A Maiden's Grave (27 page)

Tremain was ecstatic. This was even better than going through the loading-dock door, because opposing door entry allowed for immediate dynamic crossfire. The takers wouldn't have a chance to respond. Tremain conferred with Carfallo and divided the men into two new teams. Bravo would make its way under the dock to the southeast side of the slaughterhouse. Alpha would position itself at the north door, further to the back but closer to the hostages.

Upon entry, Alpha would split in two groups, three men going for the hostages, three advancing on the takers, while the four-man Bravo team would enter through the south door and engage the HTs from behind.

Tremain considered the plan: Deep gullies to cover their approach, absolute surprise, stun then flash grenades, crossfire. It was a good scenario.

"Home base to all teams and outriders. On my mark it will be forty-five minutes to green-light order. Are you ready? Counting from my five… Five, four, three, two, one, mark."

The troopers acknowledged the synchronization. He would -

An urgent, staticky message: "Bravo leader to home base. We have movement here. From the loading dock. Somebody's rabbiting."

"Identify."

"Can't tell. They're slipping out from under the loading-dock door. I can't see clearly. It's just motion."

"An HT?"

"Unknown. The dock's shot to hell and there's crap all over it."

"Mount your suppressors."

"Yessir."

The men had suppressors on their H amp;Ks – big tubes of silencers. For at least a clip or two of ammunition the sound of the guns would be merely a whispering rattle and with this wind the troopers in the skiff would probably not hear a sound. "Acquire target. Semi-auto fire."

"Acquired."

"What's it look like, Bravo leader?"

"Real hard to make him out but he's wearing a red, white, and blue shirt. I can probably neutralize but can't make a positive ID. Whoever it is, he's staying real low to the ground. Advise."

"If you can make a positive ID on a taker you've got a green light to take him out."

"Yessir."

"Keep him acquired. And wait."

Tremain called Outrider Two, who risked a look through the window. The Trooper responded, "If anybody's bolting, it's Bonner. I can't see him. Only Handy and Wilcox."

Bonner. The rapist. Tremain would love the chance to bring God's revenge down upon him.

"Bravo leader. Status? He's going into the water?"

"Wait, yeah, there he goes. Just slipped in. Lost him. No, got him again. Should I tell the officers in the boat? He'll float right past them." Tremain debated.

"Home base, do you copy?"

If it was Bonner he might get away. But at least he wouldn't be inside for the assault. One less person to worry about. If – though it seemed impossible – it was a hostage there was a chance she might drown. The current was swift here and the channel deep. But to rescue her he'd have to give away his presence, which would mean calling off the operation and jeopardizing the other hostages. But no, he thought. It couldn't be a hostage. There was no way a little girl could escape from three armed men.

"Negative, Bravo team leader, do not advise the troopers in the boat. Repeat, do not advise of subject's presence."

"I copy, home base. By the way, I don't think we have to worry about him. He's going straight out to mid-river. Doubt we'll ever see him again."

"What's that?"

Crow Ridge sheriff's deputy Arnold Shaw didn't know and he didn't care.

The lean thirty-year-old, a law enforcer all his young working life, had been in his share of boats. Dropping stinkers for catfish, trolling for bass and muskie. He'd even been water-skiing a couple of times down at Lake of the Ozarks. And he'd never once been as seasick as he was right now.

Oh, man. This is torture.

He and Buzzy Marboro were anchored twenty yards or so into the river, keeping their eyes "glued like epoxy" on the dock of the slaughterhouse, as their boss, Dean Stillwell, had commanded. The wind was bad, even for Kansas, and the shallow skiff bobbed and twisted like a Tilt-A-Whirl carnival ride.

"I'm not doing too well," Shaw muttered.

"There," Marboro said. "Look."

"I don't want to look."

But look he did, where Marboro was pointing. Ten yards downstream, something was floating away from them. The men were armed with battered Remington riot guns and Marboro drew a lazy target at the bobbing mass.

They'd heard a splash coming from the dock not long ago and had looked carefully but found no takers escaping through the water.

"If somebody did jump in -"

"We woulda seen him," Shaw muttered through the wind.

"- he'd be right about there by now. Just where that thing is.
Whatever
it is."

Shaw struggled to rid himself of memories of last night's dinner – his wife's tuna casserole. "I'm not feeling too well here, Buzz. What's your point, exactly?"

"I see a hand!" Marboro was standing up.

"Oh, no, don't do that. We've moving round enough as it is. Sit your heinie down."

Tuna and cream of mushroom soup and peas and those canned fried onions on top.

Oh, man, can't keep it down much longer.

"Looks like a hand and look at that thing – it's red and white – hell, I think it's one of the hostages got away!"

Shaw turned and looked at the debris, just above the surface of the choppy water, rising and falling. Each glimpse lasted no more than a few seconds. He couldn't tell what it was exactly. It looked sort of like a net float, except, as Buzz Marboro had pointed out, it was red and white. Blue too, he now saw.

And moving away from them, straight into midstream, pretty damn fast.

"Don't you see a hand?" Marboro said.

