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exhausted, and lean against a tree. Snow peppered her cheeks and eyes. When she looked around again, she realized she was totally lost: not only did she not know where she was going, but the blowing snow had already filled in her footprints. She couldn’t even find her way back.
    She dug out her cell phone but got no signal. She tried to listen to the wind, to hear its voice, but there was nothing. Suddenly she was only a twelve-year-old girl in the woods, underdressed and disoriented, and the fear that came with that realization threatened to choke her.
    What had the night winds done to her?
    She began to sing “Babes in the Wood,” a song so spot-on, it made her smile despite the wind, snow, and fear.
    Now the day being long and the night coming on
    These two little babies laid under a stone.
    They wept and they cried, they sobbed and they sighed;
    These two little babies, they laid down and died.
    She moved around to the back side of the tree to block the wind as much as possible. She stuffed her hands in her jacket pocket, wishing for the umpteenth time that she’d taken her gloves from her school backpack. There was not even a stone for her to crawl under.
    She was in serious trouble, all right.
    And then she heard a man’s voice clearly singing, “I’m Nine Hundred Miles from My Home.”
    *   *   *
    As he drove back toward town, Marshall Goins tried to ignore the pain in his back and legs. He kept glancing down at his cell phone, waiting for the NO SIGNAL message to go away. At last he got a single bar, and quickly hit the name DEACON HYATT . After a few rings, the call connected, and a voice said, “Hello.”
    â€œDeacon, it’s Marshall. Some shit’s hit the fan. I’m on my way to pick you up.”
    â€œWhich fan, and which shit?”
    â€œThe big fan, and some big shit. Somebody’s cut off Rockhouse’s extra fingers.”
    The line hissed in the lull, and then Deacon said, “That a fact.”
    â€œThat’s a pure-D fact. I just saw him. He’s sitting in his gopher hole crying, Deacon. Crying . Blood everywhere. Tried to get him to let me drive him to the emergency room over in Unicorn, or at least have Bliss come up and give him stitches, but he ain’t having none of it.”
    â€œWho did it?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t say. But Peggy told me it was Bo-Kate Wisby.”
    Deacon let out a long, low whistle. “That explains why Chloe’s been snapping heads off all day. All right, I’ll call the rest. Where you want to meet?”
    Marshall thought it over. Normally, they met outside, under the sky, but the weather wasn’t conducive to that. He said, “I’ll pick you up and we’ll go up to the Catfish. Pass the word so somebody can bring a propane heater; that way our balls won’t freeze off.”
    *   *   *
    Deacon hung up the phone. His wife, Chloe, seated at the kitchen table working a sudoku puzzle, looked up and peered over her reading glasses at him. “What?”
    â€œI have to go out. Marshall Goins’s coming to pick me up. Somebody’s done attacked Rockhouse Hicks.”
    Chloe’s expression didn’t change. “I know.”
    â€œThat what you been whispering about on the phone all day?”
    She nodded. “Peggy Goins told me.”
    â€œDid she tell you who did it?” he asked.
    â€œBo-Kate Wisby.”
    The name hung between them.
    â€œJefferson back as well?” Deacon asked.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Deacon took his heavy coat down from the hook. “That’s some bad news for everyone, ain’t it?”
    â€œIt is. But there’s worse. Mandalay’s disappeared.”
    Deacon stopped in midmotion, one arm in a sleeve. “Disappeared?”
    â€œLast anyone saw of her, the bus let her off after school. She ain’t answering her phone. She ain’t reachable the other ways, either.