Killer Mission Read online

  “Oh, no, there’s a wound under there.” Ellery pursed his lips and glanced at the knife I was still holding. “But I did it myself. Figured the small-town first aid kit they call a hospital up here would accept my story even if it didn’t look quite like a real dog bite.”

  After that it wasn’t difficult to get him to admit to most of the rest of the mischief. He confessed to helping spread those rumors about Darity wanting to shut down the frats, and to Spencer’s recent “death threat.” He’d also rigged the toilet bomb, though his face sort of crumpled when he admitted that part.

  “I never meant for anyone to get really hurt,” he said quietly. “I mean, a little shrapnel wound or whatever, sure. But not what happened to Lewis. I was planning to get in there first and stand back a bit so the explosion wouldn’t hit anyone directly, you know?” He shot a look at the dog. “But Killer stopped me.”

  I couldn’t help being shocked. Looking over at Joe, he looked the same. Even if Lewis’s death was an accident, it was obvious that Ellery wasn’t quite right in the head. Not if he was so willing to get himself and others hurt just to avoid dealing with his father.

  He’d done the acid thing too. And also shot that arrow at Joe, though he claimed he wasn’t really aiming for him—just trying to scare him and throw us off track.

  The only incidents he wouldn’t fess up to were Lee’s academic sabotage and the greased floor in the coach’s office. He claimed to know nothing about either incident, aside from hearing about the latter like everyone else.

  “Weird,” Joe said as the two of us huddled to talk things over. “The grades thing could’ve been a computer glitch or something. But could the grease thing really be unrelated to all this?”

  I kept a wary eye on Ellery. He was just standing there watching Killer, who was sniffing around at the edge of the clearing.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Might’ve been a team prank gone wrong, or maybe an innocent spill or something, I guess. We’ll just have to leave that part to Dr. Darity to figure out.”

  Speaking of the headmaster, he’d just returned to the clearing, his expression troubled. Mr. Marks was behind him, glowering and looking generally mad at the world.

  “Should we head back?” Spencer asked Darity, shooting a look at Ellery.

  “I suppose we—,” Darity began.

  Killer drowned him out with several loud barks. I’d assumed he was taking a potty break over there at the edge of the clearing, but it seemed not. He took off into the woods, appearing to once more be on the track of something or someone.

  “If he’s just chasing a raccoon or something, I’m so not in the mood,” Joe muttered as we both took off after him.

  I put on a burst of speed. Whatever Killer was after, I was pretty sure it wasn’t a raccoon.

  We followed the dog through some underbrush and then along a faint, winding path. Soon we reached a smaller clearing. In it was another hunting cabin, this one older-looking and half falling down.

  Killer raced straight over to it. “What is it, boy?” I asked, curious now.

  Joe gulped as we caught up to the dog and saw what he had led us to. “Oh, wow,” he said, playing his flashlight beam over something just inside the hut. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Darity, Ellery, Spencer, and the others burst into the clearing behind us. “What is it?” Darity asked. “Why did the dog run away?”

  Ellery hurried over to peer into the ramshackle cabin. “Ew, what’s that?” he asked, looking mystified as he stared at two buckets brimming with some dark liquid.

  Joe dipped his finger into one of the buckets and took a whiff. “Just as I thought,” he said grimly. “It’s blood. These are two buckets of blood.”

  I looked at Ellery and his father. They both looked shocked and confused. And I was pretty sure that whatever else Ellery might be, he wasn’t that good an actor.

  Next I turned my gaze to Joe. He and I shared a long, serious look.

  We might have landed one culprit. But it seemed that maybe the trouble at Firth Academy wasn’t over after all.

  Get ready to meet the next great kid detective,

  Steve Brixton!

  Here’s an excerpt from The BRIXTON BROTHERS

  Book #1: The Case of the Case of

  Mistaken Identity

  STEVE BRIXTON, A.K.A. STEVE, was reading on his too-small bed. He was having trouble getting comfortable, and for a few good reasons. His feet were hanging off the edge. Bedsprings were poking his ribs. His sheets were full of cinnamon-graham-cracker crumbs. But the main reason Steve was uncomfortable was that he was lying on an old copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, which was 959 pages long, and which he had hidden under his mattress.

