A Maiden's Grave (39 page)

But why did he do it
? Budd typed.

Someone hired him
? Potter asked the question. LeBow nodded. "Of course."

"And whoever did," Potter said, "was paying him a ton of money. A lot more than fifty thousand. That's why he didn't think to ask for cash from us. He was already a rich man. Henry, get into the Corporation Trust database and get me the corporate documents on the bank."

The intelligence officer went offline with Mead and was soon scrolling through the articles of incorporation, bylaws, and securities filings of the bank. "Closely held, so it's limited public information. But we do know that the directors are also the officers. Here we go: Clifton Burbank, Stanley L. Poole, Cynthia G. Grolsch, Herman Gallagher. The ZIP codes are close together. All near Wichita. Burbank and Gallagher live in the city proper. Poole lives in Augusta.
Ms
. Grolsch is in Derby." Potter recognized none of the names but any one of them could have some connection to Handy. As could, say, an embezzling teller, a former employee who'd been fired, the spurned lover of one of the directors. But Arthur Potter would much rather have too many possibilities than none at all. "Charlie, what hotels are near that pay phone where Mr. X called Ted Franklin? In Towsend."

"Hell, there's a bunch. Four or five at least. Holiday Inn, a Ramada, I think a Hilton and some local one. Towsend Motor Lodge. Maybe another one or two."

Potter told Tobe to start calling. "Find out if any of those directors were registered in the hotels today or if anybody from any of those towns was registered."

In five minutes they had an answer. Tobe snapped his fingers. Everyone, except Melanie, looked at him. "Somebody registered from Derby, Kansas. Same as Cynthia Grolsch."

"Too much of a coincidence," Potter muttered, taking the phone. He identified himself, spoke to the clerk for a few moments. Finally he shook his head grimly, asked, "And what room?" He jotted down
Holiday Inn. Rm. 611
on a pad. To the clerk he said, "No. And don't mention this call." He hung up, tapped the pad. "May be our Judas. Let's go have a talk with 'em, Charlie."

Melanie glanced at the pad of paper. Her face went still.

Who? Who is it
? Her eyes flared. She stood up abruptly, pulled a leather jacket from a hook.

"Let them handle it," Angie said.

Melanie looked back to Potter, her eyes flaring. She typed,
Who is it
?

"Please." Potter took her by the shoulders. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

Slowly she nodded, pulled off the jacket, slung it over her shoulder. She looked like an aviatrix from the thirties.

Potter said, "Henry, Angie, and Tobe stay here. Handy knows about Melanie. He might come back." He said to her, "I'll be back soon." Then he hurried to the door. "Come on, Charlie."

After they'd gone Melanie smiled at the agents who remained. She typed
Tea? Coffee
?

"Not for me," Tobe said.

"No, thank you. Want to play solitaire?" LeBow booted up the game.

She shook her head.
I'm going to take a shower. Long day
.

"Gotcha."

Melanie disappeared and a few minutes later they heard the sound of running water from a bathroom.

Angie began working on her incident report while Tobe called up Doom II on his laptop and started to play. Fifteen minutes later he'd been blown apart by aliens. He stood up and stretched. He looked over Henry LeBow's shoulder, made a suggestion about the red queen, which was not received very generously at all, and then paced in the living room. He glanced at the sideboard, where he'd left the keys to the government pool car. They were gone. He wandered to the front of the house and glanced outside at the empty street. Why, he wondered, would Potter and Budd have taken two separate cars to the Holiday Inn?

But his blood lust was insatiable and he stopped worrying about such a trivial matter as he returned to his computer and prepared to blast his way out of the fortress of Doom.

It had been Hawaiian Night at the Holiday Inn.

Steel guitar still pumped through the PA and limp plastic leis hung around the night clerks' necks.

Agent Arthur Potter and Captain Charles Budd walked between two fake palms and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

For a change Budd was the law enforcer looking perfectly confident; it was Potter who was ill-at-ease. The last kick-in the agent had been involved in was the arrest of a perp who happened to be wearing a turquoise Edwardian suit and silver floral polyester shirt, which carbon-dated the bust to around 1977.

