A Maiden's Grave (37 page)

They rose up and up, aiming for the moon, which was an eerie sickle in the hazy sky. The plane pointed itself at the black disk surrounded by the white crescent. Uncharacteristically poetic, Potter thought of this image: the icy thumb and index finger of a witch, reaching for a pinch of nightshade.

The negotiator closed his eyes and sat back in the soft seat.

Just as he did, the Grumman banked fiercely. So sharp was the maneuver that Arthur Potter knew suddenly he was about to die. He considered this fact very calmly. A wing or an engine had fallen off. A bolt holding together the whole airplane had finally fatigued. His eyes sprang open and – yes, yes! – he believed he saw his wife's face clearly in the white glow surrounding the moon as it scythed past. He understood that what had joined the two of them, himself and Marian, for all these years joined them still, just as powerfully, and she was pulling him after her in death.

He closed his eyes again. And felt utterly at peace.

But no, he was not destined to die just yet.

For as the plane completed its acute turn and headed back toward the airport, dropping the landing gear and flaps, sliding down down down to the flat Kansas landscape once more, Potter clutched the telephone to his ear, listening to SAC Peter Henderson tell him in a shaking, grim voice how the real Detective Sharon Foster had been found dead and half-naked not far from her house a half-hour ago and how it was now suspected that the woman who'd impersonated her at the barricade had been Lou Handy's girlfriend.

The four troopers who'd been escorting Handy and Wilcox were dead, as was Wilcox himself – all killed in a violent shootout five miles from the slaughterhouse.

And as for Handy and the woman – they were gone without a trace.

As they drove through the fields beneath the faint moon the couple in the Nissan reflected on the evening at their daughter's home in Enid, which had been exactly as unpleasant as they'd expected.

When they spoke, however, they spoke not about the children's shabby trailer, the unwashed baby grandson, their stringy-haired son-in-law's disappearing act into the trash-filled backyard to sneak Jack Daniel's. No, they talked only about the weather and unusual road signs they happened to pass.

"We'll get rain this fall. Floodin'."

"Might."

"Something 'bout the trout in Minnesota. I read that."

"Trout?"

"Bad rains I'm talking. Stuckey's's only five miles. Look there. You wanta stop?"

Harriet, their daughter, had made a dinner that could be described only as inedible – woefully overdone and oversalted. And the husband had found what he was sure was some cigarette ash in the succotash. Now they were both starving.

"Might do that. For coffee only. Lookit that wind – whooee! Hope you shut the windows at home. Maybe a piece of pie."

"I did.'

"You forgot last time," the wife reminded shrilly. "Don't want to lose the lamp again. You know what three-way bulbs cost."

"Well," the husband said. "What's going on here?"

"How's that?"

"I'm being stopped. A police car."

"Pull over!"

"I'm doing it," he said testily. "No point in leaving skid marks. I'm doing it."

"What'd you do?"

"I didn't do
nothing
. I was fifty-seven in a fifty-five zone and that's not a crime in anybody's book."

"Well, pull off the road."

"I'm pulling. Will you just settle? There, happy?"

"Hey, look," the wife offered with astonishment, "there's a lady officer driving!"

"They have ' em now. You know that. You watch
Cops
. Should I get out or are they going to come up here?"

"Maybe," the wife said, "you oughta go to them. Make the effort. That way if they're right on the borderline of giving you a ticket they might not."

"That's a thought. But I still don't know what I done." And, smiling like a Kiwanian on Pancake Day, the husband climbed out of the Nissan and walked back to the squad car, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.

As Lou Handy drove the cruiser deep into the wheat field, cutting a swath in the tall grain, he was lost in the memory of another field – the one that morning, near the intersection where the Cadillac had broadsided them.

He remembered the gray sky overhead. The feel of the bony knife in his hand. The woman's powdery face, black wrinkles in her makeup, dots of her blood spattering her as he drove the knife downward into her soft body. The look in her eyes, hopelessness and sorrow. Her weird scream, choking, grunting. An animal's sounds.

She'd died the same way that the couple in the Nissan just had, the couple now lying in the trunk of the cruiser he was driving. Hell, they had to die, both of the couples. They'd had something
he
needed. Their cars. The Cadillac and the Nissan. This afternoon Hank and Ruth'd smashed the fuck out of his Chevy. And tonight, well, he and Pris
couldn't
keep driving in a stolen squad car. It was impossible. He needed a new car. He
had
to have one.

And when Lou Handy collected what he was owed, when he'd scratched that itch, he was the most contented man on earth.

