He drove Sinclair home and asked her if she needed anything else. She told him that she was good and then she said, “Let’s get together later.”
“That sounds good,” McCain said. “Call me when you can.”
McCain headed for home, as he had a few phone calls to take care of himself. Word had gotten around that he had figured out Stratford was the serial killer, and everyone from the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Department on down wanted to hear about it.
He was supposed to be on the clock, but McCain had called his boss and told him he’d be late. They had chatted about how the whole thing had unfolded the night before, and his boss decided he should just take the day off.
That is exactly what he was planning on doing, until he took a call from Deputy Williams.
“They found the motorcycle,” Williams said before McCain even had a chance to say hello. “It’s up at the end of Forest Service Road 1902 near Cougar Valley. He’s taken off on foot from there.”
“That’s some real wilderness up there,” McCain said.
“You know that country better than most of us,” Williams said. “Any chance you and Jack would want to come up and help us search for him?”
McCain told him he’d have to check with his bosses, but if they approved, he would be on his way.
“Better come armed,” Williams said. “We’re assuming he is.”
“Roger that,” McCain said and hung up so he could call his boss.
Twenty minutes later, outfitted in his hunting clothes and boots, with his emergency to-go pack on his back and his personal .257 Weatherby rifle slung over his shoulder, he whistled for Jack to come load up.
“Where you headed, Luke?” Austin Meyers yelled from across the street. “You going hunting?”
“Sort of,” McCain said. “I’m going to try to help catch that Cascade Killer guy.”
“Cool!” Austin said. “And Jack’s going too?”
“Yep, Jack’s going too,” McCain said.
He told Austin goodbye, jumped into his Tundra, and they headed toward the mountains.
When McCain pulled up to the end of Forest Service Road 1902 there were two sheriff’s SUVs parked there. The men were looking at the motorcycle.
McCain jumped out of the truck, followed closely by Jack. They walked over to the deputies, and Williams said, “Hey, Luke, thanks for coming. I know you’ve already had a busy twelve hours or so, but we can really use the help.”
“No problem,” McCain said. “Have you found any fresh tracks?”
“We think so,” Williams said. “We found some about the size of my boots. I remembered when you tracked me and Stratford to that body and made a comment on our boot sizes.”
Williams walked him over to where the tracks were, and McCain took a good look at them.
“Yep, these are pretty fresh,” McCain said. “And they’re the right size. Were there any other private rigs up here when you guys found the motorcycle?”
“I got up here first and spotted the bike,” Paul Garcia said. “No other rigs were here.”
“Were there any articles of clothing around the motorcycle?” McCain asked.
“Just his helmet,” Garcia said and pointed to the helmet sitting just off the road.
McCain went, grabbed his pack, loaded his emergency sleeping bag and tent and a couple more bottles of water, and set it on the ground. He then got his rifle out, put a cartridge in the breech, loaded four more in the magazine, and threw another ten rounds in the front pocket of his pack.
Williams didn’t want McCain to go by himself, so he told Garcia to gear up.
McCain wasn’t crazy about the idea of having someone else along, especially Garcia who was, at best, a little out of shape. He really didn’t need someone slowing him down.
Garcia had a small pack himself, and he had a YSO-issued .223 rifle slung over his shoulder.
“You got a day’s worth of supplies in that pack?” McCain asked Garcia.
“I’ll be fine,” the short, round deputy said.
“Give us a radio,” McCain said to Williams.
“Paul has one. You guys stay in touch.”
Williams told McCain that the state patrol was working on getting a helicopter in the air, and they would come and help with the search.
“At some point,” Williams said, “the helicopter pilot will make contact with you.”
Finally, McCain took Jack over to the helmet and let him get a good sniff. He put his arms into the shoulder straps of the pack, buckled in to the chest and waist belts, shouldered his rifle, put his binoculars over his neck, gave Jack one more good snoot full of the helmet, and then walked the dog to the track.
“Find him, boy,” McCain said, and off they went, McCain following Jack, and Garcia following McCain.
Jack had never tracked a man before, and so McCain was a bit skeptical. It was certainly worth a try, however. He figured it would be like tracking the bear that LeRoy Johnson Jr. wounded. McCain could certainly track the man by looking for and following the boot tracks, but if Jack could do it by scent, it would go so much faster.
It was a little after one o’clock in the afternoon. McCain figured Stratford had a big head start. This wasn’t going to be an easy task.
McCain had to get Jack back on the track a couple times, but after he’d corrected the dog twice, he seemed to figure out what scent it was that McCain wanted him to follow. It helped, too, that Stratford pretty much stuck to a rough horse trail that led from the end of the road to the Pacific Crest Trail. There were small trails that diverted off the main trail, and McCain would have Jack check each of those out, but usually within seconds the dog would move back to the main trail.
It seemed the only time Stratford left the trail for any distance was to go down to Crow Creek, probably for a drink of water. That told McCain a couple of things. First, Stratford was not equipped to be spending days in the
