The Christopher Killer Read online

  Cameryn just stood there, waiting. What was she supposed to say to that?

  “He thinks you’re a genius.”

  “A genius. Yeah, right. I really look smart right now, don’t I?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being human, Cameryn.” He seemed to linger over every word, as though he had all the time in the world to talk to her. He leaned his elbow against the wall, propping up his lanky frame. “Your pop asked if I’d seen you. Don’t worry, I covered for you.”

  She felt her heart jump sideways. “What did you say?”

  “I said your cell phone went off and you were taking the call. That was a cell phone I saw in your back jeans pocket, wasn’t it?”

  Cameryn just stared at him. Had he been looking at her rear end?

  “I make it a point to be observant,” he said, his voice still slow and easy.

  Raking her fingers through her hair, she pulled at the net of loose strands that had fallen into her face while bent over the garbage can. “So you lied,” she said finally. “You lied to my dad.”

  A curl of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Only a little.”

  Deputy Crowley was as tall as her father but leaner, and when he moved his motions were smooth, as if his joints were well oiled. With his wide-set eyes and strong jaw he was easily handsome—the kind of good-looking that understood its own power. A small sliver of a scar stretched from his ear to his chin, made more noticeable against his tan, although his cheekbones and the tip of his nose had deepened to red. Cameryn hesitated. She knew she’d be in trouble if her father caught her talking to him—that much he’d made clear. And yet she knew her curiosity was even stronger than her sense of caution. What did her father have against this deputy? Glancing around quickly she saw the alley was empty, save for a gray cat walking daintily along the fence line. She turned back to him. “Do you have a first name, Deputy?”

  “Justin.”

  “You’re new here.”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Which must be why I haven’t run into you before now. But I do know a little about you. I know you work at the Grand Hotel as a waitress.”

  Surprised, she asked, “Who told you that?”

  The smile again. “I have my sources.”

  “I don’t like it when people talk about me.”

  “Even when it’s good?” He shifted more of his weight against the wall. “You know, I’ve been meaning to come by and grab lunch at the Grand. I’ll try to come by next time you’re on shift. I didn’t know the girls in Silverton were so pretty or I’d have moved here years ago.”

  It was her turn to smile. Was he hitting on her? If he was, he was doing it badly, and yet his awkward play somehow emboldened her. She took a step in his direction, her arms crossed over her chest, hiding the stain, holding herself in. “First of all, I’m a server, not a waitress. Second, I’m a woman, not a girl. And third”—she leaned closer, her voice low—“my dad doesn’t like you. He won’t tell me why, but he’s a smart man. If he doesn’t like you”—she tilted her head up toward his—“I can’t like you, either.”

  His voice was equally soft as he bent his head toward her until he was so near she could smell the peppermint on his breath. He was chewing gum; he snapped it between his teeth. “I bet your pop didn’t tell you why he hates my guts, did he? Bet he clammed right up when it came to the details. Am I right?”

  She could feel a flush creep into her scalp.

  “You don’t have to say anything, Cameryn. I can see the answer in your eyes.”

  “You can’t see squat,” she said, angry that he could read her so clearly. “My dad—he told me everything!”

  “Now who’s the liar?” He pulled away and straightened to his full height. “And I bet you’d like me to tell you all about it, but I won’t. Not now, anyway. See, sometimes they kill the messenger.” He winked and said, “You’d better get back and take your pictures before they notice you’re gone. Don’t want Daddy thinking you’ve been talking to the wrong people. See you around, Cammie.”

  “Wait—”

  But Justin kept walking.

  “How am I supposed to find out if you won’t tell me?”

  For a moment she thought he was going to turn the corner of the building without answering, but at the last second he stopped. Spinning on his heel, he faced her and gave her a slight bow. Then, with two fingers pressed to his forehead he sent her a mock salute. “You’re the genius, Cameryn,” he told her. “You figure it out.”

