The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  Joe went directly to the body and gave it a cursory look. I hope you didn’t touch the body this time,” he said looking at Tony.

  “Hello Joe. I’m glad to see you too.”

  “Don’t wise ass with me, Tony. Last time you screwed up our investigation.”

  “By finding the body?

  “By disturbing the body.”

  “Are you guys arguing again?” Maria had come up without Tony noticing until she spoke.

  “Ass hole is meddling in evidence again,” Joe said.

  “I didn’t do anything except turn her body over and throw up in the lake.”

  Maria put her arm around Tony and moved him off to one side. “Joe has had a bad day, Honey. Give him a little room.”

  “And I have not had a bad day? So, what is his problem now? Not enough beer at the station?”

  “Another girl’s body turned up this morning. We have not firmly identified her yet but we suspect that she is the girl reported missing earlier this week.”

  “Do you have any ideas who this one is?”

  “We just got here so there is no way to be certain but I’m guessing that she is Carla Smyth. She was reported missing this morning. She is seventeen which I’m guessing is about right for this girl. She is short and curvy with large breasts for her age. Her hair is red. Just like this girl judging by the color of her pubic hair.

  “Was the other girl missing her head?”

  “Yes and we haven’t found it yet. She was also missing her heart which at first glance seems to be also true with this one.”

  “Wow.” Tony’s head was spinning trying to forget what he remembered about the incident from 1986 that he had told Thad about out in the boat. “This has happened before here, Maria. When we were in school. Maybe it’s the same killer.”

  “I thought about that and did some research this morning. The incidents look similar but it is unlikely that it could be the same perp. It’s been thirty years. There have been no incidents in between. He would have to be getting old by now.”

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten about Aleksander Belikosie*1."

  “Certainly I have not, and I definitely remember that he was apparently immortal but that was surely an isolated incident one not likely to be repeated. After all, how many immortal guys from the Carpathian Mountains can there be in the world?”

  “Maybe he got out from under the boulders and is running amuck again.”

  “Possible, but not likely.”

  “I would say not possible,” Thad said.

  “Hello Thad,” Maria said. Why is it impossible?

  “I was over there yesterday. There has been no disturbance where we buried him. It is not possible for him to have dug himself out and put everything, including huge boulders, back in place without showing some sign of a disturbance. Ergo, whoever this is, it cannot be Belikosie. Besides the M.O. is all wrong. Belikosie never pulled anything like this. He killed Bucar descendants for vengeance not innocent teenagers.”

  By then Tony’s beach was once again taped off as it had been when they found Victor Boston’s casket on it and he and Thad were forced to leave it.

  The story of Aleksander Belikosieis in the Author’s bookVengeance, available on Kindle as an e-book.[1]

  Chapter 12

  Back at his house, Tony made them each a ham and cheese sandwich and they sat on the porch with a beer. “Well you were right about the bass,” Thad said. “But Crappie are still good eating and we got enough of them to go around. By the way, I knew Lisa Demarco. I was away at college when it happened. What do you know that wasn’t in the papers? Also, what did you mean out there about it being the last time anybody saw her or Brown alive?

  “Well it’s a long story.”

  “I have all the rest of the afternoon. All I have to do is clean the fish.”

  “I can tell you while we do that at the cleaning station.” The station was a five-foot-long stainless steel table with running water and a drain located on the patio to the left of the basement door. As they started to clean the crappie, Tony started. “I was amazed when I saw Lisa with the black kid. Since I was about ten. I had day dreamed about seeing her naked. One summer night I snuck over to Lisa’s house and peeked in her window. She got down to her pink panties and bra, and pulled the curtains closed. It was almost like she knew somebody was out there and wanted whoever it was to see that much and no more. I decided right then that night that when I grew up I was going to marry Lisa.”

  “Did you ever try to do anything about your feelings?”

  “I asked her to go to a movie with me once. She said that she was flattered, but her friends would laugh her off the school bus if she went to the movies with a grade school boy. After all, she told me, ‘I’ll be going to junior high school next year.’ I never realized that she was that old before. I just always thought of her as Lisa. I thanked her anyway, figuring that I’d ask her again when I got a little older, but I never got that chance.”

  “The next day after church I went to the river looking for my friends Eric Stone and Ned Jansons. This time, I went to the River Bridge and walked on the rocks to the swimming hole avoiding the cemetery and the canal. My buddies were not there. When I got back home, I found a note from Mom saying that she was at my grandma’s and that I should come there.

  When I got there, I found out that Lisa was supposed to have gone to the movies in Petersburg the day before with a friend named Mary Roberts. Mary came home on the bus but Lisa stayed behind saying that she wanted to do some shopping. At least that was the story Mary told, but Lisa did not come home. I knew that the story was not true because we had seen Lisa with Joquan Brown at the river.

  “Lisa lived two doors down from my grandparent’s house. There were two state police cars in front of her house. I recognized the number on one of the cars as belonging to an officer named Bacon who was our neighbor. I went over and told officer Bacon what I had seen at the river, minus a few details concerning what Lisa and Brown were doing on the rocks. I guess I was embarrassed for her and I didn’t think an adult would understand. He took some notes, asked me some questions, said that they would look into it, and left.

