by Rob Phillips
Hargraves, who had been at the same meetings in Olympia, said, “I came straight here from the capital. I didn’t have to get a mangy dog.”
“This is Jeremy Stratford,” Williams said pointing to the third deputy.
“Luke McCain,” McCain said to the officer. “You must be fairly new? I thought I knew all the Yakima deputies.”
“I’ve been here for a little over a year,” Stratford said. “Been in training and on patrol out on the reservation.”
“Good to meet you,” McCain said and turned to Williams. “So what’s the plan?”
The sheriff’s office had taken the original phone call, and as senior officer on site, Williams was in charge of the investigation.
“I know it’s getting dark,” Williams said. “But I think we need to get back to the bear with Jack as soon as possible.”
Stratford had arrived a short time before McCain, but Williams and Garcia had already been to the kill site. And, of course, the Jamisons knew right where the bear was, so the senior Jamison was asked to take the lead. Once everyone was geared up and ready to go, they started down the trail. McCain grabbed his backpack, threw in the extra coat, but decided to leave the tent and sleeping bag.
The group only had to go a mile or so, but with the darkness and terrain it took them almost an hour to make the hike. During the walk in, the Jamisons went step-by-step through the story of how Tanner had been drawn for the bear tag, how they’d done some scouting, where they’d spotted the big bear, and how they’d made the stalk and the shot. After shooting the bear, the Jamisons had skinned it, broke it down into quarters, and put the meat in cheesecloth-style game bags to help keep it clean and cool. After talking to the sheriff’s office dispatcher, they left the meat where they’d butchered it.
Both Williams and Garcia confirmed what the Jamisons believed they had discovered. Before they had hiked back to the truck to meet McCain, they had photographed the ear, the other contents of the stomach, and everything else in and around the dead bear.
Unlike grizzly bears that would occasionally attack humans, especially if they were protecting cubs, their smaller and blacker cousin, Ursus americanus, rarely attacked people. But it did happen. McCain remembered reading about a situation a few years back where a black bear, for no particular reason, had killed a man up in Alaska. He wasn’t sure what had happened up here in the mountains of Central Washington, but he definitely wanted to get a better look before drawing any conclusions.
Chapter 2
The ear looked like, well, an ear. A left ear to be exact. A small, slimy ear with a bit of the lobe missing. It was difficult to determine if it was an ear from a Caucasian, a Hispanic, a Native American, or an African American, as it was discolored on the upper half and very washed out on the lower half.
McCain knelt and, without disturbing any of the bear’s other organs and assorted innards the Jamisons had stacked into a neat little pile, he looked closely at the ear.
“I’d say it came from a woman,” he announced to the group standing in a circle and shining their flashlights and headlamps at the severed ear.
“How’s that?” Williams asked.
“I’m pretty sure there is a piercing right at the outside of the middle of the ear,” he said. “You know, like the girls who work at the coffee stands all have. And, I’m guessing there had been at least one in the lobe right where it is torn.”
Williams got in close, took a look, and said, “I believe McCain has something there.”
The other guys, including the Jamisons, took turns, one by one, and looked at the ear closely. To a man, and a teenager, they agreed. Yep, those were piercings.
“Not that a man’s ears couldn’t be pierced like that,” said Garcia. “I’ve seen some guys with some pretty crazy piercings. Have you seen the picture of the dude on the internet that looked like he tripped and fell face first into a fishing tackle box? There’s stuff sticking out everywhere.”
“That’s true,” Tanner Jamison said. “There’s this one kid at our school who wears a three-piece suit every day, carries a briefcase and has about seventeen piercings on his face. Nice guy, he’s just a little different.”
“And that blue cloth looks like denim, from a jacket or jeans,” McCain said. “We’re definitely looking for a body.”
“That’s why we wanted you up here,” Williams said. “Do you want to try tracking with Jack tonight?”
Other police agencies in Washington State used dogs for certain details, and so did the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They had a couple Karelian bear dogs at their disposal for certain tasks. Mostly those dogs were used to bark and harass animals such as bears and wild cats upon their release back into the wild, after having been rehabilitated in captivity. The unique little dogs have incredible reflexes and can harass the animals without harm to the released animals or themselves. The Department also used dogs at the state borders to sniff out potential issues with vehicles bringing contraband into the state. Mostly the WDFW dogs were used at boat inspection sites where they checked for zebra mussels and other invasive species coming into Washington.
McCain figured he could train Jack to sniff out zebra mussels if that was required, but so far the dog had only been asked to find the occasional four-legged creature. Asking him to trace the wanderings of a now dead black bear was going to be a challenge, but it might be the only way they were going to find the person who was now missing an ear and some clothing. Luckily, the snow in the area had only been gone for a few days, and with the wet soil, McCain figured he might be able to help keep the dog on the trail with his own tracking skills.
“My guess is that the bear ate the ear, and whatever other parts of the person, in the twelve hours before Tanner shot it,” McCain said. “So, hopefully he didn’t travel too far from where the body might be.”
“Do you really think someone was up here hiking or something and got attacked by the bear?” Stratford asked.
“I don’t,” said Hargraves. “It just never happens.”