Tonight he parked the cruiser, which stunk of cordite and blood, in the field, fifty yards from the road. It'd be found by tomorrow morning but that was okay. In a few hours he and Pris'd be out of the state and flying over the Texas-Mexico border, a hundred feet in the air, on their way to San Hidalgo.

Whoa, hold on tight… Damn, the wind was fierce, buffeting the car and sending the stalks of wheat slapping into the windshield with a clatter like birdshot.

Handy climbed out and trotted back to the road, where Pris sat in the driver's seat of the Nissan. She'd ditched the trooper's uniform and was wearing a sweater and jeans and Handy wanted more than anything else at the moment to tug those Levi's down, them and the cheap nylon panties she always wore, and fuck her right on top of the hood of the tinny Jap car. Holding her ponytail in his right hand the way he liked to do.

But he jumped in the passenger's seat and motioned for her to get going. She pitched her cigarette out the window and gunned the engine. The car shot away off the shoulder, hung a tight U, and sped up to sixty.

Heading back in the direction they'd just come from. North.

It seemed crazy, sure. But Handy prided himself on being as off-the-wall nuts as a man could be and still get on in this life. In reality their destination made sense, though – because where they were going was the last place anyone would think to look for them.

Anyway, he thought, fuck it whether it's crazy or not. His mind was made up. He had business back there. Lou Handy was owed.

The Heiligenstadt Testament, written in 1802 by Beethoven to his brothers, chronicles his despair at his progressive deafness, which a decade and a half later became total.

Melanie Charrol knew this, for Beethoven not only was her spiritual mentor and role model but was a frequent visitor to her music room, where he, not surprisingly, could hear as well as she could. They had had many fascinating conversations about music theory and composition. They both lamented the trend away from melody and harmony in modern composition. She called it "medicinal music" – a phrase Ludwig heartily approved of.

She now sat in the living room of her house, breathing deeply, thinking of the great composer and wondering if she was drunk.

At the bar in the motel in Crow Ridge she'd poured down two brandies in the company of Officer Frances Whiting and some of the parents of the hostages. Frances had gotten in touch with Melanie's parents in St. Louis and told them she was fine. They would return immediately after Danny's operation tomorrow and stop by Hebron for a visit – news that for some reason upset Melanie. Did she want them to stop by or not? She had another brandy in lieu of deciding.

Then Melanie had gone to say goodbye to the girls and their parents. The twins had been asleep, Kielle was awake but snubbing her royally – though if Melanie knew anything about children it was that their moods are fickle as the weather; tomorrow or the next day the little girl would drop by Melanie's cubicle at school and sprawl out upon the immaculate desktop to show off her latest X-Men comic or Power Rangers card. Emily was, of course, in an absurdly frilly and feminine nightgown, fast asleep. Shannon, Beverly, and Jocylyn were the centerpiece of the action. At the moment, coddled and the center of loving attention, they were cheerful and defiant and she could see from their gestures that they were recalling aspects of the evening in detail that Melanie herself could not bear. They had even dubbed themselves "the Crow Ridge Ten" and were talking about having T-shirts printed up. Reality would hit home later, when everyone began to feel Susan's absence. But for now, why not? Besides, whatever misgivings she'd shared with de l'Epée about the politics of Deafness, the members of its community were nothing if not resilient.

Melanie said goodnight to everyone, refusing a dozen offers to spend the night. Never before had she signed "No, thank you" as often as she had this evening.

Now, in her home, all the windows were locked, all the doors. She burned some incense, had another brandy – blackberry, her grandmother's cure for cramps – and was sitting in her leather armchair, thinking of de l'Epée… well, Arthur Potter. Rubbing the indentation on her right wrist from the wire Brutus had bound it with. She had her Koss headset clamped over her ears and had Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto cranked up so loud the volume was redlined. It was a remarkable piece of music. Composed during what music historians call Beethoven's "second period," the one that produced the
Eroica
, when he was aware of, and tormented by, his hearing loss but before he had gone completely deaf.

As she listened to the concerto now she wondered if it had been written by Beethoven in anticipation of future years when the deafness would be worse, if he'd built in certain chords and dynamics so that a deaf old man might still make out at least the soul of the piece – for though there were passages she could not hear at all (as faint and delicate as smoke, she imagined) the passion of the music came from its emphatic low notes, two hands crashing down on the bass keys, the theme spiraling downward like a hawk falling on prey, the orchestra's timpani and low-pitched strings churning out what for her was the hopeful spirit of the concerto. A sensation of galloping.

