“These two assholes started making lewd remarks to my wife,” said a man in a green tank top with a bandana tied around his head.
“Yeah,” the mad woman said. She was wearing a matching green tank top, her auburn hair tied up in a bun.
“Okay, here is what we are going to do,” McCain said. “You two,” he pointed to the two trout fishermen from the pond the day before, “are going to go over and stand by my truck.”
“And you two,” he pointed to the man and woman in the matching tank tops, “are going to go over there and stand by the outhouse.”
At that the woman made a puking noise and said, “Really? That thing stinks like shit. Even the flies won’t go near it.”
“Go,” he said and pointed. To the mob he said, “And the rest of you go on back to your campsites. Now, whoever called this in said someone had a gun. If I even think I see a gun, I am going to arrest the whole campground, and you’ll all be in lockup in Yakima until Labor Day. So don’t push it.”
He took a look around and saw an older gentleman sitting in a lawn chair, watching the lively discussion while he enjoyed a beer next to a tent trailer. McCain walked over to him.
“I’m guessing you’re a neutral party in whatever this is,” McCain said to the man. “Can you tell me what happened?”
The man told McCain he hadn’t heard the two guys who were standing by his truck say anything, but they might have laughed or made a face or something when the woman had walked by. He said he thought the gal in the green shirt had maybe had one too many beers and was kind of parading around like Miss America. He guessed she didn’t like the way those guys looked at her or laughed or whatever.
“She disappeared,” he explained. “And all of sudden here comes her biker-wannabe-husband, looking for a fight.”
“Okay, thanks,” McCain said to the man. “Appreciate it.”
He then went over to the two trout fishermen, who basically told the same story, leaving out the part about maybe laughing at the gal.
“She’s just drunk,” the shorter guy said.
“Okay, where is your camp?” McCain asked.
The two men pointed to a big green Cabela’s tent pitched under a tall pine tree close to the river.
“Stay here a minute longer,” McCain said. He walked over to the couple in the matching tank tops and said to the woman, “Tell me what happened.”
“Those bastards started insulting my wife,” the man in the bandana said.
“I didn’t ask you what happened,” McCain said to the man. “I asked your wife.”
“I wassh getting bored and show I deshided to go for a walk,” she said slurring some of her words. “And thosh two assholes called me a prositu . . . a prosute . . . a whore.”
“Where’s your camp?” he asked the husband.
He pointed to the other end of the campground, about four hundred yards away, and said, “The white and blue trailer.”
McCain told them to go back to their trailer and, talking directly to the lady, told them to take a little nap so they’d be wide awake when the fireworks started. He told them to stay at their end of the campground. And he gave them a stern warning that if he had to come back here again, people WERE going to go to jail, and that the sheriffs would get it all sorted out after the three-day weekend. He told them he was going to tell the two gentlemen over there the same thing.
“Gentlemen, my ash,” the woman said under her beer-tainted breath.
“If you really want to spend your holiday in jail, just try me,” McCain said.
He went and gave the two trout fishermen the same speech. They assured him they hadn’t done or said a thing and promised to stay away from the drunken lady and her “mouth-breathing husband.”
As McCain was walking back toward his truck a slight breeze blew by and he about gagged. The woman was right about one thing: the outhouse definitely stunk like shit. He looked around for Jack who had conveniently disappeared during McCain’s speech to the campers and found him sitting right smack dab in front of a fat man sitting backwards on a picnic table bench. Jack was staring up longingly as the oversized man ate a foot-long hotdog, all slathered in mustard. McCain whistled for the dog, and Jack came on the run.
“I think you were wishful thinking there, bud,” McCain said to Jack. “Come on, it’s too damned hot out here to be dealing with all of this.”
McCain followed Jack into the truck, fired it up and turned the AC on high. As they waited for the fan to blow cold McCain looked in the rearview mirror and saw an older silver Honda pass by on the highway. The car had gone by so quickly McCain hadn’t gotten a good look at the driver, but he decided it was worth checking out. He jumped out ahead of a couple other rigs coming up the highway and kicked the Ford in the butt.
He didn’t want to push the car, just get close enough to see who was driving. When he could read the license plate, he saw it had the same three first letters of the car he’d seen in Naches. He ran the plates on his computer and the registration showed the car was owned by a Chad Burke, age twenty-nine, with a last known address in North Bend, Washington.
As they neared the unincorporated enclave of Rimrock Retreat, the Honda slowed, the left turn signal came on, and the car turned into the Trout Lodge café. McCain followed and pulled in right next to the car.
McCain left the truck running for Jack and climbed out at the same time the driver of the Honda. The man was a couple inches
