The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  “That’s all just a wild guess,” Eric said.

  “True, but unless you have a better explanation, I’m for assuming I’m right and looking for them.”

  “I suggest that we look for a logical place where they could hide their clothes,” Ned said. “They could hide in a bunch of rocks, but there is one place where they would have been perfectly safe and completely hidden.”

  “You are right,” Tony said. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” Eric said.

  “The mica mine caves,” Ned said. “Where else?”

  “On the south side of the canal.”

  Tony took off his shoes, shoved his socks into them, tied them together with the laces and tossed them over his shoulder. He rolled up his jeans and started to step into the water.

  “Hey,” Eric said. What exactly are you doing?”

  “It’s fast, but not deep. I waded across last year.”

  “And it still was low so they waded across too.”

  The caves were about a quarter mile downstream from where they had crossed the canal. From the turn of the century until the early thirties, mica had been mined there for use in buggy and later car windows and for the little windows in pot-bellied wood stoves. The caves had been cut into solid rock. In some places, they extended as much a hundred yards back into the river bank.

  The first mine was a notorious lover’s lane. It was out of the way, and most people hardly ever went there. A couple could walk down there from the road and be perfectly alone around the mica mine caves. Inside the caves would be very private. Nobody could see you in there unless they walked right up to the entrance and looked in. If you went inside a few yards it was very dark. It was a perfectly great place for a couple to get it on without being discovered. You would see condoms lying around all around the place.

  The boys couldn’t see to go in very far. Tony’s had brought a flashlight, but the batteries were old and it gave off feeble light. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go in very far. Just around the first bend in the tunnel, where the light from outside was getting real dim, Tony saw a pile of clothes. “Hey guys, look at this.”

  Tony started to pick them up.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Eric said. The police will want them to be left where they are. Just in case they belong to Lisa.

  “Why would that matter?” Eric said.

  “I saw it in an old picture show on television. The cops found this murdered guy that Edgar G. Robinson had shot. They wouldn’t let anybody touch anything until the lab boys got there. Some stupid cop picked up an ash tray, and the detective yelled at him to put it down because it might be evidence.”

  “But this isn’t a crime scene,” Tony said.

  “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Why don’t we let Mr. Baker look at it? We could mess up everything by fooling with this stuff.

  “I at least want to look at it,” Tony said.

  Without touching anything, even in the dim light he could see a pair of girl’s red underpants. He thought he also saw the black strap of a bra. “This might be Lisa’s clothes. She was wearing red underpants. Maybe she is lying back in the cave somewhere. Maybe she is hurt of worse. We should go in and look.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Ned said. “Just exactly how do you expect to see anything in there?”

  “Well I have the flashlight and One of us could stand here in case it fails,” Ned said. “The other two could go in a ways. You’d be able to see the one standing here so you would know where you were.”

  Ned looked at Eric as if he was a genius. This kind of thinking was not usual for Eric. Maybe, Tony thought, there’s more to Eric than I thought before. A great idea,” Tony said. “Ned, how do you feel about staying here?”

  “Okay by me. I don’t think much of going in there in the dark. I don’t do too well in places like that, where I feel trapped.”

  “If we walk side by side, we’ll have a better chance of stumbling over something, if anything is there. Hold hands and keep your hand on the wall.”

  They started into the dark. Very soon, Tony began to feel a little afraid. It was a strange sensation for him. Of course, he had been scared before, but there was always a way out. He began to panic a little.

  “Turn and look back at Ned,” Eric said. “It’ll help get rid of the hebegeebies.”

  “You feel it too?” Again, he was surprised at Eric. He turned and looked back toward Ned. He stood out dimly in the light from outside behind him.

  “It’s okay,” Ned said. “I can still see your light. Can you see me?”

  “Yes,” Tony said, feeling better right away.

  After another thirty feet or so, Tony turned back again and couldn’t see Ned. Again, he felt that sense of panic, emptiness in his stomach. He wanted to turn and run back into the light. “Ned,” he shouted.

  “It’s okay. You went around a bend. I can still see the light. I’ll let you know when I can’t see it either.”

  That took only another twenty feet or so.

  “Can’t see the light any more,” Ned shouted.

  “Let’s go just a little further,” Eric said.

  “I don’t think there’s any need. If we haven’t found anything by now, I doubt that we will find anything.”

  “You stay here and give me the flashlight. I’m going in a little further. Talk to me so I don’t get turned around back there.”

  Tony kept saying, “I’m here.”

  “After a few minutes, Eric shouted from somewhere back in the cave, “Tony come in here. I found something.” His voice had taken on a high squeaky tone.

  Tony started toward the dim light from the flashlight. Soon, hey could see Eric again. Eric was standing over a mass on the floor of the cave. Tony couldn’t see what it was until he got closer. Then he wished he couldn’t see it.

