Page 48 of Just Now

“Um, ma’am, is there anything I can do to help?” From behind her, Gaynor’s voice was twanging with stress. Cami jumped so violently she nearly hit the office’s white-painted ceiling. She’d forgotten completely that he was there.

“I think I’ve gotten what I need,” she said, turning to him. “I’m looking at the footage from the second camera. The footage of your back lot.”

“That?” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised that’s useful to you, but I guess it’s helped us, also. We installed it a couple of years ago, after we had a few staff cars broken into, and a couple of attempted thefts of the premises. Folks are desperate. They’ll break in to steal staff clothing, the petty cash box. It’s prevented a lot of that, but what can you see?”

She showed him. “Look here. On the edge of the footage. There’s you, I guess you’re throwing away the slips?”

“Yes, that’s me.” He peered closer. “I can see myself there, throwing the evening’s slips away.”

“Now, wait. Let’s see if we can see what I expect to find,” Cami said.

She fast-forwarded the footage. One hour, two hours. Now it was after midnight and the place was quiet, the diner long since closed.

And there he was. A dark figure, dressed in black, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.

He lurked around the dumpster, furtively glancing around before diving in. He rummaged through the trash, tossing aside empty containers and food scraps until he found what he was looking for. Working fast he grabbed a handful of papers and stuffed them into his pocket before making a quick getaway.

“That’s him,” Cami breathed. “That’s our guy. But he knows where the camera is and he’s not letting us see him.”

Not once did the scrounging man glance at the camera. He kept his head low and his back turned away.

Gaynor looked horrified. “I can’t believe this is happening in my diner. How could I have let this happen? I thought I was preventing personal information from being stolen!”

“I’m going to see if he was there the previous night, too,” Cami said.

She felt a sense of doom descend as the footage picked him up again. He’d been here every night, she guessed. Rooting through those slips, carefully choosing the ones he thought would work for him. He must have a lengthy list of potential victims by now, and what did they have? Not even a clear sight of him.

She searched another night earlier, nodding grimly as the same figure appeared on the screen. He was there again. This was his ritual. Had he been careless at all? Had he faced the camera even once?

Cami rewound the footage to the moment when the figure first appeared on screen. She watched as he rummaged through the trash. His face was steeped in shadow. He was being careful every step of the way not to be seen.

At that moment, there was a sound of smashing glass from outside the office, and a shriek, followed by raucous cheers from the few remaining customers.

Mr. Gaynor jumped, looking guilty, as if he’d been shirking his duties by watching the footage. “I’d better get back to work,” he said, and rushed out of the office.

Now Cami was on her own, watching this killer.

She still had no idea who he was. He could, potentially, be the assistant manager that Connor was now confronting. A staff member could have sneaked back after hours. Or else he could be a customer. All it would take was one lucky visit to the diner for a psychopathic killer to work out that he could use this information. He might have asked one of the waitresses what happened to the forms, wondering if they could be useful to him.

The reality chilled Cami as she thought about the diner’s large, bright windows, so well placed to advertise the business.

He could have stared through the windows, seeing that a lot of women felt comfortable eating here, and that if he got their addresses, he could quickly do surveillance and see which ones were single. Those eating dinner at a table for one were a giveaway. He’d just have to find the table number on the form to be sure.

That was what she thought he’d done.

He had gone the lowest of low-tech routes possible. He’d looked through the windows, identifying the tables he needed, the ones where single women were sitting. And then, after dark, at the end of the night, he’d sneaked back to the dumpster for those forms he needed.

She was sure now, that if the forms were no longer available, he’d find another way to get his victims. This was just how he’d started. Now the monster was out, and they had to stop him.

Shivering, she scrolled back another night. And there he was again.

This time, he had been more patient. He’d taken some time. He’d gone through the receipts in a more leisurely way. She could see his fingers touching each one, discarding them. He was actually reading them there.

“Why did he stop doing that?” she asked.

A moment later, thinking back to his timeline, she had her own answer. It was because the police had found the first body.

After that, he’d been much more careful, not wanting to spend time there in case he was caught.

---