“This is not a classroom.” I raised my hand. “Don’t explain.”
I hoped Manny would see Caelan’s distress when confronted with neurotypical conversation. I’d become used to it over the years, but Caelan’s fragile mind at the moment wouldn’t be able to process this in addition to the stress of his friend’s death.
“I think now is a good time to tell you more about the painting.” Colin gave Manny a pointed look until the latter pushed his hands into his trouser pockets and joined Daniel and Colin at the filing cabinets. I exhaled in relief.
“Well?” Manny tapped his foot, his lips tightening even more as he glared at Colin.
Colin smiled. “Johan Klein is well-known in the Belgian art community for his excellent reproductions.”
“Reproductions? Not forgeries?” I asked.
“Yes, reproductions.” Colin nodded towards the painting on the easel. “Johan signed Roubaud’s name on the painting. Above his own. Comparing it to the original really shows Johan’s skill. The brushwork, the colours, the finest details.” He shook his head. “It’s as if someone took a photo of the original.”
“Have you contacted this Klim?” Manny asked. “I have questions for him.”
“Klein.” Colin lifted his smartphone. “My call went straight to voice mail so I left a message. I’ll follow up. Soon. I also have questions for him. For example, who bought or commissioned the painting that is now in our team room.”
Caelan was scratching his thigh again. “I need to give you information. I need to.”
“Okay, I’m in.” Francine pointed at the monitor in the centre. Then she leaned forward, looked past me at Caelan and winked at him.
I pushed back into my chair and looked at the display in front of me. I liked the design of the app. It was uncluttered. The background was a muted olive-green colour, the writing in an unadorned font and all the buttons in a clear layout and large enough for even Vinnie’s larger fingers to easily tap. “Show us the last cache you and Jace located. How do you find it on this app?”
“Click on the menu.” He stared at the monitor as Francine opened the menu on the app. “Some people never leave their homes, so some caches are online only. That’s the second tab. The last tab is the past caches. The first tab is new caches and their categories.”
“There are categories?” Colin asked.
“Four categories.” Caelan counted on his fingers. “Urban, suburban, nature and other. Other is for any place that doesn’t fit in those categories specifically. They’re also the most difficult to find. Jace and I only looked for caches in ‘other’.”
“How many people are part of this community?” I looked at the many language icons at the top of the page. “Is this international?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “This is why the internet caches are the most popular. Gifted people from all over the world look for them.”
“Gifted people?” Francine asked.
“People who are in the two percentile scale of intelligence and have certain characteristics.”
“What characteristics?” Francine glanced at me.
Caelan repeated word for word what he’d said earlier. Except this time he stopped after listing the characteristics. Then he looked at my shoulder.
“How can the site ensure that their members are gifted?” I asked. It was difficult for psychologists and psychiatrists to diagnose children and adults as gifted since there wasn’t any specific test that could determine that. Often gifted people were misdiagnosed as having ADHD, being on the spectrum or having even more severe mental health issues.
“We work on trust and honour.” Caelan shrugged. “I’ve already noticed three people I’m sure are not gifted, but as long as they don’t break the rules, no one will complain or withdraw their membership. They have to have higher intellect to take part in the hunts in any case.”
“You didn’t answer my first question.” I still wanted to know. “How many people?”
“This app has one thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three members.” Caelan shifted in his chair. “The other sites have the mundane hunts. This site only has caches with complicated riddles that we need to solve before we get the correct co-ordinates. Sometimes the solved riddle gives a secret clue that needs to be decoded and only then do we get the co-ordinates.”
“That seems like a lot of work just to get to a final cache,” Vinnie said from the door, a frown pulling his brow down.
Caelan looked at Vinnie’s shoulder. “It’s not about finding the final cache as much as it is about solving the riddles before anyone else. Or faster than anyone else.”
“Which then gives you a higher score.”
“When there’s a countdown, it’s even more challenging.” He took a shaky breath and lowered his gaze to look at both his hands squeezing the stress balls. “Jace loved the countdown caches.”
“Explain these countdown caches, superman.” Vinnie’s tone was soft with fondness.
“Sometimes when a solved riddle answer is entered into the app, a countdown starts. It could be an hour or maximum twenty-four hours. It’s a waiting period before the next GPS co-ordinates are revealed. This way, the cache owners keep the competition high. Even if we were the fastest with the first cache, we’d have to be the fastest with the second cache as well to get to the last cache first.”
“Cool.” Pink joined Vinnie by the door and looked at the monitors. “A fun way to keep the tension levels up and avoid anyone having a head start.”
“I don’t like it.” Vinnie crossed his arms. “If I worked hard to get a head start, I want the benefits.”
Colin waved Vinnie’s complaint away. “Caelan, I’ve been meaning to ask you about your communication with Jace.”
“We used his smart glasses and our phones.”
“Only?” Colin narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “Or did you maybe use another form of communication? Not just spoken and written words?”
“Of course. Jace used sign language all the time.”
“Bloody hell! Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”
Caelan glanced at Manny’s shoulder. “Because signing his words isn’t any different than speaking or writing.”
I understood how this reasoning made sense to Caelan, but knowing that Jace used sign language was indeed useful information.
Francine had not stopped looking through the app and all the different options. She paused her tapping and leaned forward again to look past me at Caelan. “Are all the caches on the app?”
“Yes. They have to be. Else they don’t count.” He looked down at the stress balls. “Most caches are in the field, but a lot are only on the site or the app. Not all the members like to leave their homes.”
“Like you,” Colin said softly. “That’s why you teamed up with Jace. With him enjoying the caches outside, you could get to even more riddles.”
Caelan nodded. “Some of the clues are not in the app, but come from the surrounding location. That was also why Jace wore the smart glasses and streamed video from them. That way I could also see where he was and find clues that he might miss.”
“Huh.” Francine blinked a few times at her tablet screen. “Are there comments hidden in some of the caches’ html source codes?”
“What are you talking about?” Manny glared at Francine’s tablet.
She lifted it. “I’m fooling around on the app and clicked on the link to one of the caches. The html code looked funny and lo and behold!” She paused dramatically. “A hint.”
The corner of Caelan’s mouth lifted. “She’s right. Some cache owners hide hints or clues in the source code. To find a cache you really have to know where to look.”
I thought about this while Manny and Vinnie agreed on the outrageous amount of work to waste time with these silly hunts. With so many different places to look for clues, I let my mind wander over all the bits of information we’d gathered from the crime scenes.