Serial Killer Summer (A 3-Day Novel)

Chapter Seven

Trouble in the first camping session of the year started immediately after opening campfire.

It's a small thing, really, the sort of thing that under normal circumstances would not be more than a blip.

The campfire went well. Lindsay was there and mostly her best most ebullient self. Mark seemed edgy, but even he gradually relaxed. Devon and Hillary lead the whole camp—almost 150 camper counsellors and other staff—through the best campfire songs they knew. All the senior staff participated in Devon's silly sketches, to the delight of the campers. And the youngest campers scooted forward for the chance to roast their first marshmallows at Camp Big Spirit while the rest of us cheered.

They day had been filled with the normal rituals of camp life, from non-stop boat rides back and forth all afternoon to bring the campers over, to first dinner with its rhyming roll call of cabins, to the conferring of honorary nicknames to all new campers.

So we were not expecting trouble as we walked back from campfire.

"Hey!" I heard a voice call out. "Hey!"

It was Win. He was in the middle of the path ahead. Kids were side-stepping him generously. He'd been introduced at dinner and received an uneasy round of applause from those who remembered Gerald. The former cook had been a jolly, pink-faced man with an angelic look. Win was...something else entirely. The counsellors and certain members of the senior staff gave him a more hearty hand, since he had become their silent party companion.

Now he was standing in the path shouting hey at anyone and everyone passing by.

"What's going on?" I asked. I looked around and was the most senior staff person visible in that moment.

"Some damned kid stole my beef, that's what's wrong!"

"Whoa," I said, motioning him to lower his voice. Campers were still streaming past us on their way to their cabins. "Let's go inside."

The kitchen was all cleaned up and everything looked ready for the next day.

"What were you doing in here at this time of night?" Then when I thought that sounded accusatory, I went on, "It looks like your work is done here for today and you should be relaxing."

"Well, I left three 10 pound bags of ground beef out here," he pointed at a wide spot on the counter between the giant mixer and the steamer where now two large bags of ground beef sat. "They were defrosting, but I wanted to put it in them cooler to finish defrosting over night. So I came in here, and one of them is gone."

Behind us, the door opened and several people came through: Lindsey, Mark, Jay and Bruce.

"What's the issue?" Lindsey asked.

"Missing ground beef," I said.

"Stolen," Win corrected, and he explained again that it had been defrosting on the counter since dinner time, and that he'd come back to put it in the cooler.

"When did you last see the third bag?" Lindsey asked.

"After dinner clean-up, about seven. Though you might want to ask those two kitchen girls. They were here later than me."

Jay spoke up. "I definitely saw the three bags when I came in to get the marshmallows before campfire."

"And since then, every one in camp has been down at Campfire Rock. Everyone," Lindsey repeated. "I don't see how anyone from camp could do this."

"Not to mention," Jay added, "what would a camper do with that much ground beef?

"Bruce, you can look into it tomorrow," she said, and Bruce nodded.