He remembered that he wasn't supposed to stand in front of the door. What else? He was reassured to glance at Budd, who had a shiny black leather cuffcase on his belt. Potter himself had never cuffed a real suspect – only volunteers at the live-fire hostage rescue drills on the Quantico back lot. "I'll defer to you on this one, Charlie." Budd raised surprised eyebrows. "Well, sure, Arthur."

"But I'll back you up."

"Oh. Good."

Both men pulled their weapons from the hip holsters. Potter chambered a round again – twice in one night and three years from the last barricade in which a bullet had rested in his gun's receiver and meant business.

At room 611 they stopped, exchanged glances. The negotiator nodded.

Budd knocked, a friendly tap. Shave and a haircut.

"Yeah?" the gruff voice called. "Hello? Who's there?"

"It's Charlie Budd. Can you open up for a minute? Just found something interesting."

"Charlie? What's going on?"

The chain fell, a deadbolt clicked, and when Roland Marks opened the door he found himself staring into the muzzles of two identical automatic pistols: one steady, one shaking, and both safeties off.

"Cynthia's a director of the S amp;L, yes. It's a nominal position. I'm really the one who calls the shots. We kept it in her maiden name. She's not guilty of anything."

The assistant attorney general could protest all he wanted but it would be up to the grand and petit juries to decide his wife's fate.

No raillery. Marks was now playing straight man. His eyes were red and damp and Potter, feeling nothing but contempt, had no trouble holding his gaze.

The AG had been read his rights. It was all over and he knew it. So he decided to cooperate. His statement was being taken down by the very same tape recorder he'd slipped Budd earlier in the evening.

"And what exactly were you doing at the savings and loan?" Potter asked.

"Making bad loans to myself. Well, to fictional people and companies. Writing them off and keeping the money." He shrugged as if to say, Isn't it obvious?

Marks, the prosecutor specializing in white-collar crime, had learned well from his suspects: he'd bled the Wichita institution's stockholders, and the public, for close to five million dollars – much of it spent already, it seemed. "I thought with the turnaround in the real estate market," he continued, "some of the bank's legitimate investments would pay off and we could cover up the shortfall. But when I went over the books I saw we just weren't going to make it."

The Resolution Trust Corporation, the government agency taking over failed banking institutions, was about to come in and seize the place.

"So you hired Lou Handy to burn it down," Budd said. "Destroy all the records."

"How did you know him?" the agent asked.

Budd beat Marks to it. "You prosecuted Handy five years ago, wasn't it? The convenience-store heist – the barricade Sharon Foster talked him out of."

The assistant attorney general nodded. "Oh, yes, I remembered him. Who wouldn't? Smart son of a bitch. He took the stand in his own defense and nearly ran circles around me. Had to do some digging to find him for the S amp;L job, you can bet. Checked with his parole officer, some of my contacts on the street. Offered him two hundred thousand to torch the place as part of a robbery. Only he got caught. So I had no choice – I had to cut a deal with him. I'd help him escape, otherwise he'd blow the whistle on me. That cost me another three hundred thousand."

"How'd you get him out? Callana's maximum-security."

"Paid two guards their annual salaries in cash to do it."

"Was one of them the guard Handy killed?"

Marks nodded.

"Saved some money there, didn't you?" Charlie Budd asked bitterly. "You left a car for him with the guns, the scrambled radio, and the TV in it," Potter continued. "And the tools to get the money out of the slaughterhouse where you'd hidden it for him."

"Well, hell, we couldn't exactly leave the money in the car. Too risky. So I sealed it up in this old steam pipe behind the front window." Potter asked, "What were the escape plans going to be?"

"Originally, I'd arranged for a private plane to fly him and his buddies out of Crow Ridge, from that little airport up the road. But he never made it. He had the accident – with the Cadillac – and lost about a half-hour."

