The Watcher: A Tony Hunter Novel

by H. Leslie Simmons

  As worried about Tony as she was she crept silently up behind the India. When she was close, she shouted the name he seemed to prefer. “Askuwheteu.”

  Startled to hear his correct name, the Indian stopped twisting the knife in Tony and turned his head to the side to see who had called him and stood up.

  She Removed the Glock from her robe pocket and fired it thirteen times into the Indian. She didn’t expect it to kill him but it might distract him enough for her to get close enough to use the tomahawk. As the bullets smashed into the brick fireplace wall, the Indian staggered back a little with each round and finally tripped over Tony who was by then unconscious on the hearth.

  When the Indian lost his balance, the motion exposed the top of his head to her. She drove the tomahawk into it and the Indian dropped prone onto Tony’s body. The tomahawk bounced off the Indian’s head, and he fell to the floor. He didn’t look dead but he was definitely not conscious.

  She wanted to rush to Tony and see if he was alive but fought off the urge and instead went to the foyer where her utility belt was hanging and removed the handcuffs from it. She returned to the great room where the Indian was coming out of his stupor. Before he could get up she hit him again with the tomahawk, turned him onto his stomach and locked his hands together behind him with the handcuffs.

  She then went to Tony, saw that he was breathing but unconscious, and saw the knife sticking out of his upper body. Her instinct was to remove it but her first aid training told her that doing so could be a mistake. She went into the kitchen, pulled a towel from the rack and wiped away the blood from around the knife as well as she could. She wrapped the towel around the wound encasing the knife to help stop the flow of blood. She then went back to the foyer and took her radio from her belt. She started to tell the operator what happened, then, thinking better of it, told her that there had been an accident, causing injury to Tony who was bleeding profusely and please send an EMF unit to their house immediately. She then asked to speak to Joe but he was not on duty. She asked for and got Joe’s off duty cell phone number. She went upstairs, got her cell and called him.

  “Lo. Joe Marshall here who the Hell is this at this ungodly hour?”

  “Joe. Its Maria. Listen, Tony has been attacked and severely injured by the Indian. We need your help.”

  “Did you call for EMSs.”

  “Yes but here is a problem they can’t handle. I have the Indian in cuffs, but I don’t know what to do with him. Well, I do know what to do with him, but I need your help to do it.”

  “Take me at least fifteen.”

  “Thanks, Joe. See you.”

  She wasn’t sure that calling Joe was the right thing to do. He had trouble believing in all this supernatural stuff. He had had trouble with it when it was Belikosie, but he had finally gone along then, and he had seen the reports about Matchitehew and the gun shots he had been able to absorb without injury, so maybe it would be easier this time.

  The home phone rang. It was the EMS operator telling her that the EMS crew was on its way. She told her about the knife and was told to not remove it. While she waited for The EMS and Joe, she called Thad, who arrived before the EMS did. She and Thad carried the Indian down to the basement and using the leg irons from her patrol car they locked his handcuffs to a water pipe and his leg irons to a sewer pipe effectively stretching him out between the two.

  Chapter 45

  When the lights came on again for him, Tony was lying on the floor against the wall in the great room and Maria was leaning over him. She had wrapped a towel over the wound but left the knife imbedded. The pain was immense. He reached down to pull the knife out. She stopped him.

  “EMS is on the way. They said to leave the knife in and let the surgeon remove it. It might do more damage to just pull it out.”

  “The pain is unbelievable.” It was all he could do to hold back the tears and finally he couldn’t.

  “Just let it go, Lover. They will be here soon.”

  As she said it the front door burst open and three smock-clad men and a woman came into the room. “Please step away Detective and let us get to him.”

  Ten minutes later she was sitting beside him in the ambulance. There was a drip tube in his arm and the pain was much better. Apparently, they had put some kind of pain killer in him.

  “What about Matchitehew?”

  “I got him into cuffs and leg irons and down to the basement before the EMS arrived. He’ll be safe down there. I also leg cuffed him to a drain pipe. He isn’t going anywhere.”

  “How did you overcome him? He is unbelievably strong.”

  “While he was working on you I slugged him with the tomahawk. He went out like a blown-out match. I got him cuffed before he came around and later put the leg irons from my car on him.”

  “What about the ghosts?”

  “When I knocked him out they wandered away. In five minutes, they were all gone.”

  “I don’t feel safe with that bastard just left in the basement unattended.”

  “He isn’t alone. I got hold of Thad and he is there now, and Joe is on his way right now.

  “Detective” A paramedic said. “We have to get on now. Are you coming with us?”

  “No, not right now.”

  “You are not coming with me?” Tony felt alone.

  “Can’t do it, lover. They will take care of you. I have to see to that damn Indian.”

  It didn’t make Tony happy but he did understand and anyway he was beginning to have trouble staying awake.

  She kissed him and climbed out of the ambulance. The paramedic closed the door and the ambulance rolled away.

