Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,1

I knew she was dead. I just grabbed Twinkie and left the room and then called 911.”

“You did the right thing,” Cameron replied. There was no way Jeff was involved in the crime, at least not at the moment. The kid had the green cast of somebody on the verge of puking. He petted the dog as if the silky fur were the only thing holding him together.

“What’s going to happen to Twinkie? Dorothy doesn’t have any family, and I can’t take her. We already have a big dog, Zeus, who would eat this little girl for lunch.” Jeff looked distraught. “Twinkie is a great dog, friendly and well trained. I mean, I’m sorry about Dorothy, but you need to find a good home for Twinkie.” Jeff looked at him pleadingly.

Great, Cameron thought. Not only did he have another murder to try to solve, he also had the faith of a softhearted kid depending on him to find a tragically orphaned mutt a good home.

“Gather up all her doggie stuff, and I’ll see what I can do,” Cameron said. “Then go home. We’ll probably have more questions for you later, but right now I’d prefer you not talk to anyone about this crime except with your parents.”

Jeff nodded and got up from the table. As he began to gather up all things Twinkie, Cameron went back down the hallway where he met the coroner, who told him what he already suspected.

Time of death was between one and three in the morning, cause of death was a quick, clean slice across the throat. Dorothy’s hearing aids were on the nightstand. She’d never heard her screen being removed and the unlocked window sliding open. She’d never heard her killer’s approach.

“It’s just like the other two,” Deputy Benson said. “Three women killed in their beds, their throats cut.”

“And all three worked as waitresses at the Cowboy Café,” Cameron added. He frowned, thinking of how this latest murder would affect Mary Mathis, the owner of the café.

He couldn’t help the way his heart softened as he thought of her. He’d had a thing for Mary since she’d taken over ownership of the café five years before and for the three years prior when she’d worked as a waitress there...unfortunately it was an unrequited thing.

He couldn’t think about that now. He had plenty of other tasks ahead of him to find this killer who was tormenting his town.

Throughout the afternoon, his men canvassed the neighborhood to find anyone who had witnessed anything unusual, but Grady Gulch was a typical small Oklahoma town where most people were in their beds and sleeping in the wee hours of the morning.

Twinkie spent part of the day either snoozing on the rug in the living room or being walked by one of the deputies on scene. Cameron had already decided he’d take the pooch home with him for now and in his spare time try to find her a good home.

As Cameron attended to his duties overseeing the crime scene and directing his deputies, he couldn’t help but think of the other two victims. Candy Bailey had been a young woman killed in her bed in a small cottage behind the Cowboy Café. Shirley Cook had been a middle-aged woman murdered in her bed in her home.

Now Dorothy, sixty-four years old and looking to retire and putter in her garden after years of waiting on other people, was instead murdered while she slept.

He tamped down the unexpected rage that threatened to build inside him, a rage directed at the killer, who moved like a shadow in the night, who sought out the vulnerable and killed them without remorse and left no clues behind.

Who was this person? A native of Grady Gulch or one of the new members of town who had brought with them a dark soul and an evil directed at the waitresses of the popular café?

Before the night was over he needed to have a sit-down with Mary. It was something he dreaded, first telling her that another of her waitresses had been killed, although by the time he got to her she probably would have already heard. But he wanted to pick her brain as to why somebody might be targeting these women who worked for her.

The fact that the first two murdered women had worked at the café he might have written off as a strange coincidence, but three dead waitresses made a definite pattern that had to be explored. A serial killer, just what