The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  His stomach dropped four inches. “Missing? What do you mean missing? Where is she?”

  “Well, that’s just it. They don’t know. She went with her friends to the movies in Petersburg yesterday. She left them in town and got on the bus to come back home, but she never got here. They don’t know if she got off the bus somewhere, or what. Did you ever hear her say anything about running away?”

  “Never. She wouldn’t run away.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She just wouldn’t, that’s all?”

  “How well do you know this Demarco girl, Tony? His mother sat down on the swing.

  “She was Grandmas neighbor, is all.” He couldn’t believe he had lied again. He made it a point to never lie to his mother, but this seemed different.

  “Then how do you know that ‘she would never run away,’ as you said it?” his grandma stopped rocking

  “The kids talk. She was a good girl.” Another lie. “Nobody said anything about her being unhappy. Besides, where would she go?” He was thinking about that bastard Brown. Could she have run away with him? He couldn’t say anything about that, though. The adults would not understand. If she didn’t show up soon, he would have to tell his mother about what they saw, though. It might be important. “Maybe something happened to her.”

  “What do you mean ‘happened to her,’ Tony?” His grandma started rocking again.

  “Maybe she fell and hurt herself. Maybe she’s lying somewhere hurt.”

  “Where would she go to do that?”

  “Everybody goes to the river.”

  “I’m sure they will look there,” Tony’s mother said. “They always look in the river.”

  “What does that mean,” Tony said? “Do you think she has drowned?”

  “Now how on earth would I know that?”

  Disturbed by it all, Tony jumped off the porch and headed home. He stopped next to the police department car and looked toward the house. Officer Bacon came out and walked toward the car. “Hello, Tony,” he said.

  “Hello Mr. Bacon. What’s happened to Lisa?”

  “We don’t know yet, Tony.”

  “Did she run away?”

  “We don’t know that either. She didn’t take anything with her if she did.”

  “Can I tell you something, without you telling my Mom?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Tony. It depends on what it is.”

  “I saw Lisa yesterday down on the river. Mom said that she went to the movies in Petersburg and didn’t come home. But I saw her late in the afternoon. She was with a black guy named Joquan Brown. He’s a football player at the high school in Petersburg,”

  “What time was it that you saw her and Brown?” He took a note book out of his back pocket and flipped it open.

  “About four or four thirty, I guess.”

  “Did anybody else see them?”

  “Craig, Tom, and Lee were there.”

  “What are their last names?”

  “You know them.”

  “For the record, Tony.”

  “Craig Cook, Brett Price, and Lee Sanders. They were there.”

  “What were Lisa and Brown doing there?”

  “They were fooling around.”

  “What do you mean ‘fooling around’?”

  “Just laying on the rocks.” He decided to lie again. It was hard to do. Mr. Bacon was a policeman and everybody knows you don’t lie to the police. But he felt that he didn’t want anybody to know what Lisa was doing with that nigger. They might not believe him. Even he was growing unsure that he had seen what he saw.

  “Okay, Tony. We’ll look into it. Thank you.”

  “You won’t tell my Mom what I told you?”

  “I see no need to.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be at the river. She doesn’t like for me to go there alone.”

  “You said that there were three other boys there with you.”

  “They were, but I didn’t go with them. I don’t run around with them, they’re older. They wouldn’t let me hang around with them even if I wanted too, which I don’t.”

  “Did anyone else you know see Lisa yesterday?”

  “I talked to Ned on the phone last night. He didn’t say anything about seeing her.”

  “Did you tell him what you saw at the river?”

  “No. I didn’t want anybody to know that Lisa had been there with a nig...black boy.”

  “I see. Well, thank you, Tony. I may want to talk to you more about this later. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure, Mr. Bacon. I’ll ask my buddies if they know anything and let you know.”

  “Thank you, Tony. Well, I have to get back to work.” He got into the car and drove away.

