A time after the murder Bud transfers from Stoddard to Caldwell and becomes Ellen’s boyfriend,(something we gets to know later in the book) the weird thing is that Ellen is Dorothy’s older sister. Ellen is very suspicious about the fact that her little sister committed suicide so she decides to go to Blue River to investigate the case herself. On the way to Blue River Ellen writes a letter to Bud where she tells him about her plans. In Blue River Ellen also gets to know two persons that she suspects have murdered her sister, don’t having a single clue of who it really is.
When Ellen is together with Dwight Powell (one of her suspects) at his home Bud suddenly pops up and shoots him, claiming Dwight was about to kill her. Ellen jumps crying into bud’s arms... A few minutes later she was dead too.
In the summer Bud is back home at his mothers house. There he gets his sick thought about killing Leo Kingships last daughter, Marion. However if he don’t kill her it would be nice to get Leo Kingship as the father in law. (he had tried two times before)
He decides to quit school and try to get knowing Marion. He moves to New York and it doesn’t take a long time before Marion falls into love with him. Maybe not a big thing when you know all about her interests on beforehand, Bud had spent a long time trying to remember what the recent two girlfriends had said about their sister, everything he could remember he put down on a list.
Suddenly Gordon Gant shows up, one of the two that Ellen had suspected for the murder. Now he had involved in the case, and he was suspicious about the murders, he told his ideas to Leo, but he rejected him. But when Gordon found the list Bud had written with all of Marion interests on, Leo became more suspicious.
One day Bud went with Leo, Marion and Gordon (Gordon under a false name) to Leo kingship’s copper facility. After being shown around Leo and Gant suddenly starts to confront him about the murder on Dorothy and Ellen. Bud denies it all, but after being threatened by being pushed in a copper smelter he admits it all.
Now it was his turn... Bud "fell" into the red-hot copper smelter, a murderer was killed.