Confessing to the Cowboy

A spoiled tiny dog wasn’t exactly what he thought about when he considered bedmates, but for now the furry dog was all he had.

He’d awakened at dawn after a night filled with haunting visions of dead women, each of them pleading for justice. His nightmares had been a strobe-light event with the dead reaching out to him.

Now here he sat in his office, sipping coffee and waiting for it to be time for the staff meeting he’d called with all his deputies that would occur in another twenty minutes.

While the coffee sent a jolt of caffeine-driven adrenaline through him, it did nothing to make his thoughts any more clear as to solving these crimes. He didn’t expect his team to have anything to report to him to answer either of those questions. He reared back in his chair and released a sigh of weary frustration.

At some point today he needed to get out to his parents’ place. It had been a full week since he’d been there and he knew there would be things that needed to be done. Since his brother, Bobby’s, death, Cameron had been trying to help them around the ranch to fill in the shoes of the child they had lost.

The relationship between him and his father had become strained long ago when Cameron had decided to run for sheriff instead of staying home to help with the family ranch. With Bobby’s death the relationship had only become more difficult.

He sat for another fifteen minutes, then swallowed the last of his coffee and stood. Now wasn’t the time to think about family dynamics or anything else that didn’t pertain to murder. It was time to meet with his team and see if they could figure out how to stop this killer before he struck again.

Minutes later he stood at the head of a long table in the conference room, six deputies seated on each side of the table. They were an even dozen, all good men who made up the law in Grady Gulch and the surrounding area. Thankfully they were in charge of a small county.

“Morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

For the next hour the men reported what had been done so far in the investigation into Dorothy’s murder. The neighborhood had been canvassed, friends had been interviewed and, just as he’d suspected, they had little to report.

Her neighbors had heard nothing throughout the night, friends indicated that they couldn’t imagine Dorothy having any enemies. Yada-yada-yada, Cameron thought. It was the same song, just a different victim.

No forensic evidence had been left behind, no fingerprints to process, no dropped glove or footprints to cast, this killer was definitely smart enough to cover his tracks well.

“There’s no question now that this killer is targeting the waitresses at the Cowboy Café,” Cameron said when the others were finished with their meager reports. “That’s the only connection that’s obvious between the victims.” He instantly thought of Mary and wondered if she was in danger, as well.

In her capacity as owner of the café she rarely worked the floor, but she did work behind the counter often and could be considered a waitress.

“Adam, I want you to check and cross-check the personal lives of these women and see if there’s anyplace else they connect besides their work at the café. Maybe they go to the same hairdresser or use the same gym. I want to know anyplace these women’s lives might intersect besides the café.”

“Ben,” Cameron said, directly his attention to Deputy Ben Temple, who he considered his right-hand man. “I want you to spend the next couple of days hanging out at the café. See if you notice anyone acting strange, if you see anyone who appears to be focused in on a particular waitress. The rest of you divide up and I want every friend and every neighbor or acquaintance from the previous victims reinterviewed.”

It was work that had already been done, but Cameron was grateful and proud that nobody on the team complained. Half the men he dismissed to go home and sleep, the other half who worked the day shift he dismissed to begin their work.

Once the meeting was finished, Cameron went back into his office and pulled on his jacket and his hat. He knew that it was important for him to be seen around town this morning, to assure the public that he and his men were working overtime to catch the evil that was at work in their town.

It wasn’t something he was particularly looking forward to doing. People would want answers, and unfortunately he had none to give. He believed it was important to delegate the investigation work to his deputies, but he’d learn what they discovered every step of the way. He was a puzzle guy, he liked to gather pieces, and then attempt to put together the puzzle that would eventually solve the crime.

The last murder that had occurred in Grady Gulch had been two years before, when Jeff Davie had shot his wife, Cheryl, in a domestic dispute. It had been an open-and-shut case as Jeff had confessed to his crime.

Cameron had never had anything like this to take care of before...the murder of three women. He wanted to believe he and his team were up to the task, but if things got too dicey he’d have to request help from the FBI, thus undermining he and his team’s ability in the face of the people in town.

As he stepped outside, the blustery air half stole his breath away. Only early November and already he could smell winter in the air. Thankfully the cold wind had chased most people off the streets.

He walked alone down Main, waving into shop windows as he passed. Why now? Why in the last three months had the murders begun to occur? There had to be a trigger of some kind, either that or the murderer had moved here in the past couple of months. There had been several new families and single men who had moved to Grady Gulch in the past year or so. Cameron made a mental note to check each of them thoroughly.

What he’d like to do was head to the café and check on Mary. When he’d told her about Dorothy the night before and she’d fallen onto the sofa and began to weep, there had been nothing Cameron wanted to do more than pull her up into his arms, hold her tight against him in an effort to comfort.