"Why did he take the girls?"

"He needed them. With the delay he knew he didn't have time to get the money
and
make it to the airport – with the cops right on his tail. But he wasn't going to leave without the cash. Lou figured with the hostages inside and me working to get him out, it didn't matter how many cops were at the slaughterhouse. He'd get out sooner or later. He radioed me from inside and I agreed to convince the FBI to give him a helicopter. That didn't work but by then I remembered Sharon Foster's negotiation with Handy a few years ago. I found out where she was stationed now and called Pris Gunder – his girlfriend – and told her to drive over to Foster's house. Then I pretended I was a trooper and called Ted Franklin at state police."

Potter asked, "So your heart-rending offer to give yourself up for the girls… that was all an act."

"I
did
want them out. I didn't want anyone to die. Of course not!"

Of course, Potter thought cynically. "Where's Handy now?"

"I have no idea. Once he got out of the barricade that was it. I'd done everything I'd agreed. I told him he was on his own."

Potter shook his head. Budd asked coldly, "Tell me, Marks, how's it feel to've murdered those troopers?"

"No! He promised me he wouldn't kill anyone! His girlfriend was just going to handcuff Foster. He -"

"And the other troopers? The escort?"

Marks stared at the captain for a minute and when no credible lie came to mind whispered, "It wasn't supposed to work out like this. It
wasn't
."

"Call for some baby-sitters," Potter said. But before Budd could, his phone buzzed.

"Hello?" He listened for a moment. His eyes went wide. "Where? Okay, we're moving."

Potter cocked an eyebrow.

"They found the other squad car, the one Handy and his girlfriend were in. He's going south, looks like. Toward Oklahoma. The cruiser was twenty miles past the booking center. There was a couple in the trunk. Dead. Handy and his girlfriend must've stolen their wheels. No ID on them
so
we don't have a make or tag yet." Budd stepped close to the assistant AG. The captain growled, "The only good news is that Handy was in a hurry. They died fast."

Marks grunted in pain as Budd spun him around and shoved him hard into the wall. Potter did nothing to interfere. Budd tied the attorney's hands together with plastic wrist restraints then cuffed his right wrist to the bed frame.

"It's too tight," Marks whined.

Budd threw him down on the bed. "Let's go, Arthur. He's got a hell of a lead on us. Brother, he could be nearly to Texas by now."

She was surrounded by the Outside.

And yet it wasn't as hard as she'd thought.

Oh, she supposed the driver had honked furiously at her when she crossed the center line a moment ago. But, all things considered, she was doing fine. Melanie Charrol had never in her life driven a car. Many deaf people did, of course, even if they weren't supposed to, but Melanie had always been too afraid. Her fear wasn't that she'd be in an accident. Rather, she was terrified that she'd do something wrong and be embarrassed. Maybe get in the wrong lane. Stop too far away from a red light or too close. People would gather around the car and laugh at her.

But now she was cruising down Route 677 like a pro. She didn't have musician's ears any longer but she had musician's hands, sensitive and strong. And those fingers learned quickly not to overcompen-sate on the wheel and she sped straight toward her destination.

Lou Handy had had a purpose; well, so did she.

Bad is simple and good is complicated. And the simple always wins. That's what everything comes down to in the end. Simple always wins… that's just nature and you know what kind of trouble people get into ignoring nature.

Through the night, forty miles an hour, fifty, sixty.

She glanced down at the dashboard. Many of the dials and knobs made no sense to her. But she recognized the radio. She turned switches until it lit up: 103.4. Eyes flicking up and down, she figured out which was the volume and pushed the button until the line in the LED indicator was all the way at full. She heard nothing at first but then she turned up the bass level and she heard thumps and occasionally the sliding sound of tones and notes. The low register, Beethoven's register. That portion of her hearing had never deserted her completely.