  “I heard the new deputy’s really cute,” Rachel announced to Cameryn. “I mean he’s too old for you, but I’m almost nineteen and my sister told me the deputy’s only twenty-one. Of course I’m leaving for college soon so there’s not exactly much of a future, but I say why not at least try it out until I have to go? I don’t think two years is too much of a difference in age. What do you know about him?”

  Cameryn shook her head and continued wiping down the table while Rachel Geller, her fellow server, chattered on as she always did. The smell of bleach burned Cameryn’s eyes and nostrils. Her boss always soaked the cloths in a too-strong solution, but today it didn’t bother her. After her stint with Robertson she had drenched her hands in her own bleach solution until her outer layer of skin seemed to dissolve, leaving her hands smooth and slick and sanitized. And yet, when she’d held her hands to her nose, she could still smell the lingering scent of the dead man. It seemed as if his very pores had fused into hers. “You’ll get used to it,” her father had assured her, but she wondered.

  “I can’t believe you saw some dead guy,” Rachel went on. “It’s already all over town. You are so not like me. If I had seen some rotting corpse in a bathtub I would have absolutely lost it. But nothing bothers you. You are, like, the toughest girl I know.” She looked at Cameryn with frank admiration. “Sometimes I think you’re more like a guy.”

  “What do you mean?” Cameryn asked, her voice sharp.

  Rachel’s blue eyes widened as she realized her mistake. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s because you’re into science and all that boy stuff. I’m not saying you’re like a guy, it’s just—you know you’re not—never mind, I’m only making it worse.” A redhead, Rachel had dyed her hair chestnut to disguise the original strawberry color, although nothing could cover the explosion of freckles that blazed across her milk-white skin. Cameryn had known her for years. Although they weren’t especially close, she liked Rachel. The only difficulty in dealing with her was that she tended to talk nonstop. Words poured out of her mouth in an uncensored cascade, which meant she spent half her life apologizing for what she said the other half of the time. And yet, no one ever really got mad at Rachel, because it was easy to read her heart. Cameryn herself often wished she was more free. She often felt she weighed her own words too carefully.

  “Sorry if I offended you,” Rachel told her now. “You know me and my mouth.”

  “No offense taken.” Dipping her rag in her bucket once more, Cameryn concentrated on scrubbing a piece of petrified cheese stuck to the table’s edge.

  Rachel sighed. She walked to the end of the Grand and peered into the empty restaurant. She tapped her foot on the wooden floor and sighed again, louder this time. “It is so dead in here. Don’t you think it’s dead in here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you mind if I went home? My parents are out of town, which means I’ve got, like, a billion things to do, and I’ve made, like, five dollars in tips. There is absolutely no reason for two of us to be here, don’t you think?”

  That was true. Saturday afternoon sometimes dragged, but today’s business had slowed to a crawl. The Grand usually served a light but steady tourist crowd, mostly families who had come up on the D & S train or kids who took up booths while splitting a single order of fries or cranky old-timers who demanded endless coffee refills. For some reason today’s serving rooms remained empty.

  “I was supposed to leave at seven,” Cameryn said. “I’ve got plans for tonig
ht.”

  “How about if I leave now and get back by then?”

  “Sure,” Cameryn said, nodding. “If George says it’s okay, I’m fine with it.”

  But something new had caught Rachel’s attention. A little bell jingled on the restaurant door as a man came in and strode to the bar. Plowing her hair back with her hand, Rachel stood, transfixed, as Justin Crowley straddled a round stool. They were in the back section of the restaurant, so they could watch, unnoticed.

  “Ohmygosh, he is cute,” Rachel breathed. “I heard he was, but…” She didn’t finish her thought. It looked as though her entire body had gone on alert. As she stood staring, wide-eyed, Cameryn noticed the red-gold roots glinting at Rachel’s scalp, like infinitesimal flames ready to catch the chestnut hair on fire. “Don’t you think he’s cute, Cameryn?”

  “I don’t know. He’s okay, I guess,” she replied.

  “He’s way better than okay. Hey, can I serve him? I mean, he is in your section and I was about to leave”—she looked at Cameryn eagerly—“but I could stay a little longer. The thing is, lately I’ve been attracting the absolute worst guys—it’s like I’ve got some kind of loser radar or something. I mean, guess who’s been hanging around, trying to ask me out?”

