"This is the third one," said Detective Byrd emphatically.
"The third one what?" snapped back Captain Wilde.
You know what, the third victim. These bodies are connected."
"Connected how? You don't know they're connected", the Captain said pointedly, enunciating each sentence by poking a finger toward the detective. "There's no evidence they're connected,” He paused for a moment, eased back in his chair and continued with a little more calm. "For all we know these are just three separate, ah, ladies shall we say, who were killed by three different people. It happens all the time. Some times it happens more often than others. It's a risk of the business."
"Look, I know that, but these are connected," the detective responded while trying to remain calm. "The bodies are all dumped in similar places. There are signs at all three sites of return visits. Hell, the victims even look similar. They could be sisters."
There was silence for a few moments as Wilde starred out his window. "Let's assume you're right. Now what? What should we do, have a press conference and alert the good people of Jacksonville that there's a serial killer operating in town? That'll just cause a big stir. We'll be flooded with false leads. Everyone will be calling about their weird neighbor and we'll be spinning our wheels on that instead of finding this guy. If it even is the same guy."
"And the Mayor will start calling you every day. All over some hookers."
"Dammit, that's not it at all," Wilde snapped back. "I just see lots of downside by making this kind of thing public and not much upside. And we're not even sure."
"But these girls out there, they need to know, even if we're not sure."
Now the Captain stared at his desktop. Shortly after the silence became uncomfortable, he began, "Let's do this. Let's go to the FBI. We'll send them our file on these three bodies and see if the Behavioral Science people can tell us anything. Maybe they'll weigh in on whether they think there's a connection."
Byrd sighed.
"We need more. More than your hunches."
Mark just couldn't leave the list of waypoints alone. He had gotten off work a little early and decided to head out to the state forest to pick off a new cache and check out LIST02. They were both on the east side of the forest so they were a much closer drive than LIST12, the first one he'd visited. The road in was much rougher and the Tracker rattled violently. He slowed to a crawl to keep it from rattling apart. People actually lived on this road. How did they stand driving on this every day?
He was familiar with the area. It was only about a half-mile from one of the oldest caches in northeast Florida. He'd done that cache over six months ago. The newly listed cache he wanted to do was called Crossroads, and just as he'd suspected it was right at the crossroads of three of the numbered forest roads. The container was very well camouflaged. It was a glass jar that had been painted Khaki and then had been brushed with glue and rolled in old crushed palmetto fronds. It made it very tough to spot, but fortunately the coords were accurate. Mark managed to find it after a search of twenty minutes. He signed the logbook and returned to the Tracker to head toward LIST02.
He continued deeper into the forest on road 14. When he came to road 12 he turned to the left. The waypoint was somewhere in the area of where this road ran parallel to road 11. None of the forest roads appeared on the base map of his GPS unit, so he couldn't quite tell which road he should be on.
Many units came with more detailed base maps or he could download maps to his Magellan Sport Track Map. But he just felt it was part of the fun to work without maps. Maps? We don't need no stinkin' maps. The thought of that paraphrase from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" never failed to give him a chuckle. Besides, as he often said to the cachers who used them, maps are for girls.
As it turned out, a map would have been helpful here. At its closest approach, road 12 was still a half-mile from he waypoint. It was on the other side of road 11 so he would need to proceed north on 12 until it met up with 11 and then turn south back toward the waypoint. It didn't really matter because the forest was beautiful and the drive pleasant.
He was able to drive within a quarter mile of the waypoint on 11. There was a road that appeared to head right for it, but it was cabled off and clearly posted as being closed to motor vehicles. He was a familiar face to the forest staff and couldn't get away with violating such a clear prohibition. Not with out at least plausible deniability. He pulled off the road, parked and grabbed his backpack and GPS as he climbed out of the Tracker. Since it went in the right direction, he followed the closed road on foot.
The road ran along the bank of the creek that cut through the area. It was a pleasant hike. The temperature was already mellowing a bit in the early evening so it wasn't too hot. There was enough tree cover that it made a great habitat for Cardinals. They were beautiful birds to watch as they flew from bush to bush. As long as he didn't make too much noise, he was able to get fairly close. He also was treated to the overhead flight of a red shouldered hawk with a snake dangling below it. The real prize was the deer he scared up. Getting a better look at wildlife was one advantage to walking over driving.
