Confessing to the Cowboy

chapter 6



To say that Cameron was having a bad morning was a vast understatement. He’d awakened just before dawn, his thoughts not only filled with moments of the day he’d spent with Matt and Mary, but also with worries about the unsolved murders.

It hadn’t been the warmth of thoughts of Mary and Matt that had driven him out of bed, but rather the haunting of the dead and his frustration with the lack of leads in the case. He could only hope that somebody on his team had come up with something yesterday while he’d been off duty, although he knew that if any real leads had been discovered somebody would have called him.

It was just after six when he got to the office. He holed himself up in the small room with a fresh cup of coffee, a stale donut left in a box from the night crew and the files of the three murders he desperately wanted to solve.

Candy Bailey had died in one of the cabins behind Mary’s café. For a long time Cameron had believed her boyfriend, Kevin Naperson, was guilty despite the fact that his father had alibied him for the night and time in question. Even when Shirley Cook had wound up dead, Cameron had wondered if Kevin was responsible, attempting to take the heat off himself for Candy’s murder by killing another woman he had no ties to.

But Dorothy’s death had put a whole new spin on things. There was no way he believed Kevin Naperson had the calculation and cunning that this killer had displayed. There was no way Cameron believed he was chasing a young adult who wasn’t that smart to begin with. Kevin was simply an unfortunate young man dating a woman at the wrong time.

Cameron also didn’t believe that this was the first time his killer had killed. He was simply too good at it and showed no signs of deteriorating or losing control.

He ate the cinnamon-covered donut, hoping for a sugar rush that would get him through another long day, then leaned back in his chair and took a sip of the strong brew, wishing it could magically infuse his brain with some answers.

They were still running background checks on some of the newer people in town, but that didn’t mean the killer wasn’t a native of Grady Gulch. Besides, no matter how many tools you had at your fingertips, thorough background checks took both time and manpower and ultimately the sanction of a friendly judge.

A knock on his door surprised him as he looked at his watch. Only six-thirty. The door opened and Ben Temple poked his head inside.

Cameron motioned him in. “A little early, isn’t it, Deputy Temple?”

“For you, too,” Ben replied. He eased down in the chair opposite Cameron and swiped a hand through his short, curly dark hair. “I’ve been having bad dreams. Sleep isn’t so pleasant right now.”

“I hear you,” Cameron agreed, thinking of the images that haunted his dreams when he closed his eyes at night. He reared back in his chair and shoved the files he’d been staring at to the side. “So, what did I miss yesterday?”

“We all worked on doing as many background checks as possible and reinterviewed some of the people that we initially talked to with the original two crimes. Nothing much came from those interviews, but I did find out something very interesting about one of our newer members in town.”

“Who?” Cameron leaned forward.

“Thomas Manning. Apparently seven years ago he lived in Oklahoma City and was married to a woman named Nancy.” Ben’s blue eyes gleamed with the first spark Cameron had seen there for a long time. “Guess what Mrs. Manning did for a living?”

“She was a waitress,” Cameron replied, his heart beating just a little bit faster.

Ben nodded. “She worked as a waitress at a truck stop on the north side of the city. Thomas was an English professor at one of the community colleges. Anyway, apparently serving up burgers wasn’t all Nancy was doing while she was at work in the evenings. One night she left a note for Thomas and told him she had fallen in love with a truck driver and was taking off over the road with him. Thomas and Nancy divorced soon after she left town.”

Cameron raised his elbows to the desk and steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “This definitely makes Thomas a person of interest.” He dropped his hands to the files he’d pushed aside moments before. “How do you feel about a road trip?”

Ben shrugged. “Footloose and fancy-free, you know that’s me. Just tell me where to go and what to do.”

“Why don’t you plan to spend the next couple of days in Oklahoma City? See if you can find any of Manning’s coworkers at the college, maybe talk to people who knew both him and Nancy. Also talk to local law enforcement and see if there were ever any domestic calls to their residence, find out if any women working as waitresses anywhere there have met untimely deaths. Also, see if you can find out what happened to Nancy after she left with her truck-driver lover.”

Ben nodded. “You mean find out if she’s still among the living.”

“Exactly,” Cameron replied.

“But this could be the break we’ve been looking for, right?”

Cameron hesitated a moment and stared at the wall just over Ben’s shoulder. “It could be. But it could also mean nothing, just one of those odd coincidences that sometimes haunt a case. I mean, why here? Why now? If his wife left him five or six years ago, then why would he move to a small town and start killing waitresses now?” He looked back at Ben. “Maybe you can find those answers in Oklahoma City.”

