First to Find

by Mark Gessner

  The only problem he had now was the rain. It rained all fucking night. Once he'd hopped off the southbound freight on MoPac, he'd headed straight for shelter. When you're homeless in Austin, or just posing as homeless, your options for shelter are limited. He'd had to hole up under a bridge. Kicked some fat homeless bag out of the crawl space under the bridge on 360 and 183, cardboard sign and all. How do you get to be fat when you're homeless? he wondered, as he watched her roll down the hill toward the freeway. Never mind. He needed to be alone, needed time to dry off. The rain was blowing sideways, so he'd crawled up into a narrow gap under the bridge to get some extra cover. The gap was just big enough to fit a man, and there was a ledge where he could lay out flat, between the beams and the concrete abutment, safely out of the wind and the rain.

  And he slept.

  Chapter 32

  March 1 - 8 A.M.

  THE KILLER FELT THE squeezing again, the tightness in his chest, and for a moment he thought he was back in the mountains with that thin mountain air leaching the life out of his lungs. The light peeled his eyes open. He blinked back the brightness of the day, even here under the bridge, and he realized that he was pinned at the chest. What the fuck? The gap had been big enough to let him in earlier this morning, now what the hell was going on? He wiggled and twisted, exhaled deeply to flatten his chest, and then slipped out. Barely. He shimmied out and climbed down off the ledge. What the fuck? Had the bridge deck moved?

  He scratched his head and grabbed his backpack, pulled it off the ledge in the gap. As he ate his breakfast, which this morning consisted of a single-serving can of mixed peas and carrots, a handful of beef jerky and a cranberry apple breakfast bar, he looked up at the gap. The roar of the traffic below on Mo-Pac expressway was deafening, but through the din he could almost hear the voice of Professor Rodchenko droning on.

  Rodchenko had been his professor in mechanical engineering 1051, an introductory course in statics and dynamics. The killer had elected to take this course even though his major was computer engineering. He thought it would be an easy elective. How difficult could it be? The course kicked his ass and he'd had to drop it once he got his first exam scores back. But he never forgot old Doctor Sergei Rodchenko. Romanian maybe, definitely Soviet bloc. Big tall goober, stood around seven feet tall, short black hair slicked straight back with Vaseline. Looked, walked, and sounded like fucking count Dracula, except instead of wanting to suck your blood, he wanted to inject your brain with trusses, members, frames, and free body diagrams. Especially free body diagrams. Only when he said it, it was with that thick eastern European rolling R sound, and you couldn't help but picture a real body, a pale human corpse, with two tiny red fang marks on the neck, put there, most likely, by old Count Rodchenko himself. Rodchenko had this really annoying habit of walking up behind you while you were working on something, a quiz or whatever, then saying, "Vell, I tell you..." and then he would wait half a minute, like he was pondering over what he was going to tell you, and you'd really be wanting to hear it, but then he'd just shake his head and walk away, so you never knew what the fuck he was going to tell you. Vell.

  What little he did pick up in that course came back to him now, and he shuddered. Another ten minutes in that expansion gap and he would never have been able to slip himself out. You heard about it from time to time, some homeless trash found dead under a bridge, asphyxiated or maybe some bones broken, no sign of foul play. No one paid those stories much mind. What's one more dead homeless motherfucker? That's one less bullshit hard luck story scrawled on cardboard trying to bum whiskey money off you at the traffic light. The police just bagged 'em, tagged 'em, and hauled 'em off. End of investigation. But it wasn't foul play, it was the goddamn expansion joints. Count Rodchenko had taught that concrete, like most other solids, expands when heated and contracts when cooled. Same reason why sidewalks are broken up into square slabs instead of poured as a continuous ribbon. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. Gaps have to be designed in to handle the expansion. In a sidewalk it's a small gap, maybe an inch or so. They stuff the gap with some compressible black fiberboard shit to keep rocks and other debris from clogging the gap. Under a bridge though, the gap is huge, sometimes big enough to stuff a fat homeless bitch in--by night. By the heat of the day though, maybe only a skinny kid could fit in the gap, maybe only a cat, depends on the gap. There's no need for filler material because it's under the bridge where shit can't fall into the gap, (unless you consider a fat smelly homeless bitch to be shit, which he did, he most definitely fucking did) so they just leave the gap open. And it had almost crushed him.

  Gotta be more careful, that's all.

  Need to find a better hideout. This place was too fucking noisy, and there were homeless people shuffling around all hours of the day and night, talking to themselves, talking to the birds, talking to the street signs, trying to talk to him, trying to touch him, for Christ's sake. Sure they all looked crazy, and statistically he knew that more than half of them were legally and medically insane, but one of them might be able to identify him later and he couldn't have that. Now that it was morning and the rain had stopped, he shouldered his backpack and began scouting for a better hideout. The research he had done at the library in Alamogordo told him all he needed about which way to go. Southwest, toward the Pennybacker bridge. He climbed up from under the overpass and began walking. It was prime rush hour, so another homeless guy shuffling along the highway with his pack would fade into the background. He walked. He walked down the northbound breakdown lane of highway 360. He walked south; he walked facing traffic. He didn't look up, instead he carried that pitiful dejected look that the homeless were so good at projecting when they were trying to hard luck you out of a dollar on the street corner. About a mile down the hill, just past the light at Spicewood Springs road, he noticed a little beige concrete building just down from the road. It was a restroom facility for a small park. One side men's, the other side women's. Perfect. He wasn't homeless, just posing as one, and right now nothing would feel better than a good hot bath. Failing that, he'd take a good hot sponge bath in a sink. When you were living out on the road, you took what came your way and you made do. And in this case, the city of Austin parks department was welcoming him to their fair city with hot and cold running water, and a locked private room in which to luxuriate in it.

