As he prepared to make the hike back to the truck, McCain pulled out his phone, took several photos of the body and the surrounding area, and then he took off his coat and his shirt and stripped off his cotton undershirt. He draped the undershirt over the bush closest to the body. Then he took a few steps away and urinated in several spots.
It would be tomorrow morning before the crime scene people could get up here, and the last thing he needed was for some other animals, maybe another bear, or more likely a coyote or two, to come in and make more of a mess of what was left of the body. The undershirt would definitely smell like man, based on the day he had had, and the urine should also help keep the critters away. He had done this several times before when he had to leave elk or deer meat overnight in the woods.
McCain put his shirt and coat on, pulled his pack over his shoulders and started for the truck.
“Hold on, Jack,” he said to the dog as he started to move out ahead of him. He’d almost forgotten to make a waypoint of the body site in his GPS. He knew he could find the spot again, but just for safety’s sake, he got the waypoint marked. If by some chance he wasn’t able to come back and lead the crime scene team in tomorrow, they’d have the waypoints that they could follow.
“Now we can go,” he said to the yellow dog, and off they went into the night.
Chapter 3
The next morning, as McCain and Jack returned home after guiding the crime team to the body, Austin Meyers was the first one to meet them in his driveway.
“So, now can you tell me what happened?” the youngster asked. “Did Jack help you find a hurt animal?”
“Well, Jack did help, but it wasn’t a hurt animal he found,” McCain explained. “It was the body of a dead woman, who had been partially eaten by a bear.”
“Really?” Austin asked. “And Jack found her? Cool.”
“He didn’t actually track the woman,” said McCain. “He tracked the bear backwards from where it had been shot by a hunter. But it would have taken a lot longer to find her without Jack.”
Austin was kneeling down next to the yellow dog, and after hearing what Jack had done, he gave the dog a big hug and said, “Wow, you’re a hero, Jack. You deserve a treat.” And with that, boy and dog were sprinting to the Meyers’ house for a cookie or some other sweet Jack didn’t need.
“Oh, I see how you are,” McCain said to Jack as he ran away with the boy.
As the days went by, officials were considering the death “questionable” but weren’t coming right out and saying it was a homicide. Unlikely as it was, it still could have been an accident. They just didn’t know.
McCain continued his normal duties, like checking on anglers fishing in the area ponds and lakes. Late April was one of the busiest times for fishing in the region. The local WDFW fish hatchery crews were stocking trout in all the local lakes, and anglers were going after them with a fever. He wrote a few citations to anglers for fishing without a current license, or for keeping more fish than the daily regulations allowed.
The spring turkey hunting season had opened on April 15. There were a few wild turkeys in the region, so he tried to check on the turkey hunters when he could, just to make sure everyone was legally licensed and had taken only birds with a visible beard. He talked to a few hunters, but only checked two who had actually killed a turkey.
One day McCain was working up in the Wenas Valley, in the Wenatchee National Forest to the northwest of Yakima, checking on any turkey hunters who might be in the area. As he drove up the forest service road, he met a car coming down. The driver wasn’t in camo clothing, he was driving a silver 90s-era Honda, and he just didn’t look like a hunter, which made McCain wonder for a half-second what the guy was doing up there.
McCain slowed and pulled off the one-lane road to let the car pass. He thought the driver might stop and chat for a moment, but he didn’t. He just waved and motored right on by. McCain thought about turning around and running the guy down, but he really had no reason to do that, so he let it go and continued up the pothole-filled dirt road, looking for the rare turkey hunter.
Higher up, McCain found a hunter just getting back to his truck. Dressed in camo clothing from head to toe, the man, who was in good shape for someone who looked to be in his 70s, was obviously a turkey hunter. McCain pulled in and climbed out of the truck.
“How you doing?” he asked the hunter.
“I’ve been better,” the man said. “I just missed the biggest tom of my life! Right over there.”
“Sorry to hear that. Do you hunt up in this area often?”
“Not much, no. I usually hunt up by Colville, but I live in Yakima and didn’t have time to drive up north to hunt, so decided to try up here today. I came in last night right at sundown and heard a couple of gobblers and figured I was in the chips. And it worked too. I called him right in. Well, after trying to get ahead of him most of the morning, I called him right in.”
“Not many turkeys up in this neck of the woods,” McCain said. “You’re lucky to have found some.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the hunter said.
McCain asked to see his license, which
