The Cascade Killer (Luke McCain Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2020 Rob Phillips

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  For permissions contact: [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Book design by Gray Dog Press and Kevin Breen

  Cover image derived from Adobe Stock photos

  ISBN: 978-0-9997075-8-6

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Production by Gray Dog Press

  www.graydogpress.com

  Published by

  Latah Books, Spokane, Washington

  www.latahbooks.com

  The author may be contacted at [email protected]

  The

  Cascade

  Killer

  A Luke McCain Novel

  Rob Phillips

  Dedication

  To Terri, thank you for being there beside me during this endeavor and everything else we have been through over the past forty-two years.

  And to my sons, Kyle and Kevin, thanks for being my sounding board and for all your support and encouragement during the writing of this book. It wouldn’t have happened without you guys.

  Also, to the great dogs that have shared my outdoor adventures over the past fifty years. Jack is a compilation of you all.

  Prologue

  There’s a bear,” Tanner Jamison hissed from behind his binoculars.

  Washington’s spring bear hunting season had just opened and Tanner, along with his father, Eric, were watching a clear-cut where they had seen bears on two pre-season scouting trips. They had been looking at the edges of the clear-cut when Tanner spotted an odd black object he thought was a burned stump, until it moved. After a few minutes of watching the bear, the two put together a plan they hoped would get them to within 250 yards of the bruin. And then they were off.

  The stalk worked out to perfection. It took them longer than they estimated, as the hillside dropped straight down into a small creek that was overgrown with alders and brush, making the walking almost impossible. But they made it through, and after a climb to their predetermined shooting spot, they crept up to the break of the hill and again started searching the clear-cut with their binoculars.

  “There it is,” Eric said after about thirty seconds. “He’s coming out from behind that little fir tree, just up from where we saw him before.”

  Tanner went prone, using his backpack as a rest. With one shot from his Ruger 7mm, the bear dropped and didn’t move.

  “Great shot, son!” Eric said excitedly, patting his son on the back.

  The elation would last only until they started field dressing the animal. After Tanner accidentally nicked the bear’s stomach with his knife, they stared in disbelief at the contents that came oozing out.

  “What the heck?” the elder Jamison said as he stared at the bloody mix of meat and grass coming out of the dead bear’s stomach. Floating in the gunk appeared to be a human ear.

  His son gagged a few times and said, “That can’t be an ear, can it?”

  As the stomach’s contents kept draining out, there were pieces of blue mixed in with the blood-red bile and goo.

  “I think it is,” said Eric. “And that blue stuff looks like shards of clothing.”

  “Do you think the bear killed someone and ate them?” Tanner asked.

  “I don’t know, but we need to call 911 right away.”

  Chapter 1

  Interstate 5 heading south out of Olympia was one big traffic jam just about any time. It was no different this day. In fact, if anything, it might have been worse. Luke McCain looked ahead at the long string of cars, all with their brake lights shining red, and felt like screaming. After spending two days in Olympia he wanted to get out of this rat race and be home in time to see his dog and finally get some good sound sleep in his own bed. Unfortunately, the way the bumper-to-bumper traffic was moving on the six-lane, it might be morning before he made it back to Yakima.

  As a veteran police officer with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, McCain had been in Olympia for meetings with other fish and wildlife officers from around the state. The meetings were held quarterly so officers from each of the six regional headquarters could train and discuss any trends in the world of fish and wildlife protection.

  He was thinking about the meetings and how he was looking forward to getting back to the east side of the state when he glanced down at the speedometer. Was he really going 22 miles an hour in a 70?

  “Come on!” he yelled as he pounded the palm of his hand on the steering wheel.

  Traffic finally started picking up faster than funeral procession speed around Grand Mound, and by the time he hit Centralia he, along with about 900 other cars, were doing close to the speed limit. With another two hours or more on the road before he got home, McCain decided to stop in Chehalis to grab a burger and get rid of some of the liquid he’d consumed during the meetings that morning.

  At six foot, almost five inches and 227 pounds, in top shape from a regular workout routine that included both cardio and weightlifting, McCain made a pretty daunting first impression. He had worked hard at making himself someone that only the very stupid or very drunk would want to mess with.

  People in police work put their lives on the line every day, but what the general public didn’t realize was that fish and wildlife police officers, or game wardens as many people still called them, were maybe at the highest risk of them all. Studies showed that nearly eighty percent of the people they contacted every day, including many anglers and virtually all hunters, were armed. That, and the desire to be able to hike some of the mountains he hunted each fall, kept him motivated to stay fit.

  McCain pulled into the Wendy’s in Chehalis and ordered a double with cheese, hold the onions and pickles, with fries and a Frosty. He was calculating how many more miles he was going to have to run to work off those calories when his phone rang.

  The screen read YAKIMA COUNTY SHERIFF.

  “McCain,” he said into the phone.

  “Is this the rifleman?” the scratchy voice asked.

