“I caught the salmon with my own two hands,” he said. “It’s my favorite fish to catch and to eat.”
“You won’t get any argument from me. I guess I can add one more quality to your list. Looks, good job, kinda funny, and you can cook. Why aren’t the ladies beating your door down?”
“Don’t get too excited. Salmon’s about the only thing I can make that tastes good. And, I think you could cook a spring salmon in the dishwasher, and it would eat just fine. Sorry, I don’t have any dessert.”
“No problem. I really need to get going. Tomorrow is going to be another crazy day, now that you’ve found the Jimenez girl.”
McCain and Jack stood on the porch and watched her drive away.
“I really would like to get to know her better,” he said to the yellow dog before turning in to clean up the dishes.
Chapter 18
The killer was amazed the body of the girl had been found so quickly. Someone had been very lucky. Still, it was scary to think that the idiots would have been there just hours after he had set the woman free. He had always had the help of the elements to cover his tire tracks and footprints. He had used the game cart a couple times before, when the terrain allowed, and because it was a quicker way to get in and out of where he had let her go.
There was no word about the white car he dumped by the river. That was good. They wouldn’t find it until fall, if at all. Not that he was worried about that because he had wiped down the car inside and out.
They also knew now about the heart. Again, that didn’t matter. So what? He removed the bitches’ hearts. What did that tell anyone?
Still, it was a close call. The closest yet. He would have to be a little more careful from now on.
He would wait. If he could. Until the heat and anger rose up in him again. At that point he could make no promises.
It had been three days since McCain found the body, and the media was going bonkers over it. A fourth body in the killing spree that even the national news was now calling the Cascade Killer. McCain had seen Sinclair interviewed on TV a couple of times, and the Yakima Herald-Republic had run a series of in-depth stories about the four victims, including a timeline of when they disappeared and a map of where their bodies had been located
Luckily for McCain, Sinclair had kept his name out of the news as the person who had discovered the body. She told reporters that a hiker had seen the vultures and went to see what they were circling over. The next time he talked to her he would have to thank her for that.
Maria Jimenez had been positively identified by her sister after her body had arrived at the county morgue. Later the coroner would announce that she had been strangled to death. There was no evidence of a sexual attack. The only other physical evidence was the bruising on the left side of her face. The woman had been hit prior to being killed, the coroner reported.
The crime scene crew had taken plaster imprints of the tire tracks and the few partial shoe tracks that McCain had found. They weren’t quite ready to say the tire tracks came from a game cart, but McCain was positive they were. He’d seen too many on his checks of hunters over the years. When they did determine that it was a game cart, maybe then they could figure out who manufactured it based on the details of the track. That might lead them to some purchase records if the cart was bought direct from the factory or through some online store.
The investigation was moving along, but at glacial speed, McCain thought. The killer was either very smart or very lucky. Probably both.
On the following Monday, McCain decided it was about time to follow up on the Johnson boys. It was his experience that arresting poachers for one offense rarely stopped them from breaking the game laws again. The police arrest records were full of people who habitually took game and fish out of season.
With the tables in the Yakima County Jail now securely bolted to the floor, LeRoy Johnson Sr. seemed to be firmly incarcerated. LeRoy Junior and his brother Theodore, on the other hand, were out in the world, most likely causing trouble. The brothers struck McCain as the types who might enjoy doing a little hunting out of season.
The Johnsons’ house in Tieton was closer than Teddy Johnson’s Cle Elum cabin, so McCain ran up to the old man’s place first. He slowed as he approached the driveway. Surprisingly, the house was a regular beehive of activity. The flock of chickens was back, with birds scratching and pecking everywhere. McCain saw Junior’s Chevy and Teddy’s Dodge sitting in the gravel driveway.
A couple half-breed dogs were tied by a length of chain to two trees next to the house. They both strained at the chains, barking at the chickens. Or more likely, McCain thought, they were just barking to hear their heads rattle. It always amazed him how people could just let their dogs bark incessantly. Didn’t it get on their nerves? Even trying to watch television, listening to the dogs bark in the background would drive him nuts.
There was nobody outside, so he decided to cruise up the driveway and see if anyone popped their head outside. Sure enough, he had barely stopped when LeRoy Junior stepped out on the porch. McCain saw him turn and say something to someone inside, and a second later a thinner version of the younger Johnson stepped out. Williams had been right. They were definitely kicked by the same mule.
The brothers were the same height, had the same round face, and had the same
