by Rob Phillips
“Yessir,” Armstrong said. “It sounds like pretty similar circumstances. By the way, how can you be sort of involved? Isn’t that like being sort of pregnant?”
McCain explained that he wasn’t officially on the task force that was doing the investigation, but he and his yellow Lab Jack had been involved in locating two of the women’s bodies and he had figured out the whole deal about the new moon.
Armstrong hadn’t been told about the new moon aspect, and when McCain explained it to him, the sheriff said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention now.”
“Well, I actually have three names of people I’d like to have you check in your database if possible,” McCain said. “I’m just looking to see if they had a Colorado driver’s license and an address somewhere in your neck of the woods during the time those two women went missing.”
“I can do that,” Armstrong said. “We’re a pretty small department here in Moffat County, but I can get the state police to run them for me. Shoot me the names.”
“I’ll do you one better,” McCain said. “I’ll send you Washington driver’s licenses on all three. Give me your email address and I’ll send them as soon as I have them in hand.”
McCain already had the license for the cowboy, Chad Burke, but he could get the other two with one quick phone call, which is exactly what he did. When he had all three, he sent them to Sheriff Armstrong with a note that simply said, “Thanks!”
The response from Moffat County was waiting for him when arrived in the office the next morning. They had three matches on different Chad Burkes, but only one, based on the photo on the Colorado driver’s license, was an actual match. He’d lived in the small ski resort town of Steamboat Springs, just east of Moffat County. McCain looked up a map of Colorado on the internet and figured Steamboat Springs was within easy driving distance of Craig.
The other two names McCain had given the sheriff came up with name matches but no exact matches based on the photos in the driver’s licenses. McCain thought about it for a few seconds. After looking at the Colorado map again, he had one more idea he thought might be worth checking out. He emailed Sheriff Armstrong to see if he could do it for him. The sheriff emailed back a few minutes later. He said it might take a day or so, but he’d check.
With that, McCain headed out into the early September heat to go do what he was paid to do. As hot as it was, he decided he’d head to the mountains and check some of the anglers up at Leech Lake, Dog Lake, and Clear Lake near White Pass. It would definitely be cooler up there. He envied Jack. He’d left him in the air-conditioned house. The big yellow dog was probably sprawled out sleeping on McCain’s bed at that very moment.
On his way up Highway 12, McCain thought about the woman he had seen with the cowboy that night on the sidewalk. He sure wished he had seen her face. And he hoped she was living a happy life wherever she was at this moment.
When McCain hit Rimrock Lake he slowed a bit as he drove by. There were a few boats out on the lake, but from what he could see they were all pulling skiers or tubers.
As he neared Indian Creek Corrals, McCain saw Ray Patterson out at the rails of one of the corrals, so he swung in for a minute. He rolled down the passenger window and Patterson walked over. Patterson was thin, about six feet tall, and wore cowboy boots and a t-shirt tucked into tight Wranglers. He had a little hitch in his giddy-up, most likely from his younger days team roping in the pro rodeo circuits.
“Hi, Luke,” Patterson said. “How’s the search for that serial killer going?”
“Kinda slow,” McCain said. “But I’m not too involved. Say, did you ever get paid for letting everyone use your horses that day those bones were found up the Twin Sisters trail?”
“Yep, paid in full,” Patterson said. “From the county too, which is a switch. Usually I’m sending them money.”
“That’s the truth,” McCain said.
The two men chewed the fat for a few more minutes. McCain asked how business had been, and Patterson said it had been a good summer so far.
“Lots of people are renting horses and going up and looking at the spot where the bones were found,” Patterson said. “That’s pretty creepy if you ask me, but hey, they’re renting my ponies, so I’m okay with it I guess.”
McCain said so long to Patterson and headed on up the highway, toward Dog Lake to check the anglers there.
On his way home he saw the silver Honda sitting in front of the grocery store in Naches. McCain now knew that Burke had lived in Colorado, not far from where the women went missing. He decided to stop in and chat with the cowboy again.
Just as he was pulling into the store’s parking lot, Burke was coming out with an armload of groceries.
McCain pulled up next to the Honda and got out.
“Hey, how’s the rafting going?”
“Good. Lots of people right now, what with the weather being so nice. The offer still stands if you’d like to try it.”
“You know what, I would. Would you have room for a friend of mine too?”
“I think we can make that happen. I can take you tomorrow or Sunday. Just give me a call.”
“Let me get your number, I’ll check with my friend, and we’ll get it all set up. I remember you saying you moved up here from Colorado. Did you whitewater guide down there as well?”
“No, I was basically a ski bum. I taught some ski lessons and did a little guiding on the streams in Northern Colorado. But it didn’t pay the bills, so I came up here where the grass was greener.”
“I’m envious,” McCain said.
“Yeah, well, let me know about the raft trip,” Burke said and climbed into the Honda and fired it up.
McCain watched him drive off and then called Sinclair.
“Hey, McCain. What’s up?” she said when she answered.
“What you got going tomorrow or Sunday?”
“Just gotta keep pushing on this case, why?”