  “Who?”

  “Adam the Freak. I’ve tried to be nice, you know, ’cause he’s always alone and stuff, but that’s where I went wrong. Now it’s like he never gets the hint and I’m, like, ‘Hello, go cast your spells on someone else,’ but he just orders food and watches me. That’s the caliber of guy I’ve been getting. But this deputy is totally fine. You don’t mind if I give it a whirl, do you?”

  With a dismissive wave of the hand, Cameryn said, “Be my guest.”

  “Thanks, Cammie—you’re a true friend!” She flashed a smile over her shoulder as she made her way to the bar.

  Cameryn squeezed the rag hard and watched as Rachel swooped in on her prey. Although the street outside was bright with four-o’clock sun, most of the Grand Hotel Restaurant seemed caught in a perpetual twilight. That was because the restaurant itself was a long, thin shoe box of a room, bisected into a larger back area for eating and smaller room in front for the bar. Daylight did not penetrate more than three feet from the restaurant’s only window, and the rest of the fixtures—ten-inch hurricane lamps illuminated by electric candles—barely cast a glow. The hundred-year-old bar was the main attraction in the front room, which was where Crowley had settled himself. Carved with scrolls cut deep into mahogany, it stretched fifteen feet and boasted twelve stools. On the wall behind it hung a mirror, and directly above that was a bullet hole left there by Wyatt Earp himself, carefully circled so patrons would be sure not to miss that piece of the Grand’s colorful past. A small television had been bolted to the wall, flashing pictures silently at the empty room.

  She could hear Rachel’s candied voice as she gave him a glass of water and began her usual small talk. Straining, she tried to decipher Justin’s monosyllabic replies. Although the dried cheese had already been completely removed from the table, she continued to swipe it, her eyes focused on the rag while her whole mind concentrated on their hushed conversation. There was a clink of a glass, and then silence. Suddenly a shadow darkened; when Cameryn looked up she saw Rachel standing over her, her face twisted into an uncharacteristic frown. “He asked for you,” she said curtly. “He says he wants you to wait on him.”

  “Serve him. Besides, who cares? You want him so you got him. Tell him I’m busy.”

  “That’s a little hard to pull off when the restaurant’s completely empty.”

  “He’s your customer. I gave him to you.”

  “He’s a customer who wants you, not me. By the way, you never told me you worked with him,” she went on accusingly. “You never said he was there with the dead guy. Don’t you think you should have mentioned it?”

  “Why? He was there for, like, five minutes!”

  “Whatever.” Rachel sighed and shoved her order pad into her apron pocket. “Look, I’m going home. Just serve him and collect your tip, which I’m guessing is going to be huge since he’s, like, ‘I really want my waitress to be Cameryn.’ I’ll check with Callahan and if he says it’s okay then I’m off, but I will return by seven! Have fun with your deputy.” The sun had come out on her face again, and she gave Cameryn a knowing smile. Her voice suddenly became low, conspiratorial. “I don’t care what you say—that guy’s a definite hottie!”

  And then she was gone. The saloon-type doors swung behind her as Rachel disappeared into the kitchen; the only sound was the wiper-like squeak of the hinges. There was nothing to do, Cameryn realized, but go and take the deputy’s order. She walked slowly to the bar, trying hard to convey her annoyance. She could feel him watching her. Through the corner of her eye she saw that he had on regulation khakis and that his shirt was neatly tucked. His too-long hair, though, was tousled, as though he couldn’t get the whole professional package quite right. The bangs brushed against his lashes like a dark curtain. His eyes met hers.

  “Hi, Cammie,” he said, gently thrusting his chin in her direction. “Good to see you again.”

  “What would you like?” Cameryn asked. She pulled out her pad and pencil, poised to write. Not that she needed it—she never wrote down an order for one. But the pad allowed her to keep her eyes off Justin’s face. She didn’t want to look at him.

  “Well, to begin with,” he said, “I’d like to be your friend.”

