Harry Trainer looked totally wiped out-like he had just nosedived off his long board from a 20-foot breaker. His thin blond hair barely clung on the peripheries of his dome. His forehead glowed red, but not with his usual over-the-top tan. The Lagoon Watcher had lost his cool.
“Harry, have you gotten any sleep since you rescued the boater?” asked a noticeably concerned Swartzman.
“Rest? These people don’t believe in rest,” he replied with the veins in his neck flaring. “They think endless cups of cheap, bitter coffee are a proper substitute for sleep.” He faced Sneed. “I beg to differ.”
The detective let the man’s griping roll off him with a regal jutting of his chin. Much like a lion rules its terrain, Sneed ensured that his dominance resonated through his personal office. He sat behind a manly oak desk with broad legs. On it sat four glass-encased antique revolvers. One looked Civil War era and had a Confederate flag imprinted on the white handle. Aaron wondered how many men that baby had blown away on the battlefields.
The detective had lined his walls and shelves with framed press clippings from Georgia papers about murderers getting arrested or convicted. The photo that really caught Aaron’s attention featured two young police officers with bad ‘70s mustaches standing with their guns drawn like a poster from an old Western movie. Upon second look, Aaron recognized one guy as a much younger detective Sneed. Both men had the same last name on their badges, through.
“Is that your little brother?” Aaron asked Sneed as he pointed out the photo. “Is he still an officer in Georgia?”
The bitter glare Sneed pelted him with nearly knocked Aaron out of his chair.
“This is not a damn barbecue. We ain’t here to reminisce about family times,” Sneed said. Swartzman started apologizing on behalf of his student, but the detective buried his gesture. “We’re here because there’s a killer on the loose and it’s pretty clear that the bacteria in the lagoon and the crazy shit it’s doing to the animals are his signatures. All of you have seen it. You’re supposedly the experts. So you tell me how someone could pull this off.”
The three scientists exchanged perplexed glances. Swartzman hadn’t made up his mind and Trainer clearly didn’t want any part of this. After a sleepless night out on the lagoon and a morning getting batted around the sheriff’s office, Trainer wouldn’t hear any complaints from Aaron. He figured that if anybody should take the fall, the rookie might as well stick his arm out before the hungry jungle cat.
“I’ll tell you, between the manatee, the hawk and the gator, I’d say the bacterial infection makes animals aggressive,” Aaron said. “And it takes way lots to hurt them. The manatee brushed off a propeller. The gator took a shotgun blast like a mosquito bite. In both cases, the water turned acidic, but it was a hell of a lot more potent in this last case. I doubt there’s a living thing left in the waters of Palm Bay besides the bacteria. So if you boil it down, someone has introduced this freak show bacteria into the lagoon so they can make infected animals bring victims to them. It’s all about dissecting them and harvesting the organs.”
With an incredulous gasp, Swartzman swiveled his chair toward his student and let him have it.
“You just leapt so high to reach that conclusion that you’re standing on the moon. If this gator was infected, and we have no confirmation that it was without a sample, it still doesn’t mean the bacteria made it attack those men. Gators are naturally aggressive. That’s what they do! And to think someone could train a gator to fetch and catch like a hunting dog-that’s a complete joke.”
Aaron shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. He had taken one for the team and the coach still chewed him out in front of everybody.
Sneed ignored the grilling. He had focused on Trainer’s reaction the whole time. The Lagoon Watcher didn’t appear outraged at Aaron’s theory. He looked amused by it. Sneed’s eyes widened when he spotted the Watcher sending Aaron a nod as if he knew he had caught onto something.
“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve seen an animal with a purple mark act out,” Sneed told Trainer. Furrowing his sunburned brow, the scientist crossed his arms and offered nothing. “Come on, Watcher, you’re out there more than anybody. Don’t hold back on me, now.”
“Hold back?” he asked. “What more do you want? I told you everything that happened there three times. I’ve done plenty.”
