A Maiden's Grave (6 page)

Shannon nodded. On the girl's left forearm was a faux tattoo of another X-Man, Gambit, which she'd drawn with Pentel marker.

"Why don't you tell us one?" Susan asked her.

Kielle thought for a minute then confessed that her poems still needed some work.

"Why are birds gray in your poem?" Beverly asked Melanie. Her signing was abrupt, as if she had to finish every conversation before one of her wrenching asthma attacks.

"Because we all have a little gray in us," Melanie answered, amazed that the girls were actually rallying, distracted from the horror unfolding around them.

"If it's about us I'd rather be pretty bird," Suzie said, and her twin nodded.

"You could have made us red," suggested Emily, who was dressed in a Laura Ashley floral. She was more feminine than all the rest of the students combined.

Then Susan – who knew facts that even Melanie did not; Susan, who was going to attend Gallaudet College next year with straight A's – explained to the other girls' fascination that only male cardinals were red. The females were brownish gray.

"So, they're cardinals?" Kielle asked.

When Melanie didn't respond the little girl tapped her shoulder and repeated the question.

"Yes," Melanie answered. "Sure. It's about cardinals. You're all flock of pretty cardinals."

"Not archbishops?" Mrs. Harstrawn signed, and rolled her eyes. Susan laughed. Jocylyn nodded but seemed stymied that someone had once again beaten her to a punch line.

Tomboy Shannon, devourer of Christopher Pike books, asked why Melanie didn't make the birds hawks, with long silver beaks and claws that dripped blood.

"It is about us then?" Kielle asked. "The poem?"

"Maybe."

"But there are nine, including you," Susan pointed out to her teacher with the logic of a teenager. "And ten with Mrs. Harstrawn."

"So there are," Melanie responded. "I can change it." Then thought to herself: Do something. Whipped cream on pie? Bullshit. Take charge!

Do something!

Go talk to Brutus.

Melanie rose suddenly, walked to the doorway. Looked out. Then back at Susan, who signed, "What are you doing?"

Melanie's eyes returned to the men. Thinking: Oh, don't rely on me, girls. That's a mistake. I'm not the one to do it. Mrs. Harstrawn's older. Susan's stronger. When she says something, people – hearing or deaf – always listen.

I can't -

Yes, you can.

Melanie took a step into the main room, feeling the spatter of water that dripped from the ceiling. She dodged a swinging meat hook, walked closer to the men. Just the twins. And Beverly. Who wouldn't let seven-year-old girls go? Who wouldn't have compassion for a teenager racked by asthma?

Bear looked up and saw her, grinned. Crew-cut Stoat was slipping batteries into a portable TV and paid no attention. Brutus, who had wandered away from the other two, was gazing out the window.

Melanie paused, looked back into the killing room. Susan was frowning. Again she signed, "What are you doing?" Melanie sensed criticism in her expression; she felt like a high-school student herself.

Just ask him. Write the words out.
Please let little ones go
.

Her hands were shaking, her heart was a huge, raw lump. She felt the vibrations as Bear called something. Slowly Brutus turned.

He looked at her, tossed his wet hair.

Melanie froze, feeling his eyes on her. She pantomimed writing something. He walked up to her. She was frozen. He took her hand, looked at her nails, a small silver ring on her right index finger. Released it. Looked into her face and laughed. Then he walked back to the other two men, leaving her alone, his back to her, as if she posed no threat whatsoever, as if she were younger than the youngest of her students, as if she were not there at all.

She felt more devastated than if he'd slapped her.

Too frightened to approach him again, too ashamed to return to the killing room, Melanie remained where she was, gazing out the window at the row of police cars, the crouching forms of the policemen, and the scruffy grass bending in the wind.

Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse through the bulletproof window in the truck.

They'd have to talk soon. Already Lou Handy was looming too large in his mind. There were two dangers inherent in negotiating. First, making the hostage taker bigger than life before you begin and therefore starting out on the defensive – what Potter was beginning to feel now. (The other – his own Stockholming – would come later. He'd deal with it then. And he knew he would have to.)

"Throw phone ready?"

"Just about." Tobe was programming numbers into a scanner on the console. "Should I put an omni in it?"

Throw phones were lightweight, rugged cellular phones containing a duplicate transmitting circuit that sent to the command post any conversations on the phone and a readout of the numbers called. Usually the HTs spoke only to the negotiators but sometimes they called accomplices or friends. These conversations sometimes helped the threat management team in bargaining or getting a tactical advantage.

