Cache 72 (A Jaxon Jennings' Detective Mystery Thriller Series, Book 2) Read online

  Cache 72

  By

  Richard C Hale

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Richard C Hale. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of the text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

  Cover Designed by: Richard C Hale

  Copyright ©Richard C. Hale 2013

  Please Visit the Author’s Website at:

  http://www.richardchaleauthor.com

  Or join Richard’s email list The Heard

  Or his FaceBook Page.

  Richard always answers e-mails. Drop by the website and say ‘Hello!’

  For Paula, My Hope

  CHAPTER 1

  The severed finger fell from Jaxon’s grip and landed on his boot where the sticky blood adhered to the leather.

  He stared at it as he held the empty box in his other hand. His surprise at finding it here in this beautiful wooded area overshadowed the revulsion he felt. He looked back and forth between the box and the finger, shook his boot, dislodging the amputated appendage, and then unconsciously wiped his hand on his jeans. The pink fingernail polish gleamed in the sun as it rolled into a lighted area on the forest floor.

  He looked back to the box and saw a white piece of paper crammed inside, a little blood smeared across its surface. He pulled it free and opened it, careful to keep from touching the drying blood.

  It read: Congratulations! You are the lucky recipient of the finger of one Bethany Hope. She’s waiting to get it back. Should you so choose, you could be her savior. She’s trapped in a place only you will be able to find, but you must hurry. The clock is ticking and I’m watching. I’ll know when you find this note and I’ll be watching your every move. Think of it as a game...only with a dire outcome should you fail. If you choose to ignore this or come to the conclusion this is a joke, she will perish just as surely as you will survive. If you call the police, she will die. Can you live with that? You have 72 hours. I’ll be helping you along the way and for my first act of kindness here is your next waypoint. The rest may prove a little more difficult. Ready? Go!

  N29° 58.91915’, W081° 38.04077’

  Jaxon read the note again, more slowly, and then looked around, searching.

  He could make out no one watching or even a hint of how they would know he was here. He looked up and a glint of sunlight on an object caught his eye. He maneuvered to his left and saw what looked to be a camera high up in the tree, its lens facing down at him. A little red light blinked off and on.

  Jaxon Jennings, retired cop, ex Army MP, and owner of Jennings’ Investigations, dropped the box and paper on the ground and began to climb the tree. His six foot three, two hundred and forty pound frame didn’t seem to cause the huge branches of the old oak any strain. At least until he climbed a little higher. Then he wondered if this little excursion was the smartest move for someone of his size and age. Forty eight was not old, but it was not young either. When he reached the camera, he tore it from its strap and stared into the lens.

  “I’m coming for you, dipshit.” He found the power switch and turned it off.

  Back on the ground, he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed a number from memory. It was answered by his wife on the third ring.

  “Jennings’ Investigations.”

  “Hey Vick. I need a little help,” he said.

  “What’s up? I thought you were GeoCaching.”

  She sounded amused and he knew she didn’t appreciate his hobby.

  He explained the situation to her and she listened quietly, never interrupting.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Yeah, I agree. I need you to find out as much as you can about this Bethany Hope and then see if you can track anything down about this remote camera. Call the manufacturer and give them the serial number...”

  “We’ve been here before,” she interrupted.

  “I know. I don’t know why all the psychos find me. See if the serial number can get us an IP address or something. He has to be accessing the camera from the internet.”

  “On it.”

  “Don’t call me. I’ll call you. He may have some other means of watching me and I don’t want him to know I’ve got help. We have 72 hours. No police right now until I know he’s blind.”

  “Or she.”

  He contemplated that statement, “Right. I don’t think it’s a woman, but we can’t rule it out.”

  “Be careful,” she finally said.

  “I will. You know me.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  He grinned to himself and then said goodbye.

  It was amazing how she had fallen right in with him on this and they both knew exactly what needed to be done. It shouldn’t surprise him, being that she was also an ex-cop and retired FBI agent, but it still made him feel better that they were in sync even after all they had been through. Working together they just might have a chance at saving this girl’s life and taking down the bad guy. What a cliché, he knew, but it gave him comfort.

  He opened the GeoCaching app on his phone and plugged in the numbers for the lat/longs the psycho had provided.

  GeoCaching was a fun new hobby he had gotten into in the last few months. It was like a scavenger hunt you could participate in as much, or as little, as you wanted. It kept his investigative juices flowing and gave him an excuse to be outdoors. Who would’ve guessed it would lead to the ultimate scavenger hunt, where someone’s life hung in the balance?

  He stared at the map of North Florida and the blinking blip representing the latitude and longitude point he had entered into the phone. The GPS built into it said the new waypoint was to the south and approximately five miles away. The only problem was it showed it smack dab in the middle of the St. John’s River. He rechecked the numbers and confirmed they were correct.

