“The Scales” are the seventh sign of the Zodiac. The Sun transits this area between September 23 and October 22. This is an Air sign under Venus. They say that women are from Venus… this is controversial in some circles.
Libra is Latin for weighing scales, making it the only constellation of the Zodiac representing an inanimate object.
The association with scales and balance began with the ancient Babylonians, with the scales representing the balance between the seasons as well as day and night. The ancient Greeks viewed Libra as the claws of Scorpius reaching out.
To the Romans, Libra represented the scales of justice being held by the goddess Virgo or Astraea.
At GeoVenture, we offered a choice, to solve the puzzle below, or go find a bathroom scale and put weight on it to get the coordinates. Since it wasn't practical to leave a bathroom scale out in the wild, you get the puzzle.
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Case File: 1138
The case was a weird one, right from the beginning. In my forty nine years, I hadn’t seen anything quite like it. I was contacted by these people that called themselves ‘GeoCachers’. I learned quickly, that they are very passionate, if not strange, about their chosen activities. It is an activity, much like my own, one of furtive investigation and stealth in sometimes murky places. An activity that takes them to the deep underpinnings of the urban jungles and sometimes deep into the forests where dangerous beasts sometimes lurk.
It was May of 2014 when through my door walked one who called himself KLBLUE. A short stocky man who spoke in quick sentences and he was requesting my services. I’m not sure what I was going to be able to do for him, but he quickly explained.
“I would like you to investigate a murder.”
“Murder? Whoa buddy, that’s for the cops. I don’t do murders.”
“I’ve already been to the cops. They don’t believe me, so I decided to try a private investigator. I’ve called others and they won’t help me. You’re number eight.”
“What makes you think I’m going to help you?”
He sat down heavily in the chair across my desk. “You solved that Cirith Ungol case back in forty six, right?”
“Forty six weeks ago maybe. Otherwise I’d be pushing up daisies or long retired if it was that long ago.”
“Whatever. But the gumshoe I talked to at the cop shop said you’re the man.”
“Wait, who says ‘gumshoe’ anymore? I think you’ve been reading too many detective novels. Why don’t you call someone else? I don’t have time for this.”
“You have to hear me out!”
I paused. What I really wanted to do was head down to the pub and have a night of-; well, I don’t know what kind of night, but it would have been hard to wake up in the morning. I waved for him to continue.
He took a breath. “You see, I was Geocaching out East of Winnipeg about five months ago.”
I held a hand up. “Stop. You were doing what?”
“Geocaching. It’s this thing, a sport, or a game depending on your view, where you find containers hidden around the world using a GPS to narrow your search.”
“And you take them?”
“No, you leave them. There’s a log book inside that you sign.”
“Where do these, uh, containers come from?”
“People hide them.”
“Which people.”
“Geocachers.”
“Like you?”
“Yeah, kind of like me. I hide something and others try to find it. Like a treasure hunt or a game of hide and seek.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It’s fun! It gets us outside and exploring the world instead of hiding inside with our computers, smartphones and television.”
“Okay, that kind of makes sense.”
“A Geocache is a compound word, Geo for Earth and Cache meaning hiding spot, or container. People hide them, other people try to find them. For fun.”
“And they are all over the world.”
“All over, yes.”
“Okay, you were, uh Geo-caching…”
“Yes, East of Winnipeg. About two thirds of the ninety six kilometres from Perimeter to Birch River Road and the Trans Canada. In the Windy Lake area.”
“Okay, I’ve been in the area, maybe four years back when I was investigating a woman whose husband thought she was cheating. Turns out she was simply learning to fire a gun and didn’t want anyone to know about it. She liked the hillbilly style of sand pit target shooting like goes on out in that area. Go on.”
“So I found this Geocache, a big one too, and when I opened it up there was a body inside!”
“A body? So why didn’t you call the cops?”
“I did. They didn’t believe anything I told them. Six times, I called them and told them I found a body and they kept telling me that I must be imagining it.”
“Okay, so what do you want me to do about it?”
“I know who the culprits are, but you need to look into it.”
Now I was starting to get interested. A body dump that the fuzz wasn’t interested in checking out? There was definitely more to this story and I was hooked in through my own curiosity. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a dolled up dame that got me hooked this time. “Okay, tell me what you think.”
“Well, it’s all there in the Geocache Description.” He tossed a sheaf of papers on my desk, a big GC3Y78M was circled on the top corner. "Jimmy Machiato" was his name. I believe he was killed by glacier_ice and another cacher named TurdleEggs helped him hide the body. All because of coffee and this, I believe, is glacier_ice’s confession.”
I skimmed through the story about a coffee connoisseur named Jimmy who had opened a coffee shop in Anola. The story went on to explain how he had crossed glacier_ice and that confrontation had lead to Jimmy’s demise. If the story was to be believed, glacier_ice had taken out Jimmy.
“This certainly sounds compelling, but it appears to just be a made up story. What else leads you to think that this glacier_ice fellow had anything to do with this body you supposedly found.”
The man glared at me, “Not supposedly anything. I know what I saw. I saw it at the same coordinates listed at the top of that ‘story’. But I have further evidence to support it. This year, glacier_ice hosted three coffee events! He’s a man that loves his coffee and he’s not even hiding it! “
I looked down at my own coffee mug. The dark swill had already long gone cold. I lifted the mug to my lips, took a sip and stared at this man thoughtfully. “This still all sounds very circumstantial to me.”
“I assure you, sir, this is just the tip of it. If you investigate, you’ll find more evidence that shows what he did.” He dropped another sheet of paper on my desk. “Here are nine people I think you should talk to, all of them Geocachers, they’ll all tell you things about him too.”
“What is it you really want out of this?”
He stood up, put both palms on my desk and leaned over me. “Libra! Justice! Glacier_ice must pay for his crime! It’s there, he confessed, then hid the body. Go see for yourself.” He then stood and walked to the door.
I leaned back in my chair. “What if I find nothing to support your claims?”
“Then nothing will have been accomplished and there would be no justice for Jimmy.”
The door closed quietly after him as he left. I turned and stared out the window behind me. Was this a case I should take? The numbers were certainly there, calling to me. Things sometimes do have a way of adding up and pointing us to where we should go. Rarely is there a divine sign that shows itself brightly to tell you what to do.
I stood and reached for my coat, reached into my desk for my keys. A short road trip wouldn’t hurt. Who knows what dark places lurk in the dark grottos of human nature.
-- *** NOTE: Please leave the skeleton in the closet.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.