“Well—” he started before she cut him off.
“And besides the local news people, all of sudden I’ve got calls from TV stations and reporters from Seattle and Portland. I even had a call from a reporter from TheNew York Times.”
“Wow, bad news travels fast. I won’t bug you now, but I do have a couple of thoughts and questions.”
“I’m about to go into a task force meeting. Can we talk later?”
“Sure, just call me when it works for you.” And he hung up.
He wanted to talk to Sinclair before he headed to the mountains, so he decided to wait for her call closer to home. Needing to kill a little time while staying in phone service range, he decided to go down to the river. Every now and again he’d grab Austin Meyers, and he and Jack and the kid would go do a little fishing. This was the perfect time to do so. He called the Meyers’ phone and Austin answered.
“Hi, Luke. Are you hunting for the Cascade Killer?”
“Naw, the FBI is handling that. In fact, Jack and I are going fishing on the river in a few and wanted to see if you wanted to come along?”
“Sure!” Austin said. “I’m totally bored. Let me check with my mom.”
Austin was knocking on McCain’s door ten minutes later. He had his spinning rod in his hand and an old-fashioned creel over his shoulder. He was in shorts, a Russell Wilson number 3 Seahawks t-shirt and was wearing a Boston Red Sox ball cap.
“Did you bring any food or water?” McCain asked.
“Yeah, my mom fixed a couple of peanut butter sandwiches for us, and I have a bottle of Mountain Dew.”
“Okay, well, let me grab my gear and we’ll be on our way.”
McCain knew that fishing the river during mid-morning was probably not going to be the most productive time of day, but even then he figured they’d catch a fish or two. And, because Austin’s dad lived in Arizona and didn’t get up here much after he had divorced the boy’s mother, the only time he got to go fishing was when McCain took him.
They’d fished before, and McCain had helped Austin through a hunter’s safety course in January, so he could get his hunting license this fall. And he’d gone to a few of the boy’s Pony league baseball games the past couple of months.
“You think the FBI is going to catch the killer?” Austin asked as they walked down the trail to the river.
“Yes, I do,” said McCain. “They always do. Sooner or later the person makes a mistake, and they get caught. The challenge is going to be trying to catch him before he kills any more women.”
“Yeah, I sure hope they do. Do you think they’ll want Jack to help again?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, but they could.”
When Jack heard his name, his ears perked up and he looked up at Austin.
The boy scratched Jack’s back and said, “I sure hope so. It was so cool how he tracked the bear to where that one woman was.”
“Don’t start pumping him up too much,” McCain said. “He’s already getting a big head.”
When they hit the river, Jack took off downstream, splashing and playing and drinking water from the river. McCain and Austin went upstream to the first deep hole where McCain knew the bigger trout liked to lay.
“Throw your spinner over toward those bigger rocks and let it roll down through the hole,” McCain instructed.
Austin followed the directions perfectly, and within a few seconds he was fighting a nice fat rainbow.
“Way to go! Do you want to keep it for dinner?” McCain asked.
“Let’s let it go. That way I can catch it again maybe sometime.”
“Good idea.”
As they fished along upriver, McCain and Austin talked.
“How’s your baseball team doing?” McCain asked.
“Okay. We’ve won four and lost three. I got a triple the other day.”
About then Jack came running along the edge of the water. The dog was sopping wet, and as he got to McCain and the boy, he stopped and started shaking the water off.
“HEY!” Austin yelled, holding his hands up in front of his face to try to shield it from the dog-water assault.
McCain just laughed.
“I’d sure like to have a dog like Jack someday,” Austin said as he wiped water from his arms and legs.
“Well, keep getting good grades and showing your mom you’re responsible enough to take care of a dog, and I bet she’ll let you have one. When it is time, I’ll help you find a good one.”
“That’d be cool. Maybe you can help me train him to become a tracking dog, just like Jack.”
“I’d like that. And so would Jack. How about we dig into those sandwiches?”
As they sat on a rock and ate the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they talked about dogs and girls and football. All kinds of guy stuff. And as they did, a yellow dog sat right in front of them, watching every bite they took. Austin was the first to give in. He tore off some crust to give to Jack who happily gobbled it up and waited for more.
“You are one spoiled dog,” McCain said. “If a stranger saw you acting like that, they’d think you never got fed.”
Austin just laughed and gave Jack another bite of bread.
The two fished for a while longer and then headed back to the house.
“Thanks for taking me fishing,” Austin said. “It was fun. You’ll probably have to tell my mom about the big one I caught and let go, because she might not believe me.”
“Tell her to call me. And thanks for going with me. Jack’s fun, but he’s not much for conversation. We’ll do it again
