“Geocaching is hide and seek with a GPS, right?”
McCoy nodded. “It’s a recent craze. People hide things, trinkets, a log book. The coordinates are posted on the web. You use a GPS to find the cache, usually adding a trinket to a bunch of trinkets, or signing the book. There are big national geocaching sites, and little regional ones. The site where Burton’s coordinates were posted is called East Kentucky Geofun. It’s run from a computer server and operated by a kid in Stanton.”
“Cherry checked him out, right?”
“A sixteen-year-old techie – not involved. The site runs itself: Anyone with internet access can post on the site anonymously. Some local kids saw the new coordinates and went out expecting to find a standard cache, a box of trinkets or whatever.”
“But instead found a guy with a truck parked on his sternum. The same happened with the guy in the shack?”
“There were differences,” McCoy said. “Not much, but … It’s odd. Geocache listings are in a standard format for the website: the name of the cache, the coordinates, and the name of the person or persons placing the cache.”
McCoy had my attention. “How are these different?” I asked.
The ranger reached in his pack and produced a sheaf of folded pages. “Let me show you the format of the typical geocache …”
He unfolded a page and handed it to me. Geocache entries copied from a computer screen. The format was simple.
Haystack Rock
N XX.XXXXXo W XXX.XXXXXo / Johnny Cache
McCoy said, “It’s the name of the cache, the waypoint or coordinates, and who placed the thing – in this case a humorous handle. Standard stuff for a geocache.” His finger tracked down the page. “But down here is the entry that led the kids to Sonny’s body …”
=(8)=
N XX.XXXXXo W XXX.XXXXXo
“A strange symbol and the waypoint,” McCoy explained. “That’s all. The computer registers when the cache is placed, so that’s automatic.”
“Any idea what the eight denotes? Time of day, a campsite number, the infinity symbol on its side?”
He shrugged. “Donna Cherry and I spent hours trying to make sense of the number and symbols, together and individually. Nothing.”
“You and Cherry work together?”
“I have law-enforcement powers in the national forest. Plus I know the area better than most anyone else.”
I tapped the second set of coordinates. “This also showed up on the geocache site leading to Soldering-iron Man?”
“Not exactly. The coordinates were different, of course, but so was the number in parentheses.”
=(5)=
N XX.XXXXXo W XXX.XXXXXo
I stared at the pad and did all I could in the face of the information, which was shrug.
We pulled on our daypacks and for four hours I followed McCoy on his rounds: checking stands of white-haired goldenrod, a species only found in the Gorge; checking erosion blocks designed to keep sections of trail from gulleying; noting a deadfall across the path so the maintenance crew could tend to it with a chainsaw, and looking in on the occasional backpacking camper or campers to make sure they were following rules about campfires and so forth.
Interspersed with these bouts of “business”, McCoy pointed out a few things I would have seen on my own, and a hundred more I wouldn’t have noticed. At a cliff face he explained strata, naming the epochs and conditions that had created the demarcations. He showed me where Native Americans had built camps and villages. He pointed out caves cut by underground streams, rolled away logs to display salamanders and other hidden critters.
We paused for lunch on a high ridge, the panoramic Red River Gorge spreading below like a postcard from Heaven. Mix-up chomped jerky sticks and took a nap. In minutes we pulled our packs back on. We were descending switchbacks on a curving trail when I saw a slender, white-bearded man approaching on the right-turning path ahead, visible across a slight ravine. His shoulders were wide, hips slender. He wore large sunglasses, a wide-brimmed safari hat, a blue shirt and khaki pants. He carried a walking stick and had a set of compact field glasses strung from his neck. He moved with ease, as if the trail were a city sidewalk.
“That’s Dr Charpentier,” McCoy said, sounding pleased. “You’ll enjoy meeting him.”
I saw Charpentier pause to study something in the trees, then resume his approach. The trail curved behind a stand of rhododendron and I lost sight of him.
We kept walking, but the trail remained empty, as if Charpentier had vaporized. I turned back to McCoy and a hundred feet behind saw Charpentier moving away with carefree grace. For a split-second I wondered if some mystical forest physics had occurred, Charpentier passing through us like neutrinos through the earth.
“Uh, Lee. …” I said. “How did Charpentier do that?”
McCoy pointed up the hillside. “A spur trail goes to a campsite above. He walked past us up there.”
“Charpentier’s antisocial?”
“Focused. When he’s thinking about something important, he doesn’t stop to chat.”
I shot a final look at Charpentier. He’d turned our way with field glasses to his eyes. I had the uneasy feeling they were trained on me.
In return for being my guide, I offered to fix supper for McCoy and he was happy to accept. We’d have a nice conversation, I figured, though it might veer into an area the ranger wasn’t expecting, one including the irritable Miz Donna Cherry.
I found a roadside stand offering silver queen corn, tomatoes, sugar onions, banana peppers, new potatoes the size of golf balls, and a local offering called greasy-grits beans. The grocery store provided smoked hocks. I cooked the beans, potatoes, onions and hocks together in stages, steamed the corn. I sliced the tomatoes and mixed them with sautéed peppers and onion, drizzled vinegar and olive oil over the concoction.
McCoy arrived at seven bearing two bottles of wine, red and white, just to be prepared. We ate like stevedores and I asked questions sparked during the hike. We retired to the porch to watch the falling sun light the sky behind the western peaks. I leaned back in my chair and set my heels on the porch railing. Mix-up gnawed at a ham bone, a dog in bliss.
“Lemme ask a question, Lee. Sheriff Beale about took my head off when he found me at the scene. It wasn’t the height of professionalism. What’s his story?”
McCoy took a sip of wine. Sighed. “Roy’s daddy was sheriff, granddaddy before that. Roy’s part of a lineage that connects to a different time, back when a sheriff made up the rules as he went along, favors for kin and friends, revenge on enemies. Roy’s daddy died six years back, slammed by a heart attack while bedded down with a friend’s wife.”
“So Beale Junior got the sheriff job?”
“There was an interim sheriff for three years until the term ran out and it came election time. Like his daddy, Roy’s kin to half of everyone in the county. I reckon every relative that voted for Roy figured no one else in their right mind would.”
“Doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“Roy’s father and grandfather were stubborn and humorless men. Hard as flint, the both of them. Roy’s soft as a pillow, so he has to act the role he’s seen. Sometimes when I hear Roy talking and swaggering, it’s like hearing a high school student doing Henry V. The only problem is, I saw it done by Olivier.”
I laughed at the analogy. McCoy leaned back and folded his arms over his chest, studying the darkening sky. “Thankfully, Donna Cherry is in charge,” he said. “Sort