BY JULY, THE BODY OF a second Benton Boy had been discovered—my very own buddy, Colton.
They’d found him in a stone quarry about fifteen miles from town—the Eureka Tile Company, as I recall—his limbs broken and bent back on themselves (“like some discarded Raggedy Ann,” wrote the local paper) and his head completely gone—which caused a real sensation amongst the townsfolk as each attempted to solve the riddle and at least one woman reported having seen it: “Just floating down the river, like a pale, blue ball.”
But it wasn’t until Rusty was killed that things reached a fever pitch, with Sheriff Donner under attack for failing to solve the case and neighbor turning against neighbor in a kind of collective paranoia—for by this point no one could be trusted, not in such a small town, and th
