The Seer: A Haunting Sincerity

THE SEER

A HAUNTING SINCERITY

Bruce A. Schmidt

AuthorHouse™ LLC

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© 2013 Bruce A. Schmidt. All rights reserved.

Photo Credits:

Photo on front page by Ryan Chapel and Photo on back page by Contemporary Studio, Greeley Colorado.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/10/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2174-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2173-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2172-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013917908

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my beloved children, time will close and heal the wounds, I promise. My beloved wife, family, Jim and Brenda Groff, and friends that have continued to support me while I dabble with writing and special thanks to my parents for giving me encouragement to be unique and creative.

There are many small towns throughout the Midwest and for that matter throughout the entire planet, there are also many people that may seem close to the characters in this book through description or mannerisms; however the town and the characters in the book that follows are of my dreams, nightmares and imagination only.

"In the beginning God created man . . .

And man’s subconscious mind created ghost . . ."

(Kevin Lee Hoffman)

Chapter 1

T he rope squeaked with pain as it complained of the tension being exerted on it. The pain to my neck was uncomfortable and sending me in a panic and the wooden truss moaned from my body’s weight. I grasped for the noose tightly around my neck as I wondered just what the hell was going, on and why and how I came to be in this situation, more importantly just what the hell I was doing hanging from a rope in the first place! Where am I? I don’t recognize the room I am in, what is going on? My body swung slightly from side to side as I began to became light headed and fade into the unconscious state of bliss. As I started to fade from the Jack of blood passing through my brain, I began to experience a state of euphoria. My will to remember as much of the past as possible and hang on to the very hope and being of life grew stronger. Fading deeper and deeper into the realm of non-life I couldn’t struggle any remember anymore. The world around me continued to fade from a gray to a black.

SLAMB! I felt as my body was jolted from a movement or a realization of my soul reminding me to open my eyes! I drew in a deep breath as a gasped for air, I sat up in bed feeling warm yet feeling a draft as I realized I was covered in sweat. What a dream I thought, how real and painful it felt. I sat there for a moment trying to realize what just happened, was it a dream I thought? It had to be, I am awake and in my own bed. I swung my feet off of the bed and sat there for a minute with my hands holding my head as I leaned forward. As I sat there I realized how fast my heart was beating, this dream scared the hell out of me, I thought to myself as I stood up from the bed and walked toward the restroom in my house.

I walked into the restroom and used it to relieve myself, my accelerated heart rate beat on nit bladder like a drum reminding me l needed to go. After I finished I walked to the sink and went about my normal routine by washing my hands and brushing my teeth. As I stood in front of the mirror I realized how pale and drawn in my face was. I had been over doing it at work lately and pushing myself way to hard working on my latest case with the Eaton police. I had been like this before; I thought to myself and shrugged it off to another learning experience in my life. I dabbed a small amount of shaving cream on my neck and smoothed it around to shave the beard that I had grown to dislike. When I was a 12 year old boy I used to take my father’s razor and shave my young facial skin trying to promote hair to grow, trying to become a man before my time.

My father would often warn me to be careful for what I wished for by shaving this way. Twenty eight years later I wish I had heeded his warning, shaving this beard on a daily basis was a chore I didn’t like to do. As I drug the razor across the hair on the right side of my neck I winced as I realized that was painful. Blood instantaneously mixed with the shaving cream and began to form a small spot on my neck. It felt like a scratch small yet painful. I continued to shave around that spot and quickened the pace to get through this morning ritual that I had grown to dislike.

As I finished my shave the right side of my neck remained to sting from the small cut and a small amount of blood remained to drain from the painful spot. As I finished up and rinsed off my neck and face I noticed something that caught on the rough skin of my hands. It appeared to be a whisker I had missed during my shave realizing this I grabbed my razor and attempted to remove the lone hair from my neck. As I drew the razor across the hair it felt as if it was a splinter of wood that when I hit it with the razor it almost drove it in deeper? I leaned in closer to the mirror to get a look and it appeared to be a strand of fibrous material and as I moved it around with my finger nail it began to bleed just a little bit more with every move.

