Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,34
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