“Wait one minute. I gotta grab one more thing, and then we can be on our way.”
“Where’s Jack?” Sinclair asked.
“He’s over at the neighbors being spoiled rotten.”
McCain ran into the house, and three minutes later he came out wearing a crimson and gray WSU t-shirt and black ball cap with a big WSU logo on it.
“Hey, you’re flying the colors, so will I.”
Sinclair just shook her head and laughed.
When they got to the campground, they found three big blue buses sitting there along with about forty people meandering around. The guides were obvious because they were already outfitted in blue personal floatation vests and helmets.
“That’s our guy, right there next to the back of the second bus,” McCain said.
Sinclair laughed again. “I know that guy. I see him working out sometimes in the evenings at my gym. He’s even asked me out.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” McCain said sarcastically. “Here I think I’ve found a possible suspect and you’re doing Zumba with him.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not a suspect,” she said. “Especially knowing what we know now. Let’s go enjoy the day and see where it leads.”
“10-4,” McCain said as he opened the truck door and headed to the rafts and Burke.
The cowboy recognized Sinclair immediately and said, “Hey, nice to see you out here. Glad the game warden brought you along. You ready for some fun?”
“Sure am,” Sinclair said. “I guess I never asked you what you did for a living when we talked at the gym. This is a cool job.”
“It’s fun, you meet lots of great people, and I’m outdoors, where I want to be. But the pay’s not great.”
“Well, it definitely beats sitting behind a desk staring at a computer all day.”
“If you guys are ready, let’s load up.”
McCain and Sinclair headed to the bus. Burke just stood and stared at Sinclair and smiled.
Chapter 23
The heat was insufferable. The killer was burning up. He had to do something. He was having the nightmares again. He had to make them stop.
She was beautiful in his dreams. Tall, pretty, with long black hair. He could still remember exactly how she looked the last time he saw her. Before she left him with those terrible people. He was only five years old, but he remembered that day like it was yesterday. As he would for the rest of his life.
She broke his heart. Tore it out really, is what she did. How could his mother, someone he had loved so much, the person who was supposed to protect him and love him, do that to him? He couldn’t understand it.
He’d gotten revenge for the beatings. The man and the woman, who his mother said were relatives, got what was coming to them. How could he be related to such horrible people? He would never believe that.
He’d only been fifteen at the time, when he did what he had to do.
After they had passed out from another night of drinking, he zip-tied their wrists and ankles and shoved dirty underwear and socks in their mouths. Then he waited until they woke up. He still remembers looking into their eyes when they saw what he was doing. They squirmed and made plenty of sounds, but the filthy gags kept them muffled. They could do nothing but watch.
He turned on the gas to the stove but didn’t light it. The gas slowly seeped into the old, rundown house until it hit the candle he had lit in the old utility room where they made him sleep. He was a quarter mile away when the house exploded. He thought about the two people who were inside. He hoped they were awake to feel the heat. And to feel their bodies burning. It would be like that for them for the rest of eternity, because if there was anybody who deserved to burn in hell, it was them.
He stood in the black of night, the darkest night of the month, and watched the flames. It was the night of the new moon. The perfect night to watch the house burn to the ground.
No firetrucks came. No police came. No neighbors came. No one seemed to notice the house, and the horrible people who lived inside were gone. No one cared. He’d done the world a favor.
And on that night he promised himself that he would find his mother. And he would make her pay for what she had done to him. He would make her feel the pain. He would make her know what it is like to have your heart ripped from your chest.
The heat was rising. A new moon was coming. He had to do something. He had to make the nightmares stop.
It was three days before the new moon. McCain made a mental note of the date, and as the day drew closer his concern grew about what the killer might do next. From the past abductions and killings, the killer had taken the women the day before the new moon, seemingly at night, killed them by strangulation at some point in the next twenty-four hours, and then dumped them on the night of the new moon.
McCain believed the killer would most likely grab the woman on Friday night, the night before the next new moon. McCain and Sinclair had discussed the possibility that if the killer were to strike again, it could happen that night.
“Just for the heck of it, I’m going to keep an eye on Burke,” she said.
“Good idea,” McCain said. “Jack and I are going to my neighbor kid’s football game.”
McCain had been down at the county courthouse as a possible witness in an illegal fish-selling case, but just before the trial was to start, the attorneys struck a deal. That was just fine with him. With no trial he headed to his office. When he got there, he turned on his computer and checked his emails. First up was a reply from the sheriff in Colorado. It turned
