purple bead had been half-way imbedded into the turtle.

  Easing off the throttle so the skiff slowed to a glide, Swartzman peeked underneath the turtle’s head. His eyes widened. Aaron had never seen anything astonish his teacher—anything scientific, at least. He had looked plenty perplexed when Aaron showed up on the first day of class with a mask and flippers over his shoulder like a masters course in marine biology was Scuba Diving 101.

  “That’s not normal, is it doc?”

  “No, it certainly isn’t normal.” Swartzman couldn’t take his eyes off it. “I don’t know how you missed it when you got it untangled from the mangroves.”

  Like the professor didn’t miss it too, Aaron thought.

  “Think it’s some kind of infection inside the tumor? Whoa. Maybe we discovered a totally new disease!” His dreams of making scientific journal headlines were dashed when he saw his professor’s sour expression. Keeping the animals in the lagoon healthy had been the man’s life’s work. “I mean, it would totally suck if it were a new disease hurting these turtles.”

  “Yeah.” Swartzman sighed and combed his fingers through the Brillo Pad of hair remaining on the sides and back of his pointy skull. Out on the water in a polo shirt and khaki shorts, he had clearly come expecting his student would tackle the dirty work in the lagoon, and that chore looked like all he expected out of Aaron.

  I’m capable of so much more. These guys have been spinning their wheels for decades trying to figure out what’s wrong with these turtles. If I could crack this case…

  “Hey! Greetings there Herb!” shouted the only boater in the lagoon who used a megaphone. Harry Trainer, the Lagoon Watcher, inched toward them in his boat, which had been decorated with a paint-by-numbers marine life scene. He drove that boat as slowly as an old lady on the Interstate. He wouldn’t chance hitting one of his underwater buddies.