It was 3:30 before we could even think about sleeping again. Twiggy was edgy. I guess I would be, too, if I had just fought off a mugger. I don’t know how long it took for us to fall asleep. At least I thought we slept, we must have because I was startled awake with a BAM! BAMM! BAM! “Open up! Police!”
“Twiggy!” I said but he wasn’t in the room. Where could he be? Surely if he was worried about getting arrested he’d have taken me with him. And how had they found us here? Why were they pounding on the door like we had done something wrong?
I went to the door and opened it a crack.
“Yes?”
“Open the door.”
“Officer, I haven’t done anything wrong.” How many times was I going to have to state my innocence to a police officer before this contest was over?
“We’re looking for the driver of the green van parked outside.”
“Did you try knocking on the green van?” I asked.
“Management said the driver of that van rented this room.”
“Uh, yeah, but he isn’t here right now.”
“Could you tell us where he went?”
“If this is about the guy in front of the steakhouse, he mugged us. He held me at knife point and demanded all Tw… Tony’s money. He almost got it, too!”
“Who is Tony? We’re looking for Markus Daniel Livingston.”
“Who? I don’t know anybody named Markus.”
“Could you come down to the station? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Me? Why me?”
It turned out his polite request didn’t translate to “Later, when it’s convenient for you, could you drop by the station for a nice chat?” It meant I could come in peacefully, without cuffs, or roughly, with cuffs. They didn’t even let me put my shoes on. Where was Twiggy? I thought he was probably in the van but I didn’t want to call attention to him if he’d been accused of wrong doing. Maybe I could clear this up without involving him.
I didn’t know what to do. These police officers were muggles and to tell the whole story I would have to tell them about the geocache. I was so nervous. I had never drank anything alcoholic except that one accidental martini before that night, but I knew that if I admitted to drinking before the incident occurred that it would change their whole perspective and make Twiggy and I look very bad. One question led to another and I was tiptoeing around the topic as carefully as I could when a solution suddenly dawned on me.
“The knife! If you can find the knife it will prove my story is right.”
“And where might we find this knife?” they asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll help you find it.”
“I don’t think so. Do you think you can identify the man who attacked you?”
“Yes, I think so, though I never saw his face very well. He was standing behind me and when he reached for the money I ran away. So I only saw him bent over, looking at the ground.”
They were leading me to another room to identify the mugger when another officer caught up to us and said, “Emerson, there’s a guy out here looking for the young lady.”
Just then Twiggy burst into the hallway. He said, “What are you doing here?” at the same time that I said, “Where were you?”
“Marcus Livingston?” one of the officers asked.
It got rather complicated with the van belonging to someone else, the mugger claiming Twiggy had assaulted him and us claiming we reacted in self defense.
“Where is the knife?” the officer finally asked.
“In the cache,” Twiggy said. “It’s hard enough to open that I didn’t think a geocacher would open it up soon. I was going to call you and tell you about it later.”
The officers all either put their hands on their hips or crossed their arms over their chests and glared at Twiggy as if he pulled a trick on them and he was going to pay. Apparently they had heard of geocaching. They didn’t ask what he was talking about.
Five minutes later we were riding together in the back seat of a squad car.
“I always wondered what it’s like back here,” Twiggy said. “I’m glad we’re back here heading away from the station.”
“Yeah the other direction was scary.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“How could you sleep through it?”
“I was tired!”
“Me, too, but I heard the banging on the door. The mugger must have gotten our license plate number when we drove away. What did you do to him that he says you beat him up?”
“He had a knife!” Twiggy said. “I had nothing! How can they say it wasn’t self defense?”
“We’ll find the knife. That’ll prove it.”
“I guess I better email the CO and tell him that the police are onto his cache,” Twiggy said as he led the officer to the ATM. Then he explained to the officer about the cache. “You have to download the coordinates from the website, find this spot and then find the combination to the lock from the clues around you. That’s why I didn’t think it would be opened soon.”
“So what is the combination?”
“It’s a secret that only observant geocachers would know,” Twiggy said. “It’s also the roman numerals around the cache entered from largest to smallest.”
“We had to watch a video online to know how to open a bank safe,” I added. “But when he opens it you’ll see it really is a geocache.”
This time Twiggy had the door open in less than a minute.
“How did you get the combination?” the officer asked.
Twiggy pointed out the Roman numerals that could be spotted around the cache. The officer scratched his head.
“I’ve stopped by this machine several times hoping to catch a geocacher at it so I could ask for help. I’ve set up a watch on the listing. I knew to look for numbers but I never thought of looking for letters.”
“I owe the antique store a newspaper,” Twiggy said. “I wrapped the knife in it so it would be less noticeable if the cache was opened.” He took the cache out and handed it to the officer, then he brought out the knife wrapped in the daily newspaper.
“Are your prints on it?” the officer asked.
“Just on the tips of the guard.”
“I have to admit we were kind of taken aback when we pulled up and there’s a guy hog tied to a lamp post.”
“At least they’re good for something,” Twiggy quipped. “The paracord slipped out of his pocket. He can keep it.”
“No he can’t. We’ve been looking for a guy who mugs people at night and leaves them tied up in the parking lots in back of the businesses. We’re just lucky he met his match.”
We had to go back to the station and make sure the police had our contact information before they would let us go. But when the mugger saw his knife in the hands of the police he confessed that our story was true. It was up to the police to convict him of the other robberies in the area.