Occasionally a tiny omnidirectional microphone was hidden in the phone. It'd pick up conversations even when the phone wasn't being used by the HTs. It was every negotiator's dream to know exactly what was said inside a barricade. But if the microphone was found, it might mean reprisals and would certainly damage the negotiator's credibility – his only real asset at this stage of the situation.

"Henry?" Potter asked. "Your opinion. Could he find it?"

Henry LeBow tapped computer keys and called up Handy's rapidly growing file. He scrolled through it. "Never went to college, got A's in science and math in high school. Wait, here we go… Studied electronics in the service for a while. He didn't last long in the army. He knifed his sergeant. That's neither here nor there… No, I'd say don't put the mike in. He could spot it. He excelled in engineering."

Potter sighed. "Leave it out, Tobe."

"Hurts."

"Does."

The phone buzzed and Potter took the call. Special Agent Angie Scapello had arrived in Wichita and was being choppered directly to the Laurent Clerc School in Hebron. She and the Hebron PD officer who'd be acting as interpreter would be arriving in a half-hour.

He relayed this information to LeBow, who typed it in. The intelligence officer added, "I'll have CAD schematics of the interior in ten minutes." LeBow had sent a field agent to dig up architectural or engineering drawings of the slaughterhouse. These would be transmitted to the command post and printed out through computer-assisted drafting software.

Potter said to Budd, "Charlie, I'm thinking we've got to consolidate them. The hostages. The takers're going to want power in there but I don't want to do that. I want to get them a single electric lantern. Battery powered. Weak. So they'll all have to be in the same room."

"Why?"

LeBow spoke. "Keep the takers and the hostages together. Let Handy talk to them, get to know them."

"I don't know, sir," the captain said. "Those girls're deaf. That's gonna be a spooky place. If they're in a room that's lit with just one lantern, they'll… well, the way my daughter'd say, they'll freak."

"We can't be worried much about their feelings," Potter said absently, watching LeBow transcribe notes into his electronic tablet of stone.

"I don't really agree with you there, sir," Budd said.

Silence.

Tobe was assembling the cellular phone, while he simultaneously gazed at six TV stations on a single monitor, the screen split miraculously by Derek Elb. All the local news was about the incident. CBS was doing a special report, as was CNN. Sprayed-haired beauties, men and women, held microphones like ice cream cones and spoke into them fervently. Potter noticed that Tobe'd taken to the control panel of the command van as if he'd designed it himself, and then reflected that perhaps he had. He and red-haired Derek had become fast friends.

"Think about it, though," Budd persisted. "That's a scary place at high noon. At night? Brother, it'll be awful."

"Whatever happens," Potter replied, "these next twenty-four hours aren't going to be very pleasant for those girls. They'll just have to live with it. We need to bunch them up. A single lantern'll do that."

Budd grimaced in frustration. "There's a practical matter too. I'm thinking if it's too dark they might panic. Try to run. And get hurt."

Potter looked at the brick walls of the old processing plant, as dark as dried blood.

"You don't
want
them to get shot, do you?" Budd asked in exasperation, drawing LeBow's glance, though not Potter's.

"But if we turn the power on," the agent said, "they'll have the whole slaughterhouse to hide themselves in. Handy could put them in ten different rooms." Potter pressed his cupped hands together absently as if making a snowball. "We
have
to keep them together."

Budd said, "What we could do is get a generator truck here. Feed in a line. Four or five auto repair lights – you know, those caged lights on hooks. Just enough current to light up the main room. And that way if you ordered an assault we could shut down the juice any time we wanted. Which you couldn't do with a battery unit. And, look, at some point we're gonna have to communicate with those girls. Remember, they're deaf. If it's dark, how're we gonna do that?"

That was a good point, one that Potter hadn't considered. In an assault someone would have to issue sign language evacuation instructions to the girls.

Potter nodded. "Okay."

"I'll get on it."

"Delegate it, Charlie."

"I aim to."

Tobe pushed buttons. A hiss of static filled the van. "Shit," he muttered. He added to LeBow, "Got two men with Big Ears closer than they ought to be," referring to small parabolic microphones that under good conditions could pick up a whisper at a hundred yards. Today they were useless.

"Damn wind," LeBow muttered.

'Throw phone's ready," Tobe announced, pushing a small olive-drab backpack toward Potter. "Both downlink circuits're ready to receive."

"We'll -"

A phone buzzed. Potter grabbed it.

"Potter here."

"Agent Potter? We haven't met." A pleasant baritone boomed out of the speaker. "I'm Roland Marks, the assistant attorney general of the state."

"Yes?" Potter asked coolly.

"I'd like to share some thoughts with you, sir." Potter's impatience surged. There's no time for this, he thought to himself.