  Thirty seconds later, Tony heard the gravel noise stop and the ambulance began to ride easier as it pulled out onto the paved road.

  Chapter 46

  Maria went inside and down to the basement where Thad sat on a packing crate. He had moved a gooseneck LED lamp from upstairs and had Matchitehew lit up with its brilliant light.

  “How is he doing, Thad?”

  “Woke up once and started thrashing around so I tapped him with the tomahawk and he went out again. Question is what are we going to do with him?”

  “We have to do what the Medicine Woman told us to do.”

  “I know that, but can we really do it?”

  “I see it as the same problem we had with Belikosie. It seems inhuman, but there is no choice.”

  “Okay, so how do we actually do it and where?

  “I suggest we wait for Joe and go over it when he arrives.”

  “You called Joe? What hope is there that he will even believe us let alone help us kill a man?”

  “We will just have to persuade him.”

  “Persuade me of what?” Joe was coming down the steps from upstairs.” When he reached the basement floor he went immediately to the Indian. “Who the Hell is this and what have you done to him?”

  Thad stood up from is box. “He is just knocked out for now. Joe permit me to introduce you to our killer of young people. His name is Matchitehew. He is an Algonquin holy man called a medicine man by the English settlers of our fine country.”

  “You trying to tell me that this man chained up here is three hundred years old?”

  “Probably even older than that.”

  “You are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Never been more serious in my life. This Indian has killed numerous young people over the years, including at least three this year.”

  Joe was standing over the Indian examining him closely. “It looks like he has been injured. There is blood on his head. We have to get him medical attention right now.” He started to reach for the button on the radio mounted on the shoulder of his uniform.

  Maria grabbed his arm. “Please don’t do that, Joe. Hear us out first.”

  “Okay, but make it quick.”

  Thad started, “You know that he cannot be killed by our weapons. You know that he has been shot twenty or more times by police weapons some of them at very cl
ose range. You know that he walked away from all of those shots.”

  “Well something injured him here. He looks like he is out cold to me. How can that be possible if gunshots don’t slow him down?”

  “I hit him with this tomahawk after he stabbed Tony with a stone knife. He can be damaged by weapons from his own time.”

  “And how did you come upon these weapons from his own time?”

  They were loaned to us by a modern-day Powhatan Medicine Woman name Shirley Kanti James. She is a lawyer over in Richmond.”

  “And I am supposed to believe this nonsense. A three-hundred or more-year-old Indian who is still alive and goes around maiming and killing young people here today?”

  “You know that young people have been killed recently, do you not? You know that Indians have been seen in the vicinity and that some of them have evaporated when your men struck them, do you not. You know that one of these Indians has attacked your men and been shot multiple times by your men and by Maria here and Tony, who is now on his way to the hospital after being attacked by this Indian on the floor, do you not? You remember a couple of years ago that we ran into a man who was three hundred years old and could not be killed by guns, do you not?”

  “I’m listening. Assuming you are right about all this. What do you think has to be done with this Indian?”

  “The Medicine Woman told us that to destroy him we must remove his head, burn his body, and burry him again.”

  “Whoa. Bury him again?”

  “The medicine woman told us that according to the legend he was an evil man way back then so they placed a curse on him and buried him alive They did not kill him. According to the curse, he would not die but would instead awaken every twenty-eight years and stay awake for two years. As far as we can determine, when the mica mines opened around here in the 1940s they uncovered his body and he then awoke according to schedule and got out of the mine to start his rampage again. The reason they cursed and buried him in the first place was because he was killing every one he believed was evil and most of them were young people who did not obey the rules of their society. When he woke, and was loose, he started doing it again. We have seen records for the previous two thirty-year periods of killings just as we are now seeing. The M.O. was always the same.”

  “But by your own admission, this is all just a legend.”

  “Legends, yes. But there he lies.”

  “An Indian maybe, but very much alive. I still say we have to get him medical attention.”

  “So he can get loose and kill again?”

  “We will keep him locked up so he can’t, even if it really was him who was doing all this killing.”

  “Do you think you can find a judge who will believe what I just told you and lock him up forever.”

  “If he committed three murders we will try and convict him.

  “And then what? Suppose you can convict him and sentence him to death. He can’t be killed using modern methods. Who will believe that the only way you can kill him is to do what we told you must be done.”

  “I don’t believe he can’t be killed.”

  Maria stood up, approached the Indian, and pulled her Glock from it holster. “Then I’ll just have to convince you.”

  “What the hell are you doing.” Joe was on his feet and rushing toward her, but he was too slow.

  She placed the muzzle of the Glock against the Indian’s temple and pulled the trigger three time. The gun roared with a dealing blast in the confines of Tony’s basement, reverberating off the walls in a crescendo of echoes.

