by Mark Gessner
With a clumsy pulling and huffing, he transferred the drugged man to the crossbeam. This beam was narrower than the beam that had gotten them out here, but there were two beams side-by-side for strength, with only an inch gap between. Now he had Stalnaker perpendicular to the direction of travel of the road, and parallel to the expansion joint, just three feet overhead. Now came the really hard part. He had to lift the man directly up and over the water, and jam him up into the expansion joint.
It had taken him an hour to get this far, but there was no need to hurry. His measurements had shown that this gap would reach its maximum opening at five A.M. He'd have to wait here a few more hours. He leaned up against the arch and rested.
Chapter 37
March 5th - 3:45 A.M.
JUDI SLID OUT OF bed, unable to sleep --again. Kurt was miles away but still he was all over her. She grabbed her robe. Anything to take her mind off him. His lips, his kiss, his eyes, his hair, his intoxicating scent, his strong arms holding her, squeezing her. How could she have pushed him away?
--Stop.
She knew damn well why. Kurt was special, there was something about him; she had seen it right away. No, she didn't believe in love at first sight but when she first saw him she wanted to know more about him. You sleep with them too early; they dump you. Fast. Got to make them work for it, make them beg, play a little hard to get, make them know (not just think) you're the one who hung the moon. Otherwise they fuck and run, slam bam and no thank you ma'am. Even the good ones. They couldn't help it; they were just men. She wouldn't repeat that mistake again. Had come damn close to it though. Sex would wait. First he had to be made to worship the ground she walked on.
She thought about the mystery Kurt had uncovered, all those murders with the gross bottles of urine nearby. Maybe she'd see if she could also find what he had found, see if there was any danger. She didn't think Kurt was very savvy when it came to sensing danger. He seemed to be walking around in condition white all the time. He was kind of a dreamer.
She logged in to the cache-finders website, then brought up the search page.
At the SEARCH PHRASE prompt, she typed: bottle, urine
The computer came back with a single result:
1) Mt Tamalpais Romp - Mill Valley CA
She clicked on the link, which brought up this page:
Mt Tamalpais Romp - Normal Sized Cache
by Winkie378 [email this user]
California, USA
[click to download geographic coordinates and hints]
A fun cache hidden in a CA state park up on Mt Tam. Large Tupperware Container, the usual trinkets hidden inside. Bring fresh batteries for your GPS; it's a long hike in and out. Cache should be easy to find.
Cache Visitor Comments:
(14 comments total)
[click to see previous comments]
[13] December 17 by JellyRollJudie [32 caches found]
OH * MY * GOD!!! DO _NOT_ GO OUT THERE! A DEAD DOG is covering it, I mean a really freaking huge dog and it's STARTING TO DECOMPOSE! I WILL NEVER GO CACHING AGAIN!!!! I REPEAT DO NOT GO THERE AND NEVER GO IN THE WOODS ALONE!
[email this user]
[14] December 18 by Martello [901 caches found]
Enjoying a long vacation in the Bay area this week. Hiked up to the cache on Mt Tam today and had to chase off about a dozen huge vultures that had begun to feast on the carcass. I climbed down, then carefully retrieved the cache box with a long stick. What's scarier than the dead dog is that I found a sealed mayonnaise jar full of what appeared to be *urine* in an abandoned campsite uphill from the ranger station. Ran into a couple state cops in the overflow camping lot on the hike back out. Security was crawling all over the place for some reason. The Ranger station was closed and the station and its little parking lot were both taped off with yellow "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" tape. The cops kinda blew me off; they said it was probably just coyotes that got ahold of some camper's dog. They didn't even take a report. Seemed pretty busy with the Ranger station thing. I'm requesting the admins of this site to please unlist this cache so no one else goes out there and has to deal with this mess. I've lost my appetite for at least a week, that's for dang sure. Sorry JellyRollJudie, I hope you'll continue to play the game. We'd hate to lose you over something like this. Plenty of other caches out there...
-Martello (visiting from Alamogordo NM)
[email this user]
Did you Find the Cache? Add your own comment! [click here]
That must have been what that freaky longhair dude was talking about at the cacher picnic back at Emma Long. But Kurt had found others. She thought about it for a minute, then tried as many synonyms for bottle and urine as she could think of.
The computer came back with the following results:
1) Mt Tamalpais Romp - Mill Valley CA
2) Back to Nature! - Schaumburg IL
3) Photosphere - Sunspot NM
She didn't see any Pennsylvania murder. That was odd. But Kurt hadn't mentioned anything about New Mexico. She called up the New Mexico listing:
Photosphere - Normal Sized Cache
by SunWatcher [email this user]
New Mexico, USA
[click to download geographic coordinates and hints]
This cache, like its name, is a spherical object, camouflaged to blend in with its surroundings better. In addition to the usual cache goodies, the cache contains a small camera in a baggie. You are to take a photo (a sphere with a camera, get it? Photo + Sphere = "Photosphere." Also Photosphere is a part of the sun) of yourself with the Sunspot solar observatory in the background. Please include the frame number so I can put your name on the photo when I post them online later after the roll is finished. The cache was placed with permission on the Sunspot observatory grounds, since I actually work here as a solar astronomer. Have fun & Happy Hunting! Be sure to stop in at the nearby visitor center when you get here and take a guided tour of the observatory.