"I'm very busy right now."

"Some thoughts about state involvement. Just my two cents' worth."

Potter had Charlie Budd, he had his containment troops, he had his command van. He needed nothing else from the state of Kansas. "This isn't a good time, I'm afraid."

"Is it true that they've kidnaped eight young girls?"

Potter sighed. "And two teachers. From the deaf school in Hebron. Yes, that's right. We're just about to establish contact and we're on a very tight schedule. I don't -"

"How many takers are there?"

"I'm afraid I don't have time to discuss the situation with you. The governor's been briefed and you can call our special agent in charge, Peter Henderson. I assume you know him."

"I know Pete. Sure." The hesitant voice suggested he had little confidence in the man. "This could be a real tragedy, sir."

"Well, Mr. Marks, my job is to make sure it doesn't turn out that way. I hope you'll let me get on with it."

"I was thinking, maybe a counselor or priest could help out. In Topeka we've got ourselves this state employee assistance department. Some top-notch -"

"I'm hanging up now," Potter said rather cheerfully. "Pete Henderson can keep you informed of our progress."

"Wait a minute -"

Click
.

"Henry, pull some files. Roland Marks's. Assistant AG. Find out if he can make trouble. See if he's filed to run in any elections, got his eye on any appointments."

"Just sounds like some do-good, knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal to me," scowled Henry LeBow, who'd voted Democratic all his life, Eugene McCarthy included.

"All right," Potter said, forgetting immediately about the attorney general's call, "let's get a volunteer with a good arm. Oh, one more thing." Potter buttoned his navy jacket and lifted a finger to Budd. He motioned to the door. "Step out here, would you please, Charlie?"

Outside they stood in the faint shadow of the van. "Captain," Potter said, "you better tell me what's eating you. That I stepped on your toes back there?"

"Nope," came the chilly response. "You're federal. I'm state. It's in the Constitution. Preeminence, they call it."

"Listen," Potter said firmly, "we don't have time for delicacies. Get it off your chest now. Or live with it, whatever it is."

"What're we doing? Taking off our insignias and going at it?" Budd laughed without much humor.

Potter said nothing but lifted an eyebrow.

"All right, how's this? What's eating me is I know you're supposed to be good at this and I've never done a negotiation before. I hear you barking orders right and left like you know exactly what you're doing but don't you think there's one thing you neglected to mention?"

"What?"

"You didn't say hardly three words about those girls in there."

"What about them?"

"I just thought you should've reminded everybody that our number-one priority is getting those girls out alive."

"Oh," Potter said, his mind elsewhere as he scanned the battlefield. "But that's not our number-one priority at all, Charlie. The rules of engagement are real clear. I'm here to get the takers to surrender and, if they don't, to help Hostage Rescue engage and neutralize them. I'll do everything in my power to save the people inside. That's why it's me, not HRT, running the show. But those men in there aren't leaving Crow Ridge except in body bags or handcuffs. And if that means those hostages have to die, then they're going to die. Now if you could find me that volunteer – a fellow with a good arm to pitch the phone. And hand me that bullhorn too, if you'd be so kind."

As he walked through a shallow gully that eventually ran into the south side of the slaughterhouse, Arthur Potter said to Henry LeBow, "We'll want engineer reports on any modifications to the building. EPA too. I want to know if there're any tunnels."

The intelligence officer nodded. "It's being done. And I'm checking on easements too."

"Tunnels?" Budd asked.

Potter told him about the terrorist barricade at the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, three years before. The Hostage Rescue Team had completely surprised the HTs by sneaking through a steam tunnel into the basement of the building. The tycoon had ordered the furnace installed away from the house so the noise and smoke wouldn't disturb his guests, never knowing that his sense of social decorum would save the lives of fifteen Israeli tourists a hundred years later.

The agent noticed that Dean Stillwell had reorganized troopers and agents in good defensive positions around the building. Halfway to the slaughterhouse Potter paused suddenly and looked toward the glint of water in the distance.

To Budd, Potter said, "I want all river traffic stopped."

"Well, um, that's the Arkansas River."

"So you told us."

"I mean, it's a big river."

"I can see."

"Well, why? You thinking they'll have accomplices floating in on rafts?"

"No." In the ensuing silence Potter challenged Budd to figure it out. He wanted the man to start
thinking
.

"You're not afraid they'd try and swim out to a barge? They'd drown for sure. It's a mean current here."

"Ah, but they might want to try. I want to make sure they don't even think of it. Just like keeping the choppers away."

Budd said, "Okay. I'll do it. Only who should I call? The coast guard? I don't think there's any such thing as a coast guard on rivers here." His frustration was evident. "I mean, who should I call?"

