park. Even now I see her running for her mommy. Just do me a favor-stay in the car.”
“Then who will…”
“Mrs. Mint is right behind her,” Sneed said. “She’s a teacher. She can handle a sassy little brat playing hooky.”
Mrs. Mint hobbled across the pavement around the “temporary” trailers, which had been at the school for nearly four years. Her knees and ankles jolted like misfiring pistons, as they were unwillingly pressed into service chasing the girl. She wished teaching didn’t have to be so physical. If she spent all day behind her desk, she’d have no complaints.
The teacher reared over with her hands on her knees and gasped for air as she finally cleared the eight rows of portables. After composing herself, she straightened up and surveyed the parking lot. She didn’t see Mariella. She spotted the “undercover” Lincoln Navigator with tinted windows, but she didn’t see any girl pounding on the windows, demanding her new mommy.
Maybe she erred in thinking that Mariella would run straight through the trailers on the same path she had entered. The girl might have made a detour or two. For a small kid, it wouldn’t be hard to get lost amid the massive rectangles. Overruling the strenuous protests of her throbbing ankles and knees, Mrs. Mint spun around and jogged back to trailer city.
This time she paced herself and paused as she passed each row so she could have a good look down both ways. She completed the entire length, and didn’t see anyone besides students making goofy faces at her from the windows of their wooden classrooms. No sign of Mariella.
Mrs. Mint’s heart pounded as fear of the worst crept through her arteries like a scorpion. She reached into her pocket and fingered the pen that would alert the police. Then she looked around and saw the cameras. They were watching every row of the portables, but they hadn’t called her with the girl’s location. If Mariella had found a hiding place from them, it must be between the short sides of the trailers, not the long sides that were under surveillance, she thought. The girl did have a thing for privacy. Mrs. Mint wouldn’t mind leaving her alone to cry off her frustration. But, with a whole police force and the girl’s supposed mother watching, she figured she better console the poor thing.
The teacher trotted up and down the rows along the short ends of the trailers, and peered underneath their hitches and behind their air conditioning units. As she leaned over for a look at the crawl space behind a clattering A/C unit, an arm cloaked by a black coat wrapped around her throat. It yanked her against a hard body that stunk of salt water and rotten eggs. She reached into her pocket for the alert pen. The man grabbed her wrist and squeezed it until she couldn’t feel her fingers.
“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” the Lagoon Watcher said with his steaming breath on the back of her neck.
Chapter 33
The man stuck his gloved hand down Mrs. Mint’s pocket and his fingers clawed at her upper thigh. Oh Jesus, not there! She squeezed her legs together. His forearm wrenched her chin upward until she exhausted all her muscles struggling for air. His hand penetrated deeper until her pocket nearly tore. The Lagoon Watcher finally ripped his hand out of her pants and tossed the alert pen away.
“Everybody has the wrong idea about me. I’m not the one who’s dangerous,” the Lagoon Watcher said as he eased his grip around the teacher’s neck. She sank into the folds of his dark coat as if it where swallowing her whole. Her chest heaved as she feared that any breath could become her last. “The girl is dangerous. But I’m not here to hurt her. I’m here to figure out what’s wrong with her, and help her get better. The best thing you can do is walk away and leave us alone.”
She doubted that a man this creepy really intended on helping Mariella, but Mrs. Mint couldn’t argue that, if she walked away, at least she wouldn’t get hurt. She hadn’t become a school teacher so she could battle serial killers with her clip-on nails.
“Give her back, and then I’ll walk away,” Mrs. Mint said. Her tone lacked the force that she had intended. Instead of reeling from intimidation, the man chuckled as if he had been threatened by a squirrel.
“If I can make her better, you’ll get her back,” the Lagoon Watcher said. His breath stank of over-fried crawfish. “I wish I could promise you that she’ll be fine, but I haven’t been able to fix much that’s gone wrong with the lagoon. We finally killed nature’s precious treasure.”
He sounded almost teary as he spoke of the lagoon, as if it were his child.
“I love the lagoon too,” she said. She hoped that having a common interest would ingrain some sympathy with him. “I’d like nothing more than to preserve it for the children.”
“If this works, maybe we will,” he said. “Now go. I’ll take care of the girl.”
The Lagoon Watcher brought his hand down and let Mrs. Mint take a step away from him. Wondering whether his sincerity sprang from madness or genuine concern, she spun around for a look into his eyes before he disappeared. His gray-blue eyes peered out at her from beneath a long sun-scorched scalp and a shock of thinning blond hair that hung down his neck. He reminded her of a drunken middle-aged man living on a roaming house boat, not a serious scientist who could help a disturbed little girl.
He reached out to her with a gloved hand that looked deceptively comforting. Mrs. Mint whirled around and dashed out of there. She didn’t even recognize the stabbing pain in her ankles and knees until she reached the parking lot and saw the SUV with the tinted windows.
“The Lagoon Watcher has Mariella! They’re in the trailers.”
Moni yanked on the door handle so hard that she cracked a fingernail when it didn’t open. When she saw DeWitt’s smug grin as he held his finger over the master lock, she socked him on his lard-loaded arm. “Open the fucking door!”
“We’re not supposed to leave until we get word from Sneed,” he said. “You would never disregard an order, would you?”
Moni grumbled bloody murder as she dialed into the secure line. “Detective Sneed, I have confirmation from Mrs. Mint that the Lagoon Watcher has Mariella captive in the trailer area. May I have your permission to pursue the suspect?” That last sentence burned her tongue like battery acid.
“We’re having three officers converge on the suspect’s location,” Sneed said. “I’ll go while my partner here keeps an eye on the video. Officer Connors from the playground will go and one more, hmmm…” She grabbed her seat’s armrest and nearly peeled the cover off. The teacher pounded on her window about the kidnapped girl while Sneed took his sweet-ass time. “Moni, you can come too. Everybody else will watch the perimeter and make sure no one leaves. And call for backup to get firepower along that perimeter. Now move!”
The moment that prick DeWitt unlocked her door, Moni bolted from the SUV. She ignored the teacher and raced between the cars toward the trailers. Even though she ran faster than she ever had, the mental torture of worrying about Mariella stretched out each step into a month’s worth of agony. In the time she took one stride, he could snap the girl’s fragile neck and let her head dangle with lifeless eyes. He could thrust a knife into her heart until it stopped beating. He could pinch her flute-like windpipe between his fingers and crush it. Maybe he had brought his precision slicer. Moni couldn’t bear guessing how long that would take him, but she knew that Harrison hadn’t been dead for long when the police arrived at her house and found his headless corpse.
Moni pumped her legs so hard that her thigh muscles throbbed as if they were about to rupture. She didn’t care if she wound up on crutches: Mariella’s life literally hung on every second.
She drew her pistol as she dodged between the trailers. Moni heard a door open on the other side of a trailer. She dashed around it and pointed her gun. A pre-teen boy screamed and nearly fell off the steps leading up to his classroom. Without apologizing, Moni hurried on and circled around more trailers. She didn’t see anything. Mariella couldn’t even yell for her. The girl couldn’t cry out in pain from the horrible devices that the Lagoon Watcher inflicted upon her.
The pressure welled up inside Moni’s head. It pushed on the inside of her skull as dread invaded her thoughts. Had she already taken too long? Those piercing eyes that had stared at Mariella from across the dark