"No… Wait. You know, it
does
look like a hand. Sorta." Reluctantly, and to the great distress of his churning gut, Arnie Shaw rose to his feet. That made him feel, he estimated, about a thousand times worse.

"I can't tell. A branch maybe."

"I don't know. Look how fast it's moving. It'll be in Wichita 'fore too long." Shaw decided he'd rather have a tooth pulled than be seasick. No – two teeth.

"Maybe it's just something the takers threw out to, you know, distract us. We go after it and they get away out the back door."

"Or maybe it's just trash," Shaw said, sitting down. "Hey, what're we thinking of? If they were friendlies they wouldn't've just floated past without calling for help. Hell, we've got our uniforms on. They'd know we're deputies."

"Sure. What'm I thinking of?" Marboro said, sitting down too.

One pair of vigilant eyes returned to the ass end of the slaughterhouse. The other pair closed slowly, as their owner swallowed in a desperate effort to calm his stomach. "I'm dying," Shaw whispered.

Exactly ten seconds later the eyes opened. "Oh, son of a bitch," Shaw spat out slowly. He sat up straight.

"You just remembered too?" Marboro was nodding.

Shaw
had
in fact just remembered – that the hostages were deaf and mute and wouldn't be able to call out for help to save their souls, no matter how close they'd passed by the skiff.

That was one of the reasons for his dismay. The other was that Shaw knew that while he himself had been an intercollegiate state finals swim champion three years running, Buzz Marboro couldn't dog-paddle more than ten yards.

Breathing deeply – not for the impending swim but merely to keep his turbulent stomach at bay – Shaw shed his weapons, body armor, helmet, boots. A final breath. He dove headfirst into the raging, murky water and streaked toward the disappearing flotsam as it headed rapidly southeast in the ornery current.

Arthur Potter gazed at the window where he'd first seen Melanie.

Then at the window where he'd almost seen her shot.

"I think we're moving up against the wall here," he said slowly. "If we're lucky we're going to get maybe one or two more out but that's it. Then we'll either have to get him to surrender or have HRT go in. Somebody tell me the weather." Potter was hoping for a hellsapoppin' storm to justify a longer delay in finding a helicopter.

Derek Elb turned a switch and the Weather Channel snapped on. Potter learned that the rest of the night would be much the same – windy, with clearing skies. No rain. Winds would be out of the northwest at fifteen to twenty miles an hour.

"We'll have to rely on the wind for an excuse," LeBow said. "And even that's going to be dicey. Fifteen miles an hour? In the service Handy's probably flown in Hueys that've landed in gusts twice that."

Dean Stillwell called in for Henry LeBow, his laconic voice tripping out of the speaker above their heads.

"Yes?" the intelligence officer answered, leaning into his microphone.

"Agent Potter said to relay any information about the takers to you?"

"That's right," LeBow said.

Potter picked up the mike and asked what Stillwell had learned.

"Well, one of the troopers here has a good view inside, sort of an angle. And he said that Handy and Wilcox are walking around inside, looking the place over real carefully."

"Looking it over?"

"Pushing on pipes and machinery. It's like they're looking for something."

"Any idea what?" LeBow asked.

"Nope. I thought maybe they're checking out places to hide."

Potter nodded at Budd, recalling it had been the captain's idea that the takers might don rescue-worker uniforms during the surrender or HRT assault. It also wasn't unheard of for takers to, say, leave a back window open, then hide inside closets or crawl spaces for a day or two until law enforcers concluded they were long gone.

LeBow wrote down the information and thanked Stillwell. Potter said, "I want to make sure everybody's got pictures of the takers. And we'll have to tell Frank and the HRT to go through the place with a fine-tooth comb if it looks like an escape."

He sat in his chair once more, staring out at the factory.

"By the way," Stillwell returned over the radio. "I'm having chow brought in for the troopers and the Heartland's delivering your all's supper any time now."

"Thank you, Dean."

"Heartland? All right," Derek Elb said, looking particularly pleased.

Potter's mind, though, wasn't on food. He was thinking something far graver – whether or not he should meet with Handy. He felt the deadlines compressing, sensed somehow that Handy was growing testy and would start making nonnegotiable ultimatums. Face to face, Potter might be able to wear the convict down more efficiently than through their phone conversations.

Thinking too: It might give me a chance to see Melanie.

It might give me a chance to save her.

Yet a meeting between the taker and the incident commander was the most dangerous form of negotiating. There was the physical risk, of course; hostage takers' feelings, both positive and negative, are their most extreme about the negotiator. They often believe, sometimes subconsciously, that killing the negotiator will give them power they don't otherwise have, that the troopers will fall into chaos or that someone less daunting will take the negotiator's place. Even without violence, however, there's a danger that the negotiator will, in the taker's eyes, shrink in authority and stature and lose his opponent's respect.

Potter leaned against the window. What's inside you, Handy? What's making the wheels go round?

Something's happening in that cold brain of yours.

When you talk I hear silence.

When you don't say a word I hear your voice.

When you smile I see… what? What
do
I see? Ah, that's the problem. I just don't know.

The door swung open and the smell of food filled the room. A young deputy from the Crow Ridge Sheriff's Department brought in several boxes, filled with plastic containers of food and cartons of coffee.

