The reporter looked like he was barely old enough to have graduated from high school, and although it was a bit hard to detect, he had a slight speech impediment. The news director must have really liked the kid though, because he was the go-to guy for live reports whenever news was breaking.
As McCain walked by the reporter, he heard him say, “Hi, dis is Simon Erickson, reporting live from da Yakima County jail, where I am toad seventeen prisoners escaped from da jail in da early morning hours.”
McCain just kept on walking looking for Williams or someone who could tell him what had happened and why he might be needed. As he walked, he wondered if Simon Erickson had graduated from WSU’s school of journalism. If so, he sure hoped Sinclair didn’t find out.
Ultimately, he found the director of the county jail, one Robert Dyson, who gave him a brief situation report. Dyson was a gruff-looking man of about sixty. He had big bushy eyebrows and a five o’clock shadow, even though it was just 9:30 in the morning. The man, McCain thought, looked like he was tougher than a boiled owl, and would take no guff from anyone.
According to Dyson, a group of inmates decided they’d had enough of incarceration, broken a table in two, and used one half to jam up entry into the lower level exercise area. They then used the other half of the table as a battering ram and had broken open a door to the outside. At that point all they had to do was jump the ten-foot-high spiked fence and they were free as the birds.
According to an early morning jogger who was running by about the time the door busted open, it looked like a bunch of bees boiling out of a hive. He said the inmates ran out the door, jumped the fence and scattered like a covey of quail.
In all, seventeen inmates had escaped before jail enforcement officers could get the door closed and things secure. Reporter Erickson had been correct in that. McCain wondered why, if there were seventeen inmates on the loose, all the law enforcement folks were crowded around the jail. They should be out looking for a bunch of dudes in orange jump suits.
“One of the escapees was a LeRoy Johnson Sr.,” Dyson said, looking through his bushy eyebrows at McCain. “I understand you’ve had some dealings with him.”
“Yes sir,” McCain said. “We caught him and his son, LeRoy Johnson Jr. poaching bears a couple months ago up in the national forest west of town. He’s just a few days in on a nine-month sentence.”
“Well, evidently jail didn’t suit him much,” Dyson said. “Our videos show that he was one of the instigators of our little jail break. YPD and YSO have already rounded up nine of the inmates, but with eight on the loose, including Johnson, we could use some help. It is our guess that Mr. Johnson may have had a vehicle or a ride waiting for him, and he could be who-knows-where by now.”
McCain said he would do some checking out at Johnson’s place and talk to LeRoy Junior to see what he could find out. As he walked back to his truck, he saw that the young ABC reporter was now talking to a skinny man with wild, curly black hair wearing a black Adidas sweat suit and a bandana tied around his head.
“Dis is Mr. Carl Whitehead, who witnessed da escape. Tell us, what did you see dis morning?” Simon asked as he stuck a microphone into the jogger’s face.
You gotta give the kid credit, McCain thought to himself as he loaded up and headed toward Tieton.
When McCain got out to the Johnson homestead he stopped at the entrance of the dirt driveway and took it all in. The place had a look of desertion. It hadn’t been much to look at when the Johnsons were living there, but now it felt like a ghost town. There were still piles of junk here and there, along with a couple broken down cars, but it looked like no one had been home for a while. McCain recalled that when he and Hargraves had showed up the day they had arrested the Johnsons, he’d had to kick a whole herd of chickens out of the way just to walk up to the house. The chickens were gone. And so, evidently, was LeRoy Johnson Jr.
Dyson had told McCain to report to YSO Deputy Williams, so when he found no one around and the house basically deserted, he called Williams on his cell.
“Hey, Rifleman,” Williams said. “Tell me you’ve found Mr. Johnson?”
“No can do,” McCain said into the Bluetooth microphone. “The place is pretty much empty. They’ve even moved the chickens out. Can you check with Yakima and Kittitas County records to see if our friends own any land anywhere else around here?”
“Will do,” said Williams. “I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
With that Williams clicked off, and McCain headed back to the office.
A couple hours later McCain’s phone buzzed, and he saw Williams was calling back.
McCain answered and said, “Find anything?”
“Well, records don’t show any other properties owned by LeRoy Johnson, senior or junior. But there is a cabin up out of Cle Elum, owned by a Theodore Johnson. Now, I know there are like a million Johnsons in the state, but this Johnson’s previous driver’s license showed the same Tieton address as LeRoy one and LeRoy two.”
“Interesting. Maybe another son of LeRoy Senior, or maybe a brother?”
“Could be either,” Williams said. “But looking at his age, it most likely is another son. And by the driver’s license photo of Theodore, you can see they’ve definitely been kicked by the same mule.”
“Okay,” McCain said.
