Eldorado Read Online Free PDF Page B

searching at different map resolutions without success, he was about to give up. He sat staring at the screen, as if willing the answer to reveal itself.
    As he stared, a feature came to his attention that he hadn’t noticed before. A faint dotted line, with pale circles at regular intervals along its length, snaked across the entire breadth of the deserted suburb. Straining his eyes, he saw that it was labeled: ‘Old Sky-train Line’. The Sky-train was an elevated railway that had been an integral part of the city’s mass-transit system since long before the turn of the century. Parts of the line still ran through the center of town, but service to outlying areas had been discontinued long ago.
    Surrey’s been abandoned for years… he thought. Maybe Danny’s describing something that was there in the past. Maybe KG is some landmark that isn’t significant anymore and doesn’t appear now on maps .
    He adjusted the search to bring up a representation from forty years earlier and studied it carefully. The Sky-train line, almost invisible on the new map, was a major landmark on the old one, depicted by a thick, bright red line. He examined the line, following it to its end. A small red dot marked each station along the route. The very last dot was labeled: ‘King George’.
    King George… KG, he thought – of course!
    Armed with this last piece of information, he deciphered the journal fragment:
    Nine blocks east and twenty blocks north of King George Sky-train Station.
    He was so preoccupied with the journal he had trouble keeping his mind on his classes that day. He made two photocopies: One for the Police – as little faith as he had in them he was determined that they should have the information, and one for himself – to take along. He’d made a decision. After work he headed out once again for Jim Keller’s place.
     
    “I can tell by your face the news isn’t good,” said Keller, as Richard joined him sitting by the fire. Keller poured them each a cup of tea from a kettle lying in the coals.
    “I found a journal Danny’s been keeping,” Richard said, sitting down on a sawed-off stump beside him. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I understand it well enough to confirm that he’s been going to Surrey on a regular basis.”
    “And I think I know how he’s getting there,” said Keller. “I talked to some friends of mine that are still on the road. They’re telling stories about a kid with a dog biking the Surrey road. But what the hell could the boy possibly want there?”
    “His friend said Danny called it ‘prospecting’. The journal gives clues about where he was going, but nothing about why.”
    Richard hesitated, not sure how Keller would react. Finally he said, “I’ve decided to go to Surrey myself. Maybe you could help me.”
    Keller nearly dropped his teacup. “You? On your bike alone? Now that would indicate a death wish.”
    “Danny was doing it.”
    “You’re not Danny. Come on, Richard – you’ve barely stepped out of the classroom since your parents died.”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    “No offense, but you’d have a tough time handling parts of Vancouver, let alone Surrey. Anyway, there’s no way you can bike it right now.”
    “Why not?”
    “There’s only one practical way to get to Surrey by bike. They call it the Corridor – a wide ridge with lots of open space where it’s easy to avoid an ambush. It’s dangerous, but if you know your way around and you’ve got some street smarts, you can pass through safely most of the time.
    “Trouble is, a couple of days ago a major gang war broke out. Two of the biggest outfits in the city are fighting for control of smuggling through the Corridor. The place is overrun with gangsters that’ll kill anything that moves. Right now, you’d be dead the second you set foot in there.”
    Richard’s gut tightened. “Is it possible that’s what happened to Danny?”
    “Possible,” said Keller, “but I doubt