First to Find

by Mark Gessner

Maari and Judi recognized each other and they did one of those quick one-standing, one-sitting girl-hugs. Maari explained to the rest of the group that the two had been in a class together a few months before.

  Judi pointed to all the GPS receivers and asked what all the high-tech gadgetry was for.

  As a rule Kurt dated only thin women. He wouldn't usually give a heavier woman a second look, but Judi grabbed his attention. She had an inviting smile. Her eyes locked onto his; he couldn't look away. She had a strong, assured, and confident way of carrying herself and an outgoing friendly manner that he found suddenly irresistible. He didn't believe in love at first sight, but there was an instant attraction. Had he known it was mutual, his life over the next few weeks would have been much less stressful.

  "We were just out geocaching," said Maari, and Judi's face went blank. Kurt had seen that look before when he and his friends tried to explain geocaching.

  "It's like hide and seek for geeks," offered Kurt, handing her his GPS unit.

  "Someone hides a box of trinkets, they post the coordinates on the internet, then other players try to find it," recited Bonnie, tapping on the laptop keyboard.

  "So do you keep the box?" asked Judi, settling into one of the easy chairs, turning over the tiny GPS unit in her hand.

  "No, you open the box, sign the logbook, and trade trinkets if you want," said Kurt.

  "Then you write about your experience online here," said Bonnie, tapping on her screen.

  Maari apologized and then introduced Bonnie and Kurt to Judi, who reached forward and shook their hands in turn. Judi lingered just a half-second longer on the shake with Kurt, as she bored into his soul with those green eyes. Kurt drew back and wished his grip hadn't been so sweaty.

  "Are you on break? We don't want to get you in trouble," said Kurt, looking around nervously.

  Maari and Judi laughed. Maari explained that Kurt was speaking to Java Judi herself, the owner of the Java Judi's chain. Kurt asked why she was bussing tables if she was the owner and Judi explained that she was short handed in this store and had to pitch in during rush hour until she could staff up.

  Judi's life was extremely hectic right now with her business, and she told herself she really didn't have time for a dating relationship. There was something about Kurt, despite his retro appearance, that gave her butterflies. She made a mental note to ask Maari about him later.

  Judi asked Kurt why he wasn't at work on a weekday, and he admitted that he was a laid off software engineering manager out of Motorola. She offered her condolences and he waved her off, explaining that they did him a favor, and that he wasn't worried about it.

  "I could last another couple years or so if I stop buying this expensive gourmet coffee," he joked, wiggling his nearly-empty cup.

  "Hey!" she said, mocking offense.

  "Just kidding. I usually drink store brand," he confessed.

  "Ugh. That's gross," she replied.

  "We're having a big geocaching picnic next weekend. You want to come?" asked Maari.

  Judi said she usually worked weekends, but she might be able to break free. Kurt offered to send her the picnic details and asked for her email address.

  In years past, a man interested in a woman might ask for her phone number. Somewhere between the late eighties and mid-nineties that request had changed from the phone number to the email address. If the email contact proved interesting, the phone number might follow. If a woman wouldn't give you her email address, take the hint.

  Judi handed a business card to Kurt and then to each of the women. As she handed the card to Maari she rose from her chair and said, "Call me later; let's catch up."

  Chapter 5

  Hamlet, California

  December 17 - 4:42 A.M.

  A SMALL WARNING SIGN blocked the trail:

  U.S. GOV'T PROPERTY - KEEP OUT

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  The killer bulldozed the Cherokee over the sign, snapping its rotted wooden post. "The U.S. Government can suck my ass," he muttered, flipping off the sign as it fell back and under the Jeep's grill. He cut the headlights and navigated down the gravel path using the parking lights. It was a straight drive a hundred feet down to a row of abandoned oyster farm buildings. Single room wooden shacks on rotted stilts stood half in the water of the bay and half on the land. A dozen of the dilapidated structures kept a lonely vigil over the shore. He wondered what the government intended by protecting these death traps. Probably some historical preservation or some other bullshit waste of good tax money.

