The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  “I’m still reserving judgment.”

  “Don’t reserve judgement long enough to get somebody else killed.”

  He stepped away into his office doorway. “You just be at the meeting tomorrow night and don’t talk about ghosts and goblins to the public.”

  When she reached her office the first thing she noticed was a new dispatch on the top of her desk. Another teenaged girl had disappeared.

  She called Tony and told him about the new disappearance and about the meeting the next night. They decided to wait to go after the Indian until the night following the meeting.

  Chapter 33

  The meeting at the high school auditorium began with an introduction by the mayor. “Folks, let me thank you for coming tonight. As you know some disturbing events have occurred in the last several weeks in Potaucac. I am very troubled by this and I know you are also. We have here tonight representatives of the Potaucac police and the State police. We will be joined in the next few days by representatives of the FBI from the Richmond office to assist our police in the investigation. I would like to introduce to you the chief of police, Captain Charles Maitland.” The mayor sat down

  Chuck Maitland walked to the podium and placed a few papers on it. He cleared his throat. “Folks I’m sorry that I have to be here tonight to bring you some more bad news. Sixteen-year-old Charlene Morgan went missing last night and today her mutilated body was discovered behind this very building when the officers arrived to attend this meeting. It appears to be an incident like the earlier ones in Potaucac.”

  A rumble of voices came from the audience and a man shouted. “My God, when are you people going to do something about this maniac?”

  A woman shouted. “What is wrong with you people up there. Why don’t you do your job?”

  Maitland spoke. “Please be calm folks. We are doing everything we can to control this. The entire force is on alert twenty-four-seven. All our officers and support staff are serving double shifts and there have been no days off taken in a month. The State police are assisting us with increased patrols and as the mayor just told you a contingent of FBI officers will join us tomorrow.”

  “Totally incompetent work,” a man the back of the auditorium shouted.

  Maitland tried to take over the proceedings. “I’m very sorry sir, we are doing the best we can with the people you were willing to let us have.”

  “Are you trying to blame us, the citizens, for your failure to act responsibly?”

  The mayor stepped to the podium and raised his hands palms out. “Now folks no one is to blame for this. We have a maniac running loose and we will apprehend him. There will be ample time after we do to assess blame if any is forthcoming.”

  “Just more of your bullshit, Mr. mayor. We will see you next fall when you run for reelection.”

  A uniformed State police captain stepped to the podium. “If I may have a moment of your time ladies and gentlemen. I would like to say a word about your situation here. Chief Maitland and his excellent staff have done an exemplary job here. They requested our assistance immediately after the first incident occurred and we have offered all the help within our power to provide. I see no way in which the Potaucac police department could have handled the case any better. We will continue to offer our assistance in every way until this situation has been resolved. My department has every faith in Chief Maitland and his staff. I hope that you will give them the benefit of the doubt and your support until they, with our help, have completed the task of ridding this community of this maniac.”

  A voice from the crowed answered his. “Now even the state cops are handing us a bunch of bullshit. I’m getting up a bunch of citizens tonight after this meeting to handle this ourselves.”

  The mayor again took the podium. “Now listens to me. We will not have a bunch of vigilantes running around our streets. This is not 1980’s Tombstone. Taking the law into your own hands will not be permitted. As of this moment, I am declaring a state of emergence here and imposing a curfew on this city, starting immediately. After you have returned to your homes tonight, any person found outside of their home after sundown will be arrested. Tonight, since it is already late, the curfew will begin at eleven o’clock. Until further notice the gathering of more than three persons without a city permit to gather will be arrested regardless s of the time of day. I will issue a printed notice to this effect as soon as I get back to my office. It will be posted and announced to the newspapers and media outlets tonight. Now please clear this room at once. Officers please escort anyone who does not leave to the parking lot.”

  “You can’t do this,” a man shouted from the audience.

  “I can and I have, now clear this room.”

  Chapter 34

  The next evening just before sundown the Indian watched Ana Sanchez, returning from a friend’s house in time to meet the curfew deadline. He was seldom unsure about what he did but this one disturbed him as much as any ever had. He had been following her and watching her ever since he had tried to dispatch her boyfriend. That one had failed because of the writer Hunter. He would deal with Hunter sooner or later as he had tried to do when Hunter was a boy and again just recently. The next time he would succeed. He had not seen the girl do anything herself that would justify him killing her but she was certainly guilty of association with the Martin boy and that was enough.

  Ana was less than a block away from home when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned and saw her boyfriend, Bobby Martin approaching along the sidewalk. “Bobby? What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to still be in the hospital.”

  Bobby said nothing and continued to walk quickly toward her.