"I don't know, Charlie. You'll have to find out." On his cellular phone Budd placed a call to his office and ordered them to find out who had jurisdiction over river traffic. He ended the conversation by saying, "I don't know. You'll have to find out."

SAC Peter Henderson was at the rear staging area, setting up the medical unit and coordinating with other troopers and agents coming into the area, particularly the BATF agents and U.S. marshals, on site because there'd been firearm violations and an escape from a federal prison. The SAC's bitter parting words still echoed in Potter's mind.
Oh, there'll be something else. Don't you worry
.

He said to LeBow, "Henry, while you're looking up our friend Roland Marks, check out Henderson too."

"Our Henderson?"

"Yep. I don't want it to interfere with working the incident but I need to know if he's got an agenda."

"Sure."

"Arthur," Budd said, "I was thinking, maybe we should get this fellow's mother here. Handy's, I mean. Or his father or brother or somebody."

It was LeBow who shook his head.

"What? I ask something stupid?" Budd asked.

The intelligence officer said, "Just watching too many movies, Captain. A priest or family member's the last person you want here."

"Why's that?"

Potter explained, "Nine times out of ten their family's part of the reason they're in trouble in the first place. And I've never known a priest to do anything more than rile up a taker." He was pleased to notice that Budd took this not as a chastisement but as information; he seemed to store it somewhere in his enthusiastic brain.

"Sir." Sheriff Dean Stillwell's voice floated to them on the breeze. He trooped up and mussed his moppish hair with his fingers. "Got one of my boys gonna make the run with that phone. Come over here, Stevie."

"Officer," Potter said, nodding, "what's your name?"

"Stephen Gates. I go by Stevie mostly." The officer was lanky and tall and would look right at home in white pinstripes, working on a chaw of tobacco out on the pitcher's mound.

"All right, Stevie. Put on that body armor and helmet. I'm going to tell them you're coming. You crawl up to that rise there. See it? By that old livestock pen. I want you to stay down and pitch the knapsack as far as you can toward the front door."

Tobe handed him the small olive-drab satchel. "What if I hit those rocks there, sir?"

"It's a special phone and the bag's padded," Potter said. "Besides, if you hit those rocks, you should get out of law enforcement and try out for the Royals. All right," he announced, "let's get this show on the road."

Potter gripped the bullhorn and crawled to the top of the rise where he'd hailed Handy last time, sixty yards from the black windows of the slaughterhouse. He dropped onto his belly, caught his breath. Lifted the bullhorn to his lips. "This is Agent Potter again. We're sending a telephone in to you. One of our men is going to throw it as close to you as he can. This is not a trick. It's simply a cellular phone. Will you let our man approach?" Nothing.

"You men inside, can you hear me? We want to talk to you. Will you let our man approach?"

After an interminable pause a piece of yellow cloth waved in one window. It was probably a positive response; a "no" would presumably have been a bullet.

"When you come out to get the phone we will not shoot at you. You have my word on that." Again the yellow scrap.

Potter nodded to Gates. "Go on."

The trooper started toward the grassy rise, staying low. Still, Potter noted, a rifleman inside could easily hit him. The helmet was Kevlar but the transparent face mask was not.

Of the eighty people now surrounding the slaughterhouse, not a soul spoke. There was the hiss of the wind, a far-off truck horn. Occasionally the sound of the chugging engines of the big John Deere and Massey-Ferguson combines swam through the thick wheat. It was pleasant and it was unsettling. Gates scrabbled toward the rise. He made it and lay prone, looking up quickly, then down again. Until recently, throw phones were bulky and hard-wired to the negotiator's phone. Even the strongest officer could pitch them only thirty feet or so and often the cords got tangled. Cellular technology had revamped hostage negotiation.

Gates rolled from one clump of tall bluestem to another like a seasoned stuntman. He paused in a bunch of buffalo grass and goldenrod. Then kept going.

Okay, thought Potter. Throw it.

But the trooper didn't throw it.

Oates looked once more at the slaughterhouse then crawled over the knoll, past rotting posts and rails of livestock pens, and continued on, a good twenty yards. Even a bad marksman would have his pick of body parts from that range.

"What's he doing?" Potter whispered, irritated.

"I don't know, sir," Stillwell said. "I was real clear about what to do. I know he's pretty worried about those girls and wants to do everything right."

"Getting himself shot isn't doing anything right."

Oates continued toward the slaughterhouse.

