Evidence by Nathan Rosen
	Fourteen children had disappeared that summer, and the bodies were turning up one by one. Nine-year-old Angelina Horowitz, ten-year-old Robert Jameson and seven-year-old Hyung Kyun Park were only a few of the victims whose corpses had been discovered tortured, mutilated, dismembered, and left to rot in garbage bags discarded in ditches. Most of the children were still missing, including the first to vanish, nine-year-old Tom Purleigh. Hope was dwindling fast. Inspector Susan Marshall had analyzed the available evidence and followed it to the thick woods near town. A crude structure, nothing more than a few sheets of plywood leaned against a tree, caught her eye. The roof was low, far too low for a fully grown adult, and she had to stoop to look inside. Blades of all sizes, hammers, pliers, a handsaw, all covered in blood and dried gore. But among the gruesome weaponry were brightly colored comic books, trading cards, action figures, even a portable video game system. A boy's prized possessions. Realization dawned in slow horror, and in the split second before the knife plunged into her back, she knew exactly where Tom Purleigh had been all these months.
	Copyright © 2006 Nathan Rosen