cigarette because she hadn’t cleaned up her toys. She still had a circular scar. “Were there injection marks on their bodies?”
“No.” The medical examiner shook his head. “At least, not below the neck.”
The heads of the prior two victims hadn’t turned up, so Moni didn’t expect they’d get any more evidence from these bodies. So far, they hadn’t found any signs in the rat trap of an apartment the Gomez family called home that indicated why they had gotten butchered. They were at a dead end, unless Moni coaxed something useful out of Mariella.
Moni caught Sneed eyeing Mariella in her glass box like a gator with its snout poking out of the water sizing up a limping lamb.
“We’ll be needing her side of the story ‘bout now,” Sneed told Moni.
The officers focused on Moni. They waited for the answers that she didn’t have. She shifted her gaze to Mariella, who looked right back at her. The girl’s hands had frozen clenching the crayons. Moni could lie and tell them the girl hadn’t seen anything. But they’d never buy it. She hadn’t been traumatized into selective mutism without seeing something terrible.
“I’m still working on it,” Moni said. “When girl gets over the shock, I’ll bring you what she has.”
“Yeah, and how long will that take? Weeks? Months? Her whole damn life?” Sneed threw his arms up and bumped the folding table with his belly so that it collided with Moni’s elbows. “How many people will die until she can get her shit straight?”
“Sir, I…”
“I don’t care!” Sneed hollered. Even though Mariella couldn’t hear the commotion, Moni saw her wince inside the office. She must have seen the rage on his boiling face. “My brother is with the Lord right now because people didn’t talk. We had four of them people who witnessed a gang-related shooting in Atlanta and none of them said a damn thing about what happened right in front of them. We didn’t catch the gunman until after my brother pulled him over for driving like a motherfucking crazy man. As soon as he stepped out of the patrol car, that thug blew his head off. If even one of those witnesses had offered up his name, it never would have happened…” She could see the stinging pain in his red eyes as they stared her down. “So I don’t wanna hear no bullshit. The girl talks.”
Moni hung her head. She caught Mariella sending an anxious look her way after spending so much time locked in the office. Moni could only protect her for so long until she started putting other peoples’ lives at risk.
“I’ll talk to the psychologist and push her as far as she can go,” Moni said. “But don’t expect a breakthrough right away.”
“Well, when there is a breakthrough, why don’t you ask her about her mother’s hand?” said detective Nina Skillings. “There was a big bruise on it. Looks like it came from some little fingers squeezing really tight.”
Sure, that would be an easy question. Skillings assumed all girls were made of bricks and barbed wire like her.
“That bruise could have happened shortly before or shortly after her mother died,” Dr. Rudy said. “But it’s clear that Mariella left the mark. She’s stronger than she looks.”
Moni watched the girl gently coloring in the finishing touches of her drawing.
“Sometimes overwhelming grief and fear can give you a strength you didn’t know you had,” Moni said. “But when you deny yourself an outlet and turn that fear against yourself, it eats out your soul.”
No one could follow that somber tone in her voice. Sneed, who knew about her father because he had access to her personnel file, must have understood how deeply it reflected on her life. He dismissed the investigation unit.
Moni dashed back into her office. Mariella leapt off the couch and wrapped her arms around the officer’s waist. Now she knew why people had children.
But Mariella didn’t belong to her. No matter how much the child needed her, Moni couldn’t become a parent while working on this case, because a parent would never let Mariella dwell on this horrible day again.
Moni’s phone rang. It turned out that the demons in her past wouldn’t leave her alone either. She didn’t feel like answering, but if she didn’t, he’d show up on her doorstep with his calloused hand extended for her cash.
“Hi father,” she answered in an ice-cold tone.
“Saw you on the news today, darlin’,” Bo Williams said with the slur of alcohol on his lips. “You was carrying a little Mexican girl away from a crime scene. It was a nasty one, I reckon?”
Small talk. He always did it before getting to the point: money. With his work as an auto mechanic, he could probably pay his own way if it weren’t for all the boozing and gambling. The fact that this animal knew of someone as fragile and precious as Mariella settled in Moni’s stomach like rotten cheese.
“Yeah, it was rough out there today,” Moni said. “And I’m real busy working on the case so…”
“Great! I’ll make it right quick then,” he snapped. She could have hung up. She could have hung up on him right there and not answered the call when he rang her back. But, just like how she never fled her childhood home and never called the police on that abusive monster, Moni let him roll on. “My landlord’s fix’n to kick me out on my ass next month if I don’t make rent. You don’t wanna see your old man out on the street again, do ya?”
As much as that bastard deserved sleeping underneath a bridge every night, that would only give him more time out in public where he could encounter new victims. If he panhandled again, he might jump in the car with a woman and have his twisted fun.
God, why’d they let him out? Ten years in prison wasn’t nearly enough.
Bo Williams might have stayed in the pen if the girl he had beaten had died, but she survived to live on with barely any use in her arm. Moni should have protected her friend from him, but she led the girl right into her home. She had watched her father wrench Sasha’s arm behind her back until it broke. Her friend screamed and bawled tears. And when Moni begged him to stop, her father shoved her against the wall. She sat where she fell as Sasha’s beating continued. She covered her eyes and ears, like if she didn’t see or hear it, it wasn’t happening.
“You wanna be like this girl? You wanna be fashionable, don’t cha?” her father had shouted at Moni as he pulled her friend’s braids and slammed her face against the dining room table. “You think I’m gonna buy you all this nice shit? Well, when you earn a nickel, you can pay me back for all the money I wasted on you. I’m taking all those clothes your mother bought, taking the receipt and returning them to the store. I don’t want you ever splurging on that shit without my permission again!”
Moni gripped Mariella’s hand as the memories flooded back to her. She had once been a defenseless child. No one stuck up for her. Moni’s mother, bless her soul, had a fragile heart that couldn’t stand up to him.
Now this young girl had no one fighting for her. Everyone saw her as a jewelry case filled with gems of information. A case proves useful only until it’s opened. When it’s empty, it’s thrown away. Moni couldn’t let that happen to Mariella.
“I’ll send you a check for another nine-hundred dollars, but don’t you come by and pick it up,” Moni told her father. “I’ll mail it.”
She’d cut ties with him for good another time. Right now, Moni needed her father as far out of her life as possible.
“Nine-hundred?” he asked incredulously, like he had any negotiating power besides being annoying as hell. “How about an even grand?”
“I know what your rent is. I’m not paying you a nickel more.”
“Well, a man’s gotta eat, don’t he? You want me scrounging outta a dumpster like a raccoon?”
She wouldn’t mind watching that at all. Hell, she’d take a picture, frame it and hang it in her office.
“I’ll put your check in the mail tomorrow,” said Moni, who made sure she didn’t commit to an amount. Arguing with him killed her. Every time her old man raised his voice, her jaw would ache from where he used to slap it as he scolded her.
“I’m sure that you will. I know you’ve got a big case and all, but don’t forget your old pa.”
As they ended the call, Moni wished she could forget him. She understood why the little girl holding her hand and showing her a drawing of a manatee should be allowed to let her demons slip from her memory as well.
Moni sent DCF agent Tanya Roberts a text message: In court tomorrow, I will ask for temporary custody of the child. Let me protect her.
Without even looking at the words Moni had typed, Mariella gave her a big smile. She must have seen the shift in her demeanor towards her. Duty be dammed, Mariella was more than a witness.
“I’ll take care of you, baby,” Moni said as she put her arm around Mariella. “You won’t be afraid no more.”
