Page 74 of The Catcher
“Yeah, well, this asshole is going to look real good sitting in your chair,” Braithwaite retorted.
Noah clenched his fist, ready to strike, but Callie caught his wrist just in time. “He’s not worth it,” she urged, her voice calm but firm.
Braithwaite noticed the intervention and chuckled smugly. “That’s right, Sutherland. Get used to taking orders from women because, by the time Savannah is through with you, you’ll be lucky to be?—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Callie delivered a swift punch to his nose, knocking him to the ground. A small amount of blood trickled from his nostrils as he struggled to regain his composure.
“What the…what the…”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” Callie retorted, her voice dripping with disdain. “It’s 2024, get with the times.”
Braithwaite’s hand clenched into a fist, his glove stained with blood as he jabbed a finger at Callie. “I’ll have your badge,” he threatened.
“Go ahead,” Callie replied defiantly, her resolve unshaken.
“I have witnesses,” Terry said, looking around at the others. McKenzie shrugged at him, and Noah gave him a pitiful smile.
Ray was quick to reply. “Don’t look at me. Us Sutherlands always cover up for one another, isn’t that what you said?”
Noah and Callie, shifted their focus from the chaotic scene behind them, turning their attention to the new geocache. McKenzie appeared beside them, his demeanor lightening the tension with a chuckle. “That was quite the jab.”
“I’d like to think so,” Callie replied, a smirk on her lips.
McKenzie began to regale them with a story about championing women’s rights, but Callie interrupted with a playful shove before pointing at Noah’s phone. “What have we got?”
“I’m not sure.”
Noah examined the screen, noticing that the icon for the new geocache looked different from the others he had encountered. It resembled an orange air balloon. Intrigued, he clicked on it, only to find that it required him to install another app called Adventure Lab. Once it was installed, he logged in with the same username and password as the previous app and was presented with a map with a different style.
“Adventure Lab,” Callie said, looking up information about the different types of geocaches. “Unlike the geocaches, which take you to a physical container, this is more of a question-and-answer type of scavenger hunt that takes you to different locations. The question only appears when you get close to the location indicated on the map, and you must answer it to move on to the next. Some are nonsequential, meaning they will provide locations that can be done in any order, while others are sequential and must be completed in order before the others can be seen.”
Noah continued reading the information provided in the app. At the top, it read: “A Moment in High Peaks Past.” It gave the starting location as the museum and detailed five locations, with a timeline to complete it ranging from 0 to 30 minutes. Below that, a map displayed five red dots. Noah clicked on each one to get some idea of theirlocation. There was a large start button, and it indicated that the Adventure Lab listing was created by Nicholas Wilson.
“It’s nonsequential,” he said. “Ray, install this app; you too, McKenzie, and get one of your officers to do the same. I want you to go to one of these five locations. Callie and I will do the first and the second one. Ray, you do the third, McKenzie, the fourth, and have the other officer go to the fifth. Thirty minutes isn’t a long time. It’s the first time we’ve seen a timer. I don’t think it’s telling us that it takes that long; our guy is trying to tell us that we have that long until he kills again.”
His finger hovered over the start button, wondering if the perp had some timer that activated when he clicked it — some way of knowing. It was outlandish to think he could have that much control, but so far, he’d stayed one step ahead.
“You think he’s got Nicholas?” Ray asked.
“Or it is Nicholas,” McKenzie said. “CCTV in Lake George showed the two girls walking off with three teens. We couldn’t see their faces, but based on their height, the way they were dressed, and the description from the mall security guard who got into an argument with them, he thinks it was them. Lake George PD and the sheriff’s office are searching for them and will notify us if they find them.”
“Maybe,” Noah said, placing a call to Porter. When Porter answered, he asked, “Have you had any luck finding Nicholas?”
“Nope. His parents said he’s been out since last night. Never came home. They say he’s stopped taking hismedication. I found the bottles here at the house. He’s suffering from schizophrenia, Noah. The docs said it’s from trauma from a friend of his passing away a few years back. Any progress on Lake George?”
“Porter, we found the teens.”
“Alive?”
“One is. The other didn’t make it.” He took a deep breath. “Keep searching for him.”
“I’m doing the best I can. We have troopers up and down the roads on the lookout.”
Noah hung up. “Let’s begin,” he said, clicking the start button.
25
It seemed too easy. Noah furrowed his brow as he examined the Adventure Lab interface. This one seemed remarkably straightforward, unlike the previous geocaches that relied on solving puzzles and riddles. Clicking the start button, he was presented with a map displaying five red dots scattered throughout High Peaks, with the first one at the museum highlighted with the title “Olympic Museum.”
