“Sure enough, the dentals matched,” Sinclair said.
“I assume she was Caucasian?” McCain asked.
Sinclair told him she was and said the best the local police could tell, the young lady had gone missing on Halloween. She worked at a coffee stand in Enumclaw and was supposed to be home at around 11:30 p.m., after her shift Halloween night. Her roommate didn’t think anything about Miller not coming home that night, because as the roommate said in the interview, ‘I’m not calling her a slut or anything, but she didn’t have a problem with hooking up with random guys now and again. Since it was Halloween, I just assumed she went and partied with some other friends and didn’t come home. I don’t keep track of her that much.’
“When she’d missed work two days in a row, her boss called the local cops,” Sinclair said.
“You got her photo, I assume?” McCain asked.
“Yep,” Sinclair said. “Definitely could be related to the other two. It is kind of scary how much they look alike.”
McCain didn’t say anything, but if Sinclair had just a little longer hair, and you looked at her from the right angle, she could definitely fit the profile too.
“So what next?” McCain asked.
“Well, now that we have the ID and a photo, we’re forming a task force,” she said. “It’s going to get crazy real fast here in about twenty minutes. We’re going to release the name and the photo to the media and we’re going to shift into high gear.”
“It might take a bit for the local TV reporters to put two and two together, but my guess is one of the local newspaper writers will figure out the serial killer angle pretty quickly. And once the TV folks read about it in the newspaper, they’ll be all over it like a fat kid on a Twinkie.”
“Yeah, we’re preparing for all that,” Sinclair said.
“Who’s on the task force?” McCain asked.
“A forensics guy from the State Patrol in Olympia, YSO deputies Williams and Stratford, plus a detective from the Yakama Nation, and a couple detectives from the YPD. I have asked for you to be added, but I guess that’s gotta go up through about eleven people in the department, and it sounds like it’s a longshot.”
“Well, it was nice of you to ask anyway. I don’t mind staying off to the side. Sometimes you can fly under the radar and get a bit more done that way.”
“As long we stay in close contact,” Sinclair said. “I’m happy to share what we learn, as long as you do the same. I’ve appreciated all your thoughts on this one.”
The next morning the headline in the Yakima Herald-Republic read: “CASCADE KILLER ON THE LOOSE” with the subhead: “POSSIBLE SERIAL KILLER DUMPING BODIES IN THE MOUNTAINS WEST OF YAKIMA.”
“Here we go,” McCain said to Jack when he read the story. “Sinclair was right. It’s about to get crazy real fast.”
Jack just looked at McCain, wagged his tail about three times, and then lay back down to sleep.
The newspaper reporter had, in fact, put two and two together. It was the same reporter who had done several stories on the missing and murdered women on the Yakama Reservation. Because the reporter had worked with Sinclair on some of those stories, she had a direct line to the FBI agent.
In the story, Sinclair was quoted as saying that unfortunately, yes, they were most likely looking at one person as the killer, who seemed to be profiling women of a certain stature and hair color. The paper had printed the photos of the three murdered women, and anyone with one working eyeball could see what the stature and hair color was.
McCain figured within about three days every drug store in the county would be sold out of Miss Clairol dye-your-hair-at-home coloring kits in every color except black.
There was a large and growing population of Latinos living throughout Central Washington. Most could trace their roots to the state of Michoacán in southern Mexico, where their parents, or maybe grandparents, had been born before migrating to the United States in search of a better life.
Many of the families had found agricultural work in California, or in Texas, and as the years had gone by, they migrated north into the agricultural areas of Yakima and Wenatchee, where there was a huge need for workers in the orchards. The people found year-round jobs, pruning in the winter, thinning in the spring, and picking during the summer and fall, or else working in the many packing houses in the area where they sorted and packed apples virtually year round.
While some would go back to Mexico during the cold winters, most just stayed and continued to work. The fruit growers and warehouse operators were extremely glad to have such a hardworking supply of labor, as they would have had difficulty growing, harvesting, packing and shipping the fruit without them. Now, some 40,000 residents of the county had Hispanic surnames. And the vast majority of Hispanic women had black hair.
McCain wondered how law enforcement was ever going to protect such a huge number of potential victims. For one unfortunate woman of Mexican heritage, it was too late.
Two days later there was a story in the paper about a missing Sunnyside woman. According to Yakima Police, the twenty-two-year-old woman, Maria Jimenez, was taking summer classes at Yakima Valley College and was last seen about 7:30 at the YVC library. There was a picture of Jimenez accompanying the short story, with the police asking if anyone were to see her, to contact them.
As soon as he saw the photo, McCain called Sinclair.
“So, are your thinking this Jimenez woman might be another victim of the killer?” he asked when she answered.
“We’re taking a good look at it,” Sinclair explained. “I’ve talked to
