Page 14 of 36 Hours
TWELVE
8.45A.M.
With a second mug of coffee set before her, Kim felt that she was being fuelled for the day. If the police force ever kicked her out, she was coming here to apply for a job even though she hadn’t yet worked out if she liked Ryan Douglas.
‘You were saying?’ Kim prompted him.
While he’d been making the coffee, she’d checked her phone, but there were no emails or texts from the rest of her team. She hoped they were making progress on the clue as they were nearly two hours from the first deadline.
‘Aren’t you going to at least give me a clue why you’re asking?’ Ryan said.
‘Doesn’t work that way,’ Kim answered shortly. He was enjoying this just a little too much.
He sighed. ‘Okay, there have been occasions where the hobby has caused problems. It caused the evacuation of a busy street in Wetherby, Yorkshire in 2011. Another one in Alvaston, Derby in 2020. I think a school in Colorado was evacuated in 2009. Locations from rural cemeteries to Disneyland have been locked down due to strange packages being left in random locations.’
‘Any deaths?’ Kim asked.
His eyes widened. ‘You’re investigating a death?’
His excitement was pressing on the nerve that controlled her annoyance. ‘Please answer the question.’
‘A twenty-one-year-old experienced cacher died in 2011 attempting to find a cache in Washington. And some folks just get lost. I think one time three adults got trapped in a cave in Rochester, New York, and in 2015, a group of geocachers were spotted walking into the Severn Estuary off Clevedon looking for clues.’
‘Why take that kind of risk for a game?’ Bryant asked.
Ryan shook his head. ‘It’s more than a game. It’s a challenge; it’s an achievement. Once you’re invested, you push yourself to do the best you can.’
‘Even over cliffs?’ Kim asked.
‘Hey, caches have been helpful too,’ he said defensively. ‘About fifteen years ago, two lost hikers in Oregon stumbled across a cache; they phoned the co-ordinates to rescuers so they could be located.’
Kim waited.
Nothing.
‘That’s it? You can tell me about a few deaths but only one incident of usefulness?’
‘You can’t measure people’s enjoyment of the game,’ Ryan said defensively.
‘Yeah, about that. Is there any such thing as too invested?’ she asked.
‘Not sure what you mean.’
‘Is it competitive?’ she pushed.
‘Isn’t everything?’ he countered. ‘I mean, you have people that go seeking a couple of times per year. Others are out every minute they get, looking for the harder ones. If you’re invested, then you push yourself.’
Kim could understand about pushing yourself. Athletes trained for years to compete, but with them there was a goal, an endgame: Olympic gold, a world record, a place in history.
‘Do they get a trophy or something?’ she asked.
‘Just bragging rights in the chat rooms really.’
‘And these chat rooms…?’
‘Are on every caching forum. It’s a community, and very few enthusiasts are on one site.’
‘In your experience, are the people leaving the caches just as passionate about finding the ones logged by other people?’ Kim asked, wondering if they were looking more at leavers or finders.