I opened the medicine cabinet and retrieved a pair of tweezers to assist with the removal of the foreign object from my neck. As I pinched it to pull it out the pain reminded me that this removal should be fast to cause as little pain to myself as possible. I gritted my teeth and gave it a quick jerk as the pain made me cringe. What I saw next I could not believe, there in the end of my tweezers was a piece of what seemed to be a fiber of stiff material about 1/4 an inch long with the lower end that was in my neck covered in blood. What the hell? I announced to myself as I looked at this item with confusion. This was clearly a light tan fibrous material alright. Well, I thought stranger things have happened. I put the fibrous material into a pill bottle that I collected other items in as well such as fragments of broken glass and what not from crime scenes that I had been on throughout my career.

I walked over to the bed, sat clown looked out the window of my small yet modest two bedroom home in old town Eatin Colorado. Old Town is a large town run by the very people that love it, you know the class mates you grew up with and their parents. The population in the town was currently about 14 thousand people, it has its crime and it can be bad as long as you know where it is you can enjoy the city without putting yourself in danger. I moved to this town after a long nm in the big city of Los Angles as a crime scene investigator, not the greatest job but one that caused me to see enough of the true bad in people and what they were truly able to do to each other given the right circumstances.

The job had taken its toll on my marriage and family causing a very bitter and unexpected divorce on the return leg of a trip that I had taken out of state for some training. I had been married for almost fifteen years in what I thought was a good and somewhat healthy marriage. Yes we had our fights but in the end we had worked out the differences and went on our way as a happy family. Let me explain something though about how my wife (ex-wife) took advantage of the fact that I was a crime scene investigator.

To begin with she took the opportunity to file a restraining order against me on some trumpet up charges while I was out of town. Therefore when I got back I not only didn’t have a place to stay I couldn’t even say anything to my children. If that didn’t make matters worse, what I had found out was that she had already had another man in my house within three weeks of kicking me out, a real good thing for my children to see I am sure. I had also while we were married given her a very nice wedding ring that had the birthstones of our five children in it; you know something to show how much we were a true all American family?

Anyway I had one that matched; well it was about a year before the divorce that she started wearing another, bigger diamond ring that she claims she found while on a walk with my 16 year old daughter. Funny at the moment I didn’t put 2 and 2 together but at that time the wedding ring I had given her had been bent and she didn’t want to wear it. You would think that someone that solves crimes for a living would have picked up on the very simple yet unmistakable truth of my wife having an affair, but I trusted her with my kids, my life and my marriage; and I was wrong. Anyway, it was a very big and ugly mess that I am still trying to shrug off of my past. That is part of the reason that I moved back here was to restart my life on good terms. My father was raised here and I was raised here. Everyone knew of my father’s last name and he was well respected in community. It was only the bright lights and fame that I sought that took away from the life made simple, as a comparison between Eatin Colorado and LA, California.

So now I live peaceful able to see my kids when I can and work in this small yet simple town just to get away from a hell she, my ex-wife had created for me. I shouldn’t say that it has been all bad for me I have gotten to know that being forty wasn’t the end of the world. I had begun to realize that I was not at the end of life both in my career and in my love life for that matter. I have been dating this wonderful person I had met in Denver Colorado while I was attending a seminar for DNA testing. Her name is Lara Chapel she works as a professional manager and estate over seer of a very predominate local family in Denver. She is about five eight and has just the right body, shapely and perfect you know not to skinny, but not to chiseled to where you would fear her breaking your neck if she was upset at you, however I would have her by my side in a bar fight more so than I would have almost any of my buddies, yet she has the most gentle and tender side to her that melts my heart even at the word hello from her beautiful lips. She has a body that you only dream about, and when you’re around it enough, you wonder how you ever came to be without it, and marvel at the beauty that God has created! She loves to be involved with church and I think that is one of her best qualities. She has red hair and these very BIG and beautiful eyes, which often I find myself getting lost in even at a glimpse! She is the first female that has ever made me as happy just to be around, soul mate is a strong word for a relationship, but if I have one in life—she isn’t.