“I think you need a break. I’ve set up a whitewater rafting trip for you and me. We just need to pick the day.”
“I guess I can make tomorrow work.”
“Okay, let me get the details, and I’ll text you a time. Maybe you can meet me at my house, and we’ll go from there.”
“Sounds great, thanks.”
McCain called Burke to get the meeting time and place. The float down the Tieton River only took about three hours, so they ran them in the afternoon on most days, according to Burke. He told McCain to meet the raft company bus at the Windy Point campground at noon. “And wear clothes you don’t mind getting wet,” the cowboy said. “See you tomorrow.”
McCain texted Sinclair to meet at his house at 11:15 and told her about the clothing suggestion. She arrived promptly at 11:15, dressed in gray shorts, a green Oregon Ducks t-shirt under an unbuttoned denim shirt, and a San Francisco 49’ers ball cap on.
“This should be fun. What made you think of it?”
“It will be fun,” McCain said. “But I have some ulterior motives.”
McCain went on to tell her his history with Chad Burke and about seeing the silver Honda up in the mountains not far from where one of the bodies was found back in the spring. And he told her about seeing Burke with a woman with long black hair in Naches. And most importantly, he told her about Burke’s past in Colorado, living near where the women went missing at the time they disappeared.
“I know it’s all circumstantial, but I thought you’d like to meet the guy.”
“Definitely,” she said. “If nothing else, the rafting trip should be fun.”
“Wait one minute. I gotta grab one more thing, and then we can be on our way.”
“Where’s Jack?” Sinclair asked.
“He’s over at the neighbors being spoiled rotten.”
McCain ran into the house, and three minutes later he came out wearing a crimson and gray WSU t-shirt and black ball cap with a big WSU logo on it.
“Hey, you’re flying the colors, so will I.”
Sinclair just shook her
head and laughed.
When they got to the campground, they found three big blue buses sitting there along with about forty people meandering around. The guides were obvious because they were already outfitted in blue personal floatation vests and helmets.
“That’s our guy, right there next to the back of the second bus,” McCain said.
Sinclair laughed again. “I know that guy. I see him working out sometimes in the evenings at my gym. He’s even asked me out.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” McCain said sarcastically. “Here I think I’ve found a possible suspect and you’re doing Zumba with him.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not a suspect,” she said. “Especially knowing what we know now. Let’s go enjoy the day and see where it leads.”
“10-4,” McCain said as he opened the truck door and headed to the rafts and Burke.
The cowboy recognized Sinclair immediately and said, “Hey, nice to see you out here. Glad the game warden brought you along. You ready for some fun?”
“Sure am,” Sinclair said. “I guess I never asked you what you did for a living when we talked at the gym. This is a cool job.”
“It’s fun, you meet lots of great people, and I’m outdoors, where I want to be. But the pay’s not great.”
“Well, it definitely beats sitting behind a desk staring at a computer all day.”
“If you guys are ready, let’s load up.”
McCain and Sinclair headed to the bus. Burke just stood and stared at Sinclair and smiled.
Chapter 23
The heat was insufferable. The killer was burning up. He had to do something. He was having the nightmares again. He had to make them stop.
She was beautiful in his dreams. Tall, pretty, with long black hair. He could still remember exactly how she looked the last time he saw her. Before she left him with those terrible people. He was only five years old, but he remembered that day like it was yesterday. As he would for the rest of his life.
She broke his heart. Tore it out really, is what she did. How could his mother, someone he had loved so much, the person who was supposed to protect him and love him, do that to him? He couldn’t understand it.
He’d gotten revenge for the beatings. The man and the woman, who his mother said were relatives, got what was coming to them. How could he be related to such horrible people? He would never believe that.
He’d only been fifteen at the time, when he did what he had to do.
After they had passed out from another night of drinking, he zip-tied their wrists and ankles and shoved dirty underwear and socks in their mouths. Then he waited until they woke up. He still remembers looking into their eyes when they saw what he was doing. They squirmed and made plenty of sounds, but the filthy gags kept them muffled. They could do nothing but watch.
He turned on the gas to the stove but didn’t light it. The gas slowly seeped into the old, rundown house until it hit the candle he had lit in the old utility room where they made him sleep. He was a quarter mile away when the house exploded. He thought about the two people who were inside. He hoped they were awake to feel the heat. And to feel their bodies burning. It would be like that for them for the rest of eternity, because if there was anybody who deserved to burn in hell, it was them.
He stood in the black of night, the darkest night of the month, and watched the flames. It was the night of the new moon. The perfect night to watch the house burn to the ground.
No firetrucks came. No police came. No neighbors came. No one seemed to notice the house, and the horrible people who lived inside were gone. No one cared. He’d done the world a favor.
And on that night he promised himself that he would find his mother. And he would make her pay for what she had done to him. He would make her feel the pain. He would make her know what it is like to have your heart ripped from your chest.
The heat was rising. A new moon was coming. He had to do something. He had to make the nightmares stop.
