When McCain had walked roughly three-quarters of a mile he spotted a thin, indented line in the dirt about thirty yards ahead. At first, he thought someone had ridden a mountain bike through the rocks and shrubs and trees. But as he got a closer look, the tire track was too thin to be a mountain bike. Mountain bike tires are fat so that they can go over rough ground easier. This track was more like that made by a racing bike tire.
Would anyone ride a ten-speed out through this stuff, McCain wondered. He didn’t think so. Then it dawned on him. He’d seen those tracks during hunting season. Some hunters used game carts to haul out deer or elk quarters on the thin-tired carts so they didn’t have to carry the meat on their backs. He leaned closer and could see the tread pattern in places, meaning the tracks were relatively fresh. Old tracks would have been smudged by the wind and rain.
Keeping Jack at heel, McCain followed the tracks, carefully staying to one side so as not to disturb them. As he continued, he found a few partial footprints. Wherever he found them he tied a piece of the bright pink flagging tape to the nearest bush or tree. Sometimes the tire tracks would disappear on the hardest ground or over rock, but by staying on the same general course, McCain would eventually pick the track up again.
It took him almost a half hour to cover the next mile. When the track finally ended up at the body of Maria Jimenez, McCain was saddened, but not surprised.
Evidently the vultures had just found the body because they had done very little damage. The gaping cut in the chest, on the other hand, and the bruises around the woman’s throat revealed the fatal damage done by the killer. McCain had been right. The killer was taking the heart out of the bodies before he dumped them.
McCain wasn’t a terribly religious man, but he said a prayer for this poor woman, or girl, really. Just twenty-two. A tragedy for sure. With the flagging tape he carefully circled the body in a ten-foot arc. Then, as he had done at the body found by Jack, he took his sweaty t-shirt off, and draped it over a bush as close to the body as he could in hopes that his human scent would keep the scavengers away.
He put on his jacket, told Jack to heel, and started back toward the truck, careful not to disturb any tracks. At the truck, he saw his phone had no service, so he drove back up to Manastash Ridge and called Sinclair.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I’ve found the Jimenez girl’s body.”
“What? How?”
“I need you and the sheriff and whoever else up here as soon as possible. It’s definitely the missing girl, and it was definitely done by the same guy. I think I’ve got boot tracks.”
“Tell me where you are and how to get there, and someone will be there as quickly as possible.”
He figured the YSO deputies knew how to get there, but he gave her the coordinates from his GPS unit just in case.
“I just missed him, Sara,” he said quietly. “I know it was still too late for the girl, but I was that close. I watched him drive by last night. I should have followed the lights.”
It was the first time he’d called her by her first name. She knew he was hurting when he said it.
“You couldn’t have known, Luke. We’ll talk about it later. I’ll get there as quickly as I can.”
The first deputy to arrive was Paul Garcia. He’d been at the first site the night Jack had backtracked the bear, but McCain hadn’t remembered him being at the other bodies, at least not when he had been there.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” McCain said as Garcia climbed out of his marked SUV.
“Yeah, no problem,” Garcia said. “The lady FBI agent was going to catch a ride with Williams, or maybe Stratford. She was worried her car wouldn’t make it up here. They should be here in ten.”
“Okay, we’ll wait,” McCain said.
Jack went over to Garcia who gave him a few pats on the side. “How in the hell did you find the body so quickly?” Garcia asked. “Did Jack find her?”
“No, Jack just kept me company. I spotted some turkey vultures and went in to see what they were working on. It’s a day off, and I thought what the heck, Jack needed some exercise and I wanted to do some elk scouting, so we headed up this way,” McCain said, with a little creative editing included.
“What are the odds?” Garcia asked, skeptically. “You’ve been around when every one of these bodies have been found.”
“Yeah, well, I do work up here in the mountains a lot,” McCain said. “So I seem to be around. And let me think about it. Oh yeah, that’s right, it is you guys who called me in on the other three.”
Deputy Williams arrived without Sinclair and expressed surprise that she and Stratford weren’t there already. “They were ahead of me,” he said. “They should have been here by now.”
All three men looked back down the road, like Sinclair and Stratford would just magically appear, coming their way. Garcia went to his rig and radioed Stratford, who replied a minute later, saying that they were on their way. He’d taken the wrong turn.
A few minutes later, Stratford’s SUV came bouncing up the road in a cloud of dust. Sinclair and Stratford exited the vehicle as Williams fixed Stratford with a stern look.
“How can you get lost?” Williams asked Stratford. “You’re up in this country all the time. Did you not hear the words Bald Mountain Road when the call came in?”
“Yeah, I did,” Stratford said. “But I got mixed up and turned up the Rock Creek Road.”
“It’s no big deal,”