Within about 200 feet of the waypoint, the GPS showed a bearing off the road, down the slope, toward the creek. He stepped into the brush. There wasn't a trail of any kind that he could make out, but the brush was low and thin enough that he could walk easily. He was careful to watch for snakes. He wasn't so afraid of seeing snakes. What he worried about was NOT seeing them. He'd had some close calls.
He was able to keep a straight heading through the brush and the distance indicator counted down regularly as he approached the waypoint. There was no thicket of brush like he found at the other spots. Just a fallen oak that appeared to be right on the waypoint. He circled the tree and concluded that it was the destination. It would make a beautiful spot for a cache.
The coordinates put him at the thickest part of the trunk of the fallen tree and seemed to point him to one side of it. He began searching there. He picked up a stick that was lying nearby and used it to poke around in the mulch. After about ten minutes, he gave up on that side of the trunk and moved to the other. There seemed to be some erosion there. Apparently, a rivulet ran through here when it rained. He poked at the mulch with the stick and snagged it on something. He squatted down and cleared more of the mulch away with his hands.
There was some kind of plastic sheet buried here. The erosion had exposed some of it. He pulled at it thinking it would pull right out, but it was a too big. He stood up and turned in circles wondering what this might be. There didn't seem to be any kink of irrigation here, so he doubted it was anything like that. It was nothing that should be here that he could think of.
He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a pocketknife. He opened the knife, wrapped his hand around the handle with the blade pointing downward and stabbed it into the plastic sheet. Once the sheet was punctured, he used a sawing motion with the knife to try to cut a larger opening. That wasn't very efficient so he dropped the knife in the sand, grabbed either side of the opening with each hand and pulled it open into a gaping hole.
Inside, there was some kind of fabric. He picked up the knife and gave it a poke. There was something hard and solid under the fabric. He grabbed it with one hand and gave it a yank...
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek," he screeched uncontrollably, sounding somewhat like a little girl.
"Holy crap," he said after regaining some composure. "Holy crap," he repeated. He was thinking rapidly but couldn't seem to grasp what to do next. There, sticking out of hole he had made in the plastic sheet, were the skeletal remains of a human forearm with a raggedy sleeve clinging to it.
Continuing to talk to himself he said, "It's a body." Then it clicked, "They're all bodies." He threw the open knife into the bag, and grabbed his GPS unit and started to charge up the slope to the road he'd walked in on. As he walked, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. "No signal. Damn!" He continued on, glancing over his shoulder the whole time not even knowing what he thought he might find there.
As he approached the road he heard someone call, "Mr. Quantence? Is that you?"
"Yes," he shouted back. It was one of the forest staff people. "There's a body down here! A body!"
"A body?" the ranger asked.
"Yes," Mark was hyperventilating now. "Yes, right down there, about 200 feet. A HUMAN body"
"Christ, calm down and show me where."
Mark bent over, placed his hands on his knees and breathed deeply, trying to get enough air to slow his breathing. While he was doing this, the ranger was pulling out his radio and trying to get a response. "Jen," he said into the radio, "This is Pete, I ran into someone off of road 11 who says he found a body."
"Come back Pete, did you say BODY?" came the response.
"Yes, body. He's going to show it to me now. You might want to call Clay county and have them come out. And it might be good if you get out here. I don't have any experience with this kind of thing."
"It's not like I have any either, but I'll call them and I'll be on my way."
As Mark's breathing slowed, he stood upright and waved the ranger down the slope with him, "Come on. Down here." He got to within thirty feet of the tree and just pointed to it.
The ranger walked over stood for a moment and said, "Christ." He came back to where Mark was waiting and said, "Mr. Quantence, we've got the Clay county sheriff coming and the forest supervisor is on the way. I'm sure they'll all want to talk to you."
“No kidding,” Mark muttered back. They’re ALL bodies, he thought to himself.