  While Tony was standing there, trying to decide what to do next, two other officers came out of the house, got into the second car, and drove away. He decided to go see Craig. He knew that Bacon would talk to Craig and suspected that Craig would be pissed at him for telling the cops that he was at the river. Maybe Ned would go with him to talk to Craig.

  Chapter 3

  Instead of going home, as he said he was going to do, Tony went to Ned’s house. Jeff and Eric were out in the back yard shooting baskets into a goal screwed onto a plywood backboard nailed onto a big oak tree. Tony spent some time almost every day there working on his shooting. He sat on the bench in his church league that met in the elementary school gym every Saturday. He wanted to get good enough to get to play some the next season. He had it in his mind that when he got to high school, he was going to make the team. Ned was the best shot of them all. Tony tried to get him to come out for the church team, but Ned had no interest in playing on a team.

  “Hi guys,” Tony said. “Where’s Ned?”

  Eric passed him the ball. “In the garage, where else. Want to shoot a game of horse?”

  “In a few minutes. I have to see Ned first. I’ll be back.” He tossed the ball back to Eric without taking a shot. He went to the into the tumble-down garage where Ned was working on a new book case he and his dad were making. There was no pedestrian door into the garage. You had to open one of the hinged leaves of the big door to get in.

  When he came in Ned hung the handsaw he was using on hook hanging from the ceiling and picked up a plane. “Hi Tony. What’s up? Hey Close the door, for Christmas’s sake. Were you born in a barn or something?”

  “What you doing in here all by yourself?” The inside of the garage was dark, except for two bare bulb light fixtures hanging by wires from the roof structure. It smelled of sawdust and wood filler.

  “Trying to get a little further along with this bookcase. It’s going in my room when we are finished.”

  “You are using hand tools? It will take forever.”

  “That’s the way the old folks made wood things. Anyway, Dad won’t let me use power tools when he’s not here. When he is, we use power most of the time. I was just finishing up a few things. The hand plane works best on some things anyway.”

  “The guys are going to shoot some horse. Want to join us?”

  “Maybe when I finish what I’m doing here.”

  “Take a break for a minute? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Sure. What’s the problem?”

  Tony was about to ask Ned to go with him to talk to Craig, but the door opened, letting a flood of light and a cold breeze in.

  Eric was at the door. “Tony. There’s somebody out here to see you. You ain’t going to like it.”

  “Craig?”

  “None other. He don’t sound too happy to me.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you to do. Come with me to talk to Craig.”

  “What does the big jerk want from you?”

  “I told Mr. Bacon that Craig, Tom, and Lee were down at the river yesterday. You know that Lisa Demarco has disappeared.”

  “No way,” Eric said. “Where did she go?”

  “T
hat’s just it,” Tony said. “Nobody knows. We saw her at the river when we were down there. We were apparently the last people to see her.”

  “She was there with those guys?”

  “No. She wasn’t with them. You won’t believe who she was with.”

  “Not you?”

  “No. Not me either. She was with a nigger football player from Petersburg named Joquan Brown.”

  “I know him,” Eric said.

  “You know him?” How do you know him?”

  “Well, I don’t actually know him. I do know who he is, though. Why was she with him?”

  “They were fooling around.”

  “You’re kidding,” Eric said. “Lisa Demarco and a nigger. I don’t believe it.”

  “It’s true,” Tony said. “I want to help Mr. Bacon any way I can. I wanted to talk to Craig to see if he remembered something different from what I remember. I guess Mr. Bacon has already talked to him.”

  “If that’s all there was to it, why did you want me to go with you?” Ned was standing close to him. “You afraid of Craig, or something?”

  “Of course I’m afraid of Craig. He’s unpredictable. My mom says that she thinks he might be unstable.”

  “Your mom told you that?”

  “No. I heard her tell my dad. I guess I’d better go see what he wants.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Tony went outside. Ned picked up a hammer and followed.

  “Me, too,” Eric said.

