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