  She was surprised and alarmed. Bobby could not be here. She has seen him earlier this afternoon in a bed strapped in with his head all bandaged up, a black eye and big bruise on his face. Now here he was looking as good as new with no bandages, no bruise and no black eye. As she watched, the black eye and bruises slowly appeared on his head, which was now wrapped in a white bandage, just as she remembered seeing them earlier that day. She tried to remember what her Aunt Maria had said: ‘The only thing we can do is be careful, be vigilant, stay away from strangers, and most perplexing of all, don’t let even friends, or even me or your mom, approach you when you don’t expect them to be there. Whenever possible don’t go anywhere alone whether day or night.’ This had to be what she was talking about. Ana didn’t understand the reason for her aunt’s directive then and didn’t understand it now, but she was smart enough to know that it would be better to not take any chances. She had heard that the maniac killing people could make you believe that he was a different person. She had thought that those stores were just so much horror fiction stories, but now she was watching them unfold right in front of her with Bobby being here when she knew he was in the hospital, and bandages and bruises suddenly appearing as soon as she thought about them. She knew that what she was seeing was impossible, but on the long shot chance that the stories were true she backed away from the approaching Bobby.

  The Bobby began to come toward her more quickly now and she turned and ran as fast as she could toward home. She had reached the end of her yard when he grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. He was no longer Bobby. He was her mom. Relieved, she relaxed a bit and he pulled her closer to him. A voice shouted her name. She looked over her shoulder and saw her mom running down the front steps toward her and the thing holding her, who was now showing his true image, that of the Indian she had heard described. A sense of dread filled her and she screamed just as her Mother reached her, and grabbing her other arm dragged her away from the Indian. The Indian let her go and they both fell to the grass. Just as quick, they were up and running to the house. As she jerked open the screen door Ana turned and looked back to see the Indian walking slowly down the sidewalk and into the gathering shadows of the next-door neighbor’s hedge.

  In the house, Ana’s mother, Ramona punched in the number of her sister’s cell phone and when Mar
ia answered told her all that had happened as best she could through her tears.

  Chapter 35

  “Hold on Ramona, I’m just a few minutes away. Lock the doors and windows and don’t let anyone in, not even me, until you see my patrol car and a second patrol car pull up in front of your house.” Maria punched the close button on her cell, did a one eighty in the middle of Main Street and headed to her sister’s house. She called in and asked for backup at her sister’s house and ran forty miles an hour over the speed limit getting there. At Ramona’s house, Maria sat in the car and called her sister on the cell. “Everything okay in there?”

  “We are fine, Sis. Why don’t you come on in?”

  “I will when the backup gets here. I don’t want to get out of my car alone with that Indian running around loose.”

  “You are scaring me, Sis.”

  “I mean to. I want you to sit right there buttoned up until we make sure that this guy has left the neighborhood.”

  “What is it, Sis. Ana said that she saw it change from Bobby Martin to me and then to the Indian. How is that possible?”

  “I’ll tell you all I know about it when we have cleared the area. You and Ana just sit tight until I tell you it’s okay to do otherwise. I have to go now, my back up just arrived.”

  Two cars rolled up behind Maria’s car. She got out and walked toward them. Joe Marshall got out of one and DeShawn Barnes the other and approached Maria. Joe walked up close and spoke d in a low voice. “Where did you last see him?”

  “I never saw him at all. He approached Ana and grabbed her arm. Ramona saw them and came out. There was a short struggle and both Ramona and Ana started screaming and ran back to the house. The last they saw of him, he was strolling down the sidewalk in the direction toward the high school.”

  Joe waved for the other two officers who had just left the cars to come down to where he was standing. “Ok, now everybody listen to this. Maria, did you get a description?”

  “Romano said that he looked like Bobby Martin at first but when she approached he turned into an image of herself, then he became an Indian from an old western movie.

  “Sure he did.” Bob Michaels said.

  “Have you read the reports from the other night on Hunter’s beach?”

  “Well sure I did. It’s still hard to believe.”

  Maria stepped toward him. “I don’t care what you believe, Bob. But I can tell you this, if someone approaches you that shouldn’t be there you move away from him or her as fast as possible and call for the rest of us. You can be a brave skeptical asshole if you want but it is likely to get you dead. I have seen this thing change into another person. I have seen it shot fourteen times and keep coming. If you see it, do not try to capture. Call us and follow him from a safe distance. You can’t kill him. All we can do for now is track him back to his lair. We can deal with him later.”

  “Joe?” Deshawn said.

  “Just do what she said. We don’t know who or what we are dealing with here yet. Take no chances. Follow and call in. Now fan out. Deshawn and Bill go toward the high school. Bob and Sam cross the street and go toward the high school. Maria and I will go down the back yards in the same direction. Report every five minutes. If you see anything call me and do nothing without orders. Clear?”

  “Yea,” they all said in unison and started off as they had been told.

  Maria hesitated. “Hold on a minute. I’m worried about Ana and Ramona.” She went to her car, unsnapped her spare radio and went to the house. When Ramona came out, Maria handed her the radio showed her how to make a call on it and told her to go in the house lock all doors and windows and stay in there. “If he shows up again or even one of us shows up alone, don’t open the door. Use the radio. We won’t be that far away.” She rejoined Joe and they set off toward the back of the houses.

