The Cascade Killer (Luke McCain Mysteries Book 1)

by Rob Phillips

  “When she’d missed work two days in a row, her boss called the local cops,” Sinclair said.

  “You got her photo, I assume?” McCain asked.

  “Yep,” Sinclair said. “Definitely could be related to the other two. It is kind of scary how much they look alike.”

  McCain didn’t say anything, but if Sinclair had just a little longer hair, and you looked at her from the right angle, she could definitely fit the profile too.

  “So what next?” McCain asked.

  “Well, now that we have the ID and a photo, we’re forming a task force,” she said. “It’s going to get crazy real fast here in about twenty minutes. We’re going to release the name and the photo to the media and we’re going to shift into high gear.”

  “It might take a bit for the local TV reporters to put two and two together, but my guess is one of the local newspaper writers will figure out the serial killer angle pretty quickly. And once the TV folks read about it in the newspaper, they’ll be all over it like a fat kid on a Twinkie.”

  “Yeah, we’re preparing for all that,” Sinclair said.

  “Who’s on the task force?” McCain asked.

  “A forensics guy from the State Patrol in Olympia, YSO deputies Williams and Stratford, plus a detective from the Yakama Nation, and a couple detectives from the YPD. I have asked for you to be added, but I guess that’s gotta go up through about eleven people in the department, and it sounds like it’s a longshot.”

  “Well, it was nice of you to ask anyway. I don’t mind staying off to the side. Sometimes you can fly under the radar and get a bit more done that way.”

  “As long we stay in close contact,” Sinclair said. “I’m happy to share what we learn, as long as you do the same. I’ve appreciated all your thoughts on this one.”

  The next morning the headline in the Yakima Herald-Republic read: “CASCADE KILLER ON THE LOOSE” with the subhead: “POSSIBLE SERIAL KILLER DUMPING BODIES IN THE MOUNTAINS WEST OF YAKIMA.”

  “Here we go,” McCain said to Jack when he read the story. “Sinclair was right. It’s about to get crazy real fast.”

  Jack just looked at McCain, wagged his tail about three times, and then lay back down to sleep.

  The newspaper reporter had, in fact, put two and two together. It was the same reporter who had done several stories on the missing and murdered women on the Yakama Reservation. Because the reporter had worked with Sinclair on some of those stories, she had a direct line to the FBI agent.

  In the story, Sinclair was quoted as saying that unfortunately, yes, they were most likely looking at one person as the killer, who seemed to be profiling women of a certain stature and hair color. The paper had printed the photos of the three murdered women, and anyone with one working eyeball could see what the stature and hair color was.

  McCain figured within about three days every drug store in the county would be sold out of Miss Clairol dye-your-hair-at-home coloring kits in every color except black.

  There was a large and growing population of Latinos living throughout Central Washington. Most could trace their roots to the state of Michoacán in southern Mexico, where their parents, or maybe grandparents, had been born before migrating to the United States in search of a better life.

  Many of the families had found agricultural work in California, or in Texas, and as the years had gone by, they migrated north into the agricultural areas of Yakima and Wenatchee, where there was a huge need for workers in the orchards. The people found year-round jobs, pruning in the winter, thinning in the spring, and picking during the summer and fall, or else working in the many packing houses in the area where they sorted and packed apples virtually year round.

  While some would go back to Mexico during the cold winters, most just stayed and continued to work. The fruit growers and warehouse operators were extremely glad to have such a hardworking supply of labor, as they would have had difficulty growing, harvesting, packing and shipping the fruit without them. Now, some 40,000 residents of the county had Hispanic surnames. And the vast majority of Hispanic women had black hair.

  McCain wondered how law enforcement was ever going to protect such a huge number of potential victims. For one unfortunate woman of Mexican heritage, it was too late.

