by Rob Phillips
The local paper, the Yakima Herald-Republic, had run well over a dozen stories on the problem during the past year, but even with the stories, the task forces, and money sent by the federal government, it seemed the authorities were no closer to figuring out what might be happening. The case of Emily Pinkham was just the most recent of these mysterious deaths and disappearances, and it stoked the flames of the rumors that there was a serial killer out there who preyed on Native women.
Not all cities the size of Yakima had an FBI office. But because the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation was one of the largest Native American tribes in the West, they often called the FBI in to help with criminal investigations. The FBI had been working hand-in-hand with Yakama Nation police on the cases of murdered and missing women, and after the discovery of the woman’s identity, the FBI agent out of the Yakima office called a meeting in Toppenish of the various law enforcement agencies to discuss the death and discovery of Pinkham.
FBI special agent Sara Sinclair was new to the local office. She’d been working in Yakima since the first of the year and had spent the past four months getting up to speed on the investigation. The discovery of Pinkham’s body was the first new case on her desk as a potential victim of a possible serial killer.
Sinclair had previously worked in the field office in Portland, but when the last agent in Yakima took a job in Washington D.C., she had applied for the transfer and gotten it. She was somewhat familiar with the case of the growing number of missing and murdered Native women and wanted to see if she could help solve them. And she had. Or at least, she had solved a couple. Her work had helped locate two different missing women. One was found living in a homeless encampment outside of Boise, and another was located with relatives in Eastern Montana.
The woman in Montana had left after her habitually-abusive husband had smacked her around in another drunken rage. When he’d finally passed out she had taken a Seattle Mariners souvenir baseball bat and had whacked him about the head and body. She didn’t care if he was dead. She jumped in their Nissan Pathfinder and headed east until she ran out of gas money.
The husband didn’t die, but he did have a cracked skull, a couple broken ribs, and hurt like hell for a few weeks. As he recovered from his injuries he thought maybe he’d been lucky to escape death, and didn’t care if he ever saw his wife again.
The woman’s relatives in Wapato had reported her missing, and although the Yakama Tribal police suspected the man of possibly killing his wife, with no body or other real evidence, they didn’t have enough to press charges. Still, her name had been added to the list of mysterious disappearances, that is until Sinclair had located her.
She had done other work around the region too, including some drug trading investigations with the DEA and a possible human trafficking case, but most of her time was spent on cases within the boundaries of the 1,130,000 acres of the Yakama Nation reservation.
Sinclair was a fit, five-foot, ten-inch woman, with straight black hair cut to her shoulders. When McCain saw her walk into the meeting room, he thought she looked a little like the actress who played the medical examiner in the first Men in Black movie. He couldn’t come up with the actress’s name at the moment, but he’d think of it.
McCain and Hargraves had been invited to the meeting because they’d been involved in the bear investigation that ultimately led to Pinkham’s body. Also in attendance were Yakima County Sheriff’s deputies Williams, Garcia and Stratford, as well as a couple of State Patrol officers, and three Yakama Nation police officers.
After a quick around-the-room introduction of all the attendees, Sinclair said, “Here’s what we know: Miss Pinkham went missing on or about November 15th, and she was found on April 1. In that time no other Native women have gone missing, nor have any been murdered. That is the good news. But there are still at least seventeen cases that are open and unsolved from as far back as 2004.”
Sinclair went on to discuss several of the other cases and mentioned that the woman McCain had found was the only one discovered in the Cascades, off the reservation. There were a few other anomalies as well, but still, because Pinkham had been Native American, Sinclair was including her in the group of missing women.
When the meeting was over, McCain and Hargraves went up to where Sinclair was putting papers in her briefcase and introduced themselves.
“Thanks for coming today, gentlemen,” she said to them. “I appreciate your time and I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’d especially like to spend a few minutes discussing how you found the body, Mr. McCain.”
“Sure,” McCain said. “But there’s probably not much more I can give you that wasn’t in my report. We’re not really part of this investigation, but we’re happy to assist. That is, if we’re not out running down lawless trout fishermen and such.”
McCain and every other fish and wildlife officer knew that they were looked down upon somewhat by some members of the other police agencies. In their daily duties, rarely did they run across the really violent criminals like other officers did. Still, there was that whole deal about how most of the people they contacted were armed in some manner.
“Who’s going to stop the perp who is catching a couple bass over their limit, if not you?” she asked, smiling at McCain. “We can definitely sleep better knowing you are out there protecting the perch.”
McCain and Hargraves both chuckled.
Good looking and a sense of humor, McCain thought to himself. He didn’t dare say that, what with everything going on in today’s “Me Too” world. But he also thought if he had, she wouldn’t have been bothered in the least.
“I can fill you in on the day we found the body now if you’d like, Agent Sinclair,” McCain said. “Or we can meet at some other time to go over it.”
“First of all, please call me Sara,” she said. “When we’re in formal settings we can do the whole agent thing, but in these private meetings let’s keep it to first names. Okay with you guys?”
Hargraves and McCain agreed.
