Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan Page A

dashboard. “I hit it like this. I hit it this hard. It felt so neat.”
    “Stop it!” Melinda screamed. “You’re making me sick.”
    Laurie stuck it in Melinda’s face again, and Melinda ripped it from her hand and threw it in the backseat.
    Laurie laughed. “You’ve got to see her. She’s soaked with blood. She’s red.”
    Laurie’s bloodlust made Melinda shiver. She wanted Shanda dead but she’d never imagined that murder would be such dirty work.
    And so it went. Driving and listening for signs of life in the trunk. Every time they heard a stirring, they would stop and do what was necessary to silence Shanda. This continued for hours, until the light of daybreak sent them rushing back to Laurie’s house.
    Laurie’s father was gone by now, having left early for work at the factory. Laurie’s mother was still in bed and the house was silent as Laurie and Melinda walked into Laurie’s bedroom, where Hope and Toni were half asleep.
    Toni slowly opened her eyes. “Where’s that little girl?” she asked.
    “It was just a nightmare,” Laurie said prankishly. “There was no little girl.”
    “Oh, good,” Hope muttered groggily.
    It was a nightmarish experience, all right. But it was real. Toni could see Shanda’s blood splattered on Melinda and Laurie.
    “They had blood on their hands and Melinda had blood on her face,” Toni remembered. “They went to the bathroom to wash it off.”
    Upon returning, Melinda and Laurie told Hope and Toni that Shanda was still in the trunk and that she might still be breathing. At least she was the last time they’d checked.
    “They said that every time Shanda screamed they hit her on the head with the tire iron,” Toni said later. “They were laughing about it. Both of them.”
    Toni was scared. Scared of the situation. Scared of Laurie and Melinda. But Hope’s fear was more focused. For the first time she began to look at their dilemma from a practical standpoint. It had gone too far to turn back now. The job had to be finished.
    Leaving the others in the bedroom, Laurie went to the telephone and dialed the number of her neighbor, Brian Tague.
    “Brian, this is Laurie Tackett. Do you have any gasoline? I need some gas. I need to burn some clothes on our burn pile.”
    Tague was irritated by the early-morning call, but he wanted to be neighborly. “I don’t have any gas, Laurie,” he said. “I might have some kerosene. I’ll check. Why don’t you call me back in a little bit.”
    Laurie said she would, but she was growing impatient. Maybe they could get a fire going at the burn pile with matches and lighters. Laurie stuck her head back in her room and told the others to follow her. The four girls walked through the cold morning mist to the car parked by the burn pile.
    “Want to see her?” Laurie asked Hope and Toni.
    Toni gazed blankly at the blood-stained trunk lid, then said, “No. I don’t want to see anything.” She looked at Hope, expecting her friend to agree with her. But Hope had chosen her path. She was with Laurie and Melinda now. She nodded at Laurie to open the trunk.
    Laurie gave Toni a chilling stare. “If you don’t want to look, then get in the car and rev the engine,” she said tersely, handing Toni the keys. “She might scream again.”
    Following orders, Toni slipped behind the wheel and cranked the engine. Laurie slowly opened the trunk. Shanda was lying in a fetal position.
    “There was not an inch of her that did not have blood,” Hope said later.
    Laurie pulled an old sweater out of the trunk, laid it on the burn pile, and tried to set it on fire. While she was doing this, Hope reached into the trunk and pulled out a bottle of window cleaner that was lying beside Shanda. She pointed the bottle at Shanda and sprayed the blue liquid on her wounds.
    “I don’t know why she did that,” Laurie said later.
    “She had this strange look on her face when she did it,” Melinda recalled. “She was into it. Sort of like when you