  “What the hell?” He didn’t have time to question it so he used a leaf to pick up the severed finger and place it back in the box.

  Trekking back through the wooded area, he scanned the note again to see if there had been anything he might have missed. It was scrawled in a looping pen, with purple ink. The handwriting looked very feminine and this bothered Jaxon. Maybe Vick had been right. Could this scumbag be a woman?

  He emerged from the woods to the sight of his car being blocked by two local black and whites. Actually the vehicles were green and white, as Florida seemed to enjoy colorful cop cars over the traditional. Anyway, he was getting a ticket. Or a towing notice. Two cops stood by his car. One spotted him and they both waited for him to make the short walk from the woods to the car.

  “This your vehicle?” one of the officers asked when Jaxon approached.

  “Yes sir.”

  The cop looked him over and then to the woods from where he had emerged. He was medium height and slightly overweight, with brown to graying h
air. He looked close to Jaxon’s age.

  Jaxon had tucked the box with the finger and note in his pocket and he hoped it would stay there. It would take quite a bit more explaining than he was prepared for at the moment. He was definitely not ready to involve the locals just yet.

  “I need your driver’s license and registration.”

  “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “We’ve had numerous complaints of vehicles blocking the shoulder here and we’re just following through.”

  “I’m not in the road.”

  “No, you’re not, but you’re on a piece of private property here and the owner doesn’t like it. What exactly were you doing trespassing on his land?”

  This was part of the issue with his new hobby. Many GeoCachers were hiding new caches on property that was not public. It was difficult to tell if the property belonged to another entity so the cachers just did their deed and went about the business of uploading the GPS coordinates and letting the games go on. The problem was that it was illegal to put a cache on private property and this wasn’t found out until some poor cacher like Jaxon ran into a problem like this one. Jaxon hadn’t checked it out before he got here. He had trusted one of his new GeoCaching friends, PBIStalker, from the forums, and had added the site to the list of places he was going to visit today. Mistake.

  He really didn’t have time for this so he decided to use his ex-cop trump card.

  Jaxon pulled his old badge from Fairfax County in Virginia out and flashed it along with his driver’s license. “Sorry for the problem. I’m an ex-cop from Virginia and I’m into this whole GeoCaching thing. Have you heard of it?”

  The first cop looked irritated and nodded his head. “You folks are showing up all over the place, creating problems that are taking away from real police work.”

  “We were eating breakfast when we got the call,” the second one said. He was tall, blond, and built well. Pretty close to Jaxon’s own size.

  “Didn’t know we were that much of a pain to anybody but ourselves,” Jaxon said. “I’ll take care of this site and have it removed so you won’t get any more calls.”

  The first cop finally smiled and said, “Yeah. Do that please. Old man Vincent is a pain in my ass and he’ll keep calling for whatever else he can think of, but if you close this down, that will be one thorn extracted from my side.”

  “No problem. I’m Jaxon by the way,” and he shook the first cop’s hand.

  “Fanucci. Robert Fanucci,” the first cop said.

  “Williamsen,” the tall one said and clasped Jaxon’s hand in a vice-like grip. Jaxon tried not to wince.

  “You retired or just down on vacation?” Fanucci asked.

  “Retired, but I run a private investigative firm with my wife.” Jaxon handed him a card. “If you guys ever need anything outside of the normal channels. The wife is ex-FBI too.”

  Fanucci looked over the card and pocketed it. “Thanks. I may pick your brain in the future. Not too far from retirement myself.” He waved, and got in his cruiser.

  “Stay alert,” Williamsen said, and put his fingers to his forehead in a half-hearted salute.

  Jaxon waved as both cops drove off.

  Jaxon sat in the car and brought up the GeoCaching app on his cell phone. He made a notation for this site that indicated it was closed and no longer safe to hunt. Private Property notated by a cache location was usually enough to keep most of the cachers away. He looked at the next waypoint on the GPS and started the car. Time to move.

  CHAPTER 2

  As Jaxon headed south out of Orange Park, Florida, on US 17, he looked over the note again trying to find anything that might give him a clue as to what the real motive was behind this thing.

  No one kidnapped a woman and held her life in the balance just for fun. At least no one Jaxon ever knew. The world was full of idiots and psychos and Jaxon had had his fill of those types during his lifetime, but usually there was something or someone creating a catalyst for the actions committed, even if they made little sense to anyone but the perp. He knew that in police work, motive was often searched for first. If there was no clear motive, then it was very difficult to win the case.

  The note did not yield anything unusual.