“I have to run to a phone conference with my boss and some big wigs at the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” she said. “Give me your number and we’ll catch up later.”
The two WDFW officers gave Sinclair their cards with their cell numbers, and she gave them hers. And like that she was running out the door.
“Where has she been all my life?” Hargraves said to McCain.
“Well, she was probably in kindergarten about the time you and Linda were getting married,” McCain said. “What would she want with an old, fat, married guy like you anyway?”
“Yeah, well, there is that,” Hargraves said. “Now you on the other hand, you’re not married, and got no one in your life except that yellow dog. I smell opportunity.”
“We just met the woman. You think we can just cool it for a bit? Speaking of Jack, I gotta get home before he thinks he’s been left for good and is going to starve to death.”
It took McCain about twenty minutes to reach his little three-bedroom rambler that sat between Highway 12 and the Naches River near the town of Gleed. When he arrived, Jack was definitely ready to eat. He jumped up and down and barked with excitement in the backyard where he spent the days when he wasn’t on patrol with McCain.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” McCain said to the yellow dog. “I’m only a half hour late. I think you’re going to live.”
McCain liked living out in the country. He had grown up in the country, and after living in a neighborhood in Mill Creek on his last assignments with the WDFW where the houses were so close you could run and jump from one roof to the next, he made a promise to himself that wherever he landed next, he was going to get out of the city.
Frankly, the house wasn’t much. About 1600 square feet, built in the 1960s, it wasn’t fancy by any means. But as a single man, with only a spoiled dog to care for, the house was just perfect. There was a lawn that needed mowing weekly during half the year, and there was a patch of dirt in the back of
the yard where McCain had had ambitious plans for growing some vegetables.
The garden hadn’t worked out, as McCain kept falling further behind on the weeding. Pretty soon, you couldn’t see the cucumber plants from all the thistles and other weeds. Williams and his wife had come over for a little backyard barbecue not long after he had planted the garden, and the deputy just looked at it and laughed.
“What are you growing in there?” he asked.
“I planted some tomatoes, cucumbers, and some sweet corn,” McCain told him proudly.
“Why would you do that to yourself?” Williams asked. “Don’t you know you can run down to one of the produce stands in the Lower Valley and get all the vegetables you want for ten bucks.”
As it turned out, Williams was right, of course. The farmers in the Lower Valley were excellent at growing row crops, and for just a few bucks, you could have fresh-grown veggies, sweet corn and melons all summer long. Best of all, you didn’t have to hoe one row or pull one weed.
McCain fed Jack and fixed himself a ham sandwich. Like the dog, McCain ate quickly. Then he called Jack, and the two were off to the river.
Being within walking distance of the Naches River was another reason he liked living where he did. His road led to a public access to the river, and many evenings during the summer he and Jack would walk down there and fish for trout. During the spring, when the river was closed to fishing, McCain still enjoyed spending time along the stream. McCain would work with Jack on his retrieving and commands, and McCain would spend time thinking about things as he watched and listened to the river roll along.
When he and Jack made it to the river, he wasn’t surprised when a mule deer doe and last year’s fawn jumped out of some wild roses. The deer bounced a couple of times and then stopped and stared at him and the dog.
Many people didn’t realize just how many deer lived this close to town year-round. McCain had even seen elk in the trees along the river a few times. McCain thought it was a shame that people rushed by on the freeway day-in and day-out and never saw the wildlife that lived along the river corridor.
As they walked along the stream, McCain threw a retrieving dummy for Jack to fetch. He threw it into the river and, after giving the dog the command to fetch, Jack leaped from the bank, flying through the air. The dog splashed down hard, almost dunking his head, before he swam to the dummy that was rapidly floating downstream with the current. Jack was a strong swimmer and had the dummy back to McCain in no time. Then, for a change of pace, McCain threw the dummy into a big clump of brush. Jack, not-so-patiently but obediently, sat by McCain’s side until he gave the command to fetch. When he heard his name, the big yellow dog tore off toward the brush and searched hard until he found the dummy. As with just about every other Labrador retriever McCain had ever known, Jack loved to play fetch.
As they played and walked, McCain thought about meeting the new FBI agent. Sara Sinclair was definitely attractive. Hargraves had that right. And she was obviously smart. McCain hadn’t seen a wedding ring on her finger, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in a relationship.
After a couple major catastrophes in his love life, McCain was more than a little gun-shy about jumping into another relationship any time soon. But a woman like Sinclair, well, he thought that just might change his mind about trying it again.
He was thinking about the FBI agent when he heard the whistling of wood ducks from above. He searched the skies and saw a pair of the beautiful ducks swing overhead and settle into a slow spot in the river across from them. McCain looked at Jack, and the dog was at full alert. He’d heard and seen the ducks too, and was now quivering in anticipation, waiting for McCain to tell him to fetch the birds.
“Settle down,” McCain said to the dog. “We won’t be hunting ducks for another six months.”