Potter's appetite returned suddenly as the trooper set out the containers. He expected tasteless diner fare – hot beef sandwiches and Jell-O. But the trooper pointed to each of the dishes as he laid them out and said, "That's cherry mos, that's zwieback, bratwurst, goat and lamb pie, sauerbraten, dill potatoes."

Derek Elb explained, "Heartland's a famous Mennonite restaurant. People drive there from all over the state."

For ten minutes, they ate, largely in silence. Potter tried to remember the names of the dishes to tell Cousin Linden when he returned to the Windy City. She collected exotic recipes. He was just finishing his second cup of coffee when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Tobe stiffen as a radio transmission came in. "What?" the young agent said in shock into his microphone. "Repeat that, Sheriff."

Potter turned to him.

"One of Dean's men just fished the twins out of the river!"

A collective gasp. Then, spontaneous applause erupted in the van. The intelligence officer plucked the two Post-It tabs representing the girls off the chart and moved them to the margin. He took down their pictures, which joined Jocylyn's, Shannon's, and Kielle's in the "Released" folder of hostage bios.

"They're being checked for hypothermia but they look fine otherwise. Like drowned rats, he said, but we're not supposed to tell the girls that."

"Call the hotel," Potter instructed. "Tell their parents."

Tobe, listening into his headset, laughed. He looked up. "They're on their way over, Arthur. They're insisting on seeing you."

"Me?"

"If you're an older man with glasses and a dark sports coat. Only they think your name is De l'Epée…"

Potter shook his head. "Who?"

Frances laughed briefly. "Abbé de l'Epée. He created the first widely used sign language."

"Why would they call me that?"

Frances shrugged. "I have no idea. He's sort of a patron saint for the Deaf."

The girls arrived five minutes later. Adorable twins, wrapped up in colorful Barney blankets, no less (another of Stillwell's miracles). They no longer resembled wet rodents at all but girls more awestruck than scared as they stared at Potter. In halting sign language they explained through Frances about how Melanie had gotten them out of the slaughterhouse.

"Melanie?" Angie asked, nodding toward Potter. "I was wrong. Seems you do have an ally inside."

Did Handy know what she'd done? Potter wondered. How much more resistance would he tolerate before the payback? And how lethal would it be this time?

His heart froze as he saw Frances Whiting's eyes go wide with horror. She turned to him. "The girls didn't understand exactly what was going on but I think one of them was raping the teacher."

"Melanie?" Potter asked quickly. "No. Donna Harstrawn."

"Oh, my good Lord, no," Budd muttered. "And they saw it, those girls?"

"Bonner?" Angie asked.

Potter's face showed none of the anguish he felt. He nodded. Of course it would be Bonner. His eyes strayed to the pictures of Beverly and Emily. Both young, both feminine. And then to the photo of Melanie.

Angie asked the girls if Handy had, in effect, set Bonner on the woman, or if the big man had been acting by himself.

Frances watched the signing, then said, "Bear – that's what they're calling Bonner – looked around a lot while he was doing it. Like he didn't want to get caught. They think Brutus – Handy – would have been mad if he'd seen him."

"Is Brutus friendly with any of you?" Angie asked the twins. "No. He's terrible. He just looks at us with cold eyes, like somebody in one of Shannon's cartoons. He beat up Melanie."

"Is she all right?" One girl nodded.

Angie shook her head. "This isn't good." She looked at the diagram of the factory. "They're not that far apart, the hostages and the takers, but there doesn't seem to be
any
Stockholming going on with Handy."
The more I know about them the more I want to kill them
. Potter asked about guns and the tools and the TV. But the little girls could offer nothing new. Then one of them handed him a slip of paper. It was soggy but the lettering, written in the waterproof markers Derek had provided, was clear enough. "It's from Melanie," he said, then read out loud: "
Dear De l'Epée: There is so much to write to you. But no time. Be very careful of Handy. He's evil – more evil than anything. You should know: Handy and Wilcox are friends. Handy hates Bear (the fat one). Bear is greedy
."

LeBow asked for the paper so he could type it into the computer. "It's disintegrating," Potter told him. He read aloud again as the intelligence officer typed.

One of the twins stepped forward and signed timidly. Potter smiled and glanced queryingly at Frances.

"They want your autograph," she said.

"Mine?"

In perfect unison they nodded. Potter took a pen from his shirt pocket, the silver fountain pen that he always carried with him.

"They're expecting," Frances continued, " 'Abbé de l'Epée.' "

"Ah, yes. Of course. And that's what they'll have. One for each."

The girls looked at the two slips of paper and carried them reverently when they left. One girl paused and signed to Frances.

She said, "Melanie said something else. She said to tell you to be careful."

Be forewarned…

"Show me how to say 'Thank you. You're very brave.' "

Frances did, and Potter mimicked the words with halting gestures. The girls broke into identical smiles then took Frances's hands as she escorted them to a trooper outside for the drive to the Days Inn.

Budd sat down next to Potter. "Why," he asked, "would Melanie tell us that?" He pointed to the note. "About Bonner being greedy, about the other two being friends?"