The Killing Moon by Dan Padavona (books to read for 13 year olds .TXT) 📕

“So the boy fled from the vehicle and left the road for the railroad tracks. The killer abandoned his vehicle and pursued on foot, catching him before the boy made it across the meadow.”

“Sure looks that way.”

Thomas lifted his radio.

“Aguilar, the killer drove to and from the scene. Ask the neighbors if anyone noticed an unfamiliar vehicle on the access road after midnight.”

“Will do, Sheriff.”

A van stopped along the shoulder, and the Kane Grove PD crime scene techs piled out with their evidence kits. Virgil Harbough, the Nightshade County Medical Examiner, would arrive within the hour.

The crime techs erected an open-sided police tent twenty yards from the body. Thomas snapped photographs each time he placed an evidence marker. A ruler along the edge of the marker allowed Thomas to record the size of each shoe print.

Presley bent down beside him and aimed her light into the grass.

“What’s that?”

Thomas narrowed his eyes and used tweezers to pluck the orange fabric out of the weeds. It could have been stray garbage unrelated to the case. His intuition told him otherwise as he slipped the fabric into an evidence bag and held it up to the light. Thomas glanced at Presley.

“I might be crazy, but it looks like it came from a Halloween mask.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

October 31st

6:00 a.m.

It took four hours for the Kane Grove crime techs to reconstruct the scene. A sliver of gray lay on the horizon, but dawn’s approach did nothing to abate the cold. Exhausted officers hopped in place and clutched Styrofoam coffee cups, condensation clouds forming as they spoke.

At least it wasn’t windy, Thomas told himself. He pulled his coat together and wished he’d worn a second layer beneath his clothes. The building light beyond the hills warned him he should be elsewhere. Solving this murder was his responsibility, but his thoughts kept returning to the call Kane Grove PD placed to Chelsey. Raven’s kidnapper, the man who swore he’d get revenge, had broken out of prison. Thomas needed to be two places at once. He couldn’t protect his friends until he figured out who murdered the teenage boy.

He lifted his phone and called LeVar. After seven rings, he gave up. At six in the morning, LeVar was still asleep and probably hadn’t heard about Benson’s escape. LeVar had worked until late at the Broken Yolk last night. He needed to keep up with his studies, and his workday at Wolf Lake Consulting began at noon. Better to let him sleep. LeVar would be useless to Raven if he was too tired to keep his eyes open. Thomas sent a text message to LeVar’s phone. He’d read the message when he awoke.

Detective Presley and Deputy Aguilar walked back from the tent and joined Thomas beside the railroad tracks. Aguilar handed him a cup of coffee. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

“You told me this stuff would eat a hole in my stomach.”

“Good luck finding herbal tea out here,” Aguilar said, scrunching her face after she sipped her coffee. “If it keeps us awake, we’ll make do. You seem preoccupied.”

Thomas glanced up the road. A roadblock prevented looky-loos from interfering with the investigation. Taking another sip, he told Aguilar about Mark Benson.

“Benson is a fool if he returns to Nightshade County,” Aguilar said. “Once we finish here, I’ll be happy to check on Raven.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“It was Officer Stanton who called Chelsey Byrd last night,” Presley said. “Kane Grove PD is searching for Benson. If he shows his face, we’ll catch him.”

Thomas’s mind flashed back to the Jeremy Hyde case. While Thomas and the Nightshade County Sheriff’s Department searched for the man murdering prostitutes in Harmon, the psychopath stalked Thomas and the Mourning family, breaking inside his house and painting Hero on the upstairs wall. Killers hung in the shadows and found you before you identified them. Locked doors didn’t stand in their way. Was Benson a murderer in the making?

Aguilar must have recognized the worry on his face. She touched his shoulder.

“Mark Benson isn’t getting past me. Even if he does, Raven Hopkins is the last person he wants to mess with.”

“I’m not convinced he’ll come to Kane Grove,” said Thomas. “If he’s motivated by revenge, Benson will head for Wolf Lake.”

“Any chance Benson killed our John Doe? I realize it’s a shot in the dark, but Barton Falls is the first town Benson would pass through if he was making a beeline for Wolf Lake.”

“What’s his motivation? Benson and Damian Ramos kidnapped Ellie Fisher and placed a ransom on her head. Then he went after Raven because she was close to solving Fisher’s disappearance. No, he wouldn’t randomly murder a kid in Barton Falls.”

“He might have done it for money,” Presley said. “We didn’t find a wallet on the teenager.”

She had a point. Maybe Benson murdered the boy and stole his wallet. He’d need money to escape the country.

Aguilar nodded and said, “Whoever our killer is, he has transportation.”

“Your witness spotted a dark sedan driving erratically on the access road,” said Thomas.

“Shortly after midnight, yes. She couldn’t determine the make or model because of the fog. But there was someone out here around the time Kane Grove PD received the screaming complaint.”

Presley lifted her chin at a heavyset man with a gray, bushy beard strutting in their direction.

“Looks like the techs are ready to walk us through the scene.”

Thomas drained the last of his coffee and tossed the cup into a garbage bag. The lumbering tech was named Griffith.

“If you’ll follow me, Sheriff,” Griffith said, motioning for Presley and Aguilar to join them.

The tech used fluorescent paint at each evidence point to reconstruct the murder.

“I found tire tracks leading off the road and along the shoulder,” Griffiths said, sweeping his flashlight over the tracks. “Notice how the footprints trail away from the passenger side.”

“Those must belong to the victim,” Presley said.

Griffith nodded and strode into the field where the tire tracks ended.

“There’s a new set of shoe prints here,” the tech said, flashing his light over