  Joe grabbed her arm and twisted the gun out of her hand. He stared down at the Indian expecting to see a terrible opening in the man’s head and brains plastered over the surrounding walls. Instead he watched in disbelief as the small wound where the three bullets had entered began to close. There was almost no blood, and what was there rapidly evaporated, leaving not so much as a stain. There were three bullet holes in the far wall where the rounds shattered the concrete block apparently not even slowed by passing through a man’s head. “My God. How can you explain this?”

  “We already have.” Maria took her Glock out of Joe’s hand and holstered it. “Now do you believe us?”

  “I don’t know if I buy the entire story or not just yet. I do agree that we have something very strange here. Let me think about it for a few minutes.” He walked out the basement door onto the patio under Tony’s porch. He stared down through the woods to the river where he remembered looking for the Indian just a few weeks earlier and finding nothing after the man had been pushed and fell twenty feet from Tony’s porch without a sign of damage except to a few bushes or even a blood stain after reports that the man had been shot multiple time with high caliber police weapons. Joe had always been a man who made quick decisions and he made this one quickly. He walked back into the basement. “All right, what do we have to do first?”

  “Thank God, Joe.” Maria approached him and kissed him on the cheek which embarrassed him no end.

  Joe had known Maria since high school and worked with her for four years. He thought she didn’t like him and supposed that still might be true. Never had she so much as touched him except to shake hands. This thing must really be important to her.

  She started the conversation. “The first thing you have to do Joe as get the mica mine where he lived declared no longer a crime scene. We must bury him in there and blow it closed. Can you do that?”

  “All it takes is a radio call to headquarters. I just declare the investigation complete and that will be that. Then what?

  We have to get the Indian up to the mine.”

  Thad stood and started toward the stairs. “I’ll get my pickup. It will be easier to get him in and out of then a police car. It will take me a few minutes.”

  “We will have him up and on the front porch by the time you get back.”

  And they did.

  Chapter 47

  The next morning, Tony woke in the hospital. A nurse brought him a breakfast tray and helped him sit up to eat. His was lightheaded and he remarked to the nurse about it.

  “It’s just the medication. You will get less of it today. The TV remote is there next to you if you are interested.”

  “When she left he turned it on and took a sip of his coffee, black as usual. It was not really hot but it felt good going down anyway. Maybe it would help to clear his head. He punched in the Richmond TV station he usually watched in the morning just in time to see a report about something happening in Potaucac. The reporter was standing in a wooded area that Tony thought looked familiar.

  “Here, not far from Potaucac near the banks of the Appomattox River a large explosion was heard by neighbors before the sun came up this morning. The police will not allow our cameras any closer than we are here, but our helicopter shot this footage earlier this morning.”

  The picture snapped to an aerial shot. The shot was first from high above the woods but quickly contracted to show a close-up view of what looked like a large hole in the side of the hill from which dust and smoke rose in a hazy fog.

  “This is what is left of a mica mine tunnel drilled here in the 1940s. Police have stated that the cause of the explosion is unknown at this time. Wait, here comes Police Lieutenant Marshall. Excuse me Lieutenant, can you tell our listeners any more about what happened here?”

  Joe stopped and spoke directly into the microphone. “Well, it’s too early to tell yet exactly what happened here”

  “Can you speculate?”

  “I’d rather not, but some of our experts speculate that it might have been a collection of gasses in the mine from an unknown source that somehow was ignited. We have found no sign of any involvement by any person. Our experts think it might have been spontaneous combustion.”

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?”

  “Well, I’m not an expert on such things. I’d rather leave it to someone who is. I have to go now.” He started to walk away.

  “Just one more questio
n please.”

  Joe turned back toward the reporter. “Yes.”

  “Is there any danger to the public now?”

  “That I can be positive about. There is no sign of gas or anything else that might be harmful to the public. Everyone around here is perfectly safe. That much we are very certain about.” He turned and walked away from the reporter.

  The reporter signed off and turned the report over to the studio where the morning anchor faced the camera. “We have contacted several sources at the Powhatan University in Potaucac. Here is part of our interview this morning with Doctor Thadus Goodfellow, Dean of the College of Anthropology at the University. Doctor Goodfellow recently conducted an extensive investigation into mica mines in the Potaucac area.”

  Tony watched as Thad’s smiling face appeared on the screen. “I found no evidence in my investigation that would indicate any danger to the public from explosions in local mica mines. I suspect that this explosion was related to a gas penetration in this mine alone, with no relationship to any other mine. I would suggest, however, that these mines are very old and that people would be better served by staying out of such old structures that might have a possibility of some collapse due solely to age.”

  “Well, there you have it. There is no danger but stay away anyway.”

  “Well, what do you think of our show?” Maria walked to his bed and kissed him full on the lips.

  He had been so engrossed in the TV he didn’t hear her come in. “Show?”

  “Well we had to come up with something. We couldn’t very well tell everybody that we decapitated an immortal Indian, burned his body until only ashes remained, and set off three sticks of dynamite in a mica mine to bury the results of our work, now could we?”