  “I wish you’d stop calling me that,” McCain said.

  At thirty-seven, McCain was too young to have ever watched the 1950s TV series that starred Chuck Connors as a lawman in the old west. Instead of a sidearm, Connors used a special lever-action Winchester to handle all his shooting business. And business was good in the weekly series. There was always a bad guy or two who needed gunning down. Connors’ character’s name was Lucas McCain, and the TV show was called The Rifleman. Somewhere along the line, one of the older deputies in the sheriff’s department had noticed the WDFW enforcement officer shared his name with the TV character and the nickname landed, whether the real-life McCain liked it or not.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the deputy on the other end of the line said. “This is Williams. We got a strange one developing up near Chinook Pass and we’re definitely going to need some assistance from you and that spoiled dog of yours.”

  “Oh yeah? Whatcha got?”

  “Some hunters shot a black bear this morning and while field dressing it discovered a human ear in the bear’s stomach,” Williams said.

  “An ear? Where’s the rest of the body?” McCain asked.

&n
bsp; “That’s the unknown. It looks like there were some particles of clothing in the stomach contents too, but there weren’t any other identifiable body parts the hunters could see. They did say it was a bloody mess.”

  “It’s rare for a black bear to attack a human, but I guess it could have happened.”

  “Hard to tell, but you think Jack could backtrack the bear to whatever might be left of the body?”

  “Probably. It’d definitely be worth a try. I’m in Chehalis, on my way home from Olympia. Even with light traffic over the pass, I’m still two hours from Yakima. I have to grab Jack, so it’ll be closer to three. And we’ll be losing daylight pretty fast by then.”

  “Just get here as quick as you can,” the deputy said and clicked off.

  McCain grabbed his food, jumped in his rig and headed down I-5 to the cutoff to Yakima via Highway 12. As he drove he thought more about the call from Williams. Hearing of someone finding human body parts in a bear’s stomach was a first for him. He wondered how it had happened.

  McCain had subconsciously bumped his speed up as he pondered the ear in the bear. When he looked down he was doing twenty over the limit in this stretch of the highway. He was driving his state-issued police truck which included a siren and lights in the grill, but he had decided they weren’t necessary. The WDFW insignia on the doors of his tan truck would tell the State Patrol and local deputies he was a brother law enforcement officer, but as he thought more about the details he’d received from Williams he went ahead and turned on the lights and pushed the F-150 a bit harder.

  As he approached each little settlement along the way, he’d slow some and then roll along about eighty miles per hour until he hit the next small town. Once he hit Randle, he intentionally slowed and really watched the edges of the highway. From here to Packwood and beyond, a large and growing herd of elk had taken up residence, and they loved feeding in the grass along the highway. The last thing he needed right now was to smack a 600-pound elk. First, he would never live it down in the circles of his fellow WDFW officers, but more importantly, he didn’t need to be delayed by a collision with a critter nearly the size of a horse.

  He made good time getting over White Pass and soon was pulling into the driveway of his house. McCain lived just outside of Yakima in an area known as Lower Naches. When he parked the truck he looked over at the neighbor’s house and out the door came a blur of yellow and gold. His dog Jack stayed with Jessie Meyers and her son Austin when McCain had to overnight out of town. He was thankful for this option, rather than having to kennel his dog someplace. Twelve-year-old Austin loved Jack and treated him probably better than McCain did. The boy played fetch with him, and Jessie was a sucker for Jack’s big brown Labrador retriever eyes. All Jack had to do was gaze at her with a longing look, and she’d give him a bite of cookie or some other treat that he’d gobble up.

  “Hey, boy,” McCain said as the dog came over and got the obligatory belly rub, ear scratch and a few hugs around his neck.

  Jack was a big Lab, tipping the scales at just over 100 pounds. And it wasn’t a soft hundred. He was solid as a rock, strong as an ox, and could run down a wounded rooster pheasant in nothing flat. He’d come into McCain’s life as an eight-week-old ball of fur, with feet too big and soft floppy ears. As they always do, the pup grew fast, and Jack was soon in training to be not only McCain’s hunting dog but his partner in wildlife protection.

  “What have you guys been up to?” McCain asked the dog.

  “We’ve been playing fetch,” said Austin, who had followed the dog out the door. “And Jack’s been napping too. You know . . . the life of a dog.”

  With a mop of brown hair on top of his head, the sides cut short, and the gangly build of an active boy on the verge of being a teenager, Austin was your typical country kid. If he wasn’t shooting baskets at the hoop and backboard in his driveway, he was throwing a baseball or a football with one of his buddies. With all the video games, computers, and phones that kids were into now, McCain liked seeing Austin outside getting some exercise and playing with friends.

  Occasionally, McCain would play catch with Austin, and he would take him fishing over to the river near their houses. Austin’s father had divorced his mother three years before and wasn’t around much, so McCain tried to give the boy some guy time as often as his schedule allowed. Of course, it helped that there was a pretty good attachment that had developed between Austin and Jack.

