“Holy shit,” Davis said. “It’s a human skull. And there are more bones here too.”
One of the other club members, Del Newman, was a volunteer sheriff’s deputy, so he took over.
“We need to get word down to the sheriff’s office right away,” Newman said. “And we need to stay away from the skull and bones. Davis and I will ride back down to the corrals. You guys can continue up to set up camp. We’ll come join you as soon as we can.”
McCain was at Clear Lake, just up the road from the corrals, when he heard the call. Dispatch knew his location, and because he was the closest law enforcement officer in the area, they asked if he’d run over and talk to a couple horse riders who claimed to have found a human skull.
It took him only seven minutes to get down the hill to the corrals. As he pulled up, he saw a couple men standing next to horses tied to the top rail of a fence. He told Jack to stay and jumped out to chat with the men.
“Hey, Luke,” the older man said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
McCain knew Newman because he had purchased his personal truck from him a year ago. Besides being a volunteer deputy, Newman was the sales manager at the local Toyota dealership.
“Hey, Del,” McCain said. “So, what’s going on here?”
Newman introduced McCain to Davis, and then the two horsemen told McCain the story of finding the skull and bones.
“How far up the trail is it?” McCain asked.
He’d been up the trail on foot a couple of times over the years, once to check on a potential elk hunter who was reported to have shot a branch-antlered bull elk without the appropriate tag. And he’d helped a couple of the WDFW hatchery guys pack some cutthroat trout fry up to three of the high mountain lakes on the trail.
“I’d say it’s about two and a half miles in,” said Davis.
McCain remembered the trail. Like many that led off the highway, it was a steep climb for the first mile or so and mostly uphill the rest of the way.
“Any chance there’s another mount around here I could use to get up there?” McCain asked the men.
“I’m guessing they’d have a horse that you could use around here somewhere,” Newman said. “Let’s see if we can find Mr. Patterson.”
The Pattersons ran the Indian Creek Corrals and rented horses to folks during the summer for horse-packing trips and day rides. In the fall they hired out to pack hunters into the backcountry. Twenty minutes later, Ray Patterson, proprietor of the outfit, had a horse saddled and ready to go for McCain.
“You might get another horse ready, Mr. Patterson,” McCain said. “There’s a sheriff’s deputy on his way from Yakima right now, and he’ll need to get up there too.”
“Will do,” Patterson said.
With that McCain hoisted himself up into the saddle, and then, after Patterson adjusted his stirrups, they started for the trailhead. Jack ran along with the riders, zigging and zagging through the woods, staying slightly ahead of the three horses.
McCain wasn’t an experienced horse rider, but he knew the basics. And with the gentle mare Patterson had let him ride, he had no troubles guiding her up the mountain trail to where the skull and bones were located.
“It’s right up here,” Newman said. “Let’s stop and walk from here.”
They all dismounted, and McCain called Jack.
“Sit, Jack,” he said to the dog. “Stay.”
Jack obeyed. In fact, he lay down to take a breather from the run up the hill.
McCain walked a short way up the trail with Newman, and when they reached the spot where they could see the bones, McCain told Newman to wait there while he walked down to get a closer look. There was no flesh left on any of the bones, but some were marked by yellowish-brown stains, which to McCain meant they hadn’t been exposed to the elements all that long. It had been a sunny summer so far, and the sun can bleach bones in a matter of a few weeks.
He studied the area around the bones, which were scattered in a ten-foot circle. It was his guess that not all the bones were there, probably because coyotes or other animals had packed some off. There were fresh boot tracks, which he assumed were left by Davis, but he saw an older boot print too. It was so old it could have been left by a hunter last fall, but still he made a note of it. He also found strands of long black hair caught on a ceanothus bush farther down the hill.
“Damn,” McCain said to himself as he swatted at a swarm of mosquitoes that had magically appeared.
He turned and headed back up the hill to the men and horses.
“I need to get back down to the corrals as quickly as possible,” McCain declared as he smacked a mosquito on his neck. “I sure appreciate your help, but if you guys want to catch up with your group, you can go ahead.”
The men climbed back on their mounts and headed up the hill while McCain and Jack headed back down the trail. McCain needed to reach Agent Sinclair as quickly as possible. When he returned to the corrals, he hustled over to his truck and radioed dispatch. He asked the dispatcher if she could patch him through to Agent Sinclair of the FBI.
“We could if we had her number,” the dispatcher replied.
Like most people nowadays, McCain didn’t know anyone’s phone number. They were all programed into his phone, not in his head, so he had to check his phone contacts to find Sinclair’s number. He found it and gave it to the dispatcher.
“Sending you through now,” the dispatcher said.
McCain heard a phone ringing and then Sinclair’s voice saying, “Hello, you’ve reached Agent Sinclair. I’m not available right now. If you leave a number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Hey, it’s
