“And he never lived in Colorado,” Sinclair said.
“Not that I could find,” McCain said. “The other thing I noticed about Stratford is how he acted around the dead bodies. He was at two of the recovery sites, and he acted like he could care less. He didn’t look at the remains, said he was squeamish, and when you showed up at the body of the Alverez woman, he made some smart remark about what you were going to find there. Like he already knew you’d find nothing.”
McCain also told her about running into the deputy at the mini-mart in Naches, after he’d stayed on the ridge and watched a rig go up to where he had found the Jimenez woman.
“And that whole deal with him getting lost when you were with him coming up to the site,” McCain said. “I believe that was all on purpose.”
“Well, we know who he is now,” she said as she climbed into the passenger seat of McCain’s truck. “We just have to find him.”
They drove to Sinclair’s house, so she could get a few items for an overnight stay with McCain. He went with her into the house and waited for her on the couch.
“Thanks for doing this,” she said when she returned with a small duffle. “I’d probably be fine here, but it will be good to have a little company.”
As they were leaving, just for the heck of it, McCain took a swing around a couple of the blocks near Sinclair’s house. There, parked on one of the side streets, was Stratford’s county sheriff’s SUV.
“I’ll call it in,” said Sinclair. “If that is the vehicle he used to haul any of the other women, there might be some DNA evidence in there.”
“You know,” McCain said. “If he used his sheriff’s rig to pull over the women in their cars, they’d have trusted him and followed orders if he asked them to get out. And anyone passing by would pay no attention to just another motorist getting stopped by the cops.”
Stratford was glad he had planned for a possible escape. How the hell had McCain figured out it was him? He knew he hadn’t been followed. Somehow, McCain knew. But how?
He’d purchased the Triumph Tiger 800 just for this purpose. The bike was a great off-road motorcycle but had the power to go as fast as needed on the highway. He had ridden the trail many times during daylight, and now he knew exactly where he was going, even by the small headlight.
The trail led to an irrigation canal, which had a dirt service road along it. When he hit the service road he took it to a paved road that fed into another paved road that ran along the Yakima River until it hit I-82 heading north and west.
He knew every police agency in the state would be looking for him, so his plan was to head for the mountains, ditch the bike and hike the Pacific Crest Trail south into Oregon. He’d hike it all the way to Mexico if he had to.
He rode for a couple miles on the freeway and jumped off on the second exit to Selah. That would get him on the road up into the Wenas, then into the Norse Peak Wilderness where he would eventually cut the top of the Cascades and the Pacific Crest Trail.
As he rode, he felt the cool evening air blowing against him and he felt free. He wondered how long that feeling would last.
Chapter 26
McCain had given Sinclair the option of sleeping in his room or in a guest room with a bed that was only slightly better than sleeping on the floor according to a couple of guests. She had opted for the guest room, and after sitting and talking with McCain until almost two o’clock in the morning, she went in and immediately fell asleep.
“How was it?” McCain asked when she wandered out into the kitchen a few hours later.
“Actually, it wasn’t bad,” Sinclair said. “I was so emotionally exhausted I could have slept out in your driveway.”
He poured her a cup of coffee, and she checked her phone. Evidently the whole world wanted to speak to her because she had thirty-one missed calls.
“Good thing you put it on silent,” McCain said. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, I see about half of these calls are from my boss,” she said. “Maybe they caught Stratford and we can put this whole thing to bed. I’ll call him now and see what’s going on.”
After a lengthy conversation with her boss, Sinclair hung up and turned to McCain. She told him they didn’t have Stratford but thought they knew where he was heading. The FBI had received reports from people in Selah and out in the Wenas of a motorcycle rider racing through that country a short time after Stratford fled. Sinclair said the sheriff’s deputies had checked with all the motorcycle shops in the area and found out Stratford purchased a hot Triumph bike, built for both highway and off-road riding. They had the license number of the bike and were looking for it, and him.
“The only reason he would ride that way is if he was headed into the Cascades,” McCain said. “He seems to feel like he knows that country.”
“According to my boss, every available sheriff’s deputy in two counties is up that way searching for him,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked. “What are you going to do?”
“Well, if I can get you to give me a lift home, I’m going to stand in a shower until the hot water runs out. Then I need to answer some of these other calls,” she said. “The office is bringing me a new car.”
“I hope it’s not as big and ugly as the last one,” McCain
