by Rob Phillips
“Long story,” McCain said. “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.”
After they hung up, McCain sent her a text: Why do Oregon graduates place their diplomas on the dashboard of their cars? So they can park in the handicapped spots.
He immediately received an emoji of a yellow round happy face, flipping the bird.
They met at the Sea Galley in Union Gap, a restaurant famous for their “We Got Crab Legs” advertising. McCain had never checked, but it might have been one of the last Sea Galleys left in the country. And, even though it was mainly a fish place, they served a darned good steak. Both McCain and Sinclair ordered up ribeyes, with a baked spud, all the fixings, and a dinner salad. Sinclair ordered a Bale Breaker Pale Ale, brewed just down the road in Moxee, and McCain had a Coke.
“So, what are you a recovering alcoholic or something?” she asked.
“That’s not very sensitive. What if I am?” She briefly looked apologetic, and then McCain laughed. “I just never developed a taste for the stuff. Kinda tastes like donkey piss to me.”
She laughed. “Have you ever tasted donkey piss?”
“No, but if I did, I bet it would be bitter and bad tasting, just like beer. I’m not big on any alcohol really. Plus, alcoholism runs on both sides of my family, and I figured if I had the addictive gene, well, I didn’t really want to risk it.”
“Makes sense,” she said.
As they ate their salads and steaks, she talked a little about her work on the missing and murdered Native women. He told her about the bear-poaching Johnsons and how he’d run down the old man and tackled him.
“Yeah, I saw the deal on the jailbreak on the news,” she said. “Did they really break out using a table?”
“Evidently,” McCain said. “I think they’ve got it fixed now. Did you see the photo of the Alverez woman they identified as the body we saw in the mountains?”
“I did,” Sinclair said. “I was the first person the coroner called, and he emailed me her photo. In a way I was glad it wasn’t another Native woman. Still, it looks like a murder, and if it is related to the woman you and Jack found, well, that’s not good.”
“Did you notice how much the two women looked alike?” he asked. “From the two photos I saw, they could have been sisters.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” she said.
“You know, I’m not telling you how to do your job or anything, but if it was me, and I was an FBI agent, with all kinds of resources and fancy computers and minions who could do research for me at the drop of a hat, I might take a look at other women, Native and not, missing from the area that fit that same age and hair color profile.”
“Good thinking,” Sinclair said. “I asked our research folks to do that very thing just this morning.”
Because the two bodies found in the Cascades were in Yakima County, off the reservation, the investigation was solely under the jurisdiction of the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office. Still, she said she was watching the case with interest.
“I am too,” McCain said. “Now, what do you want for dessert?” When they finished with dessert Sinclair said she had to get going, as she still needed to finish up a report before morning.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said as they walked out the restaurant door. “I’m buying next time.”
The next morning before McCain and Jack headed out for the day, McCain heard his phone buzz. There was a text. I really enjoyed our dinner last night. Thanks again.
McCain was thinking how nice the dinner was too, and then his phone buzzed again. But I wouldn’t call it a date. I can’t date a Cougar. The text ended with a smiley face. McCain grinned.
He and Jack had just fired up the pickup when dispatch called him. Someone, the dispatcher told him, had phoned in a report of some anglers fishing with night crawlers in the Yakima River above Roza Dam. The anglers were camped in the Big Pines Campground. McCain radioed back and said he’d head that way
When he arrived at Big Pines there were several RVs set up in designated spaces, with a few tents scattered around. McCain always wondered why anyone would choose this place to camp. There were thirty campgrounds along the rivers up in the mountains, surrounded by lush, green forest. This place was mostly dry desert and sagebrush. Whatever the appeal was, McCain didn’t know, but the campground was almost always full in the summer.
The man who called in the report about the bait fishermen, a Dallas Grimes, had told the dispatcher he was in a small Coachman motorhome with maroon and gold accent stripes. McCain spotted the RV, pulled up in front, left the rig on with the AC running for Jack, and went to knock on the door.
The man must’ve been watching for him, because he was just opening the door when McCain stepped up to knock.
“Mr. Grimes?” McCain asked.
Grimes was an averaged-sized man, probably seventy-five, with not much hair and a little too much belly. As soon as McCain started talking to the man a little dust-mop-type dog started yapping.
“Shush, Millie!” the man yelled at the dog, and then turned to McCain. “Yes, I’m Grimes. The guys who were fishing illegally just left. They were in a rusty-brown Ford Bronco II. You know, one of those older smaller ones that were dangerous to drive and fell apart after about 60,000 miles.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” McCain said and was just about to ask the gentleman which way they went when Grimes hollered at the barking mop-dog again.
“Millie, quiet! I know they were a piece of crap because I used to own one. Probably the worst vehicle Ford ever made. Well, except for the Pinto, and maybe the Maverick. And then there was the Escort.”
The dog kept yapping.
“Millie, shut up!” the man yelled.
“Mr. Grimes,” McCain asked. “Did you see which way the vehicle went?”
The man reached down to swat the dog, missed, and about fell over because Millie had turned and was sprinting back into the bowels of the motorhome.
“They went upriver,” Grimes said pointing up the highway.