  Lying on the floor stretched out on her back was a naked girls body. He could see her breast and pubic hair which was red. “Oh God,” he said. “Is it Lisa?

  “Can’t tell. She has no head and look at her chest. It’s wide open and her guts are hanging out.”

  Neither of the boys touched her, partly because they didn’t want to disturb the scene as Ned had said but and mostly because they both felt very sick in their stomachs.

  They both staggered to the cave entrance and vomited their dinner all over the side of the mine.

  “What’s going on with you guys?” Ned walked over and put his hand on Tony’s shoulder.

  “It’s Lisa,” Eric said. “She’s dead. Her head is missing and her guts are pulled out and all over her stomach.”

  They all sat down on a rock outcropping just next to the mine entrance. The sky was noticeably darker than it had been when they went into the cave and the woods were getting a grey look. They decided that the best thing to do was go home and tell somebody what they had found, and they did just that, running the whole way even though the canal without removing their shoes.

  Chapter 7

  When The boys got back to Tony’s house and told his parents what they had found, his dad called the police. An hour later Tony, Ned, Eric and all their dads piled into police cars and were driven to the river bridge.

  They all got out of the cars and stood in the dark next to the road. “Now guys,” Officer Bacon said. “Take us to where you found Miss Demarco.”

  The parade followed Tony, with powerful bobbing flashlights leading the way along the south side of the canal until he turned off into the woods and walked to the mine where they had found Lisa.

  “It was in here,” Tony said, pointing at the black hole that was the mine entrance.

  Bacon stepped by Tony and started into the cave followed by the entourage. He stopped at the opening, turned and said. “Folks this is possibly a crime scene. I’m going to have to ask you to stay at least twenty feet back from the mine entrance. Tom, please stay out here with the folks. Sam, come with me.”

  The two police officers went into the mine. Tony could see their lights filli
ng the blackness. They were in there a short time when Bacon came back out. He took his radio from his belt and punched a button on it causing it to send out static. He depressed the talk button and said “Bacon here. Come in.”

  The speaker scratched back “Roger, Bacon. Report.”

  “Found two bodies out here. Possibly Lisa Demarco and Joquan Brown. Dispatch backup stat.”

  “Roger. Do you need medical?”

  “No need. Send forensics team.”

  “Roger”

  Bacon snapped the radio back on his belt and approached the boys and their fathers. “I’m sure you heard my report. I’m sorry to have you hear that we found them both in there. They are both dead.”

  “Were they mutilated like the other girl?” John’s dad said.

  “I’m afraid they were Steve.”

  “Can you tell us any more than that?”

  “Not at this time. We will release more when it’s available. Now I going to ask you all to go home. The officers will go take you there. I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else what happened out here just yet until we are ready to release the news. I would not like to have press swarming all over this scene before we have had a chance to secure it and do our jobs out here.”

  John didn’t think that every one of them would be silent about this. The men would certainly tell their wives and at least one of the wives would be on the phone in a minute, and he was right. A Progress Index newspaper reporter was on the phone a half hour after they got home asking questions and wanting an interview. John went to his room and cried into his pillow. It was four in the morning before he could get to sleep.

  Two more teens disappeared that year and were found without their heads. Their heads were never found. A third teen also disappeared, but her body was never found.

  2016

  Tony graduated from the University of Virginia in 1996 with a degree in English Literature. After graduation, he moved to New Jersey, across the Hudson river from Manhattan where most of the big-time publishers were at that time. There he got a job as a copy boy at a local newspaper and began to write books. He joined a writer’s group where he met and became friends with a published novelist who was also a UVA graduate. His friend introduced him to his agent who accepted Tony as a client. Tony’s first published book sold a few copies. His third became a best seller Tony went on to become what he dreamed of becoming, a best-selling horror fiction writer. Perhaps to a certain extent his career choice was influenced by the events that occurred when he was twelve. When his mother became ill with a cancer and his father began showing signs of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Tony moved back to Potaucac to look after them, thinking that he could write anywhere and that he needed to be with his parents. In the time he had been away many changes had occurred in the small town. Lake Chesdin, down river from Potaucac, which was built in the sixties, had become too small to serve the water needs of the surrounding locations and a new dam had been built ten miles upriver forming Lake Shamnpa. As a result, Potaucac had grown large enough to have its own high school and a strip shopping center. Eventually his mother passed away and his father was moved into Shady Grove Extended Care home. Soon after that, a madman came to Potaucac and murdered several people, including Tony’s fiancée and her parents. That case was solved by the police, Tony, and his friend, Thaddeus Goodfellow, who was Dean of the College of Anthropology at Powhatan University located in Potaucac. In the process Tony was reunited with his high school classmate, Police Investigator Maria Chavez. In 2016, Tony still lived in his parents’ home adjacent to lake Shamnpa, and Maria had become his wife.

