Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan

Melinda continued on their way, searching the roadside for a place to dump the body.
    As they approached a long bridge over a valley, Laurie eased the car to a stop.
    “I know this place,” she said. “There’s a creek down there. Let’s throw her in.”
    Melinda argued against it, saying that the body would float and be found by someone. Then she again raised the possibility of burning Shanda.
    “Let’s see if she’s dead yet,” Laurie said, grabbing a tire iron she kept under her seat.
    The two walked back to the trunk and opened the lid. The rush of cold air caused Shanda to stir, and she slowly began to sit up. Her hair and arms were smeared with blood and the pupils of her eyes rolled back in her head as she tried to speak, managing to mutter only one word, “Mommy,” before Laurie hit her with the tire iron and slammed the trunk lid down on her.
    After driving awhile longer, Melinda and Laurie came up with a plan to finally kill Shanda without getting their hands soiled. They stopped again and opened the trunk, hopingthat Shanda would stumble out on the road where they could run over her. But Shanda was too injured to do anything but lie there, so they closed the trunk again and drove on, cursing Shanda for clinging to life so determinedly and hoping that she would just go ahead and die.
    *  *  *
    Back at Laurie’s house, Hope and Toni talked in whispers so not to wake the Tacketts. Neither could believe what had happened on the logging road. They hadn’t considered that it would go this far, and both wondered what was happening now. Was that little girl already dead? What were Melinda and Laurie going to do with her? They were afraid of the answers. Afraid of their involvement. Afraid of waking Laurie’s parents and telling them what was going down. Afraid of what would happen to them if they walked into the kitchen and called the police.
    The quiet was suddenly broken by a soft tap on the window.
    “What . . . what was that?” Toni stuttered.
    “I don’t know.” Summoning her nerve, Hope looked out the window. “It was just Laurie’s cat,” she said, sighing with relief.
    Then they heard heavy footsteps walking down the hallway toward the bedroom. Scooting under the bedcovers, they pretended to be asleep. The door cracked open slowly. Laurie’s father stepped inside and flicked on the light.
    George Tackett was startled to find two girls in Laurie’s bed.
    “Where’s Laurie?” he asked.
    Thinking quickly, Hope said, “She and Melinda went to get something to eat.”
    “It’s way too late for that kind of stuff,” Tackett grumbled before closing the door and returning to his bedroom.
    *  *  *
    Laurie and Melinda had passed through the country crossroads known as Canaan and were into another stretch of thick woods when they heard a noise barely audible over the tailpipe’s roar, a thumping in the trunk. Then came Shanda’s voice.
    “It wasn’t really a scream or a yell,” Melinda said later.“It’s like something was messed up with her throat. It was like a gurgle. I know at one point she was saying my name. That’s when we stopped and Tackett told me I had to get behind the steering wheel and keep my foot on the gas so the muffler would be louder than Shanda’s kicking.”
    Laurie walked back to the trunk, grasping the black metal tire iron.
    “I watched through the rear-view mirror but I couldn’t see much,” Melinda recalled. “I heard something thump and there was like a weeping sound. I heard this hit like you would hear when someone hits you in your stomach. I heard a yell and a thump and then I heard the trunk door slam down. Then here comes Tackett back in.”
    Laurie slid into the passenger seat and told Melinda to drive off. As she did, Laurie stuck the bloody tire iron under Melinda’s nose. “Smell this, will you,” Laurie said gleefully. “I hit her head and it was so cool. I could feel it going in.”
    Laurie thumped the tire iron against the