The Blood On Our Hands by Jonah Ellersby

belch out great gusts of converted natural gas, the heat in the second story room was, for Dojcsak, intolerable. He drank water from a cooler, two glasses, hoping to slake his thirst.
    Three minutes after placing his first call of the morning, Dojcsak was connected to District Attorney Jimmy Cromwell, the man ultimately responsible for determining the disposition of the Missy Bitson investigation. He offered his condolences.
    “I know it’s a small town, Ed. You have my sympathies.” Dojcsak thanked him. “You also have my support. There’s no reason for me to believe you won’t do a thorough job or to call in the BCI,” he said, officially handing off the case to Dojcsak rather than the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
    Cromwell did offer the services of the State Police to assist in questioning and the Forensics Unit to assess physical evidence; Dojcsak accepted. He asked that Cromwell initiate inquiries into transients, rapists and pedophiles (or otherwise disreputable individuals) recently paroled or released from nearby correctional institutes and assigned to halfway homes and possibly at large or newly arrived to the area.
    “Do you suspect an outsider?” Cromwell asked. Dojcsak did not. “Then don’t waste your time, Ed. Look closer to home.”
    Dojcsak assured Cromwell that he would—without exception—pursue all possibilities.
    The post mortem was scheduled for ten that morning. The District Attorney would have his own people attend, as protocol required someone should.
    “Keep me in the loop, Ed,” he said. It was less a request than a demand. “No surprises.” Dojcsak promised to stay in touch and ten minutes later, he replaced the receiver.
    After speaking with Cromwell, Dojcsak removed an 8 ½ by 11-inch sheet of lined paper from a desk drawer and retrieved a ballpoint pen. In the top margin, from left to right horizontally across the page, he wrote in capital letters:
     
    MOTIVE/MEANS/OPPORTUNITY
     
    The argument could be made that anyone might have reason to kill Missy Bitson or, more significantly, have no reason at all. In Dojcsak’s mind it amounted to the same thing. The general lament, Who could do such a thing ? works in reverse when applied to the murder of a child. After all, children are natural born victims aren’t they, always at the bottom of the proverbial shit rolls down hill, hill ? Kids are the canvass on which big people are capable and often times only too willing to project their anger, frustration, humiliation, impotence, and fear; past and present, perceived and real.
    Ed Dojcsak instinctively understood that anyone and everyone could do such a thing .
    In truth, kids today—girls especially , and especially teenage girls—did little to mitigate the possibility of being victimized, dressing provocatively as they did in tight halters and low-slung jeans, leaving little to the imagination, conveying a message of willingness and availability if not in character, in appearance, sharing much too much of their thoughts and their bodies on social media.
    Dojcsak didn’t advocate the imposition of Burkha-style headwear or gowns, but did lament this creeping abandonment of propriety and shame. What use was saying, No with your words when the rest of you cried out, Yes ? (Privately, Dojcsak thanked his good fortune. With his own daughters, at least, he did not have this concern.)
    As to means, the crime scene investigation uncovered no evidence of a weapon; no entry wound from either gunshot or blade: Missy had been manually dispatched. She was a slightly built girl; it followed that even a slightly built person might have committed the crime, female or male.
    Opportunity ? Simple. Physics 101: acknowledge the impossibility of a body being in two places at one time and eliminate who it can be from whom it cannot . Dojcsak didn’t feel an obligation to produce an eyewitness, only a reasonable suspect lacking the benefit of an irrefutable alibi and against