Spiral

tell my’ girl who fathered her. And if Sundy somehow got connected up with this Held child, why wouldn’t my daughter have told me? And why would somebody kill the both of them when somebody else like you might find it out?”
    I thought about Cassandra Helides that afternoon. ”I’m sorry to ask you this question, but it may be important.” The hand stayed on her forehead. ”Please just let it be the last one, all right?”
    ”Ms. Moran, there’s some reason to believe that Veronica Held was interested in experimenting with sex.”
    The hiccup laugh. ”She should have asked me about it first.”
    ”Maybe with... a woman older than she was.”
    The hand came down, the face tightened from more kinds of pain than I could imagine. ”You’re saying she... That my Sundy and this little girl...?”
    ”Did your daughter ever tell you any—”
    ”No!”
    The only thing louder than Donna Moran’s answer was the shattering sound from outside her trailer.

EIGHTEEN

    A second shattering sound reached me before I got to the window next to the door. The Cavalier’s two headlights were smashed, glass and plastic and tin on the ground in front of its bumper. Luke, the guy in the Peterbilt ballcap, was moving around to the rear of my car, Hack wearing his bandanna and doing his barnyard laugh. Luke had an aluminum bat over his shoulder, receiving compliments on the quality of his swings from my guide in the straw hat and overalls, standing off to the side, his pipe in a corner of his mouth.
    No firearms in sight, though.
    I turned away from the window. ”Ms. Moran?”
    ”Luke and Hack, right?”
    I heard what I guessed to be one of my taillights. ”Do they carry handguns?”
    ”Never known them to.”
    I glanced around. ”There another way out of here?”
    * * *

    Coming around from the back of the trailer, I saw Hack’s bandanna first, his face turned toward the door I’d entered by. Sticking up from a back pocket of his jeans was a wrench the size of a camp hatchet.
    Crouched low, I was on him just as my guide yelled, ”Behind you!”
    Hack turned obligingly into the heel of my right hand, his nose going flat as I felt the cartilage collapse on itself. There was a torrent of blood and snot running down his shirt as he sank to his knees, both hands going up to his face, what was coming out of his mouth not identifiable as words.
    I stepped past him and yanked the wrench out of his jeans pocket. Holding it by the handle, I felt the head of the tool dowsing toward the ground.
    Luke had the bat off his shoulder now, as though he were in a hitter’s stance at the plate but advancing on the pitcher’s mound.
    I said, ”That was for what you two did to Donna Moran.”
    ”Boy, I’m gonna take your head clean off your shoulders.”
    ”He can do it, too,” my guide offered around the pipe stem. ”Luke led the county in home runs, his senior year at the high school.”
    I let Babe Ruth get to within ten feet of me before saying, ”You ever see The Last of the Mohicans, Luke?”
    He stopped his advance. ”The what?”
    Which is when I brought the wrench back behind my neck and let it fly like a tomahawk.
    Luke’s reflexes were still pretty good, but he probably— instinctively—thought I’d be aiming at his head, so he tried to duck under my chin music. I’d hoped for his chest, though, to knock him enough off balance that I could get inside the bat before he could swing it. The combination of his reaction and my target made his left cheekbone the bull’s-eye.
    There was a sickening thud, and Luke folded like a crash-test dummy.
    My guide said, ”Waste of the man’s ten dollars.” Stepping past Luke this time, I spoke over the sound of Hack groaning and rolling in the dirt behind me. ”You called him.”
    A hand reached into the overalls. I tensed, but all that came out was a cell phone.
    ”Great invention,” said my guide. ”Call cost a buck, but that’s still ninety percent profit on my time.”
    I bent down, picked up Luke’s bat. My guide’s pipe fell from his mouth to a spot between his feet.
    ”Hold on there,” he said. ”I wasn’t hurting you none.”
    ”These two tried beating me up in that roadhouse, and when they fumbled the ball, they attacked Donna Moran instead.”
    ”Maybe so, but I’m no part of that.”
    ”You told me about the roadhouse.”
    ”Only because you asked. And paid for it.”
    He was right there.
    ”So,” said my guide. ”Why don’t we just leave