Sneed looked down his nose at Randy as if the grizzly detective would have jumped into the acid bath and snapped the gator’s neck if that would have saved his brother. Luckily, Randy didn’t notice anything besides the back of his own hand as he shielded his face.
“My hand was burning, so I ran. I slammed the throttle and bolted out of there so freaked out I didn’t even look back. The skiff’s motor lasted about a minute and then it died. No gas. Those fuckers drained the tank.”
“What fuckers?” Sneed asked. “I thought you were fighting a gator?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t a normal gator. This beast wasn’t a creation of God, I tell ya. It left me out there on my skiff stranded in the middle of the lagoon. The smell of the rotten acid in the water and the fish getting fried alive with their hot guts bursting-it made me heave over the side. When I saw that my puke didn’t boil in the water, I knew I had escaped from the acid. The gator was still out there, though. If it wasn’t for the Lagoon Watcher, it woulda got me for sure.”
Sneed grilled him on the timing of his rescue. Harry Trainer, known in boating circles as the pesky Lagoon Watcher, fished Randy Cooper out of his skiff around a quarter to three in the morning. Somehow, he had heard the distress call before the Coast Guard and found himself in better position for a response-less than fifteen minutes after the call. He came wearing a black wetsuit rather than the trademark tropical shirt and shorts everybody knows him for in daylight hours. Randy said the Watcher didn’t seem all that surprised by his story, but he circled the boat around the lagoon while Randy called out his brother’s name-all while skillfully avoiding the acid slick near Palm Bay. Randy had screamed until his lungs ached. For the longest time he heard nothing besides the water lapping up against the Watcher’s boat.
“Out of the blue, I heard a bird flapping its wings,” Randy said. “When I looked in that direction, I saw a pair of purple eyes. At that point, I was ready for the damn gator-shotgun or no shotgun-if it meant finding Robbie. I told the Watcher, ‘Take me there.’ He must have seen it too, but he didn’t ask questions. Then I saw it-the red- shouldered hawk. It was…” He wiped the perspiration off his face and clenched his fist over his chin until he could spit out the words. “It was perched on Robbie’s life vest. Just the life vest and shoulders-that’s all I saw. His head was… It was gone.”
While Randy grabbed a tissue and dabbed his face, Moni pondered how his brother had been passed from a gator’s jaws to the surgical serial killer. Robbie’s corpse had the usual grocery list of organs taken from it. The head had come off along a line as straight as an architectural drawing. The only injuries that didn’t match the previous victims were the deep gator bite on the arm and the second-degree burns that had reddened most of his skin. The acid had roasted Robbie, but not for so long that his flesh dissolved down to the muscle. The gator-or something else-had pulled him out of the acid slick. They couldn’t tell whether it happened before or after the beheading. They wouldn’t know without seeing his head, and by now everybody knew that wouldn’t turn up.
How could the killer make the gator cooperate? What other animals work for him?
Moni offered Randy a tissue. He proudly brushed her hand aside and wadded the original tissue, which he had soaked, into his pocket. When he finally redeployed his tough guy scowl and looked her in the eyes, Moni fired back with the question that had been gnawing at her.
“What about the hawk? Was something evil about it like with the gator?”
Lines creased across Randy’s forehead as if he were aging by the decade right before her eyes. “The damn bird… It lured us into that trap. Then it called me over with its purple eyes so I could see my brother’s body. The site will haunt me for the rest of my life. The moment I shined a flashlight on the hawk, it took off like I startled it, but it didn’t make a sound. It flew as clumsily as a winged donkey. I would have sworn it had been shot, but I know I didn’t hit it.”
As her memory flashed, Moni’s heart raced so fast that the pulses through her blood vessels could barely keep up. She remembered how the raven had flown crookedly after she had pulled it off her windshield. It didn’t have purple eyes, but the hawk didn’t either the first time Randy spotted it. The bird had set him and his brother up for an attack. Moni wondered whether the killer had dropped the raven on her car for the same reason. Did she narrowly avoid death when she touched the raven? Or did the murderer leave it for Mariella instead?
Moni had no idea who could manipulate animals like that. But Sneed had a strong notion.
“How did the Lagoon Watcher react when he saw what was left of Robbie?” Sneed asked. “I can’t imagine an honest scientist would have seen such a sight before.”
“I was too, uh, emotional to pay that guy much mind,” Randy said. “Eventually, he tapped me on the shoulder and told me we should bring the body on board before a gator or shark rips it apart. Now when he saw it, the Watcher didn’t seem disgusted at all. Hell, he was fascinated by it. It reminded me of the first time I watched my dad gut a deer.”
“So you think the behavior of the Lagoon Watcher, Harry Trainer, was unusual?” Sneed asked as he leaned close to the microphone. When Randy agreed, he pressed on. “I suppose that’s not a stretch. His role in all of this is questionable, if you ask me. He got there eighteen minutes before the Coast Guard. You didn’t see any other boater on the water. So he was the only person in your proximity when your brother went under. Now I don’t know how the killer slices up his victims, but I’m sure your timeline of events would give the Watcher plenty of time to do some carving.”
“You think that he…” Randy gasped. His face whitened.
“Hold on.” Moni blocked the conclusion from leaving his lips. “If this guy with the corny name was the killer, why would he rescue you, Randy? You said yourself that you were vulnerable out there on the skiff.”
While Randy shook his head and shrugged, Sneed answered for him.
“Maybe it’s because he knew the Coast Guard was on the way. The Watcher had time for one victim, but he figured he couldn’t put both through the meat grinder before the searchlights came out.
“And this wasn’t the first time he’s been conveniently near one of these murder scenes,” Sneed continued. “My old pal Matt Kane, may God bless his soul, he saw the Watcher just before he found those two Mexicans dead. And then Kane became the next victim.” Sneed pounded his fist into his palm. “I best have a word with him.”
Moni couldn’t deny that it made tremendous sense. The Lagoon Watcher had been some type of environmental scientists who went a little whacko. Maybe he developed the mutated bacteria and set it loose, Moni thought. Yet, if the psycho scientist had beheaded Kane because he saw something at the murder scene, what mutilation did he envision for the young girl who had witnessed the closely-guarded secrets of his killing method?
The pickup truck that lingered outside Mariella’s school yesterday-who had been behind the wheel with binoculars? Whether it had been the Lagoon Watcher or some other kind of watcher, Moni knew exactly what he wanted.
“What types of vehicles does Trainer own?” Moni asked Sneed.
“I gotta check up on it,” he replied.
She didn’t need an answer. Moni just knew.
Chapter 12
Aaron felt as smooth as James Bond when Professor Swartzman rang him up at six in the morning and told him they were wanted at the sheriff’s office for some top secret caper. When he got there and poured through the police report about the purple-eyed gator, Aaron’s bravery flew out the window.
His head kept replaying his last dive in the lagoon. The water management lady said she saw something huge, but he had brushed it off and stayed in there. If he had swam a little longer that day, maybe they’d have crime scene photos of his body all burned red by acid with a gaping hole in his neck.
“We better be more careful around the lagoon from now on,” Swartzman said as he pointed out the witness’ description of a monstrous gator.
Aaron realized that saying they’d be more careful didn’t mean the professor would refrain from ordering someone-namely his least-favorite student-into the water in the name of ground-breaking research. The admissions officer should have told him that the tuition payment included his life. Too bad his dad wouldn’t buy that as an excuse for quitting.
Lead detective Sneed summoned them into his office for a briefing on the biological jigsaw puzzle of this case. They weren’t the only scientists he invited.