  He stepped into the men's side (the door was propped open with a small rock, to keep the place aired out), carefully slid out of his clothes and set them on top of his backpack. He got the hot water running and splashed warm handfuls on his face. He looked at his face in the mirror. He was pretty rough looking. He'd been a month on the road in homeless guise since his trip to Alamogordo. He fished in his pack for a disposable razor and soaped up his beard. He didn't shave his face clean, because he still needed to cover the scars, but he was able to trim back the beard, shave his neck, make it look like a respectable hairstyle instead of a nest. The beard mostly covered the scar. He'd be able to walk among civilized people again. He washed the soap off his face with the hot water, then proceeded to wash his hair. He lathered up his whole body and rinsed off, using an empty Gatorade bottle from his pack to gather the rinse water. The building was concrete, circular metal overflow drain in the middle of the floor, heavy steel door with a sliding latch bolt. He wasn't going to be bothered in here. Stainless steel sink, stainless steel toilet. All the comforts of home. It was still just a little chilly from the overnight rain, but the hot water felt good as he poured it over himself and let the dirt of a month on the road wash away and down the drain.

  He dried off using handfuls of paper towels from the dispenser under the polished stainless steel mirror. He jammed a sock into the drain to plug it, then threw his clothes into the sink. He filled the sink with hot water and a handful of liquid pink soap from the pump dispenser bolted to the wall. He hand-washed his black T-shirt, jeans and boxers. He rinsed them, wrung out as much of the water as he could, then put them back on. It was going to be a s
unny day, and it would be warming up. He'd walk them dry by the time he got to the Pennybacker. If he was going to be homeless, at least he'd be as clean as he could. Besides, he had some shopping to do before he dispatched the next asshole on the list. The Wal-Mart greeter was likely to raise an eyebrow at a homeless man walking in the front door, maybe even throw him out. He had to go in looking and feeling clean. This one had to be done just right. No fuckups.

  By tracing the curvature of highway 360 on his map, he decided that he could take a shortcut through the park he was in, a long narrow park called Bull Creek District Park. There was a trail running from just outside the restroom building toward the direction of the Pennybacker. If the trail went straight through, which he suspected it did, then he could cut some distance off his trip, and at the same time stay out of the sight of any law enforcement officers who happened to be driving along 360 and want to question a long haired man wearing sopping wet clothes on a sunny spring morning. That would be just what he needed right now, to draw attention.

  He started off down the path. It followed the park road for a few hundred yards, then passed over some huge boulders and then onto a gravel path along Bull Creek. To his right up the hill ran highway 360. To his left and below ran Bull Creek, which raged with the excess runoff from last night's rainfall. The creek cut its way through layers of rock, at times spreading perhaps twenty or thirty feet wide, and at times narrowing down to a dozen feet. Each time it narrowed, the rush of the water was deafening. When it widened out, the only sound was the muffled sound of traffic from the highway at the top of the hill. The trees were starting to bud and come into bloom. Spring in Texas is the best time to visit. He loved it here. This was his place. Not Austin in particular, he didn't care for Austin, but Texas. Goddamned hot in the summer, but it was nice most of the other three seasons, and depending on where you lived, you might not have too much of a problem with bugs.

  About a half mile down the path he got a piece of trail bark stuck in his boot, between his ankle and the boot leather. It was so thick it forced him to hobble and slowed him down. He sat down on a flat rock and pulled off the boot. With the wet socks, it was wedged on tight. He gave it a sharp yank, and it flipped up and over his head and landed in the weeds behind him. Fuck. He stood up, then stumbled over into the weeds. He got only a few hops before he lost his balance and fell face first. He picked himself up and beat the bushes looking for the wayward boot. He saw the boot at the edge of the creek through a stand of trees. He hopped back toward the creek, half hopping and half walking on tiptoe with his stocking foot. He grabbed the boot, and as he was trying to put it on while hopping on the other good boot, he noticed a brown shape across the creek.

  It was an abandoned Studebaker or some other prehistoric vehicle, wedged between some boulders and some trees that had grown up around it, sealing it off from the world. It had obviously been here and undisturbed for a very long time.

