By late October the park cleared out except for serious joggers and dedicated dog walkers. March, CindeeRae, and I circled the loop on our bikes searching for clues and trying to come up with a new plan.
After telling her about our run-in with Crowley, no one had said much except CindeeRae, who had whispered, “This is like a real-life spy movie,” only she didn’t seem especially excited at the idea.
Crowley’s threat had done the opposite of what he’d intended; instead of making me afraid, he had made me angry. We had already given our biggest piece of evidence to the police—Barkley’s collar—and it hadn’t helped. But there had to be more clues somewhere. Since we knew Crowley had taken Barkley from Lakeview, and since his house was just around the corner, we thought the park might be his favorite swiping spot. Hopefully he had left something behind on the road or even in the garbage cans that would help us figure out where he kept the dogs after he stole them. And if he hadn’t, we’d have to figure out somewhere else we could find clues.
We couldn’t just give up and let the bad guy win.
“This is a bad idea, Kazu.” March’s voice barely carried over the wind to where I led the group. “What if he’s out prowling and sees us?”
“Unless you can uncover more evidence through your hack, we won’t find anything by hiding inside,” I called to him over my shoulder without looking back. Keeping my bike upright against the wind required all my concentration. “You really want to wait for Crowley to come after us? He’s already got Lobster. You want him to take Genki and Hopper, too?”
“Better Hopper than me,” I could have sworn I heard him mutter. But with the tree-bending wind and rush-hour traffic on Federal Boulevard, I couldn’t be sure.
CindeeRae passed March and pedaled so that her bike was even with mine. “Maybe we should spy on him? Wait until he leaves his house and follow him to the scene of the next dognapping.”
That actually wasn’t a bad idea, but it probably wouldn’t take him long to notice three kids trailing him on bikes—that is, if he didn’t lose us in his dust first.
“Good suggestion,” I yelled. “But let’s try gathering more intel before we plan another high-stakes mission.” After March’s and my confession, followed by Officer Rhodes’s visit to our house, Mom had barely talked to me. She would kill me if she found out I was trailing Crowley, and Crowley might kill us if he found out.
“Totally.” CindeeRae stood on her pedals to push against the wind. “We can’t go into a situation blind. We need information, lots more information…” A gust blew her words away.
The cold air bit at my ankles, which peeked from under my jeans as I rode. Socks were good for more than what Mom called stink-resistance, I decided. My windbreaker flapped and my eyes watered at the chill. I swerved toward a garbage can, stopped my bike, and peered over the rim to see if there was enough trash to rummage through. It was empty. We had picked a bad day to gather intel.
I shook my head at March and CindeeRae before standing on my pedals and powering forward; our parents wouldn’t want us out riding past dinner. I ducked my head against the wind as we flew down the shady path behind Pioneer Village. We checked one more garbage can and a dumpster in the overflow parking lot. Nothing.
It was crazy to hope Crowley would leave behind evidence: a leash, a dog tag, another collar. Even an empty bag of doggie treats would be better than nothing. It was crazier to hope he’d leave behind a map to the doggie-holding headquarters. We were going to have to look somewhere else for that.
As we rounded the corner and hit the long road beside the soccer field, we came upon a boy. He sat on the ground, leaning back against his elbows, the knees of his jeans ripped and bloody, an empty dog leash in his hand. His shoulders shook, and the movement rocked his whole body.
I stopped my bike so quickly it skidded on the path, shooting gravel from my back wheel. March and CindeeRae stopped behind me.
“Are you okay?” I leaned toward him over my bike.
The kid’s eyes were glassy, and one tear slid down his cheek, clearing a path through the grime on his face. “He took my dog.”
We had been here the entire time and had ridden round the loop twice. Were we so focused on finding clues that we had missed witnessing an actual dognapping?
The kid stood and started to jog toward Federal Boulevard. “I’ve got to go home and call the police.”
We kept up with him on our bikes, riding slowly to match his pace. His hair was dark and wavy, and he wore a baseball tee with the number ten on the back. I thought I might have seen him at school. Was he a third grader?
“Is your name Dimitri?” CindeeRae asked. He nodded.
March and I turned to CindeeRae. Did she know everyone at Lincoln Elementary?
She shrugged. “My reading buddy was in his class last year.”
Dimitri stopped, as if all our talking made him forget what he was doing. “A van stopped next to us, and this guy opened the door and took Muffin.”
“What did he look like?” I grabbed the Sleuth Chronicle from my basket and opened it to a clean sheet of paper.
Dimitri looked around like he suddenly realized he was lost. He spun a slow circle, and the leash, missing its snap hook, flew in the wind like an empty kite string. I pictured myself down at the other end of the soccer field days ago with an empty leash in my own hand.
“I don’t know,” Dimitri said, meeting my eyes for the first time. “He was wearing a mask.”
“Was someone with him?” My pen bled into the paper as I waited.
“No.” He turned around and began walking toward Summer Glen. A slow hiccuping cry started from deep in his throat. “I wouldn’t let go, so he cut the leash with a knife and drove away.”
I wrote madly. “Which way did he go?”
“That way.” He pointed over his shoulder toward Federal Boulevard.
“What did the van look like?”
“Big? No windows on the side, and pictures with writing that I couldn’t really read. It was too dirty.”
I tapped my pen on the notebook. It had to be the same van!
“We’ll take you home.” March slid from his bike and walked it to the other side of Dimitri so that we flanked him like guards. Dimitri’s shoulders quaked with sobs.
Aside from me staring down the dognapping van after Crowley took Barkley, no one had seen the dognapper in action until today. Dimitri’s dog must have been special.
“What kind of dog was Muffin?” I asked.
“A Samoyed puppy.”
I had no idea what a Samoyed looked like, but I guessed they were expensive, or else why would Crowley risk snatching Muffin in broad daylight while Dimitri held fast to his leash? Muffin might go for a nice sum to an illegal breeder or a puppy mill, and Crowley obviously didn’t care who else he might hurt in the process, as long as he got the dog.
We shadowed Dimitri to his house on Grove Street, where his mother pulled him into a tight hug before rushing down their front steps and hugging us, too. We hadn’t seen anything, so we didn’t have much to say, but we nodded dumbly as we listened to Dimitri choke out something in Spanish, his words catching in his throat with his tears.
As March, CindeeRae, and I walked our bikes four blocks to my house, I realized that, with all the details of Muffin’s dognapping tucked neatly inside the pages of the Sleuth Chronicle, we had only discovered one thing: Crowley was even more dangerous than we’d first thought.