  “I do know how dogs are,” McCain said as he handed Austin a fifty-dollar bill. “Thanks so much for looking after Jack. And please tell your mom thanks too. I’d like to hang and chat, but Jack and I are needed up near Chinook Pass right away.”

  “Really?” Austin asked. “What’s going on?”

  The neighbor boy was always interested in what McCain was doing with his job.

  “Don’t know all the details yet, but as soon as I know, I’ll fill you in. Thanks again, Austin.” He patted his right hand on his thigh, and Jack fell in at heel, right next to McCain as he headed to his house.

  Ten minutes later, with the big yellow dog sitting next to him in the passenger seat of the Ford pickup, McCain backed out of the drive and headed west. In the quick turnaround in the house, McCain had changed out of his standard uniform—khakis and a tan button-up shirt with his name stitched on one side, his WDFW badge on the other—and jumped into what he called his “field” uniform. He still wore a tan shirt with badge, but he had put on his Wranglers and his favorite pair of Kennetrek hunting boots. His daily uniform also included his utility belt which he always wore. The belt held his holstered Glock semi-automatic pistol in .45 caliber, an ASP collapsible baton, pepper spray, a Taser, a flashlight, and handcuffs.

  As he headed out the door he also grabbed his backpack, ready to go in a moment’s notice. The backpack included just about everything a person might need to survive a night or two in the mountains. The pack held raingear, an extra couple layers of polar fleece, a waterproof stocking hat and gloves, some freeze-dried food, three bottles of water, a backpacker’s stove, a few energy bars and some special dog bars for Jack. For safety and communication he carried a GPS unit for marking and tracking his movement, a handheld radio, and his cell phone. In the storage bin in his truck, McCain always kept a sleeping bag rated to minus 20 degrees, a packable one-man waterproof tent, a down vest and a heavy coat. If he thought he was going to need that stuff tonight, there was room in the pack for it too.

  “What do you think, boy?” McCain asked Jack as they ran west on Highway 410. The dog turned and looked at him, barked once, and then went back to watching the road.

  McCain had a pretty good idea where the hunters had shot the bear. This time of year, it was difficult to get high in the Cascades because of the snowpack. Some years there was only a few feet in the higher elevations while in other years, like this one, there was thirty feet or more. It had started snowing in mid-November, and a continual parade of storms swinging around from the Gulf of Alaska had dumped snow in the mountains off and on for three months. The deep snow in the high elevations wasn’t a problem for the wildlife. They migrated down to lower elevations where normally the snow was either manageable or non-existent. It was on those years when the deep snow hit in the lower elevations, and, combined with persistent below-freezing temperatures, stayed for a couple months or more that created winter mortality with the deer and elk.

  Warmer temperatures in February and March meant the snowline had receded to about the 2,300-foot elevation, and it was McCain’s guess that the hunters had found their bear in that zone. It was the time of year the bears were coming out of hibernation, and they would actively be feeding to restart their digestive system after being shut down for a few months. During this time most bears will eat grasses and roots, along with the occasional grub if they can find them. Sometimes they’ll even feed on carrion—any dead animals that, for whatever reason, didn’t make it through the winter. Most bears still have some fat stored as they come out of hibernation,
so they don’t have to eat. But even then, most are hungry. Evidently the bear that had been killed by the hunters was one of those hungry ones.

  McCain turned off the two-lane highway onto Forest Road 1705, known as the Gold Creek Road. The group of law enforcement folks had gathered at an old elk camp on a flat on the ridge just short of Summit Spring. After fifteen minutes of climbing on bumpy, twisty-turny roads, McCain finally saw smoke rising from a campfire just ahead. There were three county sheriff rigs and a WDFW rig parked in the flat. He knew that fellow WDFW officer Stan Hargraves would be here. Williams had told him that. In fact, Hargraves had recommended that the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office call McCain.

  The three sheriff deputies at the campfire were Williams, a tall and lean man of about fifty, and Paul Garcia, a shorter and rounder man of about forty-five who McCain also knew. When the two stood close together they looked like a lowercase letter “b” or “d” depending on whether Williams was on the left or right side of Garcia. The third deputy, a man of about six feet, in his thirties and fairly fit, was one McCain hadn’t met before.

  When Jack saw the gathering, he stood up in the passenger seat and started wagging his tail and whining. As they got closer to the group, McCain could see two other people, a man and a teenager. He assumed they were the hunters who had taken the bear. McCain parked, grabbed his jacket, and let Jack jump out to greet the men at the campfire.

  “Hey, Jack,” Hargraves said. “You ready to earn your keep?”

  Jack just wagged his tail and started sniffling around the ground to see if anyone had accidently dropped a bite of cookie or candy bar.

  “Sorry, guys. I got here as soon as I could,” McCain said to the group. “How did you get here so quickly, Stan?”