Cache Visitor Comments:
(78 comments total)
[click to see previous comments]
[78] February 19 by ClimbingFool [1723 caches found]
Nice cache. Love the high altitude vistas on the hike back out. You flat-landers better bring some oxygen, 'cause the mountain air is thin! Pack in plenty of water too. Speaking of which, if you have to take a whiz, it's probably a good idea to just use the restroom at the visitor's center. Who pees in a glass jar, then leaves the jar in the woods behind the visitor center? I found it at the cache site, but that couldn't have been a geocacher who did that, could it?
[email this user]
Did you Find the Cache? Add your own comment! [click here]
So some cacher had found a jar of urine out in the mountains of Alamogordo. Well stranger things had happened; leaving a jar of urine in the woods wasn't a crime. Weird, but not criminal. She brought up a popular internet search engine, keyed in a search for any news of a killing in Alamogordo. Shit. There were almost two thousand hits. Too much information. She added "Sunspot" to the search, and that cut the list down to two hundred. She noticed a mention of a "solar observatory" in the original cache post, so she added that to the search as well. Bingo:
Alamogordo Daily News, Feb 17 - Section C, Page 5
SOLAR SCIENTIST KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT
SUNSPOT (AP) - A visiting scientist was killed last Saturday afternoon in a freak accident at the Sunspot National Solar Observatory. Sunspot Sheriff's deputies report that Ramona Willard Lexton, 38, of Fort Worth Texas, a visiting expert in digital adaptive optics, was burned to death when she fell into a solar telescope instrumentation chamber during a test.
Sources at the Sunspot observatory say that Lexton was working alone in the Vacuum Tower Telescope Saturday morning when the accident occurred. Her charred remains set off the observatory's fire alarm systems. Sunspot's volunteer firefighters responded to the scene within minutes, but it was too late to save Lexton.
According to a spokesperson for the observatory, Ms
Kelly Raliman of Alamogordo, Lexton was an experienced, world-renowned expert in adaptive optics. "She should simply have known better than to work on this equipment alone. And to work on this particular piece of equipment in the daytime is just inexcusable, I can't imagine what possessed her. We'll never know."
Raliman went on to say that the particular telescope involved in the accident is the only one in its power class in North America. Raliman said that Lexton had been perfecting a new digital technique for improving the stability of photosphere images through the use of a new computer image-processing algorithm to remove atmospheric distortions. Raliman stressed that the observatory had clearly posted safety procedures on the instrumentation chamber, and that the NSO was investigating why those procedures were ignored.
Lexton, who was in Sunspot on a yearlong sabbatical from Locklin Defense Aerospace in Fort Worth Texas, is survived by her parents and nine siblings, all of Fort Worth Texas.
4:30 A.M.
Judi's head was getting heavy. She couldn't think straight anymore. She found that she had spent the last few minutes trying to read and re-read the last paragraph, and it was mixing in with a half-dream of pulling espresso shots for nine little dwarfs. Time for bed. She emailed the links for the New Mexico death and cache comments to Kurt. She was pretty sure he hadn't said anything about New Mexico. He'd welcome the new information.
She hoped she hadn't scared him off by stopping short earlier. Nothing frustrated a guy more than slamming on the brakes once his motor got revved.
Part III
Third to Find
Chapter 38
March 5 - 4:45 A.M.
STALNAKER'S MUMBLED PROTESTS WOKE the killer. He applied more of the engine starting fluid to the sock and covered Stalnaker's nostrils with it. The victim fell limp again. The killer massaged a cramp out of his shoulder. Sleeping on a two-foot wide beam a hundred feet up in the air wasn't easy or restful. He'd have to get some good sleep tonight, back at the abandoned car. He was going to stick around after this murder. He wanted to read about it in the papers, see it on the news. He was starting to enjoy the publicity. No one had put the string of murders together, and they probably never would. Too bad. Part of him wanted to let them all know of his genius.
He checked his watch. Close enough. The gap would expand to its maximum width in fifteen minutes. He checked Stalnaker's bindings and found them tight. He threw two short sections of rope up and over a pipe that ran across the bridge just on the other side of the expansion gap. He tied the other end of one rope to the bindings on Stalnaker's hands and the other rope to his feet, then reached out and grabbed the free ends of each rope. He tied these off to the beam on which he was sitting. He'd need to get off this beam soon or a cramp would do him in. He brushed off a wave of claustrophobia, an urge to stand up and stretch so strong that he had to steady himself on the beam to prevent it from happening automatically. As he grabbed the beam, an old abandoned hornet's nest broke loose under his white-knuckled fingers and tumbled down to the mud below.
