them are related.”
“They were...enthusiastic. It seems like Heather left there a couple of weeks ago with a guy she was dating.”
“Harmon.” Roxanne said the name with distaste.
“Everyone seems to have that reaction,” I observed.
“No doubt. I think it’s because he makes such a strong first impression. You meet this guy and you think: holy buckets, could he be this nice? I mean he’s a tall, blond sweet-talker with great manners. Half the girls in our camp were swooning the day he arrived. But it didn’t take long to find him out. You can’t keep up an act like that for long in a working camp. People get cold and hungry and then you see what they’re really made of. Anton got mean when he got tired. He nearly put one of the other volunteers in the hospital because of an argument over chores. I put him on notice and I’d likely have kicked him out if he hadn’t left first.”
“So why was Heather with him?”
“I don’t know. Some gals think they can fix the bad ones. Some look for the wounded birds. She latched onto Anton right away. He was old enough to like ’em young. And she would have believed him if he told her the moon was made of cotton candy.”
“Can you think of anything that might help me find him?”
Roxanne shook her head. “Just don’t turn your back on him when you do.”
10
Four men were waiting for me in the parking lot of my motel. They sat in an old Jeep Cherokee with a bad paint job and a rusted out panel on the driver’s side. I spotted them from half a block away as I approached the motel in my GTO. I drove past them without looking, so I could plausibly feign surprise when they jumped me, and parked in the middle of the lot rather than directly in front of my room door. I might have done that anyway, out of habit, but it seemed prudent as the four men piled out of the Cherokee.
I popped open the glove box and pulled out a small metal rod. Then I stepped out of the GTO and marched straight toward the door to the motel room next to mine, showing my back to the men emerging from the Cherokee. My eyes darted toward the picture window of the room I was approaching. The blinds were closed and the window reflected enough light from a street lamppost to make it a full-sized mirror. The four men moved awkwardly, more like nervous schoolboys than professionals. I saw chains wrapped around a fist, a baseball bat and a heavy length of pipe. Then the fourth man—the biggest, fittest looking one of them—slid an enormous Bowie knife from a sheath and tossed the sheath back into the Cherokee. Without hesitating, he started trotting toward me well ahead of the other three men, moving as silently as he could manage.
It was a blitz attack of the kind that a serial killer might use to abduct a teenage girl. It might even have worked on a soccer mom or a jet-lagged tourist, but I wasn’t either of those. I didn’t turn as the man crossed the parking lot, pretending instead to fumble with keys as I stood in front of my neighbor’s door. I got a clearer look at my attacker from his reflection as he drew closer. He was an inch or two taller than me, with straight, spiky brown hair and a short, uneven beard. His nose was too large for his face and it looked like he’d grown the beard to compensate. He was wearing thick, black-framed glasses that might have been manufactured in the 1950s.
As he got within three strides of me, the bearded man pulled back his knife arm like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. I think he planned to skewer me to the door with that Bowie knife. He sprinted the last two steps to give himself some momentum.
I waited until the last possible moment, until he was leaning forward and fully committed. Then I spun right, moving out of the path of the knife. I hit the middle of his forearm, blocking the blade away from me and toward the door. Then I tripped him. He went flying into the door, and the knife buried itself in the cheap wood. Before he could
“They were...enthusiastic. It seems like Heather left there a couple of weeks ago with a guy she was dating.”
“Harmon.” Roxanne said the name with distaste.
“Everyone seems to have that reaction,” I observed.
“No doubt. I think it’s because he makes such a strong first impression. You meet this guy and you think: holy buckets, could he be this nice? I mean he’s a tall, blond sweet-talker with great manners. Half the girls in our camp were swooning the day he arrived. But it didn’t take long to find him out. You can’t keep up an act like that for long in a working camp. People get cold and hungry and then you see what they’re really made of. Anton got mean when he got tired. He nearly put one of the other volunteers in the hospital because of an argument over chores. I put him on notice and I’d likely have kicked him out if he hadn’t left first.”
“So why was Heather with him?”
“I don’t know. Some gals think they can fix the bad ones. Some look for the wounded birds. She latched onto Anton right away. He was old enough to like ’em young. And she would have believed him if he told her the moon was made of cotton candy.”
“Can you think of anything that might help me find him?”
Roxanne shook her head. “Just don’t turn your back on him when you do.”
10
Four men were waiting for me in the parking lot of my motel. They sat in an old Jeep Cherokee with a bad paint job and a rusted out panel on the driver’s side. I spotted them from half a block away as I approached the motel in my GTO. I drove past them without looking, so I could plausibly feign surprise when they jumped me, and parked in the middle of the lot rather than directly in front of my room door. I might have done that anyway, out of habit, but it seemed prudent as the four men piled out of the Cherokee.
I popped open the glove box and pulled out a small metal rod. Then I stepped out of the GTO and marched straight toward the door to the motel room next to mine, showing my back to the men emerging from the Cherokee. My eyes darted toward the picture window of the room I was approaching. The blinds were closed and the window reflected enough light from a street lamppost to make it a full-sized mirror. The four men moved awkwardly, more like nervous schoolboys than professionals. I saw chains wrapped around a fist, a baseball bat and a heavy length of pipe. Then the fourth man—the biggest, fittest looking one of them—slid an enormous Bowie knife from a sheath and tossed the sheath back into the Cherokee. Without hesitating, he started trotting toward me well ahead of the other three men, moving as silently as he could manage.
It was a blitz attack of the kind that a serial killer might use to abduct a teenage girl. It might even have worked on a soccer mom or a jet-lagged tourist, but I wasn’t either of those. I didn’t turn as the man crossed the parking lot, pretending instead to fumble with keys as I stood in front of my neighbor’s door. I got a clearer look at my attacker from his reflection as he drew closer. He was an inch or two taller than me, with straight, spiky brown hair and a short, uneven beard. His nose was too large for his face and it looked like he’d grown the beard to compensate. He was wearing thick, black-framed glasses that might have been manufactured in the 1950s.
As he got within three strides of me, the bearded man pulled back his knife arm like a rattlesnake preparing to strike. I think he planned to skewer me to the door with that Bowie knife. He sprinted the last two steps to give himself some momentum.
I waited until the last possible moment, until he was leaning forward and fully committed. Then I spun right, moving out of the path of the knife. I hit the middle of his forearm, blocking the blade away from me and toward the door. Then I tripped him. He went flying into the door, and the knife buried itself in the cheap wood. Before he could
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