First to Find
Page 5
Everyone laughed a nervous laugh of relief, then resumed drinking their beers (those who hadn't dropped them) and playing with their GPS units (those who hadn't dropped them).
Judi turned her head to face Kurt, his arm still wrapped tightly around her. She pushed him away and laughed, "You can let me go now." They settled onto the nearest box, and Kurt picked his glasses up off the deck. The guy who dropped his GPS into the lake was on his hands and knees, hanging over the edge of the bow, searching in vain. Judi and Kurt both tried to help him find it, but the water, so green and murky, prevented anyone from seeing more than a few inches down. Even if they had seen it, no one could reach it on the bottom anyway. After a few minutes they left him crouched in shock, staring down into the green water muttering, “Bummer,” over and over, and shaking his head.
Kurt retrieved a couple of new ice cold Cokes, popped the top and handed one to Judi. Judi asked him how the job search was going, and he asked her more about how she got into the coffee business. They spent the rest of the slow trip getting to know each other.
Bonnie and Maari watched them from the rear of the boat. They sipped chardonnay and snickered as they whispered to each other backhand. Judi had called Maari earlier in the week to get the low-down on Kurt. Maari, Bonnie, and Judi knew this, but Kurt didn't, and no one was telling.
Kurt and Judi watched the world pass by from the side of the boat. They laughed and waved to the other boaters passing in both directions. The waterlogged Ratkus party barge chugged on at two knots, practically standing still while the other traffic zipped by at thirty-five or more.
By the time they pulled back onto the shore at Emma Long, Kurt figured he had a good chance to get Judi's home phone number.
They climbed off the boat, surprised to see most of the cachers still hanging out on the shore, munching on cold food, drinking, and telling caching stories. The boaters told everyone about their brush with death, and later someone passed around an ammo can to collect up enough dough for a replacement for the hapless guy who'd dunked his GPS.
Judi headed for the food table and filled a plate with some of the leftover goodies. Someone had continued to cook hot dogs and venison sausage for the last several hours, and she found plenty of drinks. Judi and Kurt had a seat on a cooler, in a group of cachers Kurt knew, including Bonnie's husband Jason. Kurt popped the cap off a Shiner Bock and munched some dry nacho chips; Judi chugged on a Coke and ate a hot dog. Almost drowning at sea (when it comes down to it, just about any near death experience) can give you a powerful thirst and an appetite.
"...so I'm standing there, one A.M., two-way radio on my backpack, GPS in hand, trying to explain to these two heavily armed agents what I was doing unlocking an electrical utility box in the dark," said Jason.
"Wait, they were armed?" said one of the cachers.
"Yes, they came out with weapons drawn," said Jason. "Handguns, Black rifles. They were very curious who I was talking to on the radio."
"Who were you talking to?" asked another cacher, a thin, shy man up from San Antonio.
"No one! I was alone! I just keep the radio on my backpack all the time in case I need it," answered Jason, "It wasn't even turned on. They decided it would be safer for them if I got on face-to-face terms with the ground, fast. Then they had me tell them the combination so they could open the box. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they pulled out the play-doh, the McDonalds beanie baby elephant, and a hot wheels car, along with the cache logbook." said Jason.
"So then they figured you were telling the truth?" asked another cacher, a mountain of a woman wearing a tie-dye t-shirt that was stretched almost to the breaking point.
"You know, the Secret Service never really believes anyone; that's their job. After about a half hour of the third degree, they let me go, but they took my radio and my GPS, and they were going to confiscate my hiking stick too. It took me a couple weeks and a mountain of red tape before I got them back. I had to borrow Bonnie's GPS in the meantime. It seriously slowed me down in terms of my find count. I may never recover," he said.
Kurt turned privately to Judi to fill her in on the details of what had happened. All the old-timers could recite the legend of how Jason got picked up by the Secret Service.
Jason had found a "plain sight" cache in Waterloo park. The cache, disguised as an electrical box attached at chest-height to a telephone pole, had a combination lock securing it. Jason went out for his first try at night caching, but he'd chosen a poor night on which to find this particular cache. It just happened by blind luck that the hospital across the street was treating a visiting adjutant foreign minister for deep vein thrombosis from sitting on a plane for ten hours. The Secret Service had set up surveillance (standard operating procedure for high-ranking foreign officials), and their spotter spied a suspicious individual wearing a backpack, tampering with the electrical system in the park across the street.
"Anyway, to make a long story short, Jason's standing there, flashlight in his teeth, trying to work the combo lock, when a huge black SUV comes crashing through the brush and almost knocks him and the pole over. Two agents hop out with assault rifles, demanding he freeze. Jason about craps his pants. Isn't that right Jason?" Kurt asked, now that Jason had finished telling the story.
"Yeah," chuckled Jason. "I bring a change of shorts every time I go night caching now, just in case."
"Do you guys often run afoul of the law while caching?" asked Judi.