  Two days later there was a story in the paper about a missing Sunnyside woman. According to Yakima Police, the twenty-two-year-old woman, Maria Jimenez, was taking summer classes at Yakima Valley College and was last seen about 7:30 at the YVC library. There was a picture of Jimenez accompanying the short story, with the police asking if anyone were to see her, to contact them.

  As soon as he saw the photo, McCain called Sinclair.

  “So, are your thinking this Jimenez woman might be another victim of the killer?” he asked when she answered.

  “We’re taking a good look at it,” Sinclair explained. “I’ve talked to the woman’s sister, and she said the girl was kind of a book worm, and never, ever came home late. After classes she called her sister and told her she was going to go to the college library to study.”

  Sinclair said YPD was doing all the obvious things, including checking for her car, talking to people in her classes, and looking at the video footage from the security cameras on campus.

  “But if she stopped for gas, or at some fast food place, she could have met up with anyone,” Sinclair said. “I’ve got a gut feeling that this is the work of our guy. I hope she phones her sister and tells her she decided to go with a classmate to the Tri-Cities to visit a sick grandma or something. But my guess is it isn’t going to happen.”

  McCain, unfortunately, agreed.

  “Well, there’s not much I can do to help in town,” McCain said. “If it is the killer, he’s going to take the body to the mountains. I know it’s a needle in a haystack, but once I get done with some of this paperwork, I’m thinking about heading up that way.”

  “Okay, well I definitely appreciate your help. Holler if you think of anything else.”

  When McCain hung up the phone, he tried to turn his attention back to his computer and the four more reports that needed to be filed, but he couldn’t concentrate. There were nearly a million acres of public land in the Cascades, a bunch of it in Yakima County. Where would he begin?

  He started thinking it through. Yes, there were hundreds of square miles in the mountains of Central Washington, but only a small portion of that was accessible by roads. And, even though the killer seemed to show an almost superhuman ability to get the dead bodies away from the roads, the farthest any body had been found was the last one, the woman from Enumclaw. Her remains had been found a little over two miles off the road. That helped narrow the search a little. Still, that left who-knows-how-many hundreds of miles of old logging roads, Forest Service roads, and other two-tracks to try to cover.

  McCain also thought about where the three other bodies had been found. One had been located off Highway 12, and the other two most likely were accessed via Highway 410. Earlier, both he and Sinclair had wondered why the woman who went missing last Halloween in Enumclaw had been transported all the way around Mount Rainier and was dumped off White Pass.

  Then McCain remembered that sometime in late October, Chinook Pass had been closed for a couple weeks due to a big rock slide up by Government Meadows. Several elk hunters from the west side of the Cascades were ticked off because they had to drive all the way around on I-90 and I-82 to Yakima, and back up to their camps off Highway 410. Or, they had to go around Mt. Rainier and up over White Pass, and down to the “Y”.

  He wondered if the killer would have dropped the body somewhere off 410 had he had the chance, but because of the slide he decided to take one of the trails up the mountain off Highway 12 to save time. Maybe the killer had to be at work, or somewhere else where he’d be missed, and decided to just get rid of the body.

  McCain also thought about how he would dispose of a body if it were him. He decided he would do it at night, and he would do it on a night when there was little or
no moon. He looked at his phone. Tonight called for a new moon, which meant it was the darkest night of the month.

  He wondered what the moons were on the nights the other women disappeared. He googled “Moon Phases” and studied a new moon chart.

  “Holy crap,” he said aloud.

  Within a day, the dates the three other women had gone missing aligned with a new moon. He’d definitely share that with Sinclair the next time they spoke. He was only on duty until five, so he figured he’d finish his work day by running up the Yakima River to check on a few fly fishermen until it was time to knock off.

  After his shift ended McCain ran home, changed clothes, grabbed Jack, jumped in his Toyota Tundra and headed up the highway toward Chinook Pass. It was his guess that the killer was dumping the bodies up there because he was familiar with the territory. He was probably a hunter, or a hiker, and knew the mountain roads and where they went.