  Craig was standing at the curb. His bike was lying next to him on the grass. He went directly up to Tony.

  “Hey, Craig. I intended to come and talk to you today.”

  “You little bastard. You squealed to the cops that my friends and me was at the river. Why did you do that? You know what we do to squealers?”

  He was trying to sound like George Raft in some 1930s gangster movie he saw on televisions. Tony guessed he thought that would make him sound tougher. He almost laughed. He knew, though, that laughing would not be a good idea, so he smothered it. “I didn’t tell the cops. I told Mr. Bacon. I had to tell him. You know that Lisa is gone.”

  “Bacon is the cops, stupid. I didn’t know the bitch was missing until that fucking cop came to see me. My dad is about to kill me.”

  “Why? You didn’t do anything.”

  “That don’t matter to him. The cops came to our house and it’s my fault. I barely got out of there. He’s going to bust my ass, but before he does, I’m going to bust yours.”

  “I couldn’t help telling Mr. Bacon. I want them to find Lisa.”

  “Ah yes. The love of your life.” He grabbed the front of Tony’s jacket and pulled him to him until his face was four inches from Tony’s.

  Tony tried to pull away, but Craig was two years older and six inches taller, and at least fifty pounds heavier than Tony. He smacked Tony on the side of his head with his closed fist. Tony could feel his head jerk to the side. The blow gave him an instant headache. His eyes blurred, then cleared. Craig still held Tony close to him.

  “Let him go.” Ned shouted.

  “Fuck you, Jefferson. Go hide in your garage, or I’ll give you some of the same.”

  “You let him go, Cook, or I’ll bust my favorite hammer over your freaking head.”

  “You and who’s army?” He pushed Tony away from him and turned to face Ned.

  Tony was amazed. He had never seen Ned act violently before. Ned was as gentle as any girl Tony knew. He would open the garage door and shoe a fly out instead of killing it. He was afraid that Craig would hurt Ned bad. He figured that if he didn’t fight back, Craig would have his say, smack him a couple of times and go away, but Ned had escalated it much further than that. There was no way Craig would back away from him, hammer or no hammer.

  “Hold on, guys,” Tony said. “There’s no reason for a fight here.”

  Craig stood facing Ned with his fists balled at his sides and a glare in his eyes that Tony had seen before. He saw Craig get into a fight with a kid bigger than him down in Petersburg at the Bluebird movie house one Saturday. The kid made some innocent remark about how the girl Craig was sitting next to was “nice work if you can get it.” Craig took that the wrong way and challenged the kid out in the theater lobby. The kid tried to beg off from a fight, but Craig wouldn’t let him. He dared the kid to hit him first, which was a big mistake for the kid. The kid smacked Craig with his open hand and Craig one-two punched him first in the belly, then in the nose. Blood spurted from his nose getting all over the carpet in the lobby.

  “I’m telling you, Jefferson,” Craig said, “put that hammer away and go back in the garage.”

  “Or you’ll do what,” Eric said.

  “Yeah, what will you do?” Jeff had come out of the back yard. He must have heard the commotion. Jeff was the biggest of the guys. He was a year older and almost as tall as Craig and a lot heavier. “Fat kid, some would say, but he could move. Tony couldn’t guard him on the basketball floor. Jeff and Eric stood on either side of Ned. Ned raised his hammer and tapped it in his hand. For the first time Tony could remember, Craig hesitated. He completed the picture for him by stepping to Eric’s side and facing Craig, too.

  Craig shook his fist at them. “You will all be sorry for this. You can’t stay together all the time. I’ll get you. Me and my gang will get you.”

  “Any time, Ned said. It was a show of bravado for Ned, but it scared Tony. He knew that Craig would be as good as his word and all of them had better watch out for him from then on.

  Craig cursed at them once more as he got on his bike and rode away toward Main Street.

