Japanese sword that, Jack says, “one of their officers didn’t need anymore.”
Jack Cadden ain’t scared of the dark or anything else. Now, though, because of Colt he had to leave lights burning all night.
If Colt came into his house, Jack said, he’d just handle it. “If he made me, I woulda shot him in the leg or foot or something.”
Unlike other guys who’d been puffing up and talking about shooting people during all this, you had to take Jack seriously. And though I know he would’ve given Colt every opportunity to back away before putting an extra hole in him, Jack actually had previous experience shooting at barefoot guys. And that’s worth a quick Farmer Jack story:
“This is back in the days when there was quite a batch of hippies around the island—crazy bastards. Nancy and I were sitting eating breakfast, and here comes this strange-looking guy across the field. I picked up the old twelve-gauge that I kept loaded in the corner and went out on the porch. Well, sure enough he comes up toward the house. I said, ‘I don’t know what the hell you want around here, but you better get gone.’ He picked up a stick and started waving it around, so I let one fly right over his head. Man, he took off down the road, right across that sharp crushed rock, barefooted! I came back in and Nancy’d called the law. About a half hour later, this sheriff’s car comes up the driveway and they had the guy in the backseat. They says, ‘Is this the guy?’ And I said, ‘Sure looks like him. What did you bring him back here for… you want me to shoot him now?’ They said, ‘Oh no no no no!’”
SPECULATION BY THE EVENING of the eighteenth was that Colt lay crumpled on the rocks below the west coast cliffs. Other stories circulated that Turtleback was riddled with caves and that’s where he was hiding. A detective called Donna McNeil to ask where the caves were, and she explained that though there was a mine shaft from an old gold mine, it was now in a homeowner’s front yard and had been filled in. She did tell them about a couple of quarries on the mountain, and says that a search near one of them turned up a campsite tied to Colt.
FBI agents and Marysville manhunters stayed on the island after the big chase and canvassed homes around Turtleback, asking the residents if they knew “any good hiding places,” but turned up nothing. Months later, hikers stumbled upon a campsite on the mountain where it rises to a commanding view above Crow Valley. It was a spot less than a mile and a half from Stewart’s and only a half mile from the Brodys’ home. The camp was littered with water bottles, food wrappers, and three Pilot’s Operating Handbooks taken from airplanes.
There were a couple strange incidents in the days after the big chase, both in an area between Turtleback and Eastsound. In one, a man came home to find his shower running.
Then, remarkably, on March 22, Colt went back to Chuck Stewart’s home. He broke in and stole Mrs. Stewart’s set of keys, bottles of Pellegrino water, and one of her son’s sweatshirts. The Black Hawk launched, but again found nothing. On the twenty-sixth, Chuck climbed into his Pilatus and saw that the plane’s POH had been pulled out and opened up to the “start” checklist. Then on April 1, his caretaker discovered that the hangar’s alarm system had been tampered with.
One night during all this activity—he’s not sure exactly which—Josh got a phone call. “Colt was inside a hangar he’d broken into. He called late and said he could hear the helicopters flying around. We didn’t talk long, though. He said he had to run.” Josh says Colt’s manner was just like always: “Totally relaxed.”
After that, Colt lay very low. There were no credible sightings for several weeks. The police believed—or at least wanted to believe—that their massive show of force had chased him off the island. Residents, though, seemed tuned to something, some energy that Colt brought to the island. It was the same feeling you get when you’re walking through grizzly bear or cougar country—that little background buzz, a tickle on the neck. And that was still around.
In our cabin it’d become an uncomfortable running joke. Every time we heard a strange noise in the night, either Sandi or I would yell out, “Knock it off, Colt, we’re trying to sleep!” Then we’d laugh. And then we’d listen harder.