"Not usually. Most of the local cops don't know about caching, but we got a guy on the force who actually geocaches. I've met him; he's pretty cool. He's got a GPS unit that most of us would give our left wingnut for; pardon my French. The park cops are also without a clue, but they mostly leave us alone. I think the Secret Service knows about caching now after that last episode but they probably won't do anything different in the future, 'cause they're a bunch of hard cases and like I said before, it's their job. Best to cache in the daytime if you're worried," advised Jason. He popped the tab on a diet coke, drew off a cold mouthful, and then wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Speakin' of worried, Kurt, did you hear about the dead dog that Martello found on a cache a couple months ago?" He asked.
"I heard he found a dead animal, I didn't know it was a dog though. I just caught the tail end of the story," said Kurt.
"Shoot, I think that would have freaked me out more than the Secret Service did," said Jason. "And finding a jar of pee nearby, that's just freakin weird."
"Agreed." said Kurt, then, jokingly, "Dead dogs all over the place. Gotta be careful out there."
Kurt and Judi spent the rest of the afternoon tossing Frisbee, playing fetch with Maari's dog, wading in the lake, hauling ammo cans for the latecomers, listening to more geocaching legends, eating way too much picnic food, and walking along the shore talking. Discovery. They spoke of their families, work, college, pets, distaste for organized religion, likes and dislikes. Getting-to-know-you and searching for warts. An impelling tension charged the air, each one being careful not to say anything that would offend the other, nothing that would ruin the potential romance they each could feel developing.
Kurt drove home that evening with a painful sunburn on his arms and neck --and Judi's home phone number in his back pocket.
Chapter 12
Harrison Valley, Pennsylvania
Thursday, December 26
THE KILLER SLEPT IN the dry warmth, the basement of the barn providing shelter from the biting cold outside. At least that asshole McChasney's dog was out of the picture. From a basement window, he had watched the authorities haul off her mangled carcass. He was hidden well down here and they had no reason to investigate the basement, let alone the crawl space behind the furnace. Must sleep.
Awake. Still dark. His heart pounded and he looked around quickly for escape. He had forgotten where he was, and the darkness closed in on him. He couldn’t think clearly, it felt like he was losing control of his thoughts.
He wanted to run.
Instead he took a couple deep breaths and tried to focus, to clear his mind.
Where was he? He could feel the cold concrete floor. He could feel the ancient concrete block walls, blackened with the oily residue of eighty-four years of small engine and hydraulic system repair. The air was thick with the cloying smell of two cycle engine oil mixed with dust and the summery green essence of freshly mown grass, now gone cold, black, and still with the passing of countless seasons. The dead still of mid-winter night. The barn creaked under its own tired weight and the weight of the snowmass on the roof.
He remembered now.
He shuffled over to the ancient wooden workbench, and in the pale orange shaft of light that stabbed down through the basement window from the sodium vapor security lantern outside in the parking lot, he scanned the shelves and racks above the bench looking for what he needed. He was somewhat calmer now, but he knew the panic would return, and when it did it would be fierce and he needed to be ready.
Hand tools, screwdrivers, pliers, adjustable wrenches, ratchets and socket sets, all old but kept clean, each one hung in its designated place on the wall. The maintenance foreman ran a tidy shop and treated his tools well, the mark of a craftsman.
At last he spied a row of old mayonnaise and pickle jars on the shelf. Some were filled with spark plugs, some with cotter pins, assorted washers, split washers, rubber grommets, springs, rolls of electrical and Teflon tape, and the odd collection of nylon and rubber spacers. He selected a mayo jar filled with greasy machine bolts, cannibalized from equipment in the hopes that they could one day fulfill another useful purpose in some other machine part, at some later time. He shook the bolts out onto the bench, and then wiped the jar carefully with one of the rags heaped in a cardboard Quaker State Motor Oil box next to the bench.
He unzipped his jeans and filled the jar. When he was finished, he cradled the warm glass in his hands and raised it to his lips. His nostrils filled with the musky blood-warm ammonia scent of fresh urine. His eyes glazed over, unfocused. Was he in another place, far from here, perhaps another time? Only the killer knew, and then again, looking into those dark green eyes, you got the sense that, well, maybe he didn't.
He pulled a mouthful through pursed lips and choked it down, then wiped his lips with the back of his wrist. In thirty years he never got used to the taste. Like warm sea water tinged with the bitter taste of ammonia. The smell alone was enough to make him gag. He coughed, then clamped his hand to his mouth to suppress the reflex. This ritual would stop the panic, he knew, but only for a short while, as long as the taste remained in his mouth, which would be hours. Long after the taste faded he'd still think he tasted it for a few hours more, and that worked just as well to keep his thoughts calm and focused on the plan.
He found a matching lid, also sitting on the shelf, but filled with small hex nuts that could not have matched the bolts that were in the jar. He dumped out the nuts next to the unmatching bolts, wiped the lid, held it up and rotated it in the light to be sure he'd gotten all the grease and dirt off, then screwed it onto the jar. Satisfied, he set his warm prize on the edge of the bench. He couldn't add this to his collection that he abandoned when he took to the road. Could he come back later to retrieve them all? He thought it unlikely but one never knew, and where there was hope, well, that was something.
