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heard about the Foster girl?”
    Amy nodded.  “The grapevine in a one-horse town like this is quicker than broadband.  Poor girl.  Her parents, Wayne and Shirley, will be absolutely devastated.  I can’t rightly imagine what they’ll be going through.”
    “You think that Ray Marshall did it?”
    “He’s a good boy, Logan.  Loves nature and has always seemed a gentle person.  But I don’t know what happened out there.  I hope that there’s another explanation.”
    Clifton entered the diner and sat down opposite Logan.  Amy put her hand reassuringly on his shoulder and squeezed gently before heading back to the counter.
    “It looks bad for Ray,”  Clifton said.  “Lyle…the sheriff, hasn’t said as much, but I get the feeling he considers it to be cut and dried.”
    “What’s his take?”  Logan said.
    “That Ray was high, got nasty when Tanya wouldn’t come across, and ended up strangling her, then panicked, dumped the body nearby and left the scene.”
    “Could’ve gone down that way,”  Logan said.  “Teenage couples fall out, and it can get physical.  Maybe Ray lost the plot, and the next thing he knew it was as bad as it can get.”
    “He didn’t do it, Logan.  He said that he slapped her and immediately regretted it, but that she then called him a bastard, got out of the car and walked off.  If he had seriously hurt her by accident he would have called for help.  I know my boy.  He wouldn’t have just gone to sleep in the car and then driven home if he’d murdered Tanya.”
    “Okay.  Let’s consider another scenario,”  Logan said as he raised his hand and intimated to Amy that he could use more coffee.
    Amy brought a pot and a second mug, set them down and left, while Logan thought through what other circumstances could have resulted in Tanya’s death.
    “It was late evening,”  Logan said to Clifton.  “If Ray is telling the truth, then we have a teenage girl walking along a dark highway at night.  It’s a country road that doesn’t get a lot of traffic.  Someone sees her in his headlights, stops, and she either runs off or gets in.  The guy attempts to, or actually rapes her.  We don’t know whether she had sex or not yet.  Tanya fights back, and maybe starts screaming, literally for her life.  The perpetrator panics and strangles her.  Maybe just trying to shut her up, but she dies.  He then takes the body back to where Ray is parked, stashes it nearby and resumes his journey.”
    Clifton was frowning and nodding.  He liked the straw that Logan was holding out for him to hold on to.
    Logan filled both mugs.  Took a mouthful of the strong brew.  “And just where else does that back road lead to, except into town?”  he said.
    “Are you thinking that it was someone local that did it?”  Clifton said.
    “I’m just looking at a viable alternative to Ray having done it, is all.  It’s pure conjecture, Clifton.  The law goes with facts, evidence, and high probability, not supposition.  Ray is what they have, and ‘smoking gun in hand’ circumstances that make him guilty unless proved innocent.”
    “So what can we do?”
    “Find the killer,”  Logan said.  “If we don’t, then Ray could wind up spending the rest of his life in prison.”

    The County ME did the autopsy on Tanya Foster the next day.  The main findings were that Tanya had died as a direct result of her hyoid bone being fractured, leading to asphyxiation.  There was also a contusion on her left cheek.  She had not had sex, and was still a virgin.
    Lyle talked it through with the medical examiner, Dr. Jared Wynn.
    “What can you tell me doc?”  Lyle said.
    “That the victim was manually strangled.  The perpetrator put both of his hands round her neck and dug his thumbs into her throat.  And she had been assaulted previously, by way of being struck on the left cheek by a hand.”
    “Anything that would tie the marks on her neck and throat to an