I had become interested in crime scene investigating after I reached my professional peak as a senior civil engineer at the age of 30 the job was good and I had fun doing it but I was on the road all of the time and it had also been part of the reason I ended up losing my family. I should have stayed in that profession but like most things I had clone in my life I usually either excelled at it or reached my potential early. Once doing this I would often move on to another job with higher pay or a bigger title at which I was called. Either way I would job jump about every three to four years, just to keep from getting bored with life.

I also have a very inquisitive mind and like to tinker with things and I often problem solve and have fun doing it. I think whatever I have done in my life I come at it by luck, you know someone that is a jack of all trades but a master of none. Fate often deals me a hand that I can usually make good out of but often I have been known to be at the wrong place at the wrong time as well. Take one of the first cases I worked as I was coming up through the ranks. I had taken on any work at all to get to be as good as I possibly could be by gaining experience. I did a short time in the small town of San Dimas CA; crime was almost non-existent in San Dimas, not bad crime anyway. I was staying in the San Dimas Lodge that was very nice and had just been renovated making it one of the best places to stay in San Dimas.

So I had just gone and got some food from McDonalds to eat in my hotel room when I pulled up to the parking lot. You see the San Dimas lodge has the parking under the hotel units on the second floor one side, so when you pull up and park under the units you have units in front of you on the ground level. Anyway, I had just pulled up and parked when I witnessed an average guy come out of one of the units just to the right of where I was parking. He walked to his car and was followed by a very young female that was sobbing uncontrollably.

She then proceeded to get into the passenger side of the car while still sobbing. He left his door open almost as if he did it in case he need to escape to very car interior that now incased them both. The young female continued sobbing as screaming please come back inside, please come back inside—don’t leave! Since there was not physical violence I couldn’t do anything other than watch. So I started gathering my food and I heard the sound of someone hitting something, I immediately sat my food down and looked to see what was happening!

She was hitting the dash of the car while she still screamed, please don’t leave me, and come back inside! She in her efforts hit the rear view mirror and broke it off, that is when I got out of my car and walked up to the car and showed them my credentials and asked if everything was alright. She stopped screaming and kept quiet and was giving him the look of death while he turned to me and said yes sir everything is fine. She seemed to subdue her anger so I let them be. As I gathered the rest of my food and what not out of the car I watched as they both went back into the hotel and shut the door. It was a short time later after I was in my room that I heard the sound of his car leave normally.

The next morning I was talking to the guy at the counter Ungie, a real nice guy from India and very easy to get along with and I asked if he knew what all of that was about the night before, because he also watched from his office window what happened. He had said that they both checked out together this morning kind of early and nothing seemed to be wrong. Well it was about two weeks later and we responded to a call of a murder suicide in a hotel that was not in the best part of San Dimas. You know as soon as we pulled up I recognized the car, it had belonged to the same couple saw having the fight at the San Dimas lodge.

I knew from the onset of the call that it wouldn’t be good, and as I thought they both were there, and both dead. It appeared to be a murder suicide but it was her that killed him then turned the gun on herself. The note pinned on her shirt said if he doesn’t belong to me, he belongs to no one. Tragic how love can make us as a human behave or even worse i s the fact that hate or heart break can make us think we can play god. A tragic end to two lives! The truth is that he was probably going to leave her or he was cheating on her and she found out. You know the thing that pisses me off the most is that in all of the love hate cases I have been on if the person or spouse would just swallow their pride and in most cases the men grow a set of balls and know when they are beat and just leave, a lot more people would be alive and continue to live. We as humans are far from perfect in realizing the truth even when it is in black and white in front and right in front of us.