Don't be a hero, Stevie, Potter thought. Though his concern was more than the man's getting killed or wounded. Unlike special forces and intelligence officers, cops aren't trained in anti-interrogation techniques. In the hands of somebody like Lou Handy, armed with only a knife or a safety pin, Oates'd spill everything he knew in two minutes, telling the location of every officer on the field, the fact that HRT wasn't expected for some hours, what types of guns the troopers had, anything else Handy might be curious to know.

Throw the damn phone!

Gates made it to a second rise and quickly looked up at the slaughterhouse door again then ducked. When there was no fire he squinted, drew back, and launched the phone in a low arc. It passed well over the rocks he'd been worried about and rolled to a stop only thirty feet from the arched brick doorway of the Webber amp; Stoltz plant.

"Excellent," Budd muttered, clapping Stillwell on the back. The sheriff smiled with cautious pride.

"Maybe it's a good omen," LeBow suggested.

Gates refused to present his back to the darkened windows of the slaughterhouse and eased backward into the grass until he was lost to sight.

"Now let's see who's the brave one," Potter mumbled.

"What do you mean?" Budd asked.

"I want to know who's the gutsiest and most impulsive of the three in there."

"Maybe they're drawing straws."

"No. My guess is that two of them wouldn't go out there for any money and the third can't wait. I want to see who that third one is. That's why I didn't ask for Handy specifically."

"I bet it's him, though," Budd said.

But it wasn't. The door opened and Shepard Wilcox walked out.

Potter studied him through the binoculars.

Taking a casual stroll. Looking around the field. Wilcox sauntered toward the phone. A pistol butt protruded from the middle of his belt. "Looks like a Glock," Potter said of the gun.

LeBow wrote down the information in a small notebook, the data to be transcribed when he returned to the command post. He then whispered, "Thinks he's the Marlboro man."

"Looks pretty confident," Budd said. "But I suppose he's got all the cards."

"He's got
none
of the cards," the negotiator said softly. "But either one'll give you all the confidence in the world."

Wilcox snagged the strap of the phone's backpack and gazed again at the line of police cars. He was grinning.

Budd laughed. "It's like -"

The crack of the gunshot echoed through the field and with a soft
phump
the bullet slapped into the ground ten feet from Wilcox. In an instant he had the pistol in his hand and was firing toward the trees where the shot had come from.

"No!" cried Potter, who leapt up and raced into the field. Through the bullhorn he turned to the cops behind the squad cars, all of whom had drawn their pistols or lifted shotguns and chambered rounds. "Hold your fire!" He waved his hands madly. Wilcox fired twice at Potter. The first shot vanished into the cloudy sky. The second split a rock a yard from Potter's feet.

Stillwell was shouting into his throat mike, "No return fire! All unit commanders, no return fire!"

But there was return fire.

Dirt kicked up around Wilcox as he flung himself to the ground and with carefully placed shots shattered three police car windshields before reloading. Even under these frantic conditions Wilcox was a fine marksman. From a window of the slaughterhouse came the repeated explosions of a semiautomatic shotgun; pellets hissed through the air.

Potter remained standing, in plain view, waving his hands. "Stop your firing!"

Then, suddenly, complete silence fell over the field. The wind vanished for a moment and stillness descended. The hollow cry of a bird filled the gray afternoon; the sound was heartbreaking. The sweet smell of gunpowder and fulminate of mercury, from primers, was thick.

Gripping the phone, Wilcox backed toward the slaughterhouse.

To Stillwell, Potter called, "Find out who fired. Whoever fired the first shot – I want to see him in the van. The ones who fired afterwards – I want them off the field and I want everybody to know why they're being dismissed."

"Yessir." The sheriff nodded and hurried off.

Potter, still standing, turned the binoculars onto the slaughterhouse, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside when Wilcox entered. He was scanning the ground floor when he observed a young woman looking through the window to the right of the slaughterhouse door. She was blond and seemed to be in her mid-twenties. Looking right at him. She was distracted for a moment, glanced into the bowels of the slaughterhouse then back to the field, terror in her eyes. Her mouth moved in a curious way – very broadly. She was saying something to him. He watched her lips. He couldn't figure out the message.

Potter turned aside and handed LeBow the binoculars. "Henry, fast. Who's that? You have any idea?"

LeBow had been inputting the identities of those hostages they had information about. But by the time he looked, the woman was gone. Potter described her.

"The oldest student's seventeen. It was probably one of the two teachers. I'd guess the younger one. Melanie Charrol. She's twenty-five. No other information on her yet."

Wilcox backed into the slaughterhouse. Potter saw nothing inside except blackness. The door slammed shut. Potter scanned the windows again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the young woman. But he saw nothing. He was silently duplicating the motion of her mