Whistling in the Dark 1-100

Sally is a ten-year old girl with a huge imagination. Sally loved her dad very much, but he died a few years ago. When he was on his death bed, Sally promised him that she would do her best to take care of her little sister, Troo. Troo is a very spunky girl who is just ten months younger than Sally. She was in the car with her father when he died, but she sort of represses the memory, and it makes her kind of bitter for a child. Shortly after Sally's dad died, Sally's mom married Hall. Hall is a very angry alcoholic, and I kind of get the idea that Sally's mother only married him for the sake of having a husband to provide for her. Sally and Troo also have an older sister named Nell. Sally's mother gets sick and has to go to the hospital. She ends up being in there for a long time, and it's up to Hall and Nell to take care of the girls. Hall yells at them a lot and beats them when he's home, but he's gone most of the time, leaving them to fend for themselves. Nell pays way more attention to her boyfriend than she does to her little sisters. Sally and Troo end up staying with and eating with their neighbors a lot of the time because as a nine and ten year old girls, they can't exactly fend for themselves. In their town, there was a murder about a year ago of a girl named Junie Piakowski. Junie was raped and murdered, and Sally thinks that one of the cops, Officer Rasmussen, did it. However, everyone else tells her that it's just her overactive imagination. When another girl, Sara Heinemann, goes missing, Troo is really convinced that Rasmussen is behind it. She gets chased by a man down an alley one night when she is walking home by herself, and though she never sees him, she thinks it's Rasmussen. She's also convinced that she's going to be Rasmussen's next victim. Rasmussen goes to her house to ask her something about the Sara Heinemann case, and when he gets out his wallet, she sees a picture of Junie in it next to a picture of herself.