Chapter 2

P art of the reason that I moved out of California area was because not only was I trying to shrug off my past and start a new, but I was becoming sloppy and was beginning to lose my edge. I don’t know if it was due the horrible things that I was witnessing or what horrible things people were doing to each other. The human race is a species that is easy to overcome and adapt to any situation, but I was becoming callus to what I was seeing, becoming unaware of what I really saw because I was not getting personable with the victims any more. Even in death a victim tells a story, even the most horrifying crime scene I have ever worked to where the body was not identifiable it still gave it secrets up to me.

This latest case I was working on was one of the strangest I could remember in quite some time, one of the strangest I had dealt with. No motive that I could determine right away and the situation was odd. The victim who was named Bryce a young family man with three children two boys and a daughter; Dalton 12, Reed 9 and the daughter Addy 6. Bryce was an up and coming engineer with a very young family, pretty much a model citizen within his town, and job. His marriage however was a little shaky when I called and I had asked if the family had been notified the local police said yes but they made a statement that his wife acted a little less devastated as she should have. I didn’t make any observations of including his wife as suspect just at the onset of the crime.

I was called down to the local volunteer fire department on a Sunday, late afternoon where we found Bryce Ritcher dead lying in the hose bed on one of the fire trucks. Not much sign of a struggle but he had a pair of fireman suspenders wrapped tightly around his neck. Yep, death by asphyxiation or at least that is what my gut tells me. We will now more when we get him to the morgue and do an autopsy on him. Bryce was also a volunteer on the local fire department whomever had killed Bryce had taken the time to completely remove the fire hose out of the bed area, place Bryce under it and then relay the fire hose back in the bed. Now the fire hose in the bed in the back of the truck has many layers so with Bryce’s body there, it was hidden by the multiple layers. The truck was also a 1942 international that the fire department had placed in one of the side bay windows that were built to display the older trucks at the fire station. It was the odor of Bryce’s body that gave away the crime that had been committed. Even though the body hadn’t been there that long again sitting in the bay window in the middle of summer didn’t make it easy on the body!

Now I wasn’t that familiar with how a fire hose was properly laid in a fire truck until I started working this case, but I found out that when they lay the hose correctly, they start at one side and lay it length wise within the bed so the length is the same as the length within the hose bed. In other words remember the old hard candies that your grandmother may have had that looked like big bows that ever so gently started at about 2 inches and looped back and forth onto itself kind of in a stack? Well the fire hose in a hose bed of a fire truck loops back and forth the same way. This is so when the fire truck responds to a fire, a fireman jumps off as the truck stops by a fire hydrant, the fireman takes the hose end off of the truck and wraps it around the fire hydrant and places his foot on the loose end and as the truck drive away, it unravels on its own until it get to the next section, sometimes they wrap together several sections which saves time in the fireman stringing out the hose.

This was a crime no doubt, but it was sloppy. It was only a matter of time that the body would have been found they hid it in plain sight. Nothing was used to keep the body from decay and with the truck being displayed in the bay window area, yeah what a mess! Since this was an older fire truck it had about 150 feet of fire hose in the bed currently so we had to take each section out slowly and carefully as to not lose any evidence that might be present. We never did find anything on the hose, no hair, no fibers from clothing the hose didn’t yield any clues. We found nothing whatsoever in the bed of the truck that gave us any clues.

I of course checked the normal things such as finger prints on the truck, doors into the place, but nothing. There were no foot prints on the floor we could see because floor had just been swept. There was no sign of break in so it had to be another fire man that committed the crime. I at that point started going over the last call that Bryce had been on. Bryce was one of a few of the volunteers that lived close which meant he was often to the fire station as one of the first. Therefore he often was incident command for the calls that they went out on.

The next place I started looking was with the widowed wife Mary. So I made arrangements to meet and visit with Bryce’s widowed wife early the following Monday morning. As I started ask Mary questions, it seemed that she was indeed a little less concerned of where Bryce had been than she should have. Don’t get me wrong, Mary was grieving she just seemed as if she was distant and wasn’t being honest. It was about 8:30 am when I started my interview after the kids had gotten off to school, with Mary and at about 8:43 she received a phone call on the land line to where she took the call in the other room and seemed to speak so I couldn’t hear her.