Ben rose, as if eager to get going. “I’ll find out everything I can and will check in with you by phone as soon as I get any answers.”

“You should be able to get it all done by Wednesday. That gives you two days to dig, so I’ll expect you to check back in here sometime Wednesday late afternoon.”

As Ben left the office, Cameron reached for his coffee once again, his thoughts whirling. Was this the break they’d been waiting for? He didn’t want to get his hopes up. Right now all they had was a man whose ex-wife worked as a waitress and nothing at all to tie Thomas to the murders.

He couldn’t put all his eggs in one basket. He still wanted to check out Denver Walton for no other reason than he spent a lot of time at the café, had acted out with Mary when she hadn’t given him a job and had some sort of new financial support that didn’t include Maddy Billings.

Despite Mary’s protests of Rusty’s innocence in all this, Cameron also planned on checking out the cook’s background. Five years ago when Mary had bought the café from the previous elderly owner Rusty had appeared out of nowhere, a loner...a drifter who had decided to stay in town after Mary had given him the job as head cook.

Few people knew anything about him, but the one thing everyone did know was that Rusty had a temper...a legendary bad temper. He had the opportunity to know the waitresses better than anyone else. He would know about their hours, their social lives and who was vulnerable and who wasn’t.

It was possible the waitresses who had been killed hadn’t played nice with the tough, demanding cook. With some action or another they might have pushed Rusty into a fit of rage that had ultimately ended in their deaths.

At eight o’clock Cameron met with the rest of his men to plan the duties for the day, which basically consisted of them completing the interviews and background checks he’d already set into motion.

Discouragement hung heavily in the conference room where they all met. It had been almost a full week since Dorothy had been found dead and each of them knew that the more time that passed, the less the odds of finding any clues to the killer.

It was just after nine when Cameron dismissed the group after giving them a pep talk he didn’t even believe himself. When the conference room was empty, Cameron remained, his shoulders tight with tension and a headache attempting to grab hold of his forehead.

Had Ben stumbled upon a real clue? Had Thomas Manning moved to town for a new beginning and harbored a killer rage directed toward any waitress? Had his wife’s betrayal burned in his gut until it had finally exploded?

The next logical step was to bring Manning in for questioning, but Cameron was reluctant to do so until he heard back from Ben. Information was power, and the more information Ben could gather about the man, the more power Cameron would have to interrogate Manning and hopefully break him if he was guilty. The idea of a neat-and-tidy confession was the only thing that eased Cameron’s headache.

He finally left the building, needing to walk and think. The streets were fairly deserted, most people either at church or opting to stay home and out of the blustery wind and frigid temperature. Thanksgiving was still a little over two weeks away, but it felt as if it were January.

They could not only use a break in the case, but a snap in this cold streak would be nice, as well. He pulled his collar up closer around his neck as he began a trek down the sidewalk. As he passed each storefront he paused to wave at whoever was inside, knowing that his presence on the streets just made people feel safer.

It was a false sense of security, not just for the people he served, but also for himself. He was conscious of the possibility that one of the people he waved to during the day might be the same person who was skulking around in the dead of night seeking a vulnerable woman to kill.

Just because Thomas Manning’s wife had been a waitress who’d left him didn’t mean he was the killer. Once again he reminded himself to check with his men to make sure they were checking into all the waitresses’ husbands and significant others to make sure that nobody had an issue with their spouse working at the Cowboy Café.

There were cases where motive wasn’t necessarily a big issue, but in these particular murders Cameron couldn’t help but think if he could just figure out the motive he’d be much closer to identifying the guilty.

His cell phone jangled from his coat pocket and he pulled it out to see Mary’s number displayed. He frowned. Although he’d like to think she was just calling to hear his voice, maybe to thank him again for spending yesterday with them, he knew she had to be calling for something less personal. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him...if ever.

“Mary?” he answered.

“Hi, Cameron. I was wondering if you could come by the café right now.”

Her voice sounded higher pitched than usual, strained as he’d never heard it before. “Sure. Is something wrong?”

There was a long hesitation and for a moment he thought the call had been dropped or she’d hung up. Just when he was about to hang up and call her back, she spoke, her voice a mere whisper.

“I need to talk to you. I think I might have some information that can help you in the investigation.”

Adrenaline pumped through him. “What kind of information?”

“I’ll talk to you when you get here.” She clicked off.

Cameron pocketed his phone and headed back to the office where his car was parked. Information? What kind of information could she possibly have now that she hadn’t had yesterday?

And why had she sounded so stressed? As if she were afraid not just of some unknown entity, but of him, as well?

* * *

Nervous tension paced Mary back and forth in her small living room, eating at her insides as she contemplated what she was about to do.