But he wasn’t sure that she’d welcome his touch, his closeness. She definitely gave him mixed messages. Although she’d told him a dozen times that she didn’t need or want a man in her life, occasionally he caught a whisper of longing in her eyes as she looked at him, a yearning that made him want to believe her eyes and not her lush lips.

He steeled himself as George Wilton walked out of the hardware store and nearly bowled him over. Wearing a thick, long black coat and a hat with huge ear muffs that flapped against his gray whisker-grizzled cheeks, he looked prepared for the snowstorm of the century.

“Heard Dorothy Blake was murdered last night,” he said with a scowl, which wasn’t unusual. George always found something to scowl about.

“Heard right,” Cameron replied.

“Craziness, that’s what’s taken over this town. You gonna find this creep before he kills all the waitresses from the café?”

“That’s my plan, George.”

“Yeah, well, my plan is to marry some twenty-three-year-old hottie who thinks I hung the moon, but that ain’t happening anytime soon. Hope your plan works out better than mine. You know I take most of my meals at the café. What will I do, where will I eat if this creep manages to kill all the waitresses and Mary has to close down?”

Leave it to George to think about his own creature comforts rather than the loss of the three women. “Mary isn’t going to close down the café and we’re going to catch whoever is responsible for these crimes,” Cameron said with a confidence that didn’t quite make it into his heart.

George’s scowl deepened. “Well, you’d better hurry up about it,” he said as he moved past Cameron and headed in the opposite direction down the sidewalk.

Hurry up about it. How Cameron wished he could do just that. Snap his fingers, speak an ancient incantation, wiggle his nose and magically have the guilty party behind bars. But he knew from experience that it was going to take hours of pounding pavements, talking to people and seeking any minute detail that might have been overlooked that could break the case wide open.

As the day passed, Cameron found himself unable to get Mary out of his head. Outside of the families of the dead women, Mary would be the person most touched by their deaths. Not only because they worked for her, but because she considered the people who worked at the café her extended family.

In one of their late-night talks she’d told him she had no family, that Matt’s father had been killed in a car accident when Matt had been just a baby. She and her husband had both been only children of parents who had passed away. In her isolated grief over her husband’s death she’d taken Matt and left her hometown in California and wandered until the wind had blown her into Grady Gulch.

Somebody was killing the waitresses at the café. Was it possible that it wasn’t some enemy that the women shared, but rather somebody trying to hurt Mary? Maybe he was making too big a leap, but it was a possibility that had to be considered, along with a dozen others.

The day passed far too quickly, with far too many questions remaining unanswered. A noon meeting with his men yielded nothing worthwhile and a quick stop at his parents’ ranch reminded him that he’d never be the son his father had wanted, that the son he’d loved was gone and he wasn’t even a pale substitute in his eyes.

The weight of discouragement and frustration pressed heavily on his shoulders as he stopped by the house to let Twinkie out of the laundry room. The little dog danced with excitement at the sight of him and licked the underside of his jaw when Cameron picked her up his arms. Cameron suddenly understood why people had pets.

Twinkie didn’t care that he had no clues to the three murders, didn’t care that he couldn’t be the son his parents wanted. All Twinkie needed from him was food and water and love, and the love was returned unconditionally.

If only people were more like dogs, he thought as he watched the little pooch leaping through the grass like a tiny gazelle in the yard. He called the dog’s name, and she came running back to Cameron and followed him back through the front door.

He started to lock Twinkie back up in the laundry room and then changed his mind and decided to give her the run of the house. He almost felt guilty leaving the little pooch alone again, but his day was far from over.

Twinkie needed a home where somebody could spend time with her, he thought as he headed toward the café. She was definitely a social butterfly and would thrive where there were people to appreciate her friendly nature.

It was late, almost ten, and he knew that on Wednesday nights ten was closing time at the café. Mary would probably be waiting for him with a last cup of coffee ready to pour. She’d have questions he couldn’t answer and he had questions for her, as well.

With three Cowboy Café waitresses dead, he couldn’t help but believe in the possibility that Mary was somehow in the center of the storm.

* * *

Minutes before ten, with the café empty and Mary ready to call it a night, Cameron walked in the front door. He flipped the sign on the door to Closed and then hung his hat on a hook.

She hadn’t been sure he’d make his usual stop given the fact that he had a fresh murder to investigate, but she couldn’t help the way her heart beat just a little more rapidly at the sight of his handsome face. And she couldn’t help but recognize her beating heart was a combination of pleasure and a faint edge of dread as she studied his grim features.

“Bad day?” she asked.

“Bad life,” he replied and sat on one of the stools at the counter.