She came into the living room and seemed anxious. I asked her if she was alright, she simply replied yes Just a call about Bryce’s funeral arrangements. I asked her if she had wanted me to leave and come back and she said she would be alright and she would rather continue. As I did continue, I realized that she couldn’t really account for Bryce’s whereabouts or show concern of where or what he was doing. She seemed to show a very non-caring attitude of the whole relationship between here and Bryce.

The interview was going as good as could have been expected for someone just losing their spouse, and who couldn’t show any signs of remorse. I was about 70% through the interview when there was a knock at the door. Mary seemed hesitant to answer it at first but when the second knock came and I asked if she was going to get it (yet another strange behavior buy her not wanting to answer the door) she did get up to answer the door. She answered the door and there was a small amount of discussion almost at a whisper, then she said Hello Dave, won’t you come in? Yep, she is now a suspect in my book!

She walks in and is followed by Dave. Now keep in mind that we are sitting in a living room area that has probably three to four empty chairs in it and Dave sits right beside her on the couch where she is sitting. This is Dave; he is a close family friend that I called as soon as I found out about Bryce’s passing. After she introduces me, Dave slowly reaches out his hand and shakes mine then proceeds to put his arm on the couch behind Mary. Yep, there’s my motive! She is DEFINATLY a suspect now! The body behavior between both of them indicated they are more than just friends.

My latest conclusion on Mary and Dave causes me to cut the interview short and I kindly wrap it up and add as I give her my card that if there is anything I can to or answer any questions please let me know. Mary seemed relieved to end the conversation and get me out of the house she clearly was projecting an uncomfortable vibe having Dave there. As I left the house and the door shut I could hear Mary and Dave start in conversation, clearly BOTH of them couldn’t wait for me to get out of the house. I walked down the sidewalk and headed to my car as to not walk across the grass. An old habit I have I respect the lawn of any man, because I take care of mine and its time consuming. I opened the door to my car, sat down and called the station, We will need to bring Mary in for questioning I said to my superior, I think I have just established a motive.

As I started the car I remembered the look on the face of Bryce’s body as we slowly removed the fire hose from atop him. It was a look of trust, a look of comfort, not fear or surprise. Yes, Bryce clearly new his killer probably trusted them as well. A few signs of a struggle mostly related to the method in which he died, but nothing extreme. This meant he was approached without triggering panic by his killer. So what was Bryce’s story, defiantly killed by someone that knew him, even in death a victim tells a story… I started my car and headed toward the station

Chapter 3

B eing freshly out of a relationship from my bitter and horrible divorce the first thing I did of course was to get into counseling and try to figure out why my marriage had failed. Well it did have a great deal to do with the suspicion that she had an affair. I never really figured out why she did decide to wear another ring on her finger, even if it was in spite of me being gone all of time, it still hurt. Empathy is a powerful tool and can help us feel compassion for our fellow humans if we but open our minds and heart to understand. Anyway, she wouldn’t have had an open mind even if her life depended on it!

After I finished the typical classes on building relationships and how to be more in tune with my emotions as a man, I took another self-help or betterment class on the power and control struggles we go through in the married life. I was really amazed at the power and how we as men and women use them to get our ways. Don’t get me wrong, we did have somewhat of relationship and power struggle classes when I was in the academy, but nothing this deep. I now have MUCH more empathy for the victims I see and deal with at work.

So a strange thing happened that I noticed after these classes were done and I practiced the methods that I had been taught. A lot of the classes dealt with understanding the female and how their perception was different than ours (men). So I tried and tried to do the best that I could in these classes, because just getting out of a divorce, I thought I was the one that caused the problems and just wanted to be the best man, father and husband I could if I got married again moving forward.

In the class I learned that showing empathy for even the slightest thing to another human would work miracles. So I started with a simple experiment, and I asked myself how would I be able to show empathy and not have it appears to be sexist driven? In other words, find a way to show empathy to male and female on the same level and not have it appear that I was only flirting with the