McCain pulled into the Wendy’s in Chehalis and ordered a double with cheese, hold the onions and pickles, with fries and a Frosty. He was calculating how many more miles he was going to have to run to work off those calories when his phone rang.
The screen read YAKIMA COUNTY SHERIFF.
“McCain,” he said into the phone.
“Is this the rifleman?” the scratchy voice asked.
“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” McCain said.
At thirty-seven, McCain was too young to have ever watched the 1950s TV series that starred Chuck Connors as a lawman in the old west. Instead of a sidearm, Connors used a special lever-action Winchester to handle all his shooting business. And business was good in the weekly series. There was always a bad guy or two who needed gunning down. Connors’ character’s name was Lucas McCain, and the TV show was called The Rifleman. Somewhere along the line, one of the older deputies in the sheriff’s department had noticed the WDFW enforcement officer shared his name with the TV character and the nickname landed, whether the real-life McCain liked it or not.
“Yeah, yeah,” the deputy on the other end of the line said. “This is Williams. We got a strange one developing up near Chinook Pass and we’re definitely going to need some assistance from you and that spoiled dog of yours.”
“Oh yeah? Whatcha got?”
“Some hunters shot a black bear this morning and while field dressing it discovered a human ear in the bear’s stomach,” Williams said.
“An ear? Where’s the rest of the body?” McCain asked.
“That’s the unknown. It looks like there were some particles of clothing in the stomach contents too, but there weren’t any other identifiable body parts the hunters could see. They did say it was a bloody mess.”
“It’s rare for a black bear to attack a human, but I guess it could have happened.”
“Hard to tell, but you think Jack could backtrack the bear to whatever might be left of the body?”
“Probably. It’d definitely be worth a try. I’m in Chehalis, on my way home from Olympia. Even with light traffic over the pass, I’m still two hours from Yakima. I have to grab Jack, so it’ll be closer to three. And we’ll be losing daylight pretty fast by then.”
“Just get here as quick as you can,” the deputy said and clicked off.
McCain grabbed his food, jumped in his rig and headed down I-5 to the cutoff to Yakima via Highway 12. As he drove he thought more about the call from Williams. Hearing of someone finding human body parts in a bear’s stomach was a first for him. He wondered how it had happened.
McCain had subconsciously bumped his speed up as he pondered the ear in the bear. When he looked down he was doing twenty over the limit in this stretch of the highway. He was driving his state-issued police truck which included a siren and lights in the grill, but he had decided they weren’t necessary. The WDFW insignia on the doors of his tan truck would tell the State Patrol and local deputies he was a brother law enforcement officer, but as he thought more about the details he’d received from Williams he went ahead and turned on the lights and pushed the F-150 a bit harder.
As he approached each little settlement along the way, he’d slow some and then roll along about eighty miles per hour until he hit the next small town. Once he hit Randle, he intentionally slowed and really watched the edges of the highway. From here to Packwood and beyond, a large and growing herd of elk had taken up residence, and they loved feeding in the grass along the highway. The last thing he needed right now was to smack a 600-pound elk. First, he would never live it down in the circles of his fellow WDFW officers, but more importantly, he didn’t need to be delayed by a collision with a critter nearly the size of a horse.
He made good time getting over White Pass and soon was pulling into the driveway of his house. McCain lived just outside of Yakima in an area known as Lower Naches. When he parked the truck he looked over at the neighbor’s house and out the door came a blur of yellow and gold. His dog Jack stayed with Jessie Meyers and her son Austin when McCain had to overnight out of town. He was thankful for this option, rather than having to kennel his dog someplace. Twelve-year-old Austin loved Jack and treated him probably better than McCain did. The boy played fetch with him, and Jessie was a sucker for Jack’s big brown Labrador retriever eyes. All Jack had to do was gaze at her with a longing look, and she’d give him a bite of cookie or some other treat that he’d gobble up.
“Hey, boy,” McCain said as the dog came over and got the obligatory belly rub, ear scratch and a few hugs around his neck.
Jack was a big Lab, tipping the scales at just over 100 pounds. And it wasn’t a soft hundred. He was solid as a rock, strong as an ox, and could run down a wounded rooster pheasant in nothing flat. He’d come into McCain’s life as an eight-week-old ball of fur, with feet too big and soft floppy ears. As they always do, the pup grew fast, and Jack was soon in training to be not only McCain’s hunting dog but his partner in wildlife protection.
“What have you guys been up to?” McCain asked the dog.
“We’ve been playing fetch,” said Austin, who had followed the dog out the door. “And Jack’s been napping too. You know . . . the life of a dog.”
With a mop of brown hair on top of his head, the sides cut short, and the gangly build of an active boy on the verge of being