  Chapter 13

  “After he left, I stood there for a while wondering if Lisa was holed up somewhere, possibly with the black dude I saw her with and I decided to look for her. I went around to my friend Ned’s house to ask him to help.

  “The next Saturday Ned, Eric, and I went to Petersburg to see a movie. There was a promo for a film that had Samurai Warriors fighting with long swords. I was spooked by it. And on the way home….” He hesitated. If he told Thad about the warrior chasing him Thad would once again think he was a victim of childhood imagination so, he decided to drop the story.

  Instead he jumped to the following Sunday. “After church and Sunday dinner, I met Ned and Eric, and we went to the river. When we passed through the open gates and into the cemetery, Ned walked a little closer to me. He said that the place gave him the creeps.

  “I felt the same way, especially after what I thought I has seen there earlier. I think it affected everybody that way. I keep expecting one of these graves to open up and a white skeleton to rise up out of it and come after me.”

  “Do you still feel like that? Thad said.

  Tony thought about it a minute before answering. A vision of the dead civil war soldier jumped up in his head but he still felt uneasy about telling Thad about it. “I’m not sure how I feel about it now. As you will remember that whole area is totally different now. Everything changed when the dam was built. The old cemetery is completely under water and all the bodies they could find were relocated into the new site. So, the question hasn’t come up in years.” He started again to tell Thad about the soldier but still thought that Thad would either laugh at him or make fun of it so again he didn’t tell him.

  “Did you ever tell any of your friends about what you may have seen in the cemetery?”

  “Not until this day. I was embarr
assed back then and I never thought anyone would believe me. I still don’t. On the other hand, maybe I should get if off my chest. Maybe I will later, just not right yet. Maybe if I told you and Maria what really happened it would help you see the similarities with what’s happening now.”

  “So what happened on your search?”

  “We found Lisa’s clothes and further into the mine we found Lisa’s mutilated body.”

  Chapter 14

  “When we got back to my house and told my parents what we had found, they called the police. An hour later my friends and I and our dads showed the police where we had seen Lisa in the cave. What shakes me up, Thad, is that the girl on the beach today was cut up exactly like Lisa was. I guess that’s the reason I had such a violent reaction to seeing the girl today. It took me right back to thirty years ago. Anyhow it wasn’t long before the police found the black boy also. He was farther back in the mine. I didn’t see him but the policeman told us that he had been mutilated in a way similar to Lisa. I’ll tell you Thad I almost didn’t sleep for a week. I couldn’t get what had happened out of my thoughts. I still have dreams about it even today.”

  “I remember the incident,” Thad said. “I was away at school when it happened but it was all over the papers and everybody was talking about it.”

  They finished the cleaning, put the fish in Tony’s refrigerator and went to the porch for a cup of coffee. The commotion on the beach was almost over and the last officer took the last light and went up the steps toward Tony’s neighbor’s house and around it to their cars.

  Tony was startled by a noise at the front of the house. He had become edgy just telling Thad about his earlier experiences. He and Thad both got up to investigate.

  “Hello Honey, Thad. It’s just me.”

  Tony was glad to see her. First he wanted to hear what happened on the beach after he and Thad left. From his porch they had watched the white coats come and carry the girl up the hill. By the time the TV people had come and gone and the cops finally wrapped up the scene it was dark.

  “Come in and have a seat. Can I get you a drink?”

  “Not this time. I’m still on duty and will be until very late tonight. I just came by to tell you want happened to the girl on the beach and see if you two are all right, then I have to get back to work. First off we still think that she is Carla Smyth, but without a head we can’t be sure.”

  “What about DNA?” Tony said.

  “We took tissue samples and sent them to the lab, but it will take days to identify. There is no sample on file for her anywhere. We can compare her DNA with her parents’ but that is not positive either. It may take weeks to identify her that way.”

  “Back when I found Victor Boston’s casket on my beach there was red haired girl there with Clay Barker’s friends. Can you check that?”

  “Definitely. Thanks for reminding me. I had forgotten seeing a girl like that at that incident. I will definitely find out who that girl was. Maybe her body’s being found here is not a coincidence. I’m going to upset our District Attorney again I guess.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

  “Maybe his son knows the Smyth girl and maybe the red head you and I saw was not Carla Smyth at all.”

  “I’m betting it the same girl based on her figure. And that throws my not-so-friend Tom Barker into another unpleasant episode. He isn’t going to like that one bit and I like the fact that I am also involved in this one.”

  “Don’t go jumping to conclusions again Tony.”

  “I’ll try not to but when Tom is involved it hard for me to restrain myself.”

  “Just don’t go over there and get yourself involved like you did last time.”

  “Do you remember what happened when we were in grade school?”

  “You mean about the kids disappearing and found mutilated. I do remember but not much. I never directly involved. I didn’t run around with your bunch. I was two years behind you in school.”

