Mariella stayed close because the child needed comfort, or because the child detected that her foster parent needed a tiny shoulder to lean on.
When she dropped Mariella off at school, the girl followed her halfway back to her car before Moni realized it. She led her back to class.
“It’s okay, baby,” Moni told her. “I’ll speak to the security officer and make sure everything is safe here. If you need me, ask Mrs. Mint and she’ll give me a call.”
She kissed the girl on the forehead. Mariella shot her one more glance before she entered the classroom. Mariella looked remorseful-like she felt responsible for the bloodshed because she couldn’t stop that monster from killing her parents.
Moni propped the door open and took the girl’s hand.
“What’s happening isn’t your fault, Mariella. When I was a young girl, I used to blame myself for my father beating me and hurting my mother. I thought that if I was a better kid, he would stop and become like all the other fathers. He never did… you’re a victim like me. Don’t be ashamed.”
Sharing her deepest darkest secret with the eight-year-old girl untied the knot in Moni’s heartstrings. The child embraced her.
Moni needed all the love she could get. The rest of the day would drain just about every ounce of it out of her.
Chapter 11
Randy Cooper looked more like a criminal than a witness to Moni, but he sat in the witness chair without handcuffs just the same. He had yellow-brown eyes that seemed as hyped up as a cheetah’s before it springs in for the kill.
This was one wounded cat. Cooper’s neck glowed raw red with a matted pattern like someone had nearly strangled him with several pieces of wire. One of the red grooves cut through the cursive tattoo of “Don’t Treat on Me” on his neck. His arms were dotted with tats, including a drooling bulldog, a rabbit’s foot and a snake around his wrist. His right hand had a heavy white bandage wrapped around it.
He even smelled like a zoo, or more like a saltwater aquarium. His black t-shirt and camouflage pants stunk of the lagoon. They were stiff with salt after drying from the middle of the night until morning.
Sneed hadn’t let Randy Cooper change a thing, from his dirty-blond buzz cut to his hunting boots, since the Lagoon Watcher had fished him out of the water and handed him over to the Coast Guard. That much of the story, they knew. The rest, Randy would have to recount.
Even for a seasoned hunter who worked in an outdoor shop and blasted bucks’ heads off, telling this hunting tale didn’t come easy.
“Aw, Robbie. He was my brother, man. He was my brother.” Randy shook his head and bit his lip. He wouldn’t let himself cry, not in front of police, but Moni recognized the red circles around his eyes as evidence that he had let the tears flow in private.
Randy sucked the moisture out of his sinuses and wiped his nose.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he told Sneed. “I wanna help you. I really do. I’m afraid you won’t believe this shit.”
Sneed told Moni before the interview that they should take Randy’s words with a grain of salt. He had a couple of DUI’s and an illegal hunting fine on his record.
“You just tell me what happened,” Sneed said. “All we wanna do is catch the guy who deprived you of your brother.”
“I didn’t say it was a guy… I think it was a gator. That’s what started it, at least. But what finished it, hell… I couldn’t imagine.”
Moni and Sneed traded looks of disappointment. She felt it much worse. Mariella remained the only witness who had probably seen the murderer in action. She still had the biggest target on her.
Not to say that Randy hadn’t seen enough carnage to send an experienced hunter into a padded room.
“I got home from a fishing trip and left my skiff in the canal behind my house,” said Randy, who lived in Palm Bay. “I went inside, grabbed a beer and when I went out back fix’n to lift it outta there, I saw a gator making off with my boat.”
“Hold up, son. Do you mean to tell me that a gator-a reptile dragging its belly-stole your boat?” Sneed asked.
“That’s what I fucking said, alright.” Randy wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. Sneed nodded him on. “I saw this beastly thing, must have been a nine-footer, chomp off the tether and drag my boat down the canal. I followed it on foot for miles all the way to the lagoon. That’s when I called Robbie.”
“Your older brother, Robert D. Cooper?” Moni asked.
“Yeah, Robbie. He has-he left behind a wife and a four-year-old boy.” With his lower lip quivering, he paused while those words resonated. Randy crossed his arms and stared at the floor. “He had a family. He had a damn good job as a computer tech. Robbie had it all. I shouldn’t have brought him into my troubles.”
“They aren’t just your troubles. It’s everybody’s beef now ‘cause we’ve got a killer running loose,” Sneed said. “So your brother had a boat? We didn’t find it in the water.”
“You won’t find it no more.” He bowed his head for a few seconds. “But, he had it. You can check on it, man. Robbie had a pontoon boat-an 18-foot booze cruiser. He kept it docked behind his home on the lagoon side of Indialantic. He used to take his wife and boy out on it. It wasn’t supposed to be for hunting. But I needed it to nab me that gator and get my boat back. I knocked on Robbie’s window ‘round one in the morning. I tell ya, he nearly blew my head off with a shotgun.”
“Is that how you brothers usually greet each other?” asked Moni, who figured the gator story could be cover for a brotherly fight that ended badly for Robbie.
Randy looked at her as if she had break-danced straight out of the ghetto and met a white man for the first time. She had seen that self-righteous bullshit more times than she cared to remember.
“No. It was late and I scared him. What’d you think? My people ain’t thugs, lady.” He shook his head. “Anyways, my brother told me to hit the road. I told him I was taking his boat and going after the gator whether he came with or not. I know, I know. I played the little brother needs help from big bro card. Call me a selfish asshole.”
Moni couldn’t argue with that reasoning, especially considering how big brother had paid for it.
“Robbie, God love him, wouldn’t let me go alone. He snuck out. Didn’t even tell his wife and boy goodbye…” Randy paused and pinched the tear ducts at the corners of his eyes until he collected himself. “We suited up in hunting gear. Me being a dumb ass, I told him that life vests were for pussies. He took the shotgun and I took my crossbow. I had punched many a gator through the brain with that baby.
“We rode the pontoon boat out on the lagoon in the middle of the night. We didn’t see another soul on the water, just the lights from shore on either side. We found my skiff waiting for us in the mouth of Palm Bay, which feeds into the canal behind my house. We didn’t see the gator. Robbie thought I was drunk and imagined the whole thing like some little piss-ant. We shoulda known the gator had laid a trap for us.”
Sneed rolled his eyes. “The gator laid a trap? What is he, a Vietcong?”
“This ain’t a normal gator, boss,” Randy said as he eyed the lead detective with a grim stare.
Sneed never believed far-fetched stories. He poked holes through liars until they bled the truth. Moni had seen him turn the coldest of men into mounds of jelly. She doubted he bought half of what she told him. But this time, Sneed appeared convinced that Randy had encountered a gator. After all, Robert Cooper’s body had what resembled a gator bite on his right arm. A hungry gator wouldn’t usually let a meal go so its victim could get decapitated cleanly and then leave the body floating in the water. Even if the man had lost his head first, the gator wouldn’t taste a sample of the leftovers without lapping the whole thing up or storing it underwater for later.
“You’ve hunted plenty of gators before,” Moni said. “How’d this one trap you?”
“Oh, it didn’t do it alone,” Randy said. “We tied my skiff to the pontoon boat and Robbie started ribbing me about how he thought I had fallen off the boat like some dipshit and left it out there. It kinda set me off, so when a red-shouldered hawk landed on the railing of our boat, I took aim at it with my crossbow to let off some steam.”