  Back in the day, before the logging on Forest Service lands slowed, the timber companies cut roads in all over the Cascades. Most connected with Forest Service roads, but others would go for a ways and then dead end at an old burned-up slash pile. If you didn’t know the roads, especially in the darkest of nights, you could easily end up on a dead-end road. Not a good idea if you had a dead body in the back seat and needed to get away in a hurry.

  Chapter 15

  McCain ran up Highway 410 about fifteen miles and turned right onto Bald Mountain Road, an arterial that led up to several different Forest Service roads, including a couple that dropped back down into the Wenas. While it certainly wasn’t the only road off the highway up into the mountains, McCain thought it was the most popular because it was in the best shape. He’d seen sedans and SUVs up the road plenty of times, including some sheep hunters who were up there on Cleman Mountain in a BMW sedan of all things.

  He drove up the gravel road a ways, found a good turn out, and pulled over to eat the sandwich he’d packed for supper. He hopped out, let Jack out, went to the back of the truck, dropped the tailgate and jumped up to sit and eat. Normally Jack would have been off in a flash to chase chipmunks and squirrels, but the dog had more pressing matters on his mind. Right now, there was a chance for a piece of turkey out of the sandwich that smelled so good.

  “You’re not a hunting dog, you’re a chow hound,” McCain said, and gave Jack a bite of the sandwich which he immediately gobbled up without being chewed. “You didn’t even taste that.”

  While he ate he thought more about Mr. Chad Burke. He kept forgetting to ask Sinclair the size of the boot print at the place where they found the skull and bones. And he wondered if Sinclair had asked about any other missing women around the West that might fit the same description of those that had been found in the Cascades.

  While the Green River Killer’s victims were mostly found along the Green River and near SeaTac Airport south of Seattle, he did dump two bodies close to Portland, Oregon. And Ted Bundy went from murdering women in Washington State to Florida where he killed several more. If the man doing the killings was new to the area, it was possible he could have killed and dumped bodies somewhere else.

  The other thing the FBI was good at was putting a profiler on the case, so McCain figured they were trying to get inside the killer’s head. One thing McCain knew, or thought he knew, was that the killer was possibly removing the hearts from his victims before he dumped them. The psychologists would be analyzing that one for sure.

  Did the killer’s first girlfriend, a slender gal with long black hair, break his heart? Was the guy saving the hearts as a memento of each woman?

  He again thought of Burke and wished he knew the guy’s shoe size. Something about the track at the site of the bones was of real interest to him. He’d bug Sinclair about it for sure.

  Jack had been back to the truck a couple times to check on McCain, but he was off somewhere when McCain decided it was time to move on up the road. He whistled for the dog and within a minute Jack was there, ready to jump into the truck.

  As daylight turned to twilight and then to dark, McCain drove up the road with Jack sitting by his side. They went about ten miles up, past Bald Mountain and on to Manastash Ridge. They got on the ridge road and found a good spot where they could watch a vast area of the country below. From there they would be able to see any headlights of vehicles coming and going on the Forest Service roads. McCain knew it would be too far and too dark to tell what kind of rig it was, but at least he’d know if there was anyone in there tonight.

  He and Jack sat there until two a.m. In four hours they had seen two rigs driving the roads below. The first he saw around 11:20. McCain was almost positive it was a Jeep because its headlights were close together and high off the ground. He spotted another set of generic headlights shortly after midnight. That vehicle had come up quite a ways and then disappeared around the curve of the hill. Most likely someone heading into a camp McCain thought.

  McCain and Jack were headed home, passing through Naches when he saw that the Exxon station mini-mart was open. He wasn’t usually out driving around this time of night, so he didn’t realize the store stayed open all night. In the summer, with lots of traffic on the highway, it must have paid off for the store to stay open 24-7.