  If for some reason you were looking under Steve’s mattress and found the Guinness Book of World Records, you’d probably think it was just an ordinary book. That was the point. Open it up and you’d see that Steve had cut an identical rectangle out from the middle of every one of its pages. Then he had pasted the pages together. It had taken over two weeks to finish, and Steve had developed an allergic reaction to the paste, but it was worth it. When Steve was done, the book had a secret compartment. It wasn’t just a book anymore. It was a top secret book-box. And inside that top secret book-box was Steve’s top secret notebook. And that top secret notebook was where Steve recorded all sorts of notes and observations, including, on page one, a list of the Fifty-Nine Greatest Books of All Time.

  First on his list was a shiny red book called The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook, written by MacArthur Bart. The handbook was packed with the Real Crime-Solving Tips and Tricks employed by Shawn and Kevin Bailey, a.k.a. America’s Favorite Teenage Supersleuths, a.k.a. the Bailey Brothers, in their never-ending fight against goons and baddies and criminals and crime. The Bailey Brothers, of course, were the heroes of the best detective stories of all time, the Bailey Brothers Mysteries. And their handbook told you everything they knew: what to look for at a crime scene (shoe prints, tire marks, and fingerprints), the ways to crack a safe (rip jobs, punch jobs, and old man jobs), and where to hide a top secret notebook (in a top secret book-box). Basically, The Bailey Brothers’ Detective Handbook told you how to do all the stuff that the Bailey Brothers were completely ace at.

  The Bailey Brothers, of course, were the sons of world-famous detective Harris Bailey. They helped their dad solve his toughest cases, and they had all sorts of dangerous adventures, and these adventures were the subject of the fifty-eight shiny red volumes that made up the Bailey Brothers Mysteries, also written by MacArthur Bart. Numbers two through fifty-nine on Steve Brixton’s list of the Fifty-Nine Greatest Books of All Time were taken up by the Bailey Brothers Mysteries.

  Steve had already read all the Bailey Brothers books. Most of them he had read twice. A few he’d read three times. His favorite Bailey Brothers mystery was whichever one he was reading at the time. That meant that right now, as Steve lay on his lumpy bed, his favorite book was Bailey Brothers #13: The Mystery of the Hidden Secret. Steve was finishing up chapter seventeen, which at the moment was his favorite chapter, and which ended like this:

  “Jumping jackals!” dark-haired Shawn exclaimed, pointing to the back wall of the dusty old parlor. “Look, Kevin! That bookcase looks newer than the rest!”

  “General George Washington!” his blond older brother cried out. “I think you’re right!” Kevin rubbed his chin and thought. “Hold on just a minute, Shawn. This mansion has been abandoned for years. Nobody lives here. So who would have built a new bookshelf?”

  Shawn and Kevin grinned at each other. “The robbers!” they shouted in unison.

  “Say, I’ll bet this bookshelf covers a secret passageway that leads to their hideout,” Shawn surmised.

  “Which is where we’ll find the suitcase full of stolen loot!” Kevin cried.

  The two sleuths crossed over to the wall and stood in front of the suspicious bookcase. Shawn thought quietly for a few seconds.

&nbs
p; “I know! Let’s try to push the bookcase over,” Shawn suggested.

  “Hey, it can’t be any harder than Coach Biltmore’s tackling practice,” joked athletic Kevin, who lettered in football and many other varsity sports.

  “One, two, three, heave!” shouted Shawn. The boys threw their weight into the bookshelf, lifting with their legs to avoid back injuries. There was a loud crash as the bookshelf detached from the wall and toppled over. The dust cleared and revealed a long, dark hallway!

  “I knew it!” whooped Shawn. “Let’s go!

  “Not so fast, kids,” said a strange voice. “You won’t be recoverin’ the loot that easy.”

  Shawn and Kevin whirled around to see a shifty-eyed man limping toward them, his scarred face visible in the moonlight through the window.

  The man was holding a knife!

  That was where the chapter ended, and when Carol Brixton, a.k.a. Steve’s mom, called him downstairs to dinner.