Murphy felt it, or maybe he was just feeding off everyone around him. He definitely acted more alert as we did our daily two-mile hike through the Deer Harbor woods. There was one spot not far from the cabin where several days in a row he stopped and stared into the trees, refusing to budge until I put all my weight on the leash. Since early March, there’d been a persistent rumor on Orcas that there was a $500,000 reward for capturing Colt. Where before there’d been just a few vigilante types roaming Eastsound, now there were guys all over the island arming themselves and taking to the trees. I emailed Sheriff Cumming, asking him to make some kind of statement saying there was no such huge reward (at this time there was a total of $3,000 offered among rewards posted by Orcas, Camano, and Crime Stoppers). But he never put the rumor to rest. It occurred to me that the cops had no reason to quash it since the supposed big reward put a whole lot of camo-wearing, off-season deer-hunting, shit- kicking mossnecks out in the field shaking the bushes. Plus, with only a $3,000 reward, it was just as likely that one of these guys would shoot Colt and mount him over his fireplace instead of turning him in.
With the rumored bounty on top of all the anger, it wasn’t the safest time to go traipsing through people’s woods. After Murphy stopped at the same spot the third time, I called the neighbor and asked if I could hike in to check it out. I found what looked like the perfect campsite, but no one was around and there was no evidence except for a large pile of scat. I ran down the possible suspects: too big for a raccoon, too far from the water and not fishy enough for an otter, no stray dogs around… The only wild animal in the area big enough would be a deer, but their droppings are usually in Milk Dud form… What the hell was I doing? This kid actually had me kneeling in the woods examining excrement like Kolchak the Crap Stalker.
IF I WAS GOING goofy, at least I wasn’t alone. Most of the people I spoke to admitted they’d been calling out to shadows and noises in the dark woods. Five days after the big Lover’s Cove debacle, I spent an evening manning the Eastsound lookout atop Homegrown with Kyle and his .44 Magnum. He hadn’t been getting much sleep since the break-in.
“This store makes a million noises,” said Kyle. “Refrigerators clicking on and off, the wind flapping the vents, birds landing on the skylight… One night I heard this banging downstairs, grabbed the gun, and ran down, but there’s nothing there. We figured out later it was Pumpkin’s tail wagging. Another time we scared the shit out of one of the deputies who’d climbed up the outside stairs because he thought he saw something up here. The dogs heard him and I come running out of the office in my underwear with the gun, and we’re yelling, ‘Hold it right there!’ at each other. So yeah, we’re nervous, but you’re only paranoid if he’s
It was a quiet night in town, but every ten minutes or so, someone would walk by and Kyle would jump up. “See!” It seemed like suddenly every kid on Orcas was at least six-three and wore a hoodie that made him look taller. Kyle had bumped into some of the young guys wandering around. “They were out there packing Tasers, looking for Colt.” Kyle’s theory was that some of the other kids out wandering at night were actually helping Colt: “Maybe they’re acting like decoys.”
The speculation about whether Colt had help on Orcas seemed to end when investigators reportedly found a note written in what looked like a female’s handwriting that he’d left behind in Stewart’s truck. According to a detective familiar with the case, the note was addressed to Colt and warned him about a deputy who lived in a marina, presumably Deer Harbor. It also gave directions to a home and it included tips such as which car to look for in order to tell if the owners were around. The note discussed a plan for stealing a boat and heading for Alaska. “It talked about finding a long-range cruising boat,” says the detective. “And appeared to involve at least two people other than Colt, although we wondered whether Colt had invented all this and planted it as a diversion to throw us off his trail.”
There were about a dozen boats moored at Deer Harbor Marina that could make the six-hundred-mile journey to Alaska without having to risk stopping for fuel. Cruising-style boats trade speed for long range, though, so there’d certainly be a lot of opportunities for the authorities to spot a boat during the approximately seventy- five-hour trip. But it had to be an attractive thought. If you ran only at night and laid up in one of the myriad secluded coves during daylight, chances of discovery were much less. And when you got wherever you were going, you’d have a comfortable floating home. Paint over the boat’s name, and it’s not inconceivable that you could anchor someplace almost indefinitely. The issue then would be, as usual, feeding yourself. The other problem was timing. Usually only commercial fishermen make that trip outside the calmer summer season. Winter winds and waves make the exposed stretch between the north end of Vancouver Island and the start of the Inside Passage a rough place for even large ships.
