Where Was She?

It wasn't as though she was his favorite waitress of all time.  There had been that one conversation early on that flirted with the downright hostile which could have made everything very uncomfortable ever after.  But a man's relationship with his server can run deep, what with the whole mothering aspect of it, taking care of the needs and wants and such, and she was good at it, she had a handle on what those needs were.  The substitute this morning was definitely lacking in that regard.  She had no eyes for his empty coffee cup, no matter how close to the edge of the table he placed it.  It was lamely frustrating on the whole.

He was reading, as usual, but at some point found himself unable to absorb the words.  It was a while before he realized that it was because of the conversation in the booth next to him.  There was something about, what?  A rarity around here, some horrible murder?  He listened as they described what had happened including some odd little detail that made it all the more outstanding for the teller and listener alike.

That detail sent him off into memory immediately. What was it?  He had heard something similar once.  Where had it been?  Then he remembered. It was a conversation that had grown out of the waitress acknowledging his reading habit, something that no one else indulged in at the diner.  She decided to share with him her preferred type of books, ones about true crime murders, and usually ones with some extra twisted attraction about them.  She had shown him one of the books that she had checked out from the local library, with those odd pictures of the victims and perpetrators, where their black and white, old-timey nature tended to contrast with the seemingly modern wickedness of the deeds.  It wasn't really his thing, so he had just scanned quickly through, looking at those evocative shots, but there was that detail in one of the crimes, the same exact thing that had just apparently happened here in this usually quiet town.

And now the question took its first little turn down that dark road which it would continue upon, getting blacker and more terrifying as he kept up its pursuit.

Where was she?