Terry Neale - Jo-el

I had a Garmin GPS on my BMW motorcycle and went to fetch it from the garage. My heart beat a little faster as I punched in the coordinates and waited for the GPS to tell me where this treasure hunt would take me. The unit complained that it could not find a satellite, so I went out the back door and stood in the back yard, waiting for the mystery to be solved.

The little arrow pointed to a location well south of San Francisco, close to Highway 25, south of Pinnacles National Park. The GPS indicated one hundred and forty miles. He’d said they had moved the package closer, was that the best they could do? The pointer was less than a mile from the main highway, a dirt road was shown relatively close-by, so it looked okay to reach. GPS coordinates can be a little off so I’d have to search the area. The good news was I knew the road very well, as I had ridden it many times. It was one of the truly fun motorcycle roads between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This lifted my spirits, as a reason to ride was always a good thing. I checked the weather for Wednesday, which showed a ten percent chance of rain in the San Jose area, so I tentatively planned to ride down Hwy 25 and check it out. The second Scotch was spurring me on and I felt quite excited by the whole challenge to find the hidden treasure. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do tomorrow.

I needed a break from the family room, so I went out to fuss with the motorcycle for the ride in the morning. I checked the tire pressures and removed my top-box. I had no idea how big this package was, but guessed I’d be able to strap it to the rear rack and passenger seat. Not that I believed that I’d find anything. Maybe a small box with instructions where to send the money? That triggered my thoughts for a while. Was this some crazy set-up to threaten me, harm my children, somehow elicit money from me? Maybe I shouldn’t go? Maybe I should just ignore what Ka-el was asking me to do and have my hard drive wiped and then reinstall the operating system? Maybe I should go to the police? That made me smile. I imagined trying to explain to the police that I’d been contacted by an alien race to rescue the world, from, I don’t know what? I wonder how I’d look in white? It all didn’t make a lot of sense. If someone had targeted to rob me, why drag me down a winding road in the middle of nowhere? They could confront me at home or somewhere more accessible. I would be suspicious of a car or truck parked near the spot they were sending me. Also, Ka-el, or whatever his real name was, hadn’t given me a time to be there. That would be crazy. Criminals were intrinsically lazy; they wouldn’t wait around for days for me to appear. No, the whole robbery, kidnapping thing didn’t make sense at all as far as the package was concerned.

My phone rang as I reentered the family room, it was Maggie, home alone from work and in need of an ear to bend. Maggie was a great kid, but did she love to talk? I listened for a good half an hour to a detailed story about a work colleague who’d challenged her to a ‘fitbit week’ whatever that was and Maggie was sure this girl was cheating. She was convinced the colleague had tied the fitbit to her dog’s leg and let it run around all evening. How else could she be over ten thousand steps already? What could I say? I could feel my attention wavering and eventually squeezed a word in, asking when she was coming over again. Maybe Saturday for dinner and could she bring Adam? Sure, see you then, I replied, finally able to conclude our one-way conversation.

Maggie was my youngest, recently turned twenty-six and always on the go. She loved to travel and had already visited Australia and New Zealand, as well as spending a year abroad in England while at college. Not a straight A student she had struggled with academics, but she possessed a delightful personality and lit up any room with her presence. Following a long trip down-under she’d decided, to my amazement, to join the police force. She didn’t want to sit at a desk and her education, what it was, didn’t bode well for success in an academic environment. After a difficult period with the yes-sir, no-sir, manly world of the police with its strict adherence to hierarchy, she’d settled down and began enjoying the ‘battle against the losers’ as she called it. Her enthusiasm was infectious and she was now thinking that she’d like to one day be a homicide detective.

Adam was the current live-in boyfriend and I liked him, which is a good thing. He worked at a bank in downtown and shared Maggie’s love of travel and constant need to delve into new experiences. They were a good match. Was he the one? That was a question I kept to myself. Trying hard to be the great parent and not meddle. Maggie had been devastated by the loss of her mother, but like her brother Sean, could internalize it mostly. Visiting her childhood home didn’t help, but she realized how much I had lost and was always very supportive.

That night I lay sleepless in the dark of my bedroom, listening to the sounds of cars in the distance on Lincoln Way, the occasional deep diesel burble of trucks and the screech of police sirens. The wind had increased and I could hear the few trees on my street sway back and forth. I knew I would head down Airline Highway in the morning, I knew nothing could stop me following this irrational lead to who knows what. The excitement of the afternoon, since Ka-el had commandeered my computer had become a drug and I needed more. I was enjoying myself with the crazy scheme someone had produced to lead me to a mystery package on highway twenty-five.

Dawn broke with the sound of rain pitter-pattering on the roof. I grabbed for my cell phone to check the radar map and was encouraged to see that the rain was passing through the Bay Area in an hour or so and the forecast was for partly sunny skies and breezy until late in the afternoon. It appeared that the run-down Highway Twenty-five would be cool but rain free. I made coffee and prepared a small bowl of grape-nuts with blueberries and bananas. For an hour or so I followed the gyrations of the stock market and the talking heads on CNBC. It was a routine for me, spending one or two hours in the morning pretending to be the great market trader I was not. But my focus was not where it needed to be to execute any trades or make any adjustments to my portfolio of securities. I gave that task up for useless and increased my coffee consumption.

My plan was to leave after 9 am to ensure that I wouldn’t hit any commuter traffic heading into San Jose. But my enthusiasm won over my planning and I was on the road by 8:30 and as expected I was lane splitting as I neared San Jose an hour later. The traffic dissipated once I was through the metropolis and I began to enjoy the ride. I passed through Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world and was soon around the outskirts of Hollister and onto Airline Highway. I passed the small café in Tres Pinos that was my target for lunch on the return trip and now the traffic had disappeared and I wicked it up as I headed towards Pinnacles National Monument. The ride became the prime event and I was happy as a clam, banking left and right along the endless twisty road. Even if there was nothing at the GPS coordinates this was a great way to spend the day and I became delightfully relaxed, my thoughts on nothing but the road ahead. Much of highway twenty-five ran parallel to the San Andreus fault, which stifled any chance of development. Only farms and run-down shacks dotted the vistas of low range of hills on either side. I was quickly passed the turnoff to the Pinnacles when the Garmin unit indicated that I had just five miles to go. For one moment I deliberated continuing to the junction of highway one nine eight, but throttled back as the reading dropped to just one mile ahead.

Now I could feel my pulse quicken, and my palms inside my warm gloves tingle with sweat. I truly wanted there to be something at the GPS location, even if I didn’t believe there would be. After just a few hundred yards the GPS was directing me to turn right onto the dirt road. I stopped on the highway and looked at the thin dirt line that led up towards the hilltop south of Pinnacles. This was my first fear; I was not exactly the most experienced off-road rider and my GS 1200 BMW was a pretty heavy machine. Would I be okay riding this road, would there be somewhere I could safely stop the bike and turn around without dropping it. At my age lifting the damn thing up was not something that appealed to me in any way. I had only dropped it one time and that was in a parking lot where kind hands had reached out to me, righting the bike quickly and easily. There was no one here to help me if I got into difficulty.