  He'd driven up U.S. Highway One most of the night, a narrow two-lane coastal highway with more twists and turns than a Michael Connelly novel, and he kept it four miles over the limit to avoid drawing suspicion. Last thing he needed was a routine traffic stop. He'd been having a hell of a time staying awake behind the wheel, so when he saw the abandoned oyster farm on the bay, his first thought had been shelter. His second thought --ditch the Jeep.

  He pulled the Cherokee up between the first two shacks, front tires in the water, transmission in drive. He slid out, planting one foot on the ground while keeping the other foot on the brake. He released the brake and at the same time, punched the RESUME switch on the cruise control. The sport-utility lurched forward in a vain attempt to resume a speed of fifty-nine miles per hour straight into the bay. He damn near went in with it. He had an arm and a leg still inside when it lurched, and only by falling backward was he able to avoid being snagged and dragged in. The Jeep took on water as it rolled further into the bay. It dove, twisted to the left; sunk. The bay still bubbled over the red tail lights of the sunken Jeep as he hiked further north, about a couple hundred feet more.

  Coastal grasses covered the trail in places. Between clumps of grass, his boots crunched broken oyster shells. An ancient appliance graveyard loomed into view on the right, followed by a couple more shacks. He eventually found a sturdy old cinder block building. It still had an attached steel door. Judging from the rust, it hadn't been used for a long time. Time and weather had almost removed its foul oyster stink. This looked like the only building in the farm that had once had running water. He stepped in to an employee restroom near the back. A row of porcelain steel sinks, across from a row of urinals, all but one of them busted into little porcelain fragments scattered on the floor. Vandals. A row of toilets, all neatly removed. Salvage, probably cleaned up and resold as antiques to yuppies down in San Jose. Lines of rust marked the yellow tile walls where the stall enclosures had been, long since removed for scrap metal. With the door closed and latched, the wind and the vandals wouldn't bother him here. He could sleep in his coat.

  He slept till noon, and then hitched a ride to the Greyhound bus station in Petaluma. There he bought a one-way ticket to El Paso, Texas, cash. He could have gone straight to Pittsburgh for about the same price, but he wanted to make sure his trail wasn't followed, in case the police somehow tracked him into Petaluma. He planned to alternate bus rides with hitchhiking to further obscure his trail and he wanted to be sure to stick to the southern route as much as possible. The extreme southern route.

  He'd forgotten how much riding the bus sucked. Twelve hundred miles wedged in next to a fat bitch who took up his entire arm rest. Across the aisle, a tall thin man in a stained brown shirt that even Goodwill would refuse was carrying on a lively conversation with himself. He was having a hard time convincing his imaginary friends that bankers were in fact watching everything from tall buildings purposely designed to look like owls. Every once and awhile he’d laugh at the comments of his unseen companions. He chain-smoked imaginary cigarettes, which nonetheless gave him a hacking cough that often produced great gobs of phlegm, which he’d swallow.

  Most times the bus heater didn't work and other times it heated the air to the point where he was sure his next breath would choke him. The onboard restroom was too dirty to use.

  From El Paso he planned to hitch a ride as far east as he could get. He had to get away from El Paso in case anyone tracke
d him there from Petaluma.