“Everything, huh?” Sneed huffed. “I still ain’t heard a good explanation why you were out checking for sea turtle nests in the middle of the night.”
“Because I care about the creatures that share this earth with me,” the Watcher said. “You protect people- supposedly you do. I protect the inhabitants of this planet. In case your officers haven’t noticed while they’ve set up speed traps along every causeway over the lagoon, Central Florida’s treasured estuary is on the verge of ruin.” Trainer ran through every pollutant in the environmental science textbook, and a few that had Aaron scratching his head. He gave the old-timer speech about how the lagoon used to be so clear that they could see the bottom and dive after lobsters. “I’ve been telling people for years that they should close all the wastewater dumping pipes and clean up the farm runoff. Have they listened? Not one bit. And now, surprise, surprise, we have highly deadly mutated bacteria. Sort of poetic justice, isn’t it?”
He didn’t get a single nod from the men in the room. They weren’t on the same wavelength as the Lagoon Watcher. He operated on a channel straight out of Neptune.
Aaron stocked his DVD player with flicks like Endless Summer instead of crime thrillers, yet even he saw the Lagoon Watcher’s motive. Sick and dying animals wouldn’t sway politicians-after all, dolphins couldn’t pay lobbyists with sardines. But an ecological catastrophe killing several people a week would light a fire under their asses. If the media picked out pollution in the lagoon as a reason for the headline-grabbing deaths, they’d cork every toxic spigot the next day.
He studied his professor’s expression for a sign of the same revelation, but Swartzman had his forehead in his hand as he shook his head. He looked bummed that his old friend had pretty much handed the detective the key to his cell.
“So you wanna tell me how you killed all those folks?” Sneed asked. Trainer hollered denials, but the detective pressed on like a steam train running the frantic scientist over. “You made the bacteria to terrorize this community so bad that we’d leave your precious lagoon alone. You think some fucking fish are more important than people?”
“I made it? That’s impossible!” He sprang from his seat. Sneed rose with him so their eyes stayed level. “I had nothing to do with that purple gunk. I’m being framed over my political views!”
Aaron didn’t think an extreme shade of green existed that could represent the Lagoon Watcher’s one-man political party. Not much for free speech inside his office, Sneed let his hand linger over his revolver-and not one of the antiques in the glass cases.
“Sit yer ass down,” the detective growled. “I’m not done asking questions.”
A swollen vein on Sneed’s forehead nearly burst like a knotted hose when the haggard scientist blew him off and spun Swartzman’s chair toward him. Peering down on the professor’s receding hairline, Trainer couldn’t even draw eye contact from his former research partner.
“I could use a little backup here. What gives? Shouldn’t you return the favor?”
Swartzman’s face twisted sour. It reminded Aaron of the look he had seen on the professor’s face when Trainer bought up some incident about NASA. He couldn’t let it slip by this time.
“Whoa dude, you better have one killer favor in mind that your bro owes you here ‘cause you’re asking a lot,” Aaron told Trainer.
“How about saving his career?” The Lagoon Watcher faced Aaron with a smart Alec grin. “That’s how it went with NASA.”
“That’s not what happened,” Swartzman said in a lame attempt at convincing Aaron. Instead, his pathetic squeak amplified the truth in Trainer’s story.
“Oh, sure it is,” the Lagoon Watcher said. “You don’t have Alzheimer’s yet, do you buddy? Here’s a refresher for your friends: You discovered the rocket tests at NASA were polluting the lagoon and wrote up this whole paper on it. The night before your deadline to turn it in for a feature story in the nature journal, a brute in a suit knocks on your door and threatens to knock you out. You were ready to toss the envelope in the mail and run, but I talked you out of it. Not only did you have more hair back in that day, you had that rebellious streak in you. You thought your work could change the world. But you forgot that our government keeps a whole range of people on the federal dime so they can support the status quo.” Trainer flashed a taunting grin towards the simmering Sneed. “If you had mailed that letter, they would have canned your ass. You would have been done. Maybe you’d have ended up a bum