  His boldness startled her, and she couldn’t help but look up. Justin’s smile was back, only this time it appeared more like a Cheshire-cat grin.

  “I meant to eat,” she said. “What would you like to eat?”

  “That other waitress was a pretty girl. Her name’s Rachel, right?”

  Cameryn didn’t even bother to correct him on the term “waitress.” Obviously, educating Justin was useless. He was a lost cause.

  “But…I have to say you’re even prettier. And you definitely have more fire.”

  “Look, are you going to order or not?”

  “Okay, okay, just hold your horses—”

  “Hold your horses? Uh, nobody talks that way around here, Justin. This may be the West, but we aren’t living in some ancient Gunsmoke rerun!”

  “I was trying to sound local.”

  “You sound stupid. Last chance to give me an order.”

  “Cheeseburger with fries and a Coke.”

  Scribbling furiously, Cameryn said, “Got it.”

  “Wait, don’t go.” Justin shifted forward on the barstool and rested his elbows on the bar’s polished wood. Tracing his finger down the side of the sweating water glass, he asked, “Aren’t you even a little bit curious about why I’m here?”

  Cameryn flinched. She had wondered exactly that, but she didn’t want him to know she was curious. Trying to keep from sounding too eager, she asked, “Um, is it to annoy me?”

  “No. Actually, I’m here to help you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. I remember now,” she said, nodding. “You’ve got a secret. But didn’t you tell me I was a genius that had to figure it all out?”

  His left eyebrow disappeared under his hair. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “You also said you were afraid of me.”

  This seemed to amuse him. “I don’t remember that part.”

  “Doesn’t matter—you said it.”

  “And why, exactly, would I be afraid of you?”

  “Because you’re the messenger. You said sometimes they kill the messenger. That would be me killing you, right?”

  “Not to worry.” He leaned forward and spoke softly, his green-blue eyes dancing. “I think I’m ready to take my chances.”

  But he didn’t get to say more. At that moment the bell on the door jingled again, and this time Sheriff Jacobs stepped inside. His boots made an ominous sound against the wooden floor as he stomped to the bar. In the backlight it was hard to read his features, although it was easy to read his voice.


  “All right, Crowley, time’s up,” he said angrily. “We’re supposed to be in Montrose right now. You can’t just go off when the whim strikes you.” Tugging on the bill of his sheriff’s cap, he said, “Afternoon, Cameryn.”

  Justin stiffened. The tips of his ears flamed red while he sat, unmoving.

  “Do you hear me, Deputy? I’ve been trying to find you for half an hour!”

  “I thought I got a lunch break.”

  “Not when we’re scheduled to leave town you don’t.”

  Justin looked uncomfortable, and Cameryn felt embarrassed for him. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I didn’t check the board.”

  “Next time, look before you leave. Got that?”

  “Of course.” Justin swung his leg over the barstool and stood, his expression bland. “Guess we’ll have to talk another time, Cameryn.” Almost as an afterthought, he opened his wallet and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the counter. It lay there in jackknife position, still conforming to the shape of the billfold it had come from.

  “I don’t want—” she began to protest, but Justin shook his head.

  “It’s a down payment.” It was more of a statement than a question, one that Cameryn wasn’t required to answer. She thought about this as he left. Then, shrugging to herself, she picked up the money and dropped it into her apron pocket.

  Chapter Four

  “SO DID YOU WATCH Shadow of Death last night like you promised?” Lyric asked as she dumped her backpack into the backseat of Cameryn’s Jeep. Next, she squeezed her ample frame into the passenger side and looked at Cameryn expectantly.

  “No. I was going to.” Cameryn tried to look convincing. “But then I had to help Mammaw in the kitchen and it just…slipped my mind.”

  “You are such a liar.”

  “What—why do you say that?” Cameryn asked.

  “Because you are the absolute worst faker I have ever seen in my life. Your face goes red every time you tell a whopper, and right now you’re the color of a brick. The truth is you promised to watch the show and you blew it off. Again. And you better hurry or we’re going to be late for school. How I hate Mondays.”