He told the dog to come, and they continued their walk up the river. Along the way they jumped a small flock of mallards and a pair of Canada geese, and when McCain noticed that Jack had stopped and was looking intently at something across the river, he saw a mink slinking along the water’s edge
“Good eyes there, mister,” McCain said to Jack, who ignored the comment and watched the little animal as it searched along the riverbank for a crawdad or something else to eat.
He threw the dummy a few more times for Jack and thought about the woman they had found in the mountains. How did she die and why was she there? As the investigation progressed, he wondered if he’d get to spend more time working with Sara Sinclair. He smiled at the prospect. He definitely hoped so.
Chapter 5
Asecond woman’s body was discovered in the Cascades west of Yakima in mid-May. A young couple hunting shed antlers with their dogs had discovered the remains at the edge of a small meadow.
Every spring as the weather warms and the snowline recedes, people head into the woods looking for deer and elk antlers that had been shed by the bucks and bulls in January, February and March. While deer antlers are always gladly scooped up, it is the much larger elk antlers that are the real trophies of the shed hunters.
Some shed hunters use looking for them as an excuse to be in the mountains, getting some good exercise and fresh air, while others are in it strictly for the money. There is a good market for shed antlers as buyers will resell them into some of the Asian markets. There the antlers are ground down and used for medicinal purposes. Antlers have been used for over 2,000 years in China, where they are believed to strengthen bones and muscles, benefit the kidneys and spleen, and promote blood flow.
McCain had been called out several times in the past few years when reports came in that shed hunters were jumping the elk fences on state lands. They came in under the cover of darkness to be the first to check out the lands near the WDFW elk feeding stations. He figured there must really be some good money in selling the sheds, as he had ticketed one guy three times for trespassing after he had entered the closed areas looking for sheds. McCain thought the man must just factor in a $158 fine once or twice as part of the cost of doing business.
The shed hunters who had discovered the body were legal shed hunters, and they were admittedly new to the sport. Chris Avery and his girlfriend, Mandy Spiers, were enjoying the beautiful spring day with their two golden retrievers, Mutt and Jeff, when the dogs started paying particular attention to some brush near a meadow. Even though the dogs were not trained to locate sheds, Avery was hoping that maybe a big bull elk had not made it through winter and the dogs were attracted to the decaying flesh of a dead animal.
As he got closer, Avery could see he was right, at least about the dogs being attracted to something dead. Unfortunately, what they were attracted to was definitely not an elk.
The man thought he was going to lose his lunch when he saw the bloody human remains in the grass. His girlfriend wasn’t so lucky. In one big eruption she lost every bit of the nice little picnic lunch she had enjoyed while sitting on a blanket not an hour before.
McCain didn’t normally get non-wildlife calls, but based on where the body had been found, and how it might have some similarities to the body Jack had tracked, dispatch called.
“What’s your location?” the dispatcher asked.
“I’m out past Selah talking to some folks about a possible wolf sighting,” he answered.
“Another body has been found in the mountains,” the dispatcher said. “Looks like another woman. YSO would like you to come up if you have the time.”
“Text me the location and I’ll roll right away,” McCain said.
McCain couldn’t believe it. He’d been working out of the Region 3 office for nine years and only two times before had he been involved in a call with a dead body. One of the prior calls had been to help locate a fisherman who had capsized his drift boat after getting caught by a sweeper on the upper Yakima River and had drowned. The other was a homeless guy who had been living on an island in the lower river. Now, in the span of two months here he was headed to another body discovered in the Cascades.
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McCain hopped on Wenas Road and headed northwest. He went by a new housing development being built in what were alfalfa fields just a few years before and continued past Wenas Lake to where the pavement ended and three unpaved roads split in three directions. He stayed on the left road, veered left again when it forked, and got on a smaller dirt road that followed Milk Canyon up to the top of Cleman Mountain.
According to dispatch, the kids who had found the body were just northeast of the old Cleman Mountain lookout. Within a few minutes, McCain spotted two Yakima sheriff’s rigs and a silver Toyota Tacoma parked in the sagebrush just off the road. He couldn’t see anyone but knew the deputies couldn’t be too far, so he pulled over and parked next to the other rigs.
He climbed out, let Jack out, and looked around for the group’s tracks. It didn’t take long. Four people can trample up some ground without much effort, and McCain was soon able to distinguish at least one of the tracks. Williams had fairly large feet for a man just six feet in height, and from working with the deputy on several other cases, he knew Williams wore a good-sized boot.
Interestingly, there was a second track, with a different sole than the boots Williams wore—at least a size 12, maybe bigger. McCain had no idea if they were the tracks of the young man who had been up here looking for shed antlers or the other deputy who had come on the call. The fourth set of tracks was much smaller, obviously those of the young woman shed hunter.
“C’mon, Jack,” McCain said to the yellow dog, and off they went following the trail of boot tracks made in the arid soil.
They followed the tracks up a hill for about a half mile, through scattered pine trees and buck brush, and then cut over a small ridge to the north. When they crested the hill, Jack’s ears went up, and McCain knew he had heard the voices from the people at the body.