As the killer returned to his makeshift bed of frayed (but clean) blue and white Harrison Valley Country Club logo towels behind the furnace and water heater, he caught his reflection in the polished Lexan shield of the old bench grinder. He ran his fingers along the crooked scar on his left cheek. It ran from just to the left of his eye, down through the center of his cheek, where it was punctuated on either side with canine fang marks, and from there it extended through his beard stubble to the left corner of his lip. He had other scars, sure, but this was the biggest and most noticeable. He knew that it made him stand out--easily identified, easily remembered, so he wore a beard most times, then other times tried to stay low, stay hidden, stay dark.
This scar was a battle scar, and he knew every time he saw it or ran his fingers across it that he had won that battle. That bitch had attacked, and that bitch had lost. If he hadn't been carrying his baseball bat home from school that day, he might well be dead now instead. "Fucking dogs," he whispered. Those other two mongrels about shit themselves when they saw how he had taken the alpha bitch down with a home-run swing. They turned tail and ran, the mangy fuckers. Thought they'd gang up on a little kid. He'd shown them all, though the bitch had ripped half his face off and nearly bled him dry before he cracked his bat over her thick skull.
Even in the dark, he could tell that this shop was filled with instruments of death. In addition to being a fine craftsman, the shop foreman was organized. Just like Dalton. He wondered if old Dalton still worked here. He'd have to be decrepit by now. The broken equipment waiting to be repaired was tagged and jailed in a cage along the back wall, and the equipment that had been repaired and was waiting to be returned to service had no tag and was either stacked neatly along the wall next to the bench or hanging from the wall on hooks.
He ran his hands along the line of chain saws, careful not to touch the sharp oiled chains. There were nylon corded weed trimmers, lawn mowers, and electric and manual scissor-style hedge trimmers. Each piece of equipment sported a bright yellow or green paint job, and even in the dim light from the security lamp outside, the colors glowed. Next to the hedge trimmers hung something that looked like a lawn mower engine with a four foot long metal shaft coming out of it and a ten inch steel lawnmower blade on the end. It looked like a weed trimmer, only it was way too big. A weed whacker on steroids. It was hanging from a hook on the wall--no, on closer look it actually took up two hooks, which had to be screwed into a two-by-eight that was then bolted to the wall with five thick masonry lag bolts. It had a wide leather strap on it for keeping it attached to the operator. The engine was painted bright yellow. The shaft was unpainted; it reflected the dull luster of raw steel. The blade was black except for a sharp glint of bright filed carbon steel along the cutting edges. There was no safety guard covering the blade, though he could see a flange where one was supposed to bolt on.
"Ahh, yes it's you. Strange to see you here my old friend."
He lifted the Brush Monster down off the hooks and flipped the leather strap up over his head and under his right arm.
The machine was heavy, but with the strap across his back, it was well balanced. There was a set of handle bars bolted to the pole just above the center. These bars formed a wide, flat "U." The ends of the U had plastic handle grips, and allowed him to get a firm wide grip on the machine. Along one handle grip was a throttle lever, choke, and kill switch, right where he expected to find them.
The killer backed up a step or two away from the wall, and practiced swinging the machine left and right in a wide arc. He then tried an overhead swing, and found the machine to be graceful and easy to maneuver. He smiled, almost laughing in spite of himself as he twirled and danced the machine about the shop in a deadly ballet. The heavy mower engine made a nice counterbalance. It amazed him at how easily it came back to him after such a long time. Like riding a fucking bicycle, he mused.
He pulled the Brush Monster up over his head, and placed the straps back onto the hooks in the wall. He unscrewed the gas cap and waved a hand over the filler hole. The rush of petroleum vapors confirmed there was some gasoline in the tank. He squatted in front of the machine, and ran his fingers along the blade. It gleamed in the dim light of the security lamp, and
"--Shit!"
He accidentally pricked the tip of his index finger. He jerked his hand back, put his finger in his mouth and sucked at the blood. The blade had been freshly sharpened before being placed on the in-service rack.
He pulled his finger out of his mouth and studied it again, rolling it over to expose it to the light. Just a flesh wound. Why the fuck did fingertips bleed so damn much? He wrapped it up tight in a shop
rag and shuffled back over behind the furnace to continue his sleep, cradling his warm mayonnaise jar in his uninjured arm.
Chapter 13
Friday, February 28
“GREAT FOOD - LIVE MUSIC,” screamed the corrugated metal sign above the inverted canoe that formed the awning for the Bait & Tackle Grill. The Bait Shop, as the locals called it, had at one time been a lunch trailer parked off the right of way of Ranch Road 620, northwest of Austin.
Over the years the success of the place led to one ad-hoc addition after another until now it sprawled, a complex of oddly-shaped rooms with gravel floors, corrugated metal walls, colorful neon beer signs, vintage boat motors and antique fishing paraphernalia. The Bait Shop had the best fried catfish on any shore of Lake Travis, as well as some of the best chicken-fried steak anywhere in central Texas. The original trailer was still there; it was now the kitchen. Five cooks and order takers did a hurried greasy square dance inside the trailer, while customers ordered through the original trailer window, in the back wall of the main dining room. The Bait Shop recently began to feature live music, and the musicians were set up in the newest part of the structure, which used to be a gravel parking lot. The gravel was still there. It was now the floor.