“I agree,” McCain added. “But until we find a body, we won’t know for sure.”
“I had dispatch run a check on any missing persons in Yakima County over the past seventy-two hours,” Williams said. “The only missing person was an elderly man who had dementia. I don’t believe this is him.”
“Coulda been someone from the other side of the hill,” Hargraves said.
They all paused and thought about that for a minute, then decided that Eric and Tanner Jamison would help the officers pack the bear meat, hide, and innards out to the trucks for transportation to Yakima. From there the sheriff’s deputies would figure out where to send some of the bear meat and brain material for testing, just in case it had attacked someone.
The human ear and shreds of material, packaged separately, along with the rest of the stomach contents, would most likely be sent to the Washington State Patrol crime lab to start DNA testing to see if, at some point, they might find a match to a person missing from sometime before the past seventy-two hours.
The younger Jamison looked a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to be taking any of the meat or the hide from the bear home, but Hargraves assured him that once the testing was done, he should be able to have the hide and meat, and that they would take extra good care of it. With that, the men shouldered their packs full of meat, hide, guts, and human remains, and huffed off back up the hill.
McCain turned to Jack and said, “Okay, let’s go to work.”
A three-quarter moon was coming up over the trees from the east when McCain put Jack on the few tracks he had found of the bear downhill from where it had succumbed to the well-placed shot by Tanner Jamison. The added moonlight helped McCain with his tracking. It didn’t matter to Jack. He used his super-sensitive nose to start backtracking the bear.
Scientists believe that the sense of smell for some dogs, such as bloodhounds and other tracking dogs, is at least 1,000 times stronger than a human’s. And some dogs’ sense of smell is so stro
ng it can still smell a trail up to 300 hours old. McCain didn’t know if Jack’s olfactory capabilities were as good as a bloodhound’s, but he did know the dog could flat track. And he knew the bear’s tracks were less than eight hours old based on when the Jamison boy killed the bruin.
Watching the dog work slowly downhill through the edge of the clear-cut, methodically picking up the scent, McCain was confident that Jack was on the trail. Before they started, McCain had the elder Jamison, who was packing the bear hide out to the trucks, kneel down so Jack could get one more good snoot-full of what the big bruin smelled like.
McCain kept his powerful headlamp pointed on the ground and carefully followed Jack as he worked the scent. Occasionally he would bend down and check even the slightest impressions he saw in the soft dirt to confirm that Jack was on the trail.
It took them about two hours of slow, steady tracking before they found the body. Or what was left of the body. The bear had done a pretty good job of spreading stuff around as it had tried to bury what was left of the body under some leaves, grass, and pine needles.
From what McCain could tell, his analysis of the ear had been correct. The body was that of a woman, based on the long black hair and what looked to be bright orange fingernail polish on one of the fingers. He didn’t want to be poking around too much, because right now this was a crime scene. His job had been to find the body, and now that that was done, he needed to get back to his truck and call it in.
Before he headed back, he took a few minutes to study the scene. He thought the wounds in the woman’s chest looked too neat to have been caused by the bear, but he would wait to hear what the county coroner came up with before he started sharing his thoughts. One thing he knew for sure: the bear hadn’t killed this woman. With what McCain knew about the snow and temperatures this area had received during the past few months, it was a pretty good assumption the body had been here for a while, and the below-freezing temperatures had kept the body fairly well-preserved. The deep snow had protected it from birds and other scavengers.
McCain finally stepped back several feet, sat down, turned off his headlamp and took in the night. Jack came over and stuck his head under McCain’s arm, which meant he was looking for some petting. McCain obliged.
“Jack,” he said while rubbing the dog’s ears. “You done good!”
He reached into his backpack and grabbed an energy bar and a bottle of water and shared both with Jack. They ate and drank and listened to the sounds of nighttime in the spring woods.
As he prepared to make the hike back to the truck, McCain pulled out his phone, took several photos of the body and the surrounding area, and then he took off his coat and his shirt and stripped off his cotton undershirt. He draped the undershirt over the bush closest to the body. Then he took a few steps away and urinated in several spots.
It would be tomorrow morning before the crime scene people could get up here, and the last thing he needed was for some other animals, maybe another bear, or more likely a coyote or two, to come in and make more of a mess of what was left of the body. The undershirt would definitely smell like man, based on the day he had had, and the urine should also help keep the critters away. He had done this several times before when he had to leave elk or deer meat overnight in the woods.
McCain put his shirt and coat on, pulled his pack over his shoulders and started for the truck.
“Hold on, Jack,” he said to the dog as he started to move out ahead of him. He’d almost forgotten to make a waypoint of the body site in his GPS. He knew he could find the spot again, but just for safety’s sake, he got the waypoint marked. If by some chance he wasn’t able to come back and lead the crime scene team in tomorrow, they’d have the waypoints that they could follow.
“Now we can go,” he said to the yellow dog, and off they went into the night.
Chapter 3
The next morning, as McCain and Jack returned home after guiding the crime team to the body, Austin Meyers was the first one to meet them in his driveway.
“So, now can you tell me what happened?” the youngster asked. “Did Jack help you find a hurt animal?”
