As one of the biologists droned on about something, McCain wondered how Sinclair was doing with Williams up on the mountain. Was she an experienced rider? And, although he thought he knew the answer to the question, he wondered if Williams had tried riding another horse up the trail. He replayed the whole bucking bronc show from the day before and started to chuckle. It was about then he heard his name.
“McCain? McCain?” the woman’s voice asked. “Did you hear my question?”
Damn, McCain thought. It was Andrea Parker, the head fish biologist for Region 3. She and McCain had a little history. About a year after he’d moved back to Yakima, she had taken a shining to him, and they had dated a few times. She was a pretty woman, very smart and very nice, but there just never were any sparks. At least there weren’t any for him. Evidently, she had felt a little differently, and when he told Parker that he didn’t think the relationship was worth pursuing, she didn’t take it too well. He wanted to scream, “Get over it” at her so many times. It had been almost eight years for crying out loud! But he had always just smiled when she tried to get under his skin.
“I did hear your question, Andrea,” McCain said. “But once again you are asking the wrong person.”
If he remembered correctly, she was talking about bull trout in the Little Naches River before he had zoned out. In these meetings she almost always was.
The bull trout was now listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and one of the jobs the WDFW police officers were being pushed to do was to keep a close eye on anglers fishing in waters where the bull trout lived and spawned.
The average angler barely knew a walleye from a bass, so to them a trout was a trout. If they caught a bull trout, about 90% of them would bonk the thing on the head and cook it over the fire in a skillet with fried potatoes and onions. He’d told Andrea that one time, and she got this horrible look on her face, like she’d just been told someone was killing starving children in India. If she and the other fish biologists had their say on what the enforcement officers did, they would be watching the rivers for bull trout poachers 24-7.
When McCain was a kid, everyone called bull trout “dolly varden,” and you could go up to some holes on the Tieton and Naches Rivers and catch a whole creel full of the things. The biologists back in the day thought of them as scrap fish. Bull trout are veracious feeders, and all you had to do was run a Mepps or Rooster Tail spinner in front of them and it was fish on. They were big fish too. The state record bull trout was caught out of the Tieton River, right below Rimrock Dam back in 1961. The fish weighed twenty-two pounds, eight ounces.
Of course, that was way before the biologists determined that bull trout numbers were threatened. Some people, including Andrea Parker, had spent their entire careers on one small watershed, working to bring the bull trout population back up to acceptable numbers.
McCain thought it was admirable of her to be so passionate about one fish species, but if you talked to the average person around the area, they really couldn’t care less. But someone had to do it, McCain knew, and she was the perfect woman for the job.
“You need to talk to Hargraves about that,” McCain said, throwing poor old Stan directly under the bus.
If looks could kill, McCain would be dead, because Hargraves was staring daggers at him.
When the meetings finally ended, primarily because it was lunch time, and most of the workers there required “a duty-free lunch hour,” McCain went over to Hargraves and told him he owed him one.
“You’re damn right you do,” Hargraves said and left it at that.
Chapter 12
He was finally headed back out into the field at two o’clock. He jumped in his truck, turned on the engine and checked the outside thermometer. It showed ninety-six degrees. During some Julys and Augusts in Central Washington, the high temperatures would top ninety degrees every day for weeks on end. On the hot days, when McCain kept the dog at home, Jack lounged around inside the house because it was air conditioned. McCain figured it would do the dog good to get outside, so he swung in and picked him up on the way up Highway 12 to do some checks on anglers on the river and a few of the lakes.
It was the third of July, and the campgrounds along the rivers were filled with people from all over the state. Travel trailers were parked next to tent trailers parked next to motor homes. And in between there were tents of all colors and sizes. Many campers just liked being out of town, hanging around a campfire, enjoying a hot dog cooked over the fire and a cold beer.
Some liked to fish on their camping outings, although many would opt to do so without purchasing a fishing license. Why spend the money on a license if it was only going to be used once or twice? So it was a busy time for McCain, checking to see if everyone was fishing legally. And heaven forbid if someone had caught and killed a bull trout. Andrea Parker would want them hung up by their thumbs.
As he was driving through Naches he looked over at the café and saw Jim Kingsbury’s truck parked out front. McCain slowed and turned in. He wanted to ask the man a couple questions.
He parked, left the truck running with the