  He stood out by the side of I-10 for two hours in the fucking wind and cold before someone stopped. It was a VW microbus filled with hippies heading to a folk music festival out west of Austin. He'd be going to Austin eventually, but first things first. He had to follow the plan. That's where most killers fucked up. They were stupid and didn't follow the plan. Hell, most didn't even make a plan. Those that did and didn't follow it, well they deserved to get caught, dumb shits. He would not be caught, and he didn't want to be tempted to jump the list and go straight to Austin, so he'd waved the hippies on their way. Besides, dope would fuck your brain, even second hand dope smoke, and the killer had an I.Q. of one sixty-five, at least according to one free I.Q. test on the internet; he wouldn't do anything to ruin that. Takes a shitload of brain cells to make an I.Q. that high. Genius level's what that is. Smoke one joint and you kill off a hundred thousand brain cells or so, that's what he'd always heard. The killer didn't know exactly how many brain cells were in a normal adult brain, but he figured a hundred thousand brain cells would probably amount to half an I.Q. point, maybe more. So he'd waved the hippies on. Even though the inside of the van was warm and he could feel the heat pulling him in, he waved them on.

  He only had to wait another thirty minutes before a big gypsum-hauler pulled over. He climbed up and had a seat.

  After jockeying the big rig back onto the interstate, the trucker said he was going as far as Van Horn, then he'd be cutting south down U.S. fifty-nine for a big construction project in Lajitas, down by the Mexican border west of the Big Bend. Seems some rich yankee had bought out most of the town of Lajitas, was going to turn it into a resort, put in a golf course, a bunch of condos, a big fancy hotel, that kind of shit, and needed buttloads of concrete to build it. Buttloads of concrete means buttloads of gypsum. So far the yankee had dumped a wad of money into the project, but hadn't gotten anything out of it. "See, Lajitas is so far from everythin' else, the nearest big airport's 'bout a five hour drive," the trucker said. "You want my advice?" the trucker continued, though the killer didn't want his advice. He didn't want anything but to get as far from El Paso as he could, as fast as he could, without having to take the free business advice of any fucking Harvard MBA gypsum truck drivers along the way. "You gonna build y'self a resort, you do it somewhere that folks can fly to."

  Fucking genius. It was everywhere.

  Chapter 6

  December 19 - 3:22 P.M.

  Van Horn Texas

  PAINTED ON SUN-BLEACHED brick, red and blue stripes above and below, the four-foot-high black letters announcing DIESEL FRIED CHICKEN tempted hungry drivers on the interstate, roaring a quarter mile away across the desert. A pile of old tires half as high as the roof baked just below the sign. The interstate had shunted all traffic away from town twenty years ago. A short distance, but long enough to put a bullet into the heart of Van Horn's economy. Now only the most desperate travelers would bother to stop.

  Flat, dirt, oil, flat, and more dirt. Fucking miles and miles of nothing but flat and dirt. Permian basin, Texas oil country. Black pumpjacks see-sawing, about one every couple hundred feet, sucking the crude up out of the ground like hideous black metal mosquitoes perched on the back of some monstrous black-blooded creature. With each stroke, they'd draw out their thin proboscides and suck up more of the black ooze. With each stroke the pumpjacks protested their labor with grating metallic squeaks. The killer wondered if they were pumping all this oil, why didn't they have some way to keep themselves lubed? See, a genius would figure out how to design a pumpjack to do that. World was full of morons and dipshits.

  He walked up to the window of the DIESEL FRIED CHICKEN station and pressed his face to the glass. The place was empty. A long red Formica counter stood covered in dust. An old backhoe tire decorated the center of the room. A Valvoline-can spittoon and about a thousand cigarette butts lay inside the tire. Outside, only tangled wires and rusted bolts poked up where once the station offered full service gas pumps.

  He found a padlock on a rusted hasp on the back door. He rustled around in a dumpster full of old engine parts. He yanked out a massive iron engine mounting bracket, and then whacked the hasp with it a couple times. The hasp and lock fell to the ground, raising a choking cloud of light brown dust. He kicked the lock under the pile of tires. He'd need a place to sleep for a couple days, restock supplies. Maybe shave.

  Chapter 7

  December 22 - 7:03 P.M.

  IT GOT FUCKING COLD in the desert after sundown. He'd been walking for twenty minutes already. Bus station must be somewhere in town. Every one-goat town in America had a Greyhound bus station in it. He'd find it.