  He shimmied across a fallen tree to the other side of the creek. There were no paths over here, no sign of humans other than this ancient machine. There were no markings on the car. The paint had completely gone over to dark brown rust. It had at least fifty bullet holes in the rear fenders, large caliber. It sat at the base of a steep rock cliff. He couldn't tell if the car had come from up on the cliff or from upstream during a flood. The interior was a cavern. Holy shit they built cars big back then. There was no upholstery left, and vandals had taken most of the instruments. A family of bark scorpions had taken up residence under the engine block. The hood was up, exposing the engine. The number 1311810-3 stamped in the heavy steel valve cover testified to a time long ago when someone actually gave a shit about being able to procure a replacement part for this old crate, but that time was ancient history. What he could see here was a good place to hide out. It was dry, near the Pennybacker, and had good access to the highway, yet no one knew it was here.

  Chapter 33

  March 4

  "YOU KNOW, YOU'RE SITTING on one," Kurt said.

  "You guys put these damn things everywhere. Is nowhere safe?" Judi laughed, looking around her seat as if a mouse were loose nearby, "Where is it exactly?"

  "It's under the seat, to the right there. Look for a mint tin stuck to the frame with a magnet," said Kurt. The young couple had spent the afternoon pedaling pedal boats on Town Lake, eating cotton candy, touring the botanical gardens, visiting the Umlauf Sculpture Museum, flying a pair of huge parafoil kites, and exploring the wilderness of Zilker Park.

  The Zilker Zephyr, a narrow gauge kiddie train ride, was also popular as a ride for courting couples. Kurt's knees pressed up against the seat in front, but Judi had no problem fitting in. The train wasn't very wide, so they spent the whole ride pressed side-to-side. At the end of the ride, the train passed through a short tunnel, the closest thing Austin had to a tunnel of love. A savvy gentleman would wait until the date was nearly over before offering to purchase a ticket on the Zephyr. And an even more savvy gentleman would be sure that he and his date occupied the last seat on the train, because that seat would linger in darkness the longest as the train crawled through the tunnel when it pulled into the station.

  As she signed the tiny logbook in the magnetic mint tin, Judi asked how Kurt's job search was going.

  "It's starting to pick up a bit," he said.

  "That's good, maybe we will finally get you off the streets during the workday," she said.

  "Yeah, I'm a real menace to society," he laughed, "stumbling around in the bushes looking for trinkets. Speaking of which, did I tell you I stumbled onto a sort of a mystery?"

  "A mystery?" she asked, "What kind of mystery?"

  He filled her in on the search that he and Jason had done the other day.

  "Shouldn't you call the police?" she asked.

  "I don't really have enough information to do that now," he said, "I don't know who is doing it, and I don't even know if it's a real pattern of murders or just a coincidence. There's a seventy-five thousand dollar reward for one of the murders though. I'm going to try to piece just together enough to cinch that prize, then I'll go to the cops. If it is a murderer, he's in remote places like San Francisco, Chicago, and Pennsylvania. He's not even in Texas so I'm not worried."

  "Pennsylvania?" she asked.

  "Yeah, place called Harrison Valley," he said.

  "Never heard of it," she said.

  "It's up by Pittsburgh somewhere, out in the country," he said.

  The train pulled their car out of the tunnel and into the station. It was the last ride of the day. The sun was setting and most park visitors headed to their cars.

  Kurt and Judi ordered Italian food in one of those chain restaurants that tries hard not to look like a chain. The service was inattentive and slow. They sat on the same side of the booth. The conversation became more personal. After forty-five minutes of waiting for their food, they were suddenly in a hurry to leave the place. They paid the waiter for their cokes, cancelled their orders, and left hungry. They drove to Judi's place in Kurt's truck.

  They sat in the parking lot, kissing. After ten minutes, Judi invited Kurt upstairs for coffee.

  Judi lived in one of the nicer apartments out on the northwest side of town. Just off loop 360 and Spicewood, tucked away in a little corner of the hill country. Limestone walls, nice kidney-shaped pool with hot tub, it was a quiet upscale place, but not too snooty. It also had good access to the Bull Creek Park across the highway.

  Her apartment was at the top of the stairs, on the end of the building, so that there was no neighbor on one side. Judi didn't like noisy neighbors so she specifically requested an end unit. She had her own single-car garage downstairs. The apartments had built-in security alarms and a metal security gate.

  There was a small color TV hanging under one of the cabinets in the kitchen, and a token fireplace in the living area. The bedroom was in the back; it had a great view of the limestone hillside across a small creek. She had a small home office in the front bedroom, with
one of the brand new Apple Macintosh computers. She also had a dog, a geriatric Brittany mix named Nipper, who slept at the foot of her bed. He was a good watchdog despite a touch of arthritis. He had a sweet disposition and a tendency to lick the backs of people’s knees, whether they wanted it or not.

  Judi’s taste ran slightly to the frilly side, with sheer curtains and lacy things and a few knick-knacks. She had a plush green couch in the living room, a large picture of some Gay Nineties coffee drinkers framed in thick rustic walnut hanging above the couch.

  From the corner of the frame hung Judi's polo shirt. Kurt's shirt was draped over the large panel TV on the facing wall. Their socks and shoes were scattered next to the couch. Kurt and Judi filled the couch, arms entangled, each ripping at the fasteners on the other's remaining clothing, when suddenly Judi stopped.

  "Kurt, I'm sorry, it's too soon. I can't, I'm not ready," she said, pushing him away.