  When he was out of sight, Ned walked back into the garage, laid his hammer on the work bench and sat in the floor at the base of the table leaning against it. His face was white, like he’d been outside on a bitter cold day. The other boys all sat next to him. Nobody said anything for a long time.

  Finally, Jeff said, “Did you see the look on that bastard’s face? We scared the shit out of him.”

  “He doesn’t know it,” Tony said.

  “He knows,” Eric said. “In my whole life I never saw Craig scared before.” He laughed, and that broke the ice. They all got to their feet. Jeff, Eric and Tony slapped each other on the back and giggled like a bunch of girls. They had faced down the fire breathing dragon and they had conquered it. They had won four Olympics gold medals. They had beaten Lynchburg for the state high school basketball championship, and they had done it with only four players. Three twelve-year-old players and one thirteen-year-old one.

  Ned got up, but didn’t take part in the back slapping and giggling. “You guys feel like a game of horse?” It was the first thing he had said since Craig left. He started out of the garage door.

  “I thought you had to build a book case,” Tony said.

  “I already used my hammer enough for today.” He walked away from them and they followed him to the makeshift basketball court in his back yard.

  Chapter 4

  Tony and his friends shot baskets that evening until it got too dark to see the rim. Tony lost three games of horse in a row. He just couldn’t concentrate. When he looked at the basket, all he saw was Lisa down on the rocks with Joquan Brown. It wasn’t just that she was doing that with someone other than him. In his day dreams, it was always him. He figured that in a few years the difference in their ages wouldn’t matter as much. He would grow up. She would see him as a stud. She would begin to like him as a boy instead of just as a neighbor kid. He had to be more attractive to her than a black football player. That was the hard part. Not just that he was another boy, but he was as black as a slave from Africa. Tony wasn’t really prejudiced against them. He never really knew a black person. There were none living in Potaucac. When it was almost dark, Jeff and Eric left to go home. Tony had to go home, too. His mother would be looking for him, but he wanted to talk to Ned first. “Can we talk about something, Ned?”

  “Okay. In the garage. I have to go in soon, I can smell su
pper cooking.”

  Tony followed Ned into the garage. Ned turned on the lights.

  “I need your help, pal.”

  “You got it. What do you need?”

  “I want to look for Lisa.”

  “The police are looking for her. What can we do?”

  “We know places they may not look in.”

  “Last time I looked, we were twelve-year-old kids. What can we do?”

  “I don’t believe you. We can look in all the hidden places.”

  “They can, too.”

  “We know places Mr. Bacon wouldn’t know about.”

  “What makes you think that? He grew up here, too.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “To find Lisa.”

  “Where do you want to look?”

  “I thought we’d start where we saw them go into the woods across the river.

  “When do you want to go?”

  “Sunday after dinner. Soon as you can get away.”

  “Ok. Come by here after dinner. I have to go in now. Mother will be putting supper on the table.

  “Thanks pal. I won’t forget it.”

  “I hope I don’t regret it.”

  “You won’t. Nobody will know we went.”

  “It’s not that. I mean, I hope we don’t find anything.” He went through the screen door onto the porch with a wave of his hand.

  Tony thought about what Ned had said all the way home on his bike. He really didn’t think they would find anything like Ned was thinking. No dead bodies or anything. He didn’t know what he expected to find, really. Maybe an article of clothing. Maybe just foot prints that would tell them where they might have gone. He was sure that Lisa was okay somewhere. She probably ran away with that guy. Sure, that’s what happened. They would turn up somewhere. He wondered if the police had talked to Brown, and how he could find out. Could he call Mr. Bacon and ask him? He thought about biking by the officer’s house. Maybe he would be home and he could ask.

  Some of his questions were answered when he got home. A police car was parked in front of their house. Officer. Bacon was sitting in the living room talking to Tony’s mother and dad.

  “Here he is,” Tony’s mother said, as he walked through the front door. “Officer Bacon is here to see you, Tony. Have a seat on the couch.”