McCain thought seriously about asking the man why in the world he had camped there, but he decided it wasn’t worth it. He thanked the gentleman for reporting the bait-fishermen and turned to walk back to his truck. In the background he could hear Millie yapping.
The upper Yakima River, between Yakima and Ellensburg, had become one of the West’s premier trout fishing streams. Regulations on the river were changed back in the 1990s to make that part of the river, all the way up to the headwaters in the Cascades, a catch-and-release only fishery. Fishing with bait was made illegal—only barbless, single-hooked flies, and lures were allowed.
Once the regulations changed it didn’t take long before word of the quality of Yakima trout reached the fly-fishing world, and anglers from all over came to sample some of it. The popularity of the Brad Pitt movie, A River Runs Through It, certainly helped, as about a third of the folks living around Puget Sound decided they’d like to stand in a river and fling a fly. Seattle was less than two hours away, and soon the Yakima River became the place for the folks on the west side of the Cascades to come fish. The high percentage of the anglers knew the regulations, but every once in a while there would be someone who didn’t know the rules, or more likely, was just ignoring them.
McCain spotted the brown Ford Bronco II parked in a pull-out about three miles up from the Big Pines campground. He parked far enough away that he could get out and walk up to watch the anglers for a bit. Sure enough, Grimes was right. The three men were using night crawlers. McCain could see a belly-up trout on a stringer in the water next to one of the men.
He went back to his truck, grabbed his citation book, let Jack out, had the dog heel, and walked over to talk to the three men.
“Hi, fellas” McCain said. “Can I see your fishing licenses and IDs?”
The men jumped a bit when McCain spoke, and then they started talking to one another in a foreign language. McCain thought they were speaking Russian.
“Yes, please, officer,” t
he youngest of the three men said. “We are fishing okay, no?”
“No, you are not fishing okay,” McCain said. “I need to see your fishing licenses and your driver’s licenses.”
“Yes, no please, we get for you,” the youngest man said. He spoke to the two other men in Russian, and they reached into their back pockets for their billfolds and started digging through them for their licenses.
Similar to other states in the country, there were many new Russian immigrants in Washington and a lot of them liked to fish. Unfortunately, there were some who bent the laws just a tad. And there were a few who not only bent the laws, they broke them into about a thousand pieces.
The men handed McCain their licenses. Everything seemed to be in order. McCain asked if they could understand English, and they all nodded their heads. McCain could see in their eyes that maybe the only one who actually could was the youngest, a Sergi Ivanonov, according to his driver’s license.
The whole time McCain was talking, the three men were watching Jack. They looked like they would jump in the river if the dog moved a step toward them.
McCain explained to Ivanonov the rules regarding no bait, and not being able to keep any trout in this part of the river. Ivanonov seemed honestly perplexed. He told them they needed to be sure they knew the rules of all the rivers around here, because some rivers were different, and even some parts of some rivers were different.
“No more bait,” McCain said. “No more keeping fish. Understand?”
“No, yes, please,” Ivanonov said. The other two men nodded their heads and looked at Jack.
McCain took the fish on their stringer and left the men with citations for a couple different violations. He wondered if they would pay the fines.
When he left the three Russians, he decided he’d drive on up the Yakima and check on the last few anglers on the river.
Chapter 10
Al Stephens rode comfortably up the trail above Rimrock Lake. He and seven other members of the Central Washington Backcountry Horsemen’s club were heading up a couple days early for their annual 4th of July trip into the high Cascades. The group was packing in wall tents and enough food and gear to have a good four-day stay.
The string of horses and riders was about a third of the way up the trail to the Twin Sisters Lakes where they would camp when Stephens spotted a cluster of yellowish-white bones down the hill in some brush. The riders occasionally saw bones of dead animals on their outings into the mountains, so he didn’t think much about it. That is until he looked a little closer and saw a large round bone that looked eerily like a human skull.
“Whoa,” Stephens said to his horse as he gently pulled on the reins and pointed toward the bones. “Hey, what does that look like to you guys?”
One of the younger members, named Dave Davis, dismounted and walked the forty yards down the hill to get a closer look.
“Holy shit,” Davis said. “It’s a human skull. And there are more bones here too.”
One of the other club members, Del Newman, was a volunteer sheriff’s deputy, so he took over.
“We need to get word down to the sheriff’s office right away,” Newman said. “And we need to stay away from the skull and bones. Davis and I will ride back down to the corrals. You guys can continue up to set up camp. We’ll come join you as soon as we can.”
McCain was at Clear Lake, just up the road from the corrals, when he heard the call. Dispatch knew his location, and because he was the closest law enforcement officer in the area, they asked if he’d run over and talk to a couple horse riders who claimed to have found a human skull.
It took him only seven minutes to get down the hill to the corrals. As he pulled up, he saw a couple men standing next to horses tied to the top rail of a fence. He told Jack to stay and jumped out to chat with the men.
“Hey, Luke,” the older man said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
McCain knew Newman because he had purchased his personal truck from him a year ago. Besides being a volunteer deputy, Newman was the sales manager at the local Toyota dealership.
“Hey, Del,” McCain said. “So, what’s going on here?”
