The Battle of Bayport by Franklin W. Dixon Page A

was make the investigators feel ill.
    â€œI’m going to catch a quick nap and then we can reconvene to come up with a strategy for the evening.” Frank took a deep breath, collapsed on the couch, and started snoring pretty much instantly. As beat as I was, I was way too amped to sleep. I pressed play one more time instead.
    A couple of minutes later, I paused and hit rewind. Mikey stood on the baseball field, palling around with Amir before the reenactment, gesturing with both hands open. It wasn’t what I saw that caught my eye, it was what I couldn’t see.
    Mikey’s gun.
    Amir was still holding a musket, but Mikey wasn’t. He must have put it down somewhere off screen, because the gun wasn’t anywhere in sight. That’s when it hit me. Maybe Mikey had been right.

SWEET DREAMS
15
FRANK
    I WAS WEARING MY REENACTMENT costume in my dream, but that wasn’t the cool part. The cool part was the cutlass clamped between my teeth and the rope in my hands as I swung across the bow of the Resolve to rescue Daphne from Mr. Lakin, who was dressed like a plaid-clad pirate captain. The Plaid Pirate Lakin propped his peg leg on top of a treasure chest and threatened Daphne with a metal-hooked hand. Daphne yelled out my name, and that’s when the dream really got weird. Daphne sounded exactly like Joe!
    â€œFrank!” she yelled in Joe’s voice. “Wake up, dude!”
    When I opened my eyes, the twist in my dream suddenly made a lot more sense. Joe really was yelling my name. Bummer.
    â€œCan it wait, dude? I was having a really awesome dream,” I muttered, still half-asleep.
    â€œWhat if Mikey shooting the Don was premeditated,” Joe asked excitedly, “just not by Mikey?”
    That opened my eyes all the way. My Daphne-in-distress fantasy was going to have to stay a cliffhanger.
    â€œWhat have you got?” I asked him.
    â€œIt’s really been bugging me how sure Mikey seemed about somehow being the one who shot the Don. I mean, he sounded so sincere, but it didn’t make any sense. How can you shoot somebody and just not remember it?”
    â€œIt would be a neat trick,” I agreed.
    â€œEven neater if Mikey wasn’t the magician,” Joe said. “I think there is a way Mikey could have been onto something with his crazy ideas about his musket being loaded, just not the way he thought.”
    â€œI’m listening,” I said, now all the way awake.
    â€œI went back and watched the video again, and there are a few times when Mikey’s gun is either out of his sight or someone else has it. If Mikey wasn’t the only one who had access to his musket before he fired it during the reenactment . . .”
    â€œYou think someone could have tampered with it?” I asked reluctantly. Joe was opening up a disturbing new door.
    â€œI think it’s possible, at least. There’s nothing obvious in the video, but the opportunity would have been there. Everyone just assumed the shooter was working alone, but what if there was a second person involved? The shooter could have had an accomplice, or he could even have been set up.”
    Setting someone up would be a huge gamble. It was almost too risky and callous to consider.
    â€œWhat if they missed and hit the wrong person, or the killer miscalculated and the shooter decided to aim at someone else instead?” I said, hoping Joe was wrong. “Talk about cold-blooded.”
    â€œWe already know the killer has to be one cold, bold hombre to try to assassinate someone in public like that in the first place,” Joe pointed out.
    â€œThe Second Man theory,” I said, giving Joe’s theory a name. We’ve found that classifying our theories sometimes helps us wrap our minds around a mystery and organize our thoughts, especially on a complex case like this one.
    â€œIf someone really was that devious and wanted to pick a shooter to take out Don Sterling for