pickup truck still watched her and the girl as they stood underneath the bright lights around the Melbourne sheriff’s station. When Moni stared back at him for too long, the truck sprang alive like a lion roaring in the middle of a jungle night. It jumped the curb from the parking lot onto the street and burned rubber down Sarno Road. It sped east in the direction of the Indian River Lagoon.
Moni’s skin crawled as she thought of how the man had been observing her and the girl the whole time. and lord knows how many other instances. If she had left Mariella alone for one minute, she might have lost her girl forever.
“It’s a blue pickup truck like the one the Lagoon Watcher drives,” Moni told Skillings, who finally set her hawkish gaze elsewhere. “He was outside Mariella’s school one day too. He’s stalking her. So there’s your suspect.”
Skillings growled as she sprinted towards her car. “This doesn’t change anything I said. We’ll finish this after I bring him in.”
“No, after I bring him in,” Moni corrected her as she finally unlocked her Taurus so she could give its six- cylinders a workout. “That asshole’s gonna pay for the hell he put my baby though.”
Moni swung open the back door and placed Mariella in the seat as gently and quickly as she could. Her nerves must have rattled her hands, because when she finished strapping the girl in she noticed Mariella staring at her-not with sleepy eyes but fully alert and razor sharp. She sensed Moni’s urgency.
“I’m gonna catch the man who did bad things to your parents,” Moni said as she jumped behind the wheel.
She peeled out of her parking space and leapt the curb. Skillings’ patrol car had a good lead on her. She saw the red taillights of the Lagoon Watcher’s truck farther down the road. After11 p.m., there weren’t many other cars on the quiet Melbourne streets. Moni radioed for backup. She didn’t count on it getting there before the stalker had plenty of chances to escape..
A sedan pulled into the road ahead of her. Ignoring the brakes, Moni swerved into the oncoming lane and back again as she zipped around it. Suddenly, the suspect’s truck barreled onto the grass on the right side of the street. It headed straight for an elementary school. Skillings’ patrol car raced behind him. He spun up chunks of turf-with one a big clump splattering off Skillings’ windshield. The truck shredded some bushes and then rumbled into the school’s empty parking lot. The Lagoon Watcher turned toward a building, then swerved the truck the opposite way and burst through a chain link fence that led him back onto Sarno Road. Skillings’ car was slowed down by the muddled grass and whacked by the fence as it reentered the roadway. That gave the Lagoon Watcher plenty of distance from her.
Moni hadn’t fallen for the bait. She had stayed on the road the whole time and found her car right on the truck’s tailpipe. She could only imagine the look on Skillings’ face when she saw that the “kiddie cop” had out- maneuvered her.
Of course, following the Lagoon Watcher like a tick on a dog’s ass wouldn’t get the job done. This wouldn’t end until she stopped that truck and yanked him out by the hair on the back of his neck. Moni pumped the gas. Her car rammed the pickup’s bumper on the right side. It drifted slightly left, toward the oncoming lane, but quickly straightened out.
It would take a much harder blow if she wanted his truck spinning across the road. With a quick glance over her shoulder, Moni saw Mariella on edge in her seat like a cat spooked by a thunder storm. She couldn’t play bumper cars at 90 miles an hour with her girl in the backseat.
Looking for a glancing blow that would slow him down, Moni pulled even with the truck along its right side. She nudged her car into its door. Sparks flew. The pressure forced the truck toward the opposite lane, where a pair of headlights sped toward them. Seeing the oncoming car, Moni disengaged the truck, and pulled back into her lane. The truck pulled left-straight at the car racing toward it. Moni flinched. The oncoming driver, who got a rude surprise on his twilight drive, sounded his horn. The Lagoon Watcher swung his truck back into the right lane, sideswiping Moni’s smaller car.
“Hold on!” Moni cried as her car shot over the sidewalk and onto the lawn of a church. She struggled for control over the vehicle. Her headlights caught sight of a large gazebo; it was the kind used for a wedding, or maybe a memorial service. Rejecting the brakes for fear of skidding through the grass, Moni banked the wheel hard left, and revved the gas. Her car responded so well that it brought her back onto the road, and straight into the oncoming lane. She saw the glare of headlights ahead. A horn shrieked. Moni weaved back into the right lane an instant before the tow truck sped by. She hoped she would need its services later, but not for her car.
