“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