She could imagine, through vibration and notes and sight-reading the score, most of the concerto. She thought now, as she always did, that she'd give her soul to be able to actually hear the entire piece.

Just once before she died.

It was during the second movement that she glanced outside and saw a car slow suddenly as it passed her house. She thought this was odd because the street in front was little traveled. It was a dead end and she knew everyone who lived on the block and what kind of cars they drove. This one she didn't recognize.

She pulled off the headset and walked to the window. She could see that the car, with two people inside, had parked in front of the Albertsons' house. This was curious too because she was sure the family was away for the week. She squinted at the car. The two people – she couldn't see them clearly, just silhouettes – got out and walked through the Albertsons' gate, disappearing behind the tall hedge that bordered the couple's property, directly across from her house. Then Melanie remembered that the family had several cats. Probably friends were feeding the animals while the couple was away. Returning to her couch, she sat down and pulled on the headset once more. Yes, yes…

The music, what she could hear of it, as limited as the sound was to her, was an incredible comfort. More than the brandy, more than the companionship of the parents of her students, more than thoughts about the inexplicable and inexplicably appealing Arthur Potter; it lifted her away, magically, from the horror of this windy day in July.

Melanie closed her eyes.

Captain Charlie Budd had aged considerably in the last twelve hours.

Potter studied him in the adulterating fluorescent light of the cramped office of the sheriff of Crow Ridge, which was located in a strip mall off the business loop. Budd no longer appeared young and was easily a decade past callow. And like all of them here tonight, his face showed the patina of disgust.

And uncertainty too. For they had no idea if they'd been betrayed and if so by whom. Budd and Potter sat across the desk from Dean Stillwell, who leaned into the phone, nodding gravely. He handed the receiver to Budd.

Tobe and Henry LeBow had just arrived in a mad race from the airport. LeBow's computers were already booted up; they seemed like an extension of his body. Angie's DomTran jet had hung a U-turn somewhere over Nashville and she was due back in Crow Ridge in a half-hour.

"All right," Budd said, hanging up. "Here're the details. They aren't pretty."

The two squad cars carrying Handy and Wilcox had left the slaughterhouse and headed south to the Troop C headquarters in Clements, about ten miles south. Between Crow Ridge and the state facility the lead car, driven by the woman who was presumably Priscilla Gunder, braked so suddenly it left twenty-foot skid marks and sent the second car, behind it, off the road. Apparently the woman pulled her pistol and shot the trooper beside her and the one in the backseat, killing them instantly.

The crime scene investigators speculated that Wilcox, in the second car, had undone his cuffs with the key that Gunder had slipped him and grabbed the gun of the trooper sitting beside him. But because he'd been double-shackled, according to Potter's surrender instructions, it had taken him longer to escape than planned. He'd shot the officer beside him but the driver leapt from the car and fired one shot into Wilcox before Handy, or his girlfriend, shot him in the back.

"Wilcox wasn't killed outright," Budd continued, brushing his hair, as being in Stillwell's presence made you want to do. "He climbed out and crawled to the first squad car. Somebody – they think it was Handy – finished him with a single shot to the forehead."

In his mind Potter heard:
You kill when people don't do what they're supposed to. You kill the weak because they'll drag you down. What's wrong with that
?

"What about Detective Foster?" Potter asked.

"She was found beside a stolen car about a mile from her house. Her husband said she left the place about ten minutes after she got the call about the barricade. They think the Gunder woman flagged her down near the highway, took her uniform, killed her, and stole her cruiser. Prelim forensics show some of the prints were Gunder's."

"What else, Charlie? Tell us." For Potter saw the look on his face. Budd hesitated. "After the real Sharon Foster had stripped down to her underwear Handy's girlfriend gagged and handcuffed her. Then she used a knife. She didn't have to. But she did. It wasn't too pleasant what she did. It took her a while to die."

"And then she drove to the barricade site," Potter spat out angrily, "and waltzed out with him."

"Where'd they head?" LeBow asked. "Still going south?"

"Nobody's got a clue," Budd said.

"They're in a cruiser," Stillwell said. "Shouldn't be hard to find."

"We've got choppers out looking," Budd offered. "Six of them."

"Oh, he's already switched cars," Potter muttered. "Concentrate on any report of car theft in south-central Kansas. Anything at all."

Tobe said, "The engine block of the cruiser'll retain heat for about three hours. Do the choppers have infrared cameras?"

Budd said, "Three of them do."

LeBow mused, "What route'd put them the furthest away in that time? He must know we'd be on to them pretty soon."

