The Madrona Heroes Register: Underneath It All

Chapter 28 - The Last Walk

“Wow.” Gabe uttered. 

Zoe’s mouth was in the shape of an ‘O’ and the other kids were also clearly impressed.

Zach skipped down the stairs to the basketball court. There wasn’t much he could do to conceal his grin at their reaction. “Good huh?” 

Binny grabbed Zach’s arm and said in a low voice, “How did you pay for all this?”

“Trust me. I got it all covered.” Zach whispered back.

“You didn’t do anything illegal did you?”

To Binny it looked like Zach was doing some mental calculations before he finally answered. “No. I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

Binny considered looking in Zach’s mind to find out for herself, but decided she wasn’t ready to know the source of their income.

“How did you do all that?” Gabe interrupted Zach and Binny’s side conversation.

“I didn’t do much. You guys did it by collecting all the missing animal information. I just entered the data into the software. But there’s more. Come with me.”

Once Zach had everyone gathered around the laptops up in the command center, he continued his explanation. “I’ve been thinking that if we can find a pattern in the locations of where the pets went missing, it might lead us to where the person taking them actually lives.”

The kids looked at each other, excited and speechless. Zoe looked only at Zach, hanging on his every word.

Zach continued, focused intently on the screens in front of him. “If we assume the perpetrator is a kid, and kids don’t have cars, then we’ve got to assume that they live in the neighborhood. My next assumption is that it is unlikely that they would want to grab a pet that’s too close to their own house for fear of getting found out.”

“Oh I remember the last time you did this. It was on your computer in your room. Remember?” Cassie was excited to find a way to participate in the explanation. “It was a couple of weeks ago.”

“Uh…” Zach looked flustered.

“Why were you doing this a couple of weeks ago? That was before all the animals went missing?” Zoe asked.

“I’m kind of a map nerd. I just like playing with them.” Zach’s statement sounded almost like a question.

Zach continued without waiting for more discussion on what he’d done a couple of weeks earlier. “Anyway, see how the pins form kind of a circle?”

“There’s an empty spot right in the middle of all of them.” Binny had been watching the screen intently.

“Exactly! We need to look where there are no pins. That’s where the person we’re looking for lives.” Zach pressed a button on his keyboard and a green pin dropped dead center on the map. “Right there.”

“How did you figure all this out?” Zoe asked.

Zach glanced over at the nearby pile of library books and smiled sheepishly. “I’ve been doing a bunch of reading.”

“Let’s go. Let’s go stop him now.” Penny said.

“What?” Binny sounded scared.

“We know where he lives. Let’s go there and end all this.” Penny was excited.

Zoe perked up at the suggestion. “I agree. Let’s go.”

“Hold on a second.” Zach interrupted.

“Why?” Penny asked.

“We can’t just march on over there. We need a plan. There are some things we need to do.” Zach explained.