“Which way did he go after he left the hardware store?” McCain asked.
“West. I thought about following him, but Frank told me not to. He said you’d be ticked.”
“Yeah, it’s probably a good idea to steer clear of the guy. Besides, he’s done nothing wrong that we know of. He’s probably just fixing up a cabin or something near Rimrock. I’ve seen him up that way a couple of times.”
“Okay, but just thought you’d like to know. Say, those chicken strips look good. I think I’ll order me some.”
After lunch McCain made his checks on the anglers up the Tieton. While stopped to talk to a man and his daughter fishing off the bank, he looked into the trees across the river and noticed a small gray box affixed to one of the cottonwood tree trunks. It took him a second, but then he realized he was looking at a digital trail camera. Hunters around the country had been purchasing them by the thousands and placing them on trees and fence posts and all sorts of other things to keep track of deer, elk, and other wildlife. The cameras were quiet, and the newer ones didn’t even need a flash to catch the animals at night. Some even shot in video. They were triggered by movement, and most held the photos on a SIM card. The really fancy ones could be hooked up to smart phones and would transfer the photos to a computer or tablet, almost in real time. In a way, McCain thought, it was a bit unfair. Technology had slipped into the outdoor world, and hunters were using it everywhere.
On the way back to town he started thinking about the trail cameras. What if some hunter had one of those cameras up in the mountains where it might have taken a photo of the killer packing one of the dead women to be dropped? Or perhaps someone’s home security cameras near the Bald Mountain turn-off or along the Wenas Road might have recorded the vehicles going by on the nights the women disappeared? It was long shot, but he would mention it to Sinclair when they met.
When he arrived at her office, Sinclair’s big black Chrysler wasn’t there, so he sat in his truck and did a little research on trail cameras on his phone. He was totally involved in what he was reading when there was a tap on his window. He jumped in surprise.
Agent Sinclair, standing there dressed in her FBI work attire of black slacks, white blouse, and black boots, was laughing.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Thanks for meeting me.”
“My pleasure,” McCain said. “I’ve been thinking about this killer thing all afternoon. And I have some thoughts.”
When they got into Sinclair’s office, she told him the crime lab had come around and now believed the thin tire track McCain had found was from a game cart. The problem was, from what they could tell, several of the manufacturers used the same tire on all their carts. So, trying to find purchasers of one particular cart was going to be next to impossible. The crime lab people had also analyzed the boot imprints near the cart track and couldn’t determine a make of boot or shoe. But based on the partial prints they believed the shoe size was 12 or 13.
Sinclair said a search of Jimenez’s body and clothing for anything that might carry DNA of the killer was negative. She said that they had not yet found Jimenez’s car. Not that it would do much good other than possibly giving an idea where the abduction had taken place. If they knew that, they could ask locals if they had seen anything the night before the new moon.
“We have the analysis from our profiler, some professor at Dartmouth,” Sinclair said. “She believes it is a white male, age twenty-five to forty-five, who has some serious issues with women.”
“Really,” McCain said. “I could have told you that. That fits about every serial killer in the history of the world.”
“I know,” Sinclair said. “She’s still baffled by the removal of the heart, but thinks it relates to unrequited love.”
“I guess I should be a professor someplace,” McCain said.
Sinclair went on to tell him that Colorado had come through with a couple of missing women that fit the profile—young, fit, long black hair. Both of them, she said, had just disappeared.
“They pulled a David Copperfield, is how the sheriff in Moffat County put it,” she explained. “That’s where the two women went missing. Both were normal people, working in good jobs, seemingly happy with life.”
“Did you get the dates when they went missing?” McCain asked.
“Yes, a little over a year ago, about a month apart,” Sinclair said.
“And did you put those dates to the moon phases?” McCain asked.
“No!” she said. “I didn’t think about that.”
She grabbed the dates off the email she had on her phone from the Colorado sheriff, and McCain brought up the moon phase chart.
“There you go. A perfect match to the new moon, for both of them,” he said. “It’s gotta be the same person.”
“So, if we can find someone who worked and lived in that part of Colorado a year ago, we might have something,” she said.
“Yep, and if he’s a white guy, twenty-five to forty-five, with big feet, who hates women with black hair and is fit enough to pack a 120-pound body up a trail, boom, we got our guy.”
“Don’t forget, he owns a game cart,” she said.
“I can name you about eleven guys off the top of my head that fit that, including Deputies Stratford and Williams,” McCain said. “Well, except for the Colorado part, and the hating women with long black hair. And Williams might be a bit older than forty-five.”
Sinclair said they were still running down calls from people who thought their neighbor, or brother-in-law, or boss was the killer, but so far nothing had even come close to panning out.
McCain told
