Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,59
the door to the second cabin was open and it was there he headed, his heart beating an unexpected rhythm of anxiety.
He should have thought about the cabins. Damn it, he should have thought that one of them might be a potential den for a madman. But with Rusty staying out here, he’d just assumed the others were vacant. Now he cursed that assumption.
When he got nearer he saw that dark curtains hung at the window and his heart beat a little quicker. He pulled his gun, an automatic habit when approaching an unknown situation.
He moved to make a sideways approach, not wanting to alert whoever was inside that he was there. He leaned against the building just outside the door, drew a deep breath and then whirled inside to see Mary standing in the middle of the room and Junior Lempke standing before her as if to block her exit.
Junior turned around, his eyes wide as his hands shot straight up in the air. “Don’t shoot me, Sheriff Cam, I ain’t done nothing wrong.”
Cameron met Mary’s gaze. She shrugged as if she didn’t have a clue what was going on. A quick sweep of the room chilled Cameron’s blood like the falling snow outside couldn’t possibly do.
The news clippings about the murders tacked to the wall stunned him. Junior? Junior Lempke? He hadn’t even been on the list of suspects.
“Does somebody want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” he demanded, not removing the barrel of his gun from the center of Junior’s body. Adrenaline fired through him with a heat that could melt the snow on the ground outside.
“I was out here checking on the cabins and noticed the curtains in this one. I’d just stepped inside when Junior showed up and now you’re here,” Mary said, her voice reflecting both relief and the same kind of stunned disbelief that Cameron felt.
Cameron turned his attention to Junior. “What’s going on, Junior. What have you done?” The young man standing before him would have been the last person Cameron would have thought capable of the crimes, but this place, the clippings, spoke of an obsession with the women who had been killed.
Too many serial killers liked to keep souvenirs of their crimes and the clippings and pictures on the wall could definitely be considered souvenirs.
Tears began to stream from Junior’s eyes. “My mom, she told me that I’d never be able to have a place of my own, that I’d always have to live with her. But this was my place, all by myself.”
Awkwardly he ambled over to the lamp and touched the broken shade. “I bought this with my own money at the thrift store, and I...I got the microwave at the same store. I can live here and turn on my lamp when it gets dark and cook in the microwave for myself and maybe have friends come over. My mom is wrong and I want to prove her wrong. I’m responsible and this is my place all to myself.” He jutted his chin forward, his eyes still gleaming with tears.
Cameron holstered his gun, his gut instinct telling him that Junior had no weapons on him, that he was harmless and harboring some misguided mission. He pointed to the wall with the clippings. “What’s that?” he asked.
Junior’s eyes once again filled with tears that spilled onto his cheeks. “That’s my sad wall. They were all my friends and now they are all gone. But I’m making a happy wall over there.” Junior pointed to the opposite wall and pulled a photo out of his coat pocket. “This is my first picture for my happy wall.” He handed the photo to Cameron.
It was a picture of Junior and Mary standing side by side at the picnic Mary had sponsored last summer for her staff. Junior stood tall and proud, and Mary’s face was wreathed with a smile that softened her features.
He handed the photo to Mary, who looked at it and released a deep sigh. It was obvious to him that Mary didn’t believe Junior had anything to do with the murders, either.
This was like when Cameron was twelve and Bobby was eleven and they’d gotten angry with their parents and had built an elaborate fort up in hay loft. They’d stocked it with cookies and fruit and decided they could live there alone for the rest of their lives.
Of course the rest of their lives had ended when darkness came, when the old barn