  “Have you considered the similarities between then and now?”

  “Joe has been looking into it but so far there seems to be nothing linking the two incidents.”

  “Good old blind to everything Joe. My old football buddy is great at missing important things.”

  “I think that’s unfair. Joe has been under a lot of pressure.”

  “As always. He puts a lot of pressure on himself.”

  “Maybe, but his is very diligent about his work. He wants to see all the eyes dotted. He’s a good cop, Tony.”

  “No doubt. But I recall that he had a lot of trouble believing what we all knew about Belikosie.”

  “It took me a long time to believe it too. In fact, I didn’t believe it until we pumped nine rounds into him and he stayed up. Can you expect a hardnosed cop like Joe to believe in four-hundred-year-old guys who can’t be killed?”

  “I guess not. But again, Joe sees no similarity between recent events and what happened thirty years ago.”

  “Well that’s part of the problem. There have been no similar incidents in all that time.”

  “Maybe the perp moved away and has been doing his thing somewhere else,” Thad said.

  “We will certainly check on that. But it’s far too early to know that.”

  “Ok. Where do we go from here?” Tony was anxious to get started.

  “We don’t go anywhere, Tony. This is a police matter and you should keep out of it.”

  “We found the girl on my beach. You really expect me to just ignore that. I don’t know how, I’m implicated in this, if I am. You can’t expect me to keep completely out of it until you find out who did this and if I am somehow involved. Why did her body show up on my beach of all the shore line on the lake?”

  “I will make sure that we look into that Honey. Please just don’t get in the way.”

  “If I do, I’ll be sure to tell you what I’m doing.”

  “Well, I guess that’s the best I can expect knowing you. Look. I really have to get back to work now. I’ll try to call you later. If things fall into line, I may be able to make it home before morning. Don’t wait up.”

  “I miss you already.” Tony and Thad went out onto the front porch and watched Maria’s cruiser pull out into the main road.

  “I guess I better be going, Tony. It’s getting dark and Helen will be concerned.”

  “Don’t forget your fish.”

  “Thanks. I’ll give you a call if I think of anything that might help.”

  “Help?”

  “In your new quest.”

  “Maria said that I should not embark on a quest this time.”

  “I heard her. I have known you for quite a few years, my young friend. I have yet to see you heed the reasonable thing no matter who advises you to do so. I know you love Maria but I don’t believe for one instant that you will stay out of this issue. I will be here to help if you need me.” He walked to his car and drove off down the road.

  Chapter 15

  After Thad left, Tony made himself another ham and cheese sandwich, poured himself a J&B over some cracked ice, added a dollop of water and went out onto the porch swing to eat what was going to be his supper. The sun was setting up river turning the sky into a deep orange and making the lake shimmer in the reflected glow. The lake seemed unduly calm. Most birds had settled down for the night. The only sound was the hoot of a banded owl somewhere asking his mate to join him for the evening.

  Just before it got dark a sudden movement in the sky caught Tony’s eye. A large bird circled over the lake. He could barely make out what it was. It circled for a half minute and Tony was able to finally figure out that it must be an Osprey. He thought it was strange because it was early for their migration. In the fall, they would pass by on their way south but this was too early. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking what it was. The bird was silent in it movement with no call sounding. It was clearly hunting. The only reason that he could see it at all was due to the belly and underside of the bird being a bright
white. Identification was made somewhat easier by the bird’s classic M shape made by its wings as it cruised. Suddenly the Osprey stopped its flight hung motionless for an instant and plunged head first into the calm waster emerging an instant later with one of the striped bass Tony and Thad had not been able to snag earlier clamped tightly in its beak. With its dinner safely on board, the bird disappeared over the trees with the eighteen-inch wiggling fish in its beak.

  With the sudden excitement over, Tony returned to the swing, finished his sandwich and scotch, and returned to his ruminations about current events. He decided to consult Google for some information and went to his office and turned on his desktop computer. His office was a corner room on the second floor with windows facing out onto the lake. In the day time he closed the heavy drapes when he was working to darken the room so that there were not be so many reflections on his computer screen, After the bird on the lake event he had just witnessed he decided to open the drapes so he could see the lake in case anything else happened out there. The lake was dark by then with just a few reflections from lights in houses on the other side of the lake. The full moon was rising, giving the lake a dull glow. In it he saw a small outboard boat cruising up river, in violation of the law running with no lights. If the lake patrol saw it, they would be due for a citation but the boat operator and he knew that the patrol was seldom actually on the lake and the chance of being caught was somewhere between slim and nil.

  Tony spent the evening at his computer. First he tried to work on his novel but was so distracted by the events of the afternoon that he saved his work and started trying to do some research. First he tried to find some information about the events of thirty years earlier when Lisa and the others were slaughtered. He searched the archives of the local newspapers and found a few articles about the cases in the editions from 1986 but they were less than helpful. There was even less information than he already remembered. Some of the articles had been deleted or pushed even further back in the data. Just before midnight. He searched for similar incidents in the last thirty years and got the same result Maria has reported; nothing.