In the otherwise drab, functional office five brilliant, red plants sat on a credenza, the healthiest-looking plant life Potter had ever seen indoors. Stillwell was hovering beside a wall map of the four-county area. "He could cut over to 35 – that's the turnpike, take him northeast. Or 81'd take him to 1-70."

"How 'bout," Budd asked, "81 all the way into Nebraska, cut over to 29?"

"Yep," Stillwell continued. " 'S'long drive, but it'd take him up to Winnipeg. Eventually."

"Was that Canada thing all smoke screen?" Tobe wondered.

"I don't know," Potter said, feeling that he'd stumbled into a chess game with a man who might be a grand master or who might not even know the movement of the pieces. He stood and stretched, which was tough in the cramped quarters. "The only way we're going to find him, short of luck, is to figure out how the hell he did it. Henry? What was the chronology?"

LeBow punched buttons. He recited, "At nine thirty-three p.m. Captain Budd said he'd received a call from his division commander about a woman detective who'd gotten Handy to surrender several years ago. She was located in McPherson, Kansas. The commander wondered if he should send the woman to the barricade site. Captain Budd conferred with Agent Potter and the decision was made to ask this detective to come to the site.

"At nine forty-nine p.m. a woman representing herself as Detective Sharon Foster called from her cruiser and reported that she would be at the barricade site by ten-thirty or ten-forty.

"At ten forty-five a woman representing herself to be Detective Sharon Foster, wearing a Kansas State Police uniform, arrived at the barricade and commenced negotiations with subject Handy."

"Charlie," Potter asked, "who was the commander?"

"Ted Franklin over at Troop B." He already had the phone in his hand and was dialing the number.

"Commander Franklin please… it's an emergency… Ted? It's Charlie Budd… Nope, no news. I'm going to put you on the squawk box." There was a click and static filled the room. "Ted, I've got half the FBI here. Agent Arthur Potter in charge."

"Hey, gentlemen," came Franklin's electronic greeting.

"Evening, Commander," Potter said. "We're trying to track down what happened here. You remember who called you about Sharon Foster this evening?"

"I've been racking my brain, sir, trying to remember. Some trooper or another. I frankly wasn't listening to who he was as much as what he had to say."

"A 'he,' you say?"

"Yessir. Was a man."

"He told you about Detective Foster?"

"That's right."

"Did you know her beforehand?"

"I knew about her. She was an up-and-comer. Good negotiating record."

Potter asked, "Then you called her after this trooper called."

"No, I called Charlie first down in Crow Ridge to see if it'd be all right with you folks. Then I called her."

"So," Stillwell said, "somebody intercepted your call to her and got to Detective Foster's just as she was leaving."

"But how?" Budd asked. "Her husband said she left ten minutes after she got the call. How could Handy's girlfriend've got there in time?"

"Tobe?" Potter asked. "Any way to check for taps?"

"Commander Franklin," Tobe asked, "is your office swept for bugs?" A chuckle. "Nope. Not the kind you're talking about." Tobe said to Potter, "We could sweep it, see if there are any. But it'd only tell us yea or nay. There's no way to tell who got the transmission and when."

But no, Potter was thinking. Budd was right. There was simply no time for Priscilla Gunder to get to Foster's house after the phone call from Franklin.

LeBow spoke for all of them. "This just doesn't sound like a tap situation. Besides, who'd know to put the bug in Commander Franklin's office anyway?"

Stillwell said, "Sounds like this was all planned out ahead of time."

Potter agreed. "The trooper who called you, Commander Franklin, wasn't a trooper at all. He was Handy's accomplice. And the girlfriend was probably waiting outside Detective Foster's house all along, while he – whoever
he
is – made the phone call to you."

"That means somebody'd have to know about the real Sharon Foster in the first place," Budd said. "That Handy'd surrendered to her. Who'd know about her?"

There was silence for a moment as the roomful of clever men thought of clever ways to learn about past police negotiations – through the news, computer databases, sources within the department.

LeBow and Budd were tied for first. "Handy!"

Potter had just arrived there himself. He nodded. "Who'd know better than Handy himself? Let's think back. He's trapped in the slaughterhouse. He suspects he isn't going to get his helicopter or that if he does we're going to track him to the ends of the earth – with or without his M-4 clearance – and so he gets word to his accomplice about Foster. The accomplice calls the girlfriend and they plan out the rescue. But Handy couldn't have called on the throw phone. We'd have heard it." Potter closed his eyes and thought back over the evening's events. "Tobe, those scrambled transmissions you were wondering about… We thought they were Tremain and the Kansas HRU. Could they have been something else?"