“Well, Jack did help, but it wasn’t a hurt animal he found,” McCain explained. “It was the body of a dead woman, who had been partially eaten by a bear.”
“Really?” Austin asked. “And Jack found her? Cool.”
“He didn’t actually track the woman,” said McCain. “He tracked the bear backwards from where it had been shot by a hunter. But it would have taken a lot longer to find her without Jack.”
Austin was kneeling down next to the yellow dog, and after hearing what Jack had done, he gave the dog a big hug and said, “Wow, you’re a hero, Jack. You deserve a treat.” And with that, boy and dog were sprinting to the Meyers’ house for a cookie or some other sweet Jack didn’t need.
“Oh, I see how you are,” McCain said to Jack as he ran away with the boy.
As the days went by, officials were considering the death “questionable” but weren’t coming right out and saying it was a homicide. Unlikely as it was, it still could have been an accident. They just didn’t know.
McCain continued his normal duties, like checking on anglers fishing in the area ponds and lakes. Late April was one of the busiest times for fishing in the region. The local WDFW fish hatchery crews were stocking trout in all the local lakes, and anglers were going after them with a fever. He wrote a few citations to anglers for fishing without a current license, or for keeping more fish than the daily regulations allowed.
The spring turkey hunting season had opened on April 15. There were a few wild turkeys in the region, so he tried to check on the turkey hunters when he could, just to make sure everyone was legally licensed and had taken only birds with a visible beard. He talked to a few hunters, but only checked two who had actually killed a turkey.
One day McCain was working up in the Wenas Valley, in the Wenatchee National Forest to the northwest of Yakima, checking on any turkey hunters who might be in the area. As he drove up the forest service road, he met a car coming down. The driver wasn’t in camo clothing, he was driving a silver 90s-era Honda, and he just didn’t look like a hunter, which made McCain wonder for a half-second what the guy was doing up there.
McCain slowed and pulled off the one-lane road to let the car pass. He thought the driver might stop and chat for a moment, but he didn’t. He just waved and motored right on by. McCain thought about turning around and running the guy down, but he really had no reason to do that, so he let it go and continued up the pothole-filled dirt road, looking for the rare turkey hunter.
Higher up, McCain found a hunter just getting back to his truck. Dressed in camo clothing from head to toe, the man, who was in good shape for someone who looked to be in his 70s, was obviously a turkey hunter. McCain pulled in and climbed out of the truck.
“How you doing?” he asked the hunter.
“I’ve been better,” the man said. “I just missed the biggest tom of my life! Right over there.”
“Sorry to hear that. Do you hunt up in this area often?”
“Not much, no. I usually hunt up by Colville, but I live in Yakima and didn’t have time to drive up north to hunt, so decided to try up here today. I came in last night right at sundown and heard a couple of gobblers and figured I was in the chips. And it worked too. I called him right in. Well, after trying to get ahead of him most of the morning, I called him right in.”
“Not many turkeys up in this neck of the woods,” McCain said. “You’re lucky to have found some.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the hunter said.
McCain asked to see his license, which the man had ready to show him. His name was John Ferguson.
“Everything looks in order, Mr. Ferguson. Sorry you missed the turkey.”
“Yeah, well, that happens. The worst part of it is, now the old boy will be educated. All the calling in the world won’t get him to come in again.”
“Well, maybe you can find anoth
er eager tom. Say, you didn’t happen to see a guy in silver Honda up this way, did you?
“You know, I did. Didn’t look like a hunter though. He just drove right by me when I was walking alongside the road a ways back. Kinda weird having a small sedan like that up here on these rough roads.”
“That’s what I thought. He might have been up here mushroom hunting or something.”
“I guess,” Ferguson said. “He was wearing a black cowboy hat. Maybe he was up here looking for lost cattle?”
“In a Honda? Oh well. You have a good day and hope you find another willing tom.”
Chapter 4
It took eleven days for the county coroner to identify the woman McCain and Jack had found. He had used dental records to identify her, and DNA samples confirmed it. Her name was Emily Pinkham. She was twenty-seven years old and a member of the Yakama Nation. Her last known residence was in White Swan on the Yakama Reservation.
The coroner couldn’t make any clear conclusion as to how she had died, nor could he figure out when she had perished. McCain had been right in his assessment of the situation. The cold and snow had kept her body in pretty good shape, that is until a hungry black bear had stumbled across it.
Over the past decade there had been eighteen mysterious disappearances of Native women in Washington State, and when Emily Pinkham went missing in late October the previous year, local authorities made a concerted effort to find her. But it was to no avail. Nobody had seen her with anyone suspicious. And the last person to see her alive, her cousin Jeanine Washut, said she was on her way to work at Legend’s, the Yakama tribal casino in Toppenish. Emily worked as a waitress at the buffet restaurant inside the casino. When she missed work for a couple of days, the missing person alert went out, and authorities went on the search.
The problem with missing and murdered Native women had become such an issue in Washington, and around the country, that the governor of Washington State and the U.S. Senate had developed task forces to try to figure out what was going on. The many families that were dealing with the loss of their loved ones had pushed and pushed and pushed to try to shine a light on the issue and solve these crimes.