  The purple ink seemed to mock him as it stuck out on the paper like a sore thumb. There was a small stain at the bottom right corner, but without any forensic analysis at his disposal he could only guess at what it consisted of. Could just be a water stain. He sniffed the page and noticed a scent of perfume. Though unusual, it did not give any of the secrets like he hoped it would. It was just perfume. He put the note down and concentrated on the drive to the next town.

  Green Cove Springs, Florida was the political seat of Clay County and had been a tourist attraction back in the 1800s. Everyone who had made the trip from up north to Florida back then had to stop and see the spring and bathe in its warm crystal clear waters.

  When the spring had been discovered, there were those who thought it the fountain of youth and Ponce De Leon be dammed, they were going to capitalize on it. A huge resort was built and it catered to the well-to-do of the time. Even Presidents and foreign dignitaries had visited and bathed in the pristine liquid, hoping that some of the youthful legend would rub off.

  As the progress of time so often did, the town lost its attraction and fell to the wayside as the interstate system built new towns and tourist attractions that were much more accessible. The big cities of the state, Miami, Tampa, and Orlando, were much more attractive and much easier to get to. Thus, Green Cove Springs remained a small hick town and though the spring head itself still fed into the St. John’s River right at the center of town, it attracted little attention. In fact, Jaxon didn’t even realize it was there until he passed the spring itself just off of the main thoroughfare through town while in search of a good cup of coffee. It just never occurred to him that the town with ‘Spring’ in its name actually had a real live spring.

  The GPS in his hand told him to turn left off of US 17 onto State Road 16. He maneuvered the car to the turn lane and guided it left toward the old navy base, now named Reynolds Air Park. He drove past the installation which still housed an airport and dock facilities. It even had an old par three golf course.

  He was approaching the Shands bridge which spanned the St. John’s River far south of the city of Jacksonville and he wondered if he had made a wrong turn. The GPS told him a left turn was coming up and he bore left down the road with a sign that said Old Shands Pier. It was the original Shands bridge that had been replaced in 1963. The old wooden structure was now used by the locals as a fishing spot.

  What remained of the bridge jutted out a good distance into the river and as he pulled into the parking space the mystery of the cache that put itself in the middle of the water was solved. The pier just didn’t show up on the GPS map.

  The parking lot was moderately full and he could see a dozen or more fishermen spread out along the length of the old wooden pier with their poles dangling line into the river. A toddler was running from his grandfather down the length of the structure and Jaxon wondered at the wisdom of bringing a little tornado onto an old, rickety, road of sorts, with little standing between him and the water. He was a fast tornado, too. Jaxon reached out and grabbed the tyke as he skittered past and held him tight while the little guy squirmed and protested. A man Jaxon assumed was the kid’s grandfather caught up and took him from Jaxon.

  “Thank you, sir. He’s a little spunkier than I remember.”

  “I can believe that, my friend,” Jaxon said and smiled. “Better tether him to a cleat or something.”

  “You got that right. I was actually thinking this wasn’t such a great idea. He’s pretty damn bored and the fish sure aren’t biting. ’Bout time for us to head out. I thank you again for your quickness.”

  He touched the brim of his hat and turned with the boy wiggling to get out of his arms. He scolded the toddler as he walked back out toward the water where Jaxon hoped
he was just going to retrieve his gear. The kid would probably end up in the river before long and Jaxon did not want to go swimming.

  Jaxon held up the GPS and it indicated the cache spot was 127 yards to the north. Probably the end of the pier. He started walking. Even though GPS positioning had improved over the years, what with the government releasing some of the constraints on the technology back in May of 2000, the lat/long the GPS displayed was only accurate up to about twenty-five feet. It got you within that distance of the cache point, then it was up to you to do a little hunting and find the hidden treasure.

  This is what appealed to the growing followers of GeoCaching, as it not only got them out into the wide world, and yes there were caches throughout the world, you had to put your thinking cap on to actually discover the little box, or tube, or Tupperware container that was hidden. The funny thing was that a lot of the caches were sitting right under most folks’ noses and they either didn’t see them or they didn’t realize what they were. This was such a place, and Jaxon would bet that nobody on this pier even knew one existed here.

  The GPS said he had arrived at the spot and Jaxon scanned his surroundings. Nothing jumped immediately out at him. He was at the end of the pier and there were three men spread out around the railing with poles and lines hanging into the still water. Nobody paid attention to him.

  He looked for anything metallic as a lot of the caches were attached to sign posts or guard railings or anything that a magnet would stick to. Nothing metal out here but some old tie down cleats for boats and Jaxon saw nothing attached to any of those. He put the GPS in his pocket and started walking around the perimeter that would encompass the twenty-five foot radius inaccuracy built into the GPS. Nothing stood out. Not a box, a bag, a plastic bottle, or even a rubberized container. The only things that were within view were the fishermen’s tackle boxes.