“You mean that John Krasinski guy?” McCain asked, knowing that he’d given her the wrong name.
“Kaczynski,” she corrected him. “John Krasinski is the guy who played Jim on The Office. Good thing you only have to run down poachers who escape from jail.”
McCain started laughing and told her he’d given her the wrong name to see if she’d catch it.
“Riiight,” she said.
As they were walking out to their vehicles after dinner, McCain said, “I know I’m not officially part of this investigation, but I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I’d like to help where I can.”
Sinclair thanked McCain, jumped in the black beast, and roared off into the night.
Before McCain turned his truck out of the parking lot he typed her a text: Why do Oregon Ducks eat cereal from the box? Because they choke whenever they get near a bowl.
When he awoke the next morning, there was a text waiting for him on his phone. It read: Do you know what WSU grads say to Oregon grads? You want fries with that?
Touché, McCain thought to himself.
Chapter 13
The 4th of July was going to be a hot one. Close to 100 degrees according to the Storm Chaser weather dude on the local NBC station. McCain always wondered why the big wigs at the TV station would promote their weather forecasters as storm chasers. This wasn’t Kansas or someplace with tornados tearing up trailer parks now and again. Nor was it the southeast where they were hit by a hurricane about every other week. This was Central Washington. This area had two storms a year, and those were winter storms in December or January. He figured the other ten months of the year the storm chasers were sitting on their thumbs because, besides a rain shower once in a rare while, your average third grader could look outside and tell you what the weather was. But the storm chaser name sounded good, and McCain guessed the aging viewers of the local news at six didn’t really give a crap.
He also had to laugh at the weather person at the CBS affiliate. Her name was Wendy Storm. Not Windy, but Wendy, although when she said her name it came out as Windy. Of course, the local viewers believed it to be a made-up name, but she had taken to Facebook and Instagram to assure the viewers that no, really, that was her given name.
McCain thought to get people to believe her, she should end each one of her weather forecasts by saying, “And that’s the weather, I’m Wendy Storm. I shit you not.”
All three of the weather broadcasters at the local TV stations basically said the same thing about the 4th of July. It was going to be hotter than the hubs of hell.
While most people had the day off to celebrate our country’s independence, WDFW police officers were on the clock. Many of the celebrations started early in the campgrounds and other gathering areas, and usually by the time it was dark enough for fireworks, some of the partiers were already lit. It always led to some crazy stuff.
Drunken people and illegal fireworks were always a bad combination, and McCain had spent several 4th of Julys helping to fight small brush fires, trying to keep the county from burning up. Over the years there had been a couple of squabbles that he’d had to deal with as well. Beer and hot weather had a tendency to exacerbate any conflicts amongst revelers.
The fires, of course, were all calls that the district fire departments were supposed to handle. And the fights were something the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office should be dealing with, but again, Yakima County was a big one, and anyone with a badge was put to work dealing with the issues of the holiday. So, it was no surprise when McCain heard the dispatcher call for assistance at a campground up Highway 12, not far from where he’d checked the anglers at the small lake the day before.
According to dispatch, there was a fight brewing in the campground. The lady who called in to report the altercation said she thought one of the people had a gun. McCain heard Deputy Stratford, who was patrolling the passes, respond and say he was probably thirty minutes away.
“Crap,” he said to Jack who was riding in the seat next to him. “I guess we had better go check it out.”
He jumped on the radio and told dispatch he was ten minutes away and would go have a look.
When he pulled into the campground, he saw a group of about fifteen people all in a big circle. Usually when a police rig pulls into an area where something is happening, people in the group tend to scatter. And some of them did when they saw McCain’s rig with the lights in the grill flashing red and blue, and the big badge emblem on the door. But not all of them did.
McCain opened the door, jumped out and called Jack. He scanned the group of mostly men and wasn’t surprised to see the big guy from the lake yesterday right in the middle of things. The little guy from the lake was next to him, and they seemed to be the focus of attention of several other men, and one really pissed-off woman.
“Okay,” McCain said in a loud voice. “What’s going on here?”
It helped that he was about three inches taller than anyone in the group, including the big guy, and with the hot weather, he was wearing his short sleeve duty shirt. One time when McCain was helping with a hunter’s safety class filled with twelve-year-olds, one of the kids in the class took a good long look at him and said, “Wow dude, you’re ripped.” McCain was hoping the people in this bunch were