The young man tugged at his pierced earlobe then dug several computer disks from a plastic envelope. He handed them to LeBow, who put one in his laptop. Tobe leaned over and pushed keys. On the screen played a stilted, slow-moving graphic representation of two sine waves, overlapping each other.

"There are two!" he announced, his scientist's eyes glowing at the discovery. "Two different frequencies." He looked up. "Both law-enforcement assigned. And retrosignal scrambled."

"Are they both Tremain's?" Potter wondered aloud.

Ted Franklin asked what the frequencies were.

"Four hundred thirty-seven megahertz and four hundred eighty point four," Tobe responded.

"No," Ted Franklin answered. "The first one is assigned to HRU. The second isn't a state police signal. I don't know whose it is."

"So Handy had another phone in the slaughterhouse?" Potter asked. "Not a phone," Tobe said. "It'd be a radio. And four eighty is often reserved for federal operations, Arthur."

"Is that right?" Potter considered this, then said, "But a radio wasn't found at the site, was it?"

Budd dug through a black attache" case. He found the sheet that listed the inventory of evidence found at the crime scene and the initial chain of custody. "No radio."

"Could've hidden it, I suppose. There'd be a million nooks and crannies in a place like that." Potter considered something. "Is there any way to trace the transmissions?"

"Not now. You have to triangulate on a real-time signal." Tobe said this as if Potter had asked if it could snow in July.

"Commander Franklin," the agent asked, "you got a phone call, right? From this supposed trooper? It wasn't a radio transmission?"

"A landline, right. And it wasn't patched in from a radio either. You can always tell."

Potter paused and examined one of the flowers. Was it a begonia? A fuchsia? Marian had gardened. "So Handy radioed Mr. X, who then called Commander Franklin. Then X called Handy's girlfriend and gave her the go-ahead to intercept Sharon Foster. Tobe?"

The young agent's eyes flashed with understanding. He snapped his fingers and sat up. "You got it, Arthur," he responded to the request that Potter was about to make. "Pen register of all incoming calls to your office, Commander Franklin. You object to that?"

"Hell, no. I want this boy as much as you do."

"You have a direct line?" Tobe asked.

"I do, yes, but half of my calls come in from the switchboard. And when I pick up I don't know where it's coming in from."

"We'll do them all," Tobe said patiently, undaunted.

Who's Handy's accomplice? Potter wondered.

Tobe asked, "Henry? A warrant request, please."

LeBow printed one out on Stillwell's NEC and handed it to Potter then called up on his screen the
Federal Judiciary Directory
. Potter placed a call to a judge who sat on the district court of Kansas. He explained about the request. At home at this hour, the judge agreed to sign the warrant on the basis of the evidence Potter presented; he'd been watching CNN and knew all about the incident.

As a member of the bars of D.C. and Illinois, Potter signed the warrant request. Tobe faxed it to the judge, who signed and returned it immediately. LeBow then scrolled through Standard amp; Poor's
Corporation Directory
and found the name of the chief general counsel of Midwestern Bell. They served the warrant via fax to the lawyer at home. One phone conversation and five minutes later the requested files were dumped ingloriously into LeBow's computer.

"Okay, Commander Franklin," LeBow said, scrolling through his screen, "it looks like we have seventy-seven calls coming into your HQ today, thirty-six into your private line."

Potter said, "You're a busy man."

"Heh. The family can attest to that."

Potter asked when the call about Foster came in.

"About nine-thirty."

Potter said, "Make it a twenty-minute window."

Keys tapped.

"We're down to about sixteen total," LeBow said. "That's getting workable."

"If Handy had a radio," Budd said, "what'd the range of that thing be?"

"Good question, Charlie,'* Tobe said. "That'll narrow things down even more. If it's standard law-enforcement issue I'd guess three miles. Our Mr. X would have to've been pretty close to the barricade."

Potter lowered his head to the screen. "I don't know these towns, other than Crow Ridge, and there's no listing of any calls from there to you, Commander. Charlie, take a look. Tell us what's nearby."

"Hysford's about seventeen miles. Billings, nowhere near."

"That's the missus," volunteered Commander Franklin.

"How 'bout this? A three-minute call from Towsend to your office at nine twenty-six. Was that about how long you talked to the trooper, Commander Franklin?"

"About, yessir."

"Where's Towsend?"

"Borders Crow Ridge," Budd said. "Good-sized town."

"Can you get us an address?" Budd asked Tobe.

The downloaded files from the phone company didn't include addresses but a single call to Midwestern Bell's computer center pinpointed a pay phone.

"Route 236 and Roosevelt Highway."