With Stalnaker tied to the pipe next to the expansion joint, the killer was ready to begin stuffing him into the crack. He carefully pulled on each rope, first the hands, then the feet. Stalnaker rose up off the beam, bent in half at the waist, swung out over the lake, and inched up toward the expansion joint. With each move, the killer tied the rope off. It was slow work. Soon Stalnaker was hanging six inches below the expansion joint. The killer tied a length of rope around his own waist and onto the beam on which he was sitting, and as he did so his left thigh went into a terrific spasm. He swung the cramping leg up onto the beam to straighten it out and work out the cramp, but as he did so he slipped off the beam on the other side.
As he fell, he instinctively reached out and caught the beam under his armpit. For what seemed like an eternity he hung there, dangling over the muck far below. The rope tied to his waist offered little consolation now; it didn't even come into play. One arm was wrapped around the beam up to his armpit and the other flailed wildly for balance. There wasn't time to think. The leg cramp was gone now, overpowered by a sharp pain in the upper arm where the beam had caught his weight. Adrenaline surged through his veins and he swung his free arm toward the beam so that he was now gripping it with both arms up to the armpits, and his chin perched over the top. He kicked wildly and shimmied himself up onto the beam and hung there, head over one side and feet dangling over the other. Crabbing sideways with a twist, he was fully on top of the beam again. He lay there face down for some time, eyes closed, gripping the beam with arms and legs, catching his breath, glad to be alive.
After he regained his composure, he performed the most dangerous maneuver of the whole night. Stalnaker's body was a foot away, hanging six inches below the deck, out over a hundred feet of air and about four feet of thick, reeking muck below that. He couldn't just reach out and lift the victim up into the crack; the leverage wasn't right. So he flipped over onto his back, knees bent, heels hooked under the beam. His torso hung out over the water, and with his hands he reached up and shoved the unconscious man up as hard as he could. When he was finished, Stalnaker was wedged sideways into the gap between two huge slabs of concrete, his left shoulder facing the water, his right pressed up against the deck of the bridge. He had to bungee Stalnaker's feet fast to the pipe to keep them from flopping out and pulling the man free. Chest and pelvis, both were wedged in tight. Trent Stalnaker wasn't going anywhere ever again.
He scissored back onto the beam and took a few more minutes' rest.
Once he was sure that Stalnaker was securely wedged into the expansion joint, he reached up and pulled the duct tape off the drugged man's face, taking a furball of mustache with it.
An hour later the ether had finally begun to wear off. Traffic had started to flow across the bridge, mostly from the north to south. With each passing car and truck the expansion joint pinched closed a fraction of an inch, then released. The killer stayed up on the beam near his victim for another hour, to make sure that the traffic flexing the bridge didn't release Stalnaker from his prison.
Seven A.M. Traffic was in full swing now. Stalnaker's body filled the tightening joint. He groaned with each passing car. His ribs and pelvis ached. His arms were bound tight; he couldn't move them. Legs bound, unable to kick free. The ether wore off. It left him with a throbbing headache. He tried to scream, but he couldn't draw in a whole breath, he was wedged that tight. The screams came out in short bursts punctuated with gasps.
Stalnaker soon calculated that no one could hear him over the roar of the traffic overhead. He'd been an engineer himself long ago before he evolved into a sociopathic corporate executive. He figured out where he was and what was going to happen as the sun heated up the bridge.
The killer crawled back to the ledge under the bridge, and from there scrabbled down the side of the cliff to the base of the arch, where the arch met a diagonal cross-beam halfway to the water. From there he could see Stalnaker, and Stalnaker could see him, about fifty feet away. Stalnaker struggled to get free.
"I wouldn't try to move too much if I were you," said the killer.
"You sonofa... bitch... Get me... down... from here!" demanded Stalnaker.
"Why would I do that, when I went to so much trouble to get you up there?" he shouted back. He was enjoying this part. "And I wouldn't advise kicking free either, I've got your pathetic little cock tied off to the beam and if you fall you'll only get about twenty feet down before your balls are ripped clean off." He lied about the cock-tying part. He'd actually bought the materials to do it, was planning to do it, but reconsidered when he saw Stalnaker's crusty little pecker poking out back in the men's room.
Stalnaker hushed for a few minutes as if to consider his predicament. He couldn't see his genitals, and by now his pelvis was becoming numb under the crushing pressure of the expansion gap. He couldn't feel the wire, but that didn't mean there wasn't one. "Why are you... doing this...?"
