Sinclair was still there, zip-tied to the chair. She was moving her head in a motion that was telling him that Stratford was in the back. McCain stayed in a squatted position with his pistol pointed to the rear of the house and side-stepped slowly to Sinclair. He reached up and pulled the gag out of her mouth.
“He’s gone into one of those back rooms,” Sinclair whispered. Then she asked, “How did you know?”
McCain put his finger to his lips. He was listening to make sure that Stratford wasn’t coming back with a shotgun or something.
Then they both heard the motorcycle. It revved once, twice, and then it was on the move.
“Damn it,” McCain said. “He’s running.”
McCain took off toward the back of the house, Jack running right behind him. But they were too late. When he got to the back door and looked out toward the fading sound of the motorcycle, all he could see was a yellow headlight and a red taillight bouncing out through the sage brush, headed west.
Chapter 25
As soon as he saw Stratford getting away on the motorcycle McCain called 911, again. He told them Stratford was the killer, and that he was on the run on a motorcycle. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell the dispatcher what road the killer would end up on or what kind of a bike he was on.
McCain was cutting the restraints off Sinclair when the first sheriff’s deputy arrived. It was Williams.
“What in the hell is going on?” he asked.
McCain quickly told him what had happened, and Williams got on the radio and called out an APB on Stratford, riding a motorcycle, heading west toward Yakima.
McCain continued to look after Sinclair as another sheriff’s deputy and a state patrol officer joined them. A couple minutes later, an ambulance arrived.
“I don’t need an ambulance,” Sinclair said. “I need to get after that asshole.”
“You need to be checked out,” McCain said. “You said he hit you in the head hard, twice. You might have a concussion, or worse.”
“I’m fine,” she said. Jack had come over and was sitting at her side. She rubbed his ears.
“Stratford, who would have known?” Williams asked himself. “How did you know, McCain?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Not for sure. I had an inkling, but really didn’t know. I played a hunch that if it was him, he’d bring a woman here tonight. Little did I know it would be Sara.”
“Boy, am I glad you did,” Sinclair said.
The medics with the ambulance checked Sinclair’s head, dressed a couple cuts, and told her she would probably have a headache for a couple of days, but other than that she was going to be fine.
“I’d like to shoot that son of a bitch,” Sinclair said, rubbing the back of her head lightly.
“What was he screaming at you?” McCain asked. “He sounded really pissed.”
“I think he thought I was his mother,” she answered. “Sounds like he had a terrible childhood and was blaming his mother for everything. My guess is the women he killed resembled her. And I guess I do too. He said he loved her but he had to punish her.”
“Great,” said Williams. “Definitely a psycho. We better find him.”
The medics were getting their stuff together and were about to leave, but they told Sinclair she should take it easy and watch for signs of a possible concussion.
“You have someone at home who can keep an eye on you?” the medic asked.
“No, I live by myself,” she said. “But I really don’t want to go back to my house tonight.”
“You can crash with me and Jack if you want,” McCain said. “Jack can be a rude host though. Sometimes he’ll crawl right into bed with you.”
“I’d like nothing more,” Sinclair said, and gave the yellow dog a hug.
It was decided they would leave Sinclair’s car at the double wide. It was evidence in a crime, and the crime scene crew would need to come in and dust it for prints, even though they had two eyewitnesses who could identify Stratford as the man who abducted Sinclair.
Once the law enforcement officers had everything they needed from McCain and Sinclair, the two of them, along with Jack, walked slowly down the gravel road, through the orchard to where McCain’s truck was parked. As they walked, she asked McCain how he had figured it out. Again, he said he really didn’t know the Stratford was the guy. He told her about checking Burke, Stratford, and Teddy Johnson with the sheriff in Colorado to see if any of the men had lived in or near the place when the women there went missing.
“The sheriff in Colorado ran the driver’s licenses for the three men’s names,” McCain explained. “Burke was the only one living in Colorado, in a ski resort town less than an hour from where the women went missing.”
“So, Stratford didn’t live in Colorado during that time?” she asked.
“No,” McCain said. “But when I looked at the map of Colorado, I noticed the county where the women went missing was on the state line with Wyoming. I asked the sheriff to check Stratford’s name there, and sure enough, he had worked as a deputy for the sheriff’s office in Sweetwater County, Wyoming.”
“Hmmm,” Sinclair said. “What about the third man? Who is Teddy Johnson?”
“I thought it was a real longshot that he was the guy, but when I was checking on some bear poachers right after Jack and I found the Jimenez woman, he had a single wheel game cart in the back of his truck and there was fresh blood in the bed of the pickup.”
“You could have gotten a blood sample and had it checked against the woman,” she said.
“Not without a warrant,” McCain said. “And Johnson was about to shoot me as it was. We arrested him a couple days later for a list of things