  Fifteen minutes later when none of the six of them had seen any sign of the Indian. Joe called headquarters and spoke with police chief Chuck Maitland. Together they decided that further search would probably be futile and called off the search. The decided to put around-the-clock surveillance outside Marina Sanchez’s home until further notice. The state police agreed to send one of their squads over to do that because the Potaucac squad was already stretched thin. Maria stayed with her sister until the state police arrived. Then she changed her mind, called Tony, and after a few glasses of sangria with Ramona bedded down that night in her sister’s spare bedroom.

  Chapter 36

  Tony called Thad and told him what was happening. They decided to put off their search for the Indian for at least one more night. With their plans altered, Thad, decided to try to see if he could find out more than he already knew about mica and if he could discover the location of mica mine caves in the Potaucac vicinity.

  The first references he found concerned the nature and chemical characteristics of mica, and its modern uses. Much of what he found he already knew. He knew, for example that mica is a group of minerals that that have a layered texture, that it can be split or delaminated into thin sheets, that it is chemically inert, dielectric, elastic, flexible, hydrophilic, insulating, lightweight, platy, reflective, refractive, resilient, and ranges in opacity from transparent to opaque. He did not know that mica is stable when exposed to electricity, light, moisture, and extreme temperatures, and has superior electrical properties as an insulator and as a dielectric, and can support an electrostatic field while dissipating minimal energy in the form of heat. He also did not realize that some mica remains stable at temperatures as high as 900°C. which would explain its earlier uses that he did know about.

  He knew that at one time thin transparent sheets of mica called "isinglass" were used for peepholes in boilers, lanterns, stoves, and kerosene heaters because they were less likely to shatter compared to glass when exposed to extreme temperature gradients. Such peepholes were also used in "isinglass curtains" in horse-drawn carriages and early 20th century cars. When he was a boy he had read a book about a journey in a Model T Ford car describes isinglass curtains as follows: "Oiled canvas side curtains were put up over the windows for wind, rain, and cold (there were no heaters) and were held in place with rods that fit into the doors and twisting button snaps around the perimeter. Isinglass peepholes in the curtains allowed limited visibility. Isinglass was made of thin sheets of cracked mica."

  He was aware of some of the modern uses of mica but the number of modern uses of which he was unaware surprised him. He knew that mica is used today in the electrical industry in capacitors that are ideal for high frequency and radio frequency.

  He was surprised to find that dry ground mica is used in joint compounds for filling and finishing seams and blemishes in gypsum wallboard and that ground mica is used as a paint pigment extender that also facilitates suspension, reduces chalking, prevents shrinking and shearing of paint film, increases resistance of paint film to water penetration and weathering, and brightens the tone of colored pigments.

  There are also what he considered rather bizarre uses, such its being added to well drilling fluids to seal porous sections of drill holes; in decorative coatings on wallpaper, concrete, stucco, and tile surfaces and in flux coatings on welding rods; in some greases; and as coatings for core and mold release compounds, facing agents, and mold washes in foundry applications; as a. reducer of noise in automotive brake linings and clutch plates; sound-absorbing insulation for coatings and polymer systems; in heat shields and temperature insulation; in industrial coating additive; in polar polymer formulations to increase the strength of epoxies, nylons, and polyesters; in the cosmetics industry, in blushes, eye liner, eye shadow, foundation, hair and body glitter, lipstick, lip gloss, mascara, moisturizing lotions, and nail polish; and in some brands of toothpaste; and as an insulator in concrete block, home attics, and can be poured into walls; and even as a soil conditioner, especially in potting soil mixes and in gardening plots.

  It did not surprise him to find that mica is used in the plastics industry as an exte
nder and filler, especially in parts for automobiles as lightweight insulation to suppress sound and vibration and as a reinforcing material in fenders, and in the rubber industry as an inert filler and mold release compound in the manufacture of molded rubber products, such as tires and roofing.

  Another surprise that nevertheless made sense to him because of the minerals slickness was the use of mica in the production of rolled roofing and asphalt shingles, as a surface coating to prevent sticking of adjacent surfaces.

  He found many other uses that he didn’t realize but which made sense based on the materials heat resistant and electrical insulating characteristics. Those included coatings for wiring for use in high temperature and fire resistant situations; electrical insulating products; in electrical components, electronics, isinglass, and atomic force microscopy; diaphragms for oxygen-breathing equipment; marker dials for navigation compasses; optical filters; pyrometers, thermal regulators; stove and kerosene heater windows, today just as in earlier devices.

  He also discovered that there are applications for sheet mica in aerospace components; in air-, ground-, and sea-launched missile systems; laser devices; medical electronics; radar systems; and in thin sheets windows on radiation detectors such as Geiger-Müller tubes.

  The other uses he found tended to make his eyes glaze over and he stopped looking for them, turning instead to a search for data related to useful information for the current circumstance. A man named John Lederer discovered some "Isinglass" (mica) in 1669 at the headwaters of the Pamunkey River, but little is known of the early mining operations in the location of Potaucac. Mining probably began in Virginia about 1890, but Thad could find no records of when the local mining started. He did find references of mines that were started in 1895, 1900, 1910, and 1915. Operations in the district were intermittent, with few mines simultaneously active until 1942. Other mines were opened between 1942 and 1945.