A Maiden's Grave (38 page)

"It's the main intersection," Stillwell said, discouraged. "Restaurants, hotels, gas stations. And that highway's a feeder for two interstates. Could've been anybody and he could've been on his way to anywhere." Potter's eyes were on the five red plants. His head rose suddenly and he reached for the telephone. But it was a curious gesture – he stopped suddenly and seemed momentarily flustered, as if he'd committed some grievous social faux pas at a formal dinner party. His hand slipped off the receiver.

"Henry, Tobe, come with me. You too, Charlie. Dean, will you stay here and man the fort?"

"You bet, sir."

"Where are we going?" Charlie asked.

"To talk to somebody who knows Handy better than we do."

He wondered how they'd announce their presence.

There was a button on the jamb of the front door, just like any other. Potter looked at Budd, who shrugged and pushed it.

"I thought I heard something inside. A doorbell. Why's that?"

Potter had heard something too. But he'd also noticed a red light flash inside, through a lace curtain.

There was no response.

Where was she?

Potter found himself about to call, "Melanie?" And when he realized that would be futile, he lifted his fist to knock. He shook his head at that gesture too and lowered his hand. Seeing the lights inside a lifeless house, he felt a stab of uneasiness and he pulled his jacket away from his hip, where the Glock sat. LeBow noticed the gesture but said nothing.

"Wait here," Potter told the three men.

He walked slowly along the dark porch of the Victorian house, looking in the windows of the place. Suddenly he stopped, seeing shoeless feet, legs sprawled on a couch, motionless.

Alarmed now, in a panic, he hurriedly completed his circuit of the porch. But he couldn't get any view of her – only her unmoving legs. He rapped loudly on the glass, shouted her name.

Nothing.

She should be able to feel the vibration, he thought. And there was the red flashing light – the "doorbell" – above the entryway, flashing in her clear view.

"Melanie!"

He drew his pistol. Tried the window. It was locked.

Do it.

His elbow crashed into the glass and sent a shower of shards onto the parquet floor. He reached in, unlocked the window, and started through. He froze when he saw the figure – Melanie herself, sitting up, terrified, staring at the intruder coming through her window. She blinked away the sleep and gasped.

Potter held up his hands to her, as if surrendering, an expression of horror on his own face at the thought of how he must have frightened her. Still, he was more perplexed than anything else: Why on earth, he wondered, would she be wearing stereo headphones?

Melanie Charrol opened the door and motioned her visitors inside.

The first thing that Arthur Potter saw was a large watercolor of a violin, surrounded by surreal quarter- and half-notes in rainbow colors.

"Sorry about the window," he said slowly. "You can deduct it from your taxes."

She smiled.

"Evening, ma'am," Charlie Budd said. And Potter introduced her to Tobe Geller and Henry LeBow. She looked out the door at the car parked two doors down, the two people standing behind a hedge, looking at the house.

He saw her face. He said to her, "They're ours."

Melanie frowned. He explained, "Two troopers. I sent them here earlier tonight to keep an eye on you."

She shook her head, asking, Why?

Potter hesitated. "Let's go inside."

With flashing lights, a Hebron PD squad car pulled up. Angeline Scapello, looking exhausted though no longer soot-smudged, climbed out and hurried up the stairs. She nodded to everyone, and like her fellow threat management team members she wasn't smiling.

Melanie's house had a homey air about it. Thick drapes. In the air, incense. Spicy. Old prints, many of them of classical composers, hung on the walls, which were covered with striped paper, forest green and gold. The largest print was of Beethoven. The room was full of antique tables, beautiful Art Nouveau vases. He thought with some embarrassment of his own Georgetown apartment, a shabby place. He'd stopped decorating it thirteen years ago.

Melanie was wearing blue jeans, a black cashmere sweater. Her hair was no longer in the awkward braid but hung loose. The bruises and cuts on her face and hands were quite prominent, as were the chestnut Betadine stains. Potter turned to her, tried to think of words that required exaggerated lip movements. "Lou Handy's escaped."

She didn't understand at first. When he repeated it her eyes went wide with horror. She started to sign then stopped in frustration and grabbed the stack of paper.