  He decided he wanted a soda, so he turned in to grab a Pepsi. He pulled up to the store, left the truck running, and ran inside. A dude with bleached blonde hair spiked into a five-inch peak running right down the center of his head was standing behind the counter looking at a car magazine.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” the clerk asked.

  “Okay. Time for a little caffeine,” McCain answered and headed to the soda fountain.

  Just then Deputy Stratford walked in, went to the coffee machine, pulled a cup, and started pouring coffee into it.

  McCain walked up behind the deputy and said, “Hey, Jeremy.” Stratford about jumped into the next aisle.

  “Wow, you’re a little jumpy,” McCain said. “Maybe you better make that coffee unleaded.”

  “No, I definitely need the caffeine,” Stratford said. “I hate these graveyard shifts. What the hell are you doing up at this hour?”

  “Heading over the pass to meet some friends to fish for steelhead on the Cowlitz,” McCain lied. “If I’m not there, standing on the boat launch at 5 a.m., they’ll leave without me.”

  “Sounds like good friends,” the deputy said.

  “So, how’s the task force going?” McCain asked. “Making any headway?”

  “Well, we’re just getting started,” Stratford explained. “I’m learning a lot from the other members. It is interesting to see how they work, and what they think about the killer.”

  “Yeah, I bet it is,” McCain said. “Well, Jack is sitting out in my running truck, so I best be on my way. Good luck on catching that guy.”

  “Thanks. Good luck fishing.”

  On his way back to the counter McCain grabbed a PayDay candy bar to go with his soda, paid for the items, and walked out to the truck. He opened the PayDay and ate a bite while two big brown eyes watched every move he made. Finally, when the candy bar was down to one bite, he gave it to Jack. The dog swallowed it in one big gulp.

  “I coulda just fed you a rock and you wouldn’t have known the difference,” he said to the dog that wasn’t paying any attention. He was snarfling around the seat in hopes that a peanut had fallen for him to lick up.

  “You’re a goofy dog, but I love you anyway,” McCain said, rubbing the dog’s ears as he backed out of the parking spot. He had waited until Stratford was gone, so he could head in the opposite direction of the Cowlitz River, toward his air-conditioned house and his very comfortable bed.

  Chapter 16

  The killer had been feeling the heat. Not just the incessant heat of the late July days, but the fire inside to satisfy something that had been burning in him for most of his life. He hated that bitch. She needed to die. They were all bitches who didn’t care about him.

  He had watched the moons and knew it wa
s time so he went on a hunt. He’d spotted the Mexican girl walking into the YVC parking lot toward a handful of cars parked there. She was perfect. Fairly tall, slender with long black hair. She walked to a white Honda and climbed in. She left the parking lot, turned left on Nob Hill and headed out to I-82. He followed a ways behind as she merged onto the freeway and headed south toward the Lower Valley.

  When she was down the freeway a few miles he pulled up alongside of her and waited for her to look at him. When she did, he pointed at her tire with some urgency. It worked almost every time. She pulled over, and he pulled in behind her. Being on the freeway wasn’t ideal. Other times he had been on quiet rural roads. But if he was careful it would work. He watched the traffic and when there was a break he jumped out. She had already gotten out and was checking her tires when he came from behind and punched her, hard in the face. It always stunned them enough that he could then overpower them. He caught her as she was falling, dragged her to the backseat of his rig and quickly put zip ties around her wrists and ankles. He put duct tape around her mouth and laid her in the seat where she couldn’t be seen.

  He waited for traffic to clear in both directions again, and then drove her car down the embankment, through the barbed wire siding fence and into a bunch of brush next to the Yakima River. From the freeway it was almost impossible to see the car, and it might be fall when the leaves all dropped before anyone did. Even if someone got real nosy about the break in the fence, it would still take a while he told himself.

  He wiped the steering wheel, the knob on the shifter, and the door handles and then walked back up to his car, jumped in and was gone.

  It wasn’t the ideal place for what he did, but he was positive no one had paid any attention to the guy helping a disabled motorist.