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resist a pretty face and had spilled more than he’ had let on.  Apparently, neither could the mayor, if his wife’s hostility and his own discomfort were any indication.  This thing was getting messier by the second.
                “The mayor and his family were just leaving, Ms. Kinross.”  The chief tried to step between Dolly Kinross and the Carltons, but a frisson of electricity shot up his left arm and he gasped, wondering if he was having a heart attack.  He would rather that, then tell Ms. Kinross that her youngest son was dead and her older son most likely severely wounded and currently unaccounted for.
                Mayor Carlton herded his wife and son through the front doors.  Chief Bailey thought he saw flashbulbs go off.  Leave it to old Al Tibson, owner of the Honeyville Crier, to be there with his great, big, flashing camera all set up to capture the lurid details.  He would let Mayor Carlton deal with that.  It would serve the philandering peacock right.  What the dickens was pretty Dolly Kinross doing with Mayor Carlton, anyway?
                “Chief?”  Dolly Kinross cleared her throat nervously and suppressed a sob that was threatening to break free.  “Whose blood is that?”
     
                 
                                 
    ***
     
     
     
                Dolly Kinross did not take the news well.  She kept insisting that Johnny wouldn’t have left his younger brother to save his own skin, and if he had left at all it had to have been against his will.
                “Johnny was very protective of Billy and me, Chief Bailey.  He wouldn’t have just left Billy laying there dead!  And he wouldn’t have left me – not without telling me where he was going!” Dolly Kinross had sobbed into his shoulder.  Chief Bailey had silently agreed with her.  He had tried to comfort her, and he had reassured her that they would figure it out.  But the truth was, he was completely stumped.
                    Thinking back on that awful night he sighed and rubbed the thinning hair on the back of his head, unfolding himself from his desk chair.  None of it made any sense.  From what he knew about Johnny Kinross, the kid was no angel.  After all, he had stolen the gun that his kid brother had been waving around that night.  The owner had come forward and reported it missing from his car just yesterday.  That had answered the question of the gun. 
                  He had wrangled the story of the rumble out of Roger Carlton and a few of the kids that had gathered for the fight that night.  Roger had apparently been giving Billy Kinross a hard time, and Johnny had called him out.  Johnny Kinross had been involved in his share of fights over the years, and he had a reputation as a pretty tough kid.  Apparently, Roger Carlton had tried to increase his odds in the fight with a little element of surprise.   
                  A day or so after the disappearance, Chief Bailey had also been barraged by a steady stream of hysterical females, all claiming to have had a special relationship with Johnny.  He had even been visited by plain little Dorothy Barker, Johnny’s English teacher, who had seemed unusually distraught by the news of Johnny’s disappearance.  Chief Bailey had his suspicions about that.  Seems Johnny had a way with the ladies.  Still, angel or not, Johnny didn’t seem like the kind to run when there was trouble 
                Unfortunately, that was the only option that made any sense.  They hadn’t found a trace of him anywhere.  His car had still been right where he left it that night.  The doors were hanging open and the lights were still on.  Somebody had done some real damage to it, too.  Chief Bailey was working on charging Roger Carlton with that.  The Carlton kid had been seen taking a bat to the Bel Air, and he was going to