A Childish Death

Everybody loves pretty little girls. Bennie Sue's father loved her so much that he molested her sexually and shared his child pornography with her. He is now serving 30 years in prison. Next Bennie Sue unwittingly made friends with three little girls who were being groomed by the local pedophile. She was removed from the area and went to live with her aunt on the advice of Dr. Michael Dintleman, a psychologist with experience in child abuse. Now Bennie Sue is grown up and working as a Forensic Ientity specialist at the State Crime Lab recently established at Mt. Nebo State University, her alma mater. Bennie Sue is seeing Dr. Dintleman who has an appointment at the university and a private practice. He is helping her work through her ambivalence about sex and her fair of unscrupulous suitors. The whole town is shocked when Dr. Dintleman is found naked and bludgeoned to death in his home after having sex with one of his ex-students. With no physical evidence other than a bloody ball bat and one unidentifiable thumb print, Detective Sergeant Sophia Calypso of the Dardanelle Police Department follows the trail of Dintleman's ex-student lovers (as many as 30 in the past 10 years), their husbands, boyfriends, and fathers. When Bennie Sue is mistakenly given a set of child pornography including photos taken by her and her friends when she was eight, she uncoves the location of the pedophile, and the world of her old nemesis begins to crumble. Warned of the possibility of discovery, one of his friends, a previously unknown pedophile, begins to come apart, revealing a desperate man with a ball bat. Who will be his next victim?