LeBow touched her arm. "Can you type?" He mimicked keyboarding.

She nodded. He opened his two computers, booted them into word-processing programs, hooked up a serial port cable, and set the units side by side. He sat at one, Melanie at the other.

Where did he go
? she typed.

We don't know, that's why we came to see you.

Melanie nodded slowly.
Did he kill anyone escaping
? She could touch-type and she kept her eyes on Potter as she asked this.

He nodded.
Wilcox
–
the one you called Stoat
–
was killed. Troopers too
.

Again she nodded, frowning, thinking over the implications of this.

Potter typed,
I have to ask you to do something you're not going to want to do
.

She looked at his message, wrote:
I've already been through the worst
. Her hands danced over the keys invisibly, not a single mistake.

God compensates.

I want you to go back to the slaughterhouse. In your mind
.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She wrote nothing but merely nodded.

We don't understand certain things about the barricade. If you can help us to I think we can figure out where he's gone.

"Henry," Potter called, rising and pacing. LeBow and Tobe caught each other's eyes. "Call up his profile and the chronology. What do we know about him?"

LeBow began to read but Potter said, "No, let's just speculate."

"He's a clever boy," Budd offered. "He comes across like a hick but he's got some smarts."

Potter added,
He plays the dummy but that's largely an act, I think
.

Melanie typed,
Amoral
.

Yes.

Dangerous
, Budd offered.

Let's go beyond that.

He's evil
, she wrote.
Evil personified
.

But what kind of evil?

Silence for a moment. Angie typed,
Cold death
.

Potter nodded and spoke aloud, "Right. Lou Handy's cold evil. Not passionate evil. Let's keep that in mind."

Angie continued,
Not a sadist. Then he'd be passionate. He feels nothing for the pain he causes. If he needs pain or death to get his way, he'll cause pain or death. Like blinding the hostages
–
simply another tool for him
.

Potter leaned forward and typed,
So, he's calculating
. "And?" Budd prompted.

Potter shook his head.
Yes, he's calculating, but you're right, Charlie, what does that
mean?

The men stopped speaking while Melanie's fingers danced over the keyboard. Potter walked around her and stood close as she typed. His hand brushed her shoulder and it seemed to him that she leaned into his fingers. She wrote:
Everything he does has a purpose. He's one of those few people who isn't driven by life; he drives it
.

Angie typed,
Control, control, control
.

Potter found his hand was resting on Melanie's shoulder. She lowered her cheek to it. Maybe it just was an accident as her head turned. Maybe not.

"Control and purpose," Potter said. "Yes, that's it. Type this out so she can see it, Henry. Everything he's done today has a purpose. Even if it seemed random. Killing Susan – it was to make clear that he was serious. He demanded a helicopter that seated eight but he had no problem giving away most of the hostages. Why? To keep us busy. To stretch out the time to give his accomplice and girlfriend a chance to set up the real Sharon Foster. He brought with him a TV, a scrambled radio, and guns."

Angie leaned forward to type, So
what
is
his purpose
?

"Well, escaping," Budd laughed. "What else would it be?" He leaned forward and two-finger typed,
To escape
.

No
!! Melanie typed.

"Right!" Potter shouted, and pointed at her, nodding. "Escape wasn't his priority at all. How could it've been? He virtually let himself get trapped. There was only one trooper on his tail after the accident with the Cadillac. The three of them could've ambushed him, taken his car, and escaped. Why would anybody let themselves get trapped?"

"Hell," Budd said, "a spooked rabbit'll run right into a fox's den not even thinking." He dutifully hunted-and-pecked this in.

But he does think
, Melanie wrote.
We can't forget that. And he isn't spooked
.

Not spooked at all
, Angie offered.
Remember the voice stress analysis
.

Potter nodded to Melanie, smiling and gripping her shoulder once more.
Calm as ordering a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven
.

Melanie typed,
I called him Brutus. But he's really like a ferret
.

Budd continued,
Well, if he's a ferret, then he'd go to ground only if he knew he wasn't trapped at all. If he had an escape route
.

Melanie typed,
When he first walked into the slaughterhouse Bear said that there was no way out. And Brutus said, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all
."