Maybe his Ninth Symphony was playing, the soaring, inspiring "Ode to Joy." This seemed too coincidental, considering her mission at the moment, and 103.4 was probably rap or heavy metal. But it sent a powerful, irresistible beat through her chest. That was enough for her.

There!

She braked the car to a screeching stop in the deserted parking lot of the hardware supply store. The windows held just the assortment of goods she'd been looking for.

The brick sailed tidily through the glass and if it set off an alarm, which it probably did, she couldn't hear it so she felt no particular pressure to hurry. Melanie leaned forward and selected what seemed to be the sharpest knife in the display, a ten-inch butcher, Chicago Cutlery. She returned leisurely to the driver's seat, dropped the long blade on the seat next to her, then put the car in gear and sped away.

As she forced the engine to speed the car up to seventy through the huge gusts of silent wind, Melanie thought of Susan Phillips. Who would soon be sleeping forever in a grave as silent as her life had been.

A Maiden's Grave…

Oh, Susan, Susan… I'm not you. I can't be you and I won't even ask you to forgive me for that, though I would have once. After today I know I can't listen to imaginary music for the rest of my life. I know if you were alive now you'd hate me for this. But I want to
hear
words, I want to
hear
streams of snazzy consonants and vowels, I want to
hear
my music.

You were Deaf of Deaf, Susan. That made you strong, even if it killed you. I've been safe because I'm weak. But I can't be weak anymore. I'm an Other and that's just the way it is.

And Melanie realizes now, with a shock, why she could understand that son of a bitch Brutus so well. Because she
is
like him. She feels exactly what he feels.

Oh, I want to hurt, I want to pay them all back: Fate, taking my music away from me. My father, scheming to keep it away. Brutus and the man who hired him, kidnaping us, toying with us, hurting us, every one of us – the students, Mrs. Harstrawn, that poor trooper. And of course Susan.

The car raced through the night, one of her elegant hands on the steering wheel, one caressing the sensuous wooden handle of the knife.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

The wind buffeted the car fiercely and, overhead, black strips of clouds raced through the cold sky at a thousand miles an hour.

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now I'm found.

Was blind, but now I see.

Melanie dropped the knife back onto the seat and gripped the wheel in both hands, listening to the powerful bass beat resonate in her chest. She supposed the wind howled like a mad wolf but of course that was something she couldn't know for sure.

So you'll be home then.

Never.

They were three miles outside of Crow Ridge, speeding south, when Budd sat up straight, making his perfect posture that much better. His head snapped toward Potter. "Arthur!"

The FBI agent cringed. "Of course. Oh, hell!"

The car skidded to a stop on the highway, ending up perpendicular to the roadway and blocking both lanes.

"Where is it, Charlie?
Where
?"

"A half-mile that way," Budd cried, pointing to the right. "That intersection we just passed. It's a shortcut. It'll take us right there."

Arthur Potter, otherwise the irritatingly prudent driver, took the turn at speed and, on the verge of an irrigation ditch, managed to control his mad, tire-smoking skid.

"Oh, brother," Budd muttered, though it wasn't Potter's insane driving but his own stupidity he was lamenting. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before."

Potter was furious with himself too. He realized exactly where Handy was. Not going south at all but heading directly back to his money. All the other evidence had been removed from the slaughterhouse by the police. But Crime Scene had never gotten the scrambled radio – or the cash. They were still there, hidden. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As he drove, hunched over the wheel, Potter asked Budd to call Tobe at Melanie's house. When the connection was completed he took the phone from the captain.

"Where's Frank and HRT?" the agent asked.

"Hold on," Tobe responded. "I'll find out." A moment later he came back on. "They're about to touch down in Virginia."

Potter sighed. "Damn. Okay, call Ted Franklin and Dean Stillwell, have them send some men to the slaughterhouse. Handy's on his way. If he's not there already. But it's vital not to spook him. This might be our only chance to nail him. I want them to roll in without lights and sirens and park at least a half-mile away on side roads. Remember to tell him Handy's armed and extremely dangerous. Tell him we're going to be inside. Charlie and me."