The truck she had a fix on wrecking opened a sizable lead on her. He didn’t have it all in the clear, though. Moni’s ass-busting work had helped Skillings and her patrol car slide right onto the Lagoon Watcher’s tail. They crossed the train tracks within moments of each other. Moni lagged behind. She didn’t mind trailing so much anymore. She could nearly feel Mariella’s tremors of terror from the backseat. Moni’s assault had nearly gotten her killed. It frustrated the hell out of her, but she couldn’t take any more risks with the girl in the car.
That’s exactly what everyone says about me; that I always find an excuse to back down. Damn it. I have no choice this time. If I get Mariella killed trying to arrest him, then the Lagoon Watcher will have gotten exactly what he wanted. He might even have baited me into this chase so I would risk her life. That lagoon-loving vegan son of a bitch.
The Lagoon Watcher’s truck cut the corner of Sarno Road and U.S. 1 by ducking through a parking lot. It emerged onto the highway with a southern heading. Moni got on the radio and updated the second wave of patrol cars on his direction. She had a feeling where he was headed, and she knew backup wouldn’t make it in time. They were one mile away from the stretch of U.S. 1 that ran right up against the bacteria infested Indian River Lagoon.
Moni grabbed her radio. “He’s headed for the lagoon. That’s his refuge. You hear me, Nina? You gotta cut him off.”
“Then come on! Box and stop.” Skillings replied over the radio. Moni didn’t respond. “You need me to spell it out for you? I’ll pull ahead of him to slow him down. I need you to get behind him and box him in on my tail. That should buy us time until help arrives. Got it?”
“But why don’t you just clip him and spin him out?” Moni asked.
“This is the highway, not some backwater street. He could spin into someone-like you almost made him do back there.”
Moni clamped her teeth. Her tongue simmered in her mouth from the fiery words she refrained from releasing. Everyone could hear what they said on the radio, especially the part about how Moni had screwed up.
“While you were getting faked off the road, I got some good licks on him,” Moni said over the radio. “But I better stop now. It’s getting too dangerous for Mariella here with me. It’s your turn to step up, Nina.”
“Oh sure, it’s too dangerous for her,” Skillings said. “Big surprise-Mariella helps the Lagoon Watcher get away. What else do you think she’s been doing for him?”
Moni could imagine Sneed’s ears perking like a K-9 catching the scent of blood when he heard that remark. If she didn’t catch the Lagoon Watcher and prove that he had been stalking Mariella and not colluding with her, Sneed would rip the poor girl limb from limb until she talked.
Gripping the steering wheel so hard that she nearly broke it off, Moni made a looping turn onto U.S. 1. She saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings rounding a curve in the road. Moni floored it. Seconds later, Moni’s foot suddenly numbed over and eased off the gas. She realized that Skillings hadn’t shown Mariella’s picture of the burning man to anyone else. Without that, Sneed wouldn’t know that lightning had struck twice with those pictures. Skillings wouldn’t let the suspicious drawing stay secret for long.
“We’ll catch this guy,” she told Mariella, who clutched the back of Moni’s seat so she wouldn’t bounce around. “And then we’ll have a little talk with our friend Nina.”
By the time she came out of the curve in the road, she saw the Lagoon Watcher and Skillings crossing a flat bridge over an offshoot of the Eau Gallie River. The patrol car edged its nose toward the pickup’s right rear tire. If she connected on target, the truck would whip around and thump right smack into the bridge’s guardrail, and maybe over into the water. The Lagoon Watcher must have seen it coming because he swerved left. Instead of connecting on the side of the truck, the patrol car clipped its rear bumper. While the truck weaved in and out of its lane a few times until it steadied, Skillings’ patrol car straightened out but lost much of its velocity. Moni quickly pulled even with her. She shot Skillings a glance through the window. Skillings greeted her with an accusatory stare that said
