His Watchful Eye

Prologue

     Twenty-two years ago

     Red and blue flashes of light pierced the dark, night sky as a police car pulled up to the house at the end of the street.  At the sound of the siren, nine year-old Georgia and her parents ran out onto the wrap around porch to meet with the officers that were approaching.  A warm breeze tried to dry the tears that were coursing down the little girl's cheeks.  It was such a deceptive night;  the crickets were chirping like there was nothing wrong at all, and the stars twinkled above as if the world wasn't crumbling down around her family.

When two police men stepped up to the porch alone, she felt her mother clutch her shoulder and draw her close.  Her mother's voice trembled, "Didn't you find him?  Didn't you find Charlie?"  Georgia felt her mother gripping her arm tightly as if to save her from the same fate her brother had encountered.

"No ma'am."  Hanging his head, the officer handed something to her father who stood in horrified silence. 

Looking at the object, Georgia saw that it was Charlie's New York Yankees baseball cap; the one he never took off.  He had called it his lucky hat for reasons that she couldn't understand.  Vivid images of her older brother...her best friend...drifted through her mind.  He had been gone for over a week now, and she missed him so much.  Her mother had told her that the police would find him and bring him home, but she had seen the look in her mother's eye.  Clearly her mother didn't believe the words she was saying, and it had left the her feeling empty and alone. The baseball cap blurred as her eyes filled with fresh tears of grief.

"You're going to keep looking for him, right?  You aren't giving up?"  Her father's voice cracked with emotion.  Before her brother had disappeared, Georgia had never seen her dad cry.  In the last three days he hadn't stopped crying; he just sat alone at the kitchen table while silent tears fell from his eyes.

"We found something else..."  The taller officer cleared his throat.  "There was some clothing discarded near the river.  We found blood on a few of the items, and it was a match for Charlie."

Her mother's wail sent a slither of fear down her spine.  The grip on her shoulder loosened as she saw her mother crumble to her knees beside her.  Wrapping her arms around the woman's neck, Georgia buried her face in her hair as she tried to both comfort her mom's distress and gain comfort herself from the closeness.

"Did you find a body?"  Her father clasped the cap tightly in his large work-worn hands.  "Surely you won't give up until you find a body."

"We will be dragging the river tomorrow."  This came from the shorter police man.  "We don't have high hopes...the mud in that river is so soft and deep that he could be buried several feet by now.  We will do our best, but unfortunately we can't make any promises."

"Do you know who might have done this?"  Her father stood aloof from his wife an daughter as he asked the question.

"Unfortunately, no. "  The tall office rubbed his eyebrow with his index finger.  "Whoever did this to Charlie is no stranger to this kind of crime.  He left no traces and no clues.  This guy is a professional, and the case has already gone cold."

After the two officers left, the three people on the porch slowly walked back into the house.  Georgia was still wrapped in her mother's arms, and her father remained at a distance from them.  She longed for her father to wrap his arms around the two of them; to feel like even with everything that had happened they would still be a family, but her father chose to grieve his loss alone.

At the end of the week, Georgia found herself standing in church for the first time in her young life.  A picture of her brother, Charlie, was wreathed by flowers at the front of the room.  After a man in a black dress had spoken words that she couldn't understand, a long line of sad looking people filed past them shaking her father's hand, hugging her mother, and offering her sad smiles. 

 Her father still stood at a distance from her mother; he had given Georgia a pat on the shoulder a day or so after the police had given them the news that her brother would not be coming home.  Otherwise he just kept to himself, leaving the two women in his life to grieve alone.  Glancing up at her dad, she saw the a look in his eye that she hadn't seen before, and somehow she knew that her family was breaking apart.  Not only had they lost Charlie forever, but her father was slipping away as well.  Tears filled her eyes as her young mind tried to process and understand all the ways that her life would be different from this day on.