Newman introduced McCain to Davis, and then the two horsemen told McCain the story of finding the skull and bones.
“How far up the trail is it?” McCain asked.
He’d been up the trail on foot a couple of times over the years, once to check on a potential elk hunter who was reported to have shot a branch-antlered bull elk without the appropriate tag. And he’d helped a couple of the WDFW hatchery guys pack some cutthroat trout fry up to three of the high mountain lakes on the trail.
“I’d say it’s about two and a half miles in,” said Davis.
McCain remembered the trail. Like many that led off the highway, it was a steep climb for the first mile or so and mostly uphill the rest of the way.
“Any chance there’s another mount around here I could use to get up there?” McCain asked the men.
“I’m guessing they’d have a horse that you could use around here somewhere,” Newman said. “Let’s see if we can find Mr. Patterson.”
The Pattersons ran the Indian Creek Corrals and rented horses to folks during the summer for horse-packing trips and day rides. In the fall they hired out to pack hunters into the backcountry. Twenty minutes later, Ray Patterson, proprietor of the outfit, had a horse saddled and ready to go for McCain.
“You might get another horse ready, Mr. Patterson,” McCain said. “There’s a sheriff’s deputy on his way from Yakima right now, and he’ll need to get up there too.”
“Will do,” Patterson said.
With that McCain hoisted himself up into the saddle, and then, after Patterson adjusted his stirrups, they started for the trailhead. Jack ran along with the riders, zigging and zagging through the woods, staying slightly ahead of the three horses.
McCain wasn’t an experienced horse rider, but he knew the basics. And with the gentle mare Patterson had let him ride, he had no troubles guiding her up the mountain trail to where the skull and bones were located.
“It’s right up here,” Newman said. “Let’s stop and walk from here.”
They all dismounted, and McCain called Jack.
“Sit, Jack,” he said to the dog. “Stay.”
Jack obeyed. In fact, he lay down to take a breather from the run up the hill.
McCain walked a short way up the trail with Newman, and when they reached the spot where they could see the bones, McCain told Newman to wait there while he walked down to get a closer look. There was no flesh left on any of the bones, but some were marked by yellowish-brown stains, which to McCain meant they hadn’t been exposed to the elements all that long. It had been a sunny summer so far, and the sun can bleach bones in a matter of a few weeks.
He studied the area around the bones, which were scattered in a ten-foot circle. It was his guess that not all the bones were there, probably because coyotes or other animals had packed some off. There were fresh boot tracks, which he assumed were left by Davis, but he saw an older boot print too. It was so old it could have been left by a hunter last fall, but still he made a note of it. He also found strands of long black hair caught on a ceanothus bush farther down the hill.
“Damn,” McCain said to himself as he swatted at a swarm of mosquitoes that had magically appeared.
He turned and headed back up the hill to the men and horses.
“I need to get back down to the corrals as quickly as possible,” McCain declared as he smacked a mosquito on his neck. “I sure appreciate your help, but if you guys want to catch up with your group, you can go ahead.”
The men climbed back on their mounts and headed up the hill while McCain and Jack headed back down the trail. McCain needed to reach Agent Sinclair as quickly as possible. When he returned to the corrals, he hustled over to his truck and radioed dispatch. He asked the dispatcher if she could patch him through to Agent Sinclair of the FBI.
“We could if we had her number
,” the dispatcher replied.
Like most people nowadays, McCain didn’t know anyone’s phone number. They were all programed into his phone, not in his head, so he had to check his phone contacts to find Sinclair’s number. He found it and gave it to the dispatcher.
“Sending you through now,” the dispatcher said.
McCain heard a phone ringing and then Sinclair’s voice saying, “Hello, you’ve reached Agent Sinclair. I’m not available right now. If you leave a number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Hey, it’s McCain,” he said. “There’s another body. Well, it’s not a body, more like a bunch of bones. But I’ve found some long black hair nearby. I think we need to seriously consider that this is the work of the same killer. I’m guessing the sheriff will be calling in the FBI if he comes to the same conclusion. Just wanted to give you a heads up and thought you might want to get up here sooner rather than later. Call our dispatch to get directions up here.”
McCain asked the dispatcher to give the coordinates and phone number of the Patterson’s horse outfit to Sinclair if she called in and they couldn’t raise him on the radio.
“Oh, and tell her to bring some mosquito spray if she comes,” McCain told the dispatcher. “Those blood suckers up on the hill are as big as woodpeckers.”
He then went over to the Patterson’s place to let them know there might be a phone call from the FBI, and they might need another horse.
“We’ll make sure you are paid for the horses,” McCain said. “It’s my guess you’ll be renting a few more during the next couple of days. Thanks for all your help.”
With that McCain turned, patted his hip, and Jack fell in place. They walked back to his truck to wait for the deputy to show or Sinclair to call. As he sat by the highway, in the gravel lot next to the horse corrals, an older 80s vintage Chevy pickup pulled up. McCain recognized the driver as Jim Kingsbury, a sixty-something man who always wore a Crocodile Dundee-style Australian hat, and any one of a plethora of t-shirts with humorous or political sayings on them.