  Chapter 8

  The man watched through the living room picture window as seventeen-year-old Carla Smyth walked around in the living room of her parent’s brick home. She was a beautiful young girl but that was of no consequence to him. He had long been free of animal lust. He had little interest in her body, but her head with its long red hair was going to make a marvelous addition to his collection. She was a perfect example of his quest to destroy the evil ones. She had been having sexual relations with the young man he knew she would see that night. She did it almost every time she and he were together alone. She had her cell phone in her hand right then and he was sure that she would be calling her lover to come over and participate in the evil debauchery he knew was about to begin. He would like to catch them both but was afraid that if he tried to do so, at least one of them would escape. It was of no consequence. The other would soon also be on his list and his head would rest next to hers in his collection.

  In the living room Carla punched Clay Barker’s number into her smart phone and typed him a message:

  Hi. Mom and Dad are going to The Mill Playhouse to a play tonight. Can you come over? 7:30

  The answer came back almost instantly: Try to keep me away.

  At 7, just minutes after her parents left, Carla went to her bedroom, stripped off her sweater, jeans and underwear, and jumped into the shower. Five minutes later she stood in front of her dresser mirror with a towel wrapped around her. She dried her shoulder length red hair and combed it back, tried to decide what to wear. It had to be special for Clay because he was special. They had been intimate for about six months now but it had usually been in the back seat of his Camaro. This night it would be in her bed under sheets, or with no sheets, and completely naked. She had seen Clay in swim trunks and admired his body but she had never seen him completely naked. She had never seen his manhood in the bright light either, although she had felt it more than a few times. This would be different. But what was she going to wear. She could dress in her blouse, jeans, bra, and panties as usual and feel the excitement grow as he took them off or she could just put on her teddy and not waste a lot of time. She decided on the latter. She took her pink teddy from the top of the closet under the boxes of school stuff where she had hidden it from her mother and held it against herself before the mirror. She liked her large round breast showing above the top and started to pull it down and let them show, but decided that that was too slutty and pulled it up again. One thing she didn’t like about the teddy was that it hid her slim waist and tight abs, but decided that he would see them soon enough. She turned and looked over her shoulder at herself from the back. One thing the teddy did do was stick out and drop down over her butt which emphasized it. She had heard the boys liked big butts and hers was not big enough to suite her but she had what she had and that was that. Clay had told her how sexy it was in her bikini. She hoped that the real thing would still be as attractive to him although she didn’t see how it could be. She squirted a splash of perfume under her neck and thinking about it squirted some around her red pubic hair where he could smell it if he got is head down there which was something she wanted him to do although he had never gotten the chance in the back seat of his car. She had dreamed about a boy going down the but since Clay was her first she had never realized that dream. She hoped tonight would be the night.

  Clay showed up and together they met all her expectations. He left fifteen minutes before her parents were to return. She was back in her bedroom putting on the clothes they would expect her to be wearing when they came in the door from the garage. After greeting them, she spent the rest of the night in her room going over in her mind all that had happened that night. It had been a night she would never forget; everything she had hoped for and more. Later she undressed and lay on her bed wide awake. About one o’clock by her bedside radio clock she heard a tapping on her window. With wonder and some trepidation, she went to the window and looked out. It was Clay. What in the world was he doing?

  He waved at her.

  She raised the window. “Hi Clay. What’s up.”

  He just stood there waving at her beckoning her to come out without saying a word.

  She thought he was acting weird but decided to go out and see what he wanted. Just to tell me how great a time he had tonight. She pulled on her robe over her underwear and went down the hall. When she passed by the ma
ster bedroom door, she could her father snoring, so he at least was sound asleep. She went out through the kitchen door, being very quiet so as not to have her parents hear her.

  Outside she walked around the back of the house to the spot where she had seen Clay but he wasn’t there. “Clay.” She called softly so as not to wake her parents or be heard by the neighbors. She saw him over by the woods behind the house. The only reason she could see him at all in the dark was because of the full moon that had risen an hour earlier. She called him again but he did not answer. Instead he just waved at her to come on with him. She followed him into the woods. In the woods, he turned away from her and stopped. When she reached him she touched him on his shoulder and said “Clay, baby what is it. You are scaring me.”

  When he turned back toward her she became really scared. It was not Clay standing there. It was a dark man without a shirt and wearing what looked like a leather skirt. She started to turn and run but he was too quick. He twisted her around to face him. In his hand, she saw what looked like a strange fat knife. She tried to pull away but he held her wrist firmly and pulled her toward him twisting her around so that her back was toward him. He put his arm around her chest and pulled her closed to him. When she tried to cry out, he slapped one hand over her mouth and nose stifling her scream and after a while causing her to black out.