She was on the verge of destroying everything she’d worked so hard for over the past eight years. She would lose the café, the respect of everyone here in town, but worse than all of that, she was about to put herself in a position to lose her son forever.

She choked on a sob and swallowed it, knowing she had to be strong. She would not only have to be strong for herself, but also for Matt, who wouldn’t understand, who wouldn’t remember who and what they’d escaped so very long ago.

Although telling Cameron all of her secrets was the very last thing she wanted to do, she knew it was the right thing to do, the best thing she could do for her son and for the town they’d grown to love.

At least she could assure Matt a good future with somebody who cared about him. And, hopefully, someday Matt would be mature enough, understanding enough, to find forgiveness for her and her past actions someplace in his heart.

She finally sank down on the sofa, grateful that Matt was at Jimmy’s and Rusty was in charge of the café. Maybe after Cameron heard her story, he would lead her out of here through the back door, handcuffed with her head hanging in shame.

She straightened her slender shoulders and drew in a deep breath. No, not shame. She would never be ashamed of what she’d done even though it had been one of the worst things a human could do to another. Rather she would hold her head up high, not in pride, but rather in acceptance. She’d done what she’d had to do to protect herself, but more important, to protect her beloved son.

The nerves that had jangled inside her since she’d made the decision to call Cameron slowly calmed as she drew in another deep breath and embraced a final resignation.

Somehow she’d always known this day would come. She’d hoped it wouldn’t, but a small part inside her had known that she would have to answer for the split-second decision she’d made years before.

And now that day had come. There was no way to ignore the anniversary card or the frog with the crooked gold crown that had been delivered to Matt for his birthday. Somebody from her past had found her. She feared they were already meting out a form of justice to her, causing the deaths of the people who worked for her, the women who had been her friends.

She couldn’t live with the knowledge that she might be responsible for any more deaths. A knock on her door jangled the nerves that had so recently calmed.

“Mary, it’s me...Cameron.”

Tears filled her eyes at the sound of his deep, familiar voice. She got up from the sofa and quickly swiped the tears away. She wanted to be strong. She needed to be strong to get through what happened next.

She opened the door and gestured Cameron inside, unable to meet his gaze with hers. “Why don’t we sit at the table,” she suggested, as she worried a strand of her hair between two fingers.

“Okay.” He shrugged off his coat and tossed it on the sofa, then sat in a chair, dwarfing the table with his size. She sat in the chair across from him and finally forced herself to meet his gaze.

“Thanks for coming.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. She folded her hands on top of the table, hoping to keep their trembling under control.

“Mary, what’s going on?” His gentle voice pulled a mist of tears to her eyes. “What kind of information do you think you have that might help me solve these murders?”

For a long moment she wasn’t sure where to begin to tell the story that had ultimately brought her to this place and time. She finally decided the beginning was always the best place to start.

She leaned back in her chair, pulled her hands from the top of the table and kept them tightly clasped in her lap. Hopefully he wouldn’t notice how violently they trembled. “When I was twenty-one I was working as a waitress in an upscale restaurant in San Francisco. My parents were dead and I was trying to make it on my own with a paltry salary and whatever tips I got. It was a tough life, but I was getting by okay.”

He looked at her curiously and she knew he was wondering where she was going with this. But he sat back as if patient enough to allow her to get there in her own way.

“I’d only been working there about two months when I met Jason McKnight. He was very handsome and quite charming and seemed to be taken with me. Over the next couple of months he came into the restaurant regularly and always sat in my section.

He flirted with me and kept asking me out and finally I agreed to go out with him. For the next six months he wined and dined me and I discovered he was a very wealthy, influential man, but what was important to me was that he treated me with a respect and tenderness I’d never known before. I felt like Cinderella who had finally met her prince.”

For a moment she was cast back into time, back to when she had believed dreams could come true and there really was a Prince Charming for everyone and she’d found hers.

She released a shuddering sigh. “When he asked me to marry him, I readily accepted. I thought I was so in love. The wedding was a whirlwind and I scarcely caught my breath before I suddenly I found myself Mrs. Jason McKnight, attending lavish dinner parties and charity balls. We rubbed shoulders with judges and politicians, with movie stars and the upper crust. Jason expected me to be the perfect wife, the perfect hostess and I tried so very hard to please him.” Her hands began to tremble again in her lap and she squeezed them more tightly together.

“But you didn’t always please him,” Cameron said, his tone as flat as the slightly dangerous darkness that had swept into his eyes.