Potter nodded, mused, "He could've run, but no, he risked taking a detour to the slaughterhouse and getting trapped. But it wasn't that great a risk at all because he knew he could get out. He had guns and he had a radio to call his accomplice and work out some escape plan. Maybe he'd already thought up substituting his girlfriend for Foster." He typed,
Melanie, tell us exactly what happened when they picked you up
.

She typed,
We found the wreck. He was killing those people. In no hurry.

He was confident
?

Very. He took his own sweet time
, Melanie typed, grim-faced.

Potter unfurled a map.
What route did you drive
?

I don't know roads
, Melanie wrote.
Past a radio station, a farm with lots of cows
. She frowned for a moment then traced the route on the map.
Maybe this
.

The prison's south of the slaughterhouse ninety or so miles
, Potter typed.
The three of them drove north to here, had the accident with the Cadillac here, took the van and drove all the way around here
… He traced a route that had Handy driving well past the slaughterhouse then doubling back.

Melanie typed,
No, We drove straight to the slaughterhouse. That was one thing I thought funny. He seemed to know where it was
.

But if he went straight there
, Potter typed,
when did you pass the airport
?

We didn't
, she explained.

So
he knew about it ahead of time. When he was asking me for the helicopter he knew there was an airport just two or three miles up the road. How did he know
?

Budd typed,
He'd already arranged to fly out of there
.

But
, LeBow typed as fast as he could speak the words,
if it was just a few miles up the road, and if there was an airplane or helicopter waiting for him, why go to the slaughterhouse at all
?

"Why?" Potter muttered. "Henry, tell me what we know. Let's start with what he had with him."

You're carrying a key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.

He went into the slaughterhouse with hostages, the guns, a can of gasoline, ammunition, a TV, the radio, a set of tools
-

"The tools, yes," Potter said, as LeBow typed. He turned to Melanie. "Did you see him use them?"

No
, Melanie answered.
But I was in killing room for most of time. Toward end I remembered them walking around looking at the machinery and fixtures. I thought they were taking a nostalgic look at the place, maybe they were looking for something, though
.

Potter snapped his fingers. "Dean told us something similar."

LeBow scanned through the incident chronology. He read, " 'Seven-fifty-six p.m. Sheriff Stillwell reported that a trooper under his command observed Handy and Wilcox searching the factory, testing doors and fixtures. Reason unknown.' "

"Okay. Good. Let's put the tools on hold for a minute. Those are the things he had with him when he went in. What did we
give
him?"

"Just the food and the beer," Budd said. "Oh, and the money."

"The money!" Potter cried. "Money he didn't ask for in the first place."

Angie typed,
And he never tried to bargain up the fifty thousand. Why not
?

There's only one reason a man doesn't want money
, LeBow typed.
He's got more than he needs
.

Potter was nodding excitedly.
There's money hidden in the building. It was part of his plan all along
–
to stop at the slaughterhouse and pick it up
.

That's why he had the tools
–
to get the cash out from where it was hidden
, Budd managed to type. Potter nodded.

"Where did it come from?" Tobe wondered.

"He's a bank robber," Budd said wryly. "That's one possibility."

"Henry," Potter said, "jump into Lexis/Nexis and let's read about that most recent robbery of his. The arson."

In five minutes LeBow was on-line with Mead Data. He read newspaper accounts and summarized, "Handy was found with twenty thousand stolen from the Farmers amp; Merchants heist in Wichita."

"Had he ever burned anything before that?"

LeBow scrolled through the news accounts and his own sixteen-page profile of Louis J. Handy. "No prior arson."

Then why the fire
? Potter typed.

He always has a purpose
, Angie reminded.

Melanie nodded emphatically then shivered and closed her eyes. Potter wondered what terrible memory had intruded into her thoughts. The agent and Budd looked at each other, four eyebrows arched. Then: "Yep, Charlie. That's right." Potter reached down to the keyboard.
He wasn't there to rob that bank at all. He was there to burn it down
.

LeBow was reading the profile. "And he shot his accomplice in the back when they'd been trapped by the troopers. Maybe so no one would find out what he was really doing there."