  There was only one road in Van Horn, that was the old highway, and everything from the Fiesta mart to the DIESEL FRIED CHICKEN place was hung off it. If there was a bus station, it'd have to be along the main road.

  He picked up another Greyhound in Van Horn, one way ticket to Pittsburgh, cash, no questions asked. He figured if anyone had caught his trail to Petaluma, which was unlikely, they'd have a hell of a time tracking him to El Paso. Then even if they followed him to Texas, which was even more unlikely, they'd lose him right there outside the El Paso bus station. It was simple statistics: multiply the probabilities of these independent and unlikely events, and the combined probabilities approach zero. Mathematical Genius.

  The detour along the southern route would cost him several days, but no detective in San Francisco would ever find a direct transportation link to his next victim in Pittsburgh. Besides, riding thumb was untraceable. He wondered why more killers didn't do it.

  Chapter 8

  December 24 - 3:43 A.M.

  Burger King / Greyhound Bus Station - Gary, Indiana

  THREE DAYS ON THE road without a bath, and the sign in the men's room said, “NO HAIR WASHING IN SINK.”

  Fuck that.

  If there was any doubt before, now he was convinced. Riding the bus sucked. His legs cramped, his hair felt matted, he had that greasy all over feeling, he stunk, and his back was killing him. He had a decent car. He had plenty of money. He could have driven or flown if he wished. But on a killing spree, you had to put comfort aside. You had to leave no trace. You had to follow the plan.

  Halfway through his sponge bath, a pimple-faced teen in a Burger king uniform and matching paper crown clattered a yellow plastic mop bucket into the restroom.

  "Hey, didn't you see the sign? No bathing allowed in here," said the kid, pointing.

  The killer, hunched over the sink, stopped working the rinse water through his hair. His taut muscular shoulders and biceps flexed as he dropped his arms to the sink. His long black hair dripped dirty water into the sink, onto the edge of the sink, and onto the floor. He rotated upward to face the boy. He snapped his right arm out into a clenched fist; flipped his middle finger, bared his teeth in an animal sneer.

  The kid turned and ran. The mop and the paper Burger King crown fell to the floor.

  Chapter 9

  December 24 5:32 P.M.

  THE KILLER SLID OFF the bus at the Pittsburgh terminal. He hailed a cab to take him to Murrysville. He paid the driver in cash, and then hitched a ride from Murrysville to the Mini-Mart in Harrison Valley. If you're going to be thumbing a ride, you can't do any better than Christmas Eve or Mother's Day. There's fewer drivers out, but no matter how much you resemble Charles Manson or Wichita's BTK killer, every one really wants to believe your hard luck story about how your car broke down and you're just trying to get home to Mom.

  From the Mini-Mart he walked the three miles out the lonely highway to the Club. A blizzard had blown down out of Canada. The snow blew so fast that the highway disappeared under his feet. When he got to the club around midnight, he found the barn exactly where he expected it to be, poking up out of the darkness in a whirlwind of amber security light and snowflakes. Around the back of the barn he found a small window to the basement shop area. It was unlocked, held shut by a flimsy plastic prop-rod.

&
nbsp; Chapter 10

  www.cache-finders.com Geocache Listing

  Ammo Can Exchange - Cacher Picnic

  by Bonnie [email this user]

  Texas, USA

  [click to download geographic coordinates and hints]

  Well, we won the government surplus auction! Let's get together to distribute the Ammo cans! They make great cache containers, they're waterproof and easy to paint!

  We have almost FIVE HUNDRED CANS to distribute! We got a great deal, these are usually $4-$7 each at the Army surplus stores, but (with our gas costs and trailer rental figured in), we got these for $0.96 each! Whoo-Hoo! Anyway, we're charging an even BUCK FIFTY a can, so that we can use the extra money to buy food and supplies for the PICNIC LUNCH on the Shores of City Park (That's 'Emma Long Municipal Park' for you Outta-Towners!)