“We’d been married about six months the first time he kicked me in the thigh so hard I thought he had crippled me. He told me I’d been flirting with somebody at the party we’d attended, which of course wasn’t true.”

“So, what happened?”

She shrugged. “He kicked me and screamed at me and then went downstairs to his study for yet another drink. I crawled into bed and finally fell asleep. The next morning I woke up in a bed full of roses and Jason effusively apologizing and chalking the whole thing up to the fact that he’d been drunk, too drunk to really know what he was doing. I made the same mistake so many women make.... I believed him and so I forgave him.”

“And then something happened again,” Cameron said softly.

“Of course,” she replied and released a weary sigh. “Cameron, I was a textbook case of an abused woman. Each time he hurt me he made excuses for himself and it didn’t take long before I began to blame myself for his behavior. Maybe the flower arrangement in the center of the table hadn’t been as fresh as it should have been, perhaps I should have paid more attention to the items on the menu for an important dinner party. There was so little I knew about the kind of lifestyle we were living. I was raised by an alcoholic mother who didn’t teach me anything but how to clean her up after a bad night.”

She raised a hand to twirl the strands of her hair. “And if I wasn’t blaming myself, then I was the one making excuses for Jason. He was a wealthy, powerful man with lots of stress and who sometimes drank too much. Besides, I felt powerless. I didn’t have any friends, I had no money of my own. I was isolated and alone in my misery. I didn’t know how to get out...and then I got pregnant.”

“And you hoped, you prayed that somehow that would change things,” Cameron said, as if he’d heard the story a hundred times before.

“Exactly.” God, she’d been such a fool, believing Jason’s excuses and promises, afraid to leave yet equally afraid to stay. “The pregnancy went without incident and for the first time since he first hurt me, I had real hope. He’d cut down on his drinking and we seemed to be in a honeymoon stage.”

She knew the term was appropriate since the good times occurred between abusive incidents in a domestic violence situation. It was flowers and jewelry, intimate dinners and romance...and then the tension began to build to an explosion once again.

“The honeymoon period lasted through my entire pregnancy and with each day that passed I began to believe that Jason was truly a transformed man.

“But something happened that changed all that.” Cameron’s features were taut with tension, his eyes holding little spark of life as he stared at her. He seemed to go to a dark place inside himself in order to prepare for the rest of her bleak tale.

“It started up again when Mike...Matt...was three months old. Jason didn’t like Mike crying. He didn’t like the time that I spent with him. He didn’t bond with Mike at all, in fact I think he hated his own son. Jason started to drink more and I could feel his rage escalating. Each day I waited for the explosion that I was sure would come.”

She paused, her body and mind remembering the simmering terror of those days and nights. As perverse as it seemed, she’d almost wished for a beating that would relieve the stress of the anxiety of waiting for it to happen.

She splayed her hands on the top of the table, palms down to assure that the trembling would halt. “The explosion came when Mike was almost two years old.” Her mind filled with the memory of Jason’s face, his dark eyes flat and cold as a snake and his mouth compressed together in a tight line that always portended imminent danger.

“We were all in the den supposedly enjoying quality family time. Jason had been knocking back drinks while I chased Mike around to keep him entertained. The backhand across my face came out of nowhere and the force of it threw me to the floor. I instantly curled up into a fetal ball as Jason began to kick me over and over again. And with each kick a rage began to form inside me. I knew before morning came, I’d take Mike and leave...if I lived through the beating.”

Cameron’s hands on the top of the table had curled into fists, as if he wished Jason were here in the room with them and he could mete out a bit of macho justice of his own.

“He finally stopped kicking me, but he wasn’t finished yet. He walked over to where Mike stood crying and viciously shoved him down. He pulled back his arm with his hand fisted and I knew he intended to punch Mike. That’s when I got the fire poker.”

Her heart raced inside her chest, threatening to erupt from her skin just as it had on that fateful night. She was grateful that Cameron said nothing to stop the story from spilling out of her.

She had to finish it. She would be destroyed, but she might save lives. She had to do the right thing and that meant telling Cameron what she’d done so many years ago.

She unclasped her hands and sat up straighter in her chair, holding Cameron’s gaze intently, expecting that with her next words the softness in his eyes would transform into something much different. She got up from the table, unable to sit as she finished her tale.

She took several steps away from the table and then turned back to look at Cameron. “He was just about to hit Mike when I slammed him over the head with the poker. It was one thing for him to abuse me, but there was no way I was going to allow him to hurt my child. That first blow sent Jason to the ground on his belly and then something snapped inside me and I hit him again...and again. I couldn’t stop hitting him. I killed him, Cameron. Nine years ago I killed my husband and then I took Mike and we went on the run.”