It was three days before the new moon. McCain made a mental note of the date, and as the day drew closer his concern grew about what the killer might do next. From the past abductions and killings, the killer had taken the women the day before the new moon, seemingly at night, killed them by strangulation at some point in the next twenty-four hours, and then dumped them on the night of the new moon.
McCain believed the killer would most likely grab the woman on Friday night, the night before the next new moon. McCain and Sinclair had discussed the possibility that if the killer were to strike again, it could happen that night.
“Just for the heck of it, I’m going to keep an eye on Burke,” she said.
“Good idea,” McCain said. “Jack and I are going to my neighbor kid’s football game.”
McCain had been down at the county courthouse as a possible witness in an illegal fish-selling case, but just before the trial was to start, the attorneys struck a deal. That was just fine with him. With no trial he headed to his office. When he got there, he turned on his computer and checked his emails. First up was a reply from the sheriff in Colorado. It turned out McCain’s hunch had been right. One of the other men on his list had had a job in Green River, Wyoming, in Sweetwater County, just across the state line from Moffat County, Colorado.
So that’s two, McCain thought to himself.
He hadn’t been surprised that the third name on his list hadn’t showed up, but he wanted to check it out just so he could eliminate him as a suspect. He knew he was stretching on all of them, frankly, but with two having been within fairly close driving distance of where the women in Colorado had disappeared, and when they had disappeared, it made them that much more interesting.
Sinclair had seen Burke a couple of times at the gym after the river rafting trip. They chatted some, and since Sinclair wanted to watch him she decided the best way would be to ask him to dinner for Friday night.
“Aren’t you and the game warden a thing?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “We’re just friends. So, what do you think?”
“Yeah, I’d be up for it. Just let me know when and where.”
They decided to meet at the Thai King Restaurant, located a couple of blocks off Yakima Avenue. Sinclair liked Thai and as it turned out so did Burke.
They met there at seven. Once they got their table and ordered, Burke asked, “So what do you do for work?”
“I work in the federal court,” Sinclair said. It was a lie, of course, but just a little one, because she often spent her days at the federal courthouse. When she told him, you could see his eyes glaze over just a little.
“You must really enjoy your outdoor jobs,” she said, turning the subject back to him. It was a good move, because he talked for a half hour straight on his love of fishing and skiing and water rafting.
They sat and ate and talked for what seemed to Sinclair to be hours. Finally, when she’d had enough, she looked at her phone, saw it was past nine and said, “I really need to be going. I have a couple of important meetings in the morning.”
“Really? Working on Saturday?” Burke asked. “Doesn’t sound like government work to me. Don’t you guys take off for Arbor Day and stuff like that?”
“Yeah, well, tomorrow isn’t one of those days,” she said.
They walked together out to their cars. They said their good nights, and she jumped into her big black Chrysler. Burke watched her drive off and then hopped into his silver Honda, started it up and turned out of the parking lot, going the other direction.
McCain decided to play a hunch. He’d told Sinclair he was going to Austin Meyer’s football game, but the kid’s team didn’t play at night. So, with nothing better to do, and since it was the night before the new moon, he took a chance. He loaded Jack into his Tundra and, with an address he had from a driver’s license, headed east toward Terrace Heights.
After following the road out past the landfill, McCain found a spot in a small orchard and parked far enough away from the rundown double wide to not cause
suspicion, but close enough to where he could watch the place with his binoculars. It wasn’t quite dark, but there were no cars in the driveway and there were no lights on inside the manufactured home. From what he could tell no one was home.
“We’ll just wait here for a while and see what transpires,” McCain said to Jack.
The yellow dog wagged his tail and curled up on the passenger seat.
Chapter 24
The killer was waiting for her behind some arborvitae next to her house. As she pulled her car in under the carport he snuck around the back of the car. He watched, and as soon as she was stepping up out of the car, he hit her, hard, in the back of the head with his fist. Unlike some of the other women, she didn’t go down, but it stunned her. He hit her again, and this time she went to her knees.
He quickly pulled the zip ties out of his pocket, secured her wrists and ankles, opened the back door of her car and pushed her in. He stuffed a rag in her mouth, and to keep her lying down in the back seat, he buckled the seat belt around her and pulled it tight. Then he dug through her purse, found her keys, jumped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, backed out and took off.
It had all taken about thirty seconds. As he drove away, he looked around to make sure no one had seen him or was following them.
On the drive to his house he kept an eye on the rearview mirror. No one was following him. With the other women he had taken them in his car. For the sake of time, he decided to use her car. His vehicle would be fine where he parked it.
He drove out Terrace Heights Drive, past the Chevy dealership and Walmart, and out beyond the cemetery and the grade school. He was just past the landfill when she started squirming in the backseat. He looked back at her a couple times as he drove, and he was looking back when they went by the little orchard where McCain was parked in the trees, back off the road.
McCain saw the big black car roll by, and even though there were a few others like that around, he was pretty sure it was Sinclair’s. What he couldn’t quite figure out was, what she was doing out here right now. If she had the same hunch he had, wouldn’t she be bringing some back-up? He decided to just sit and watch. The problem was it was dark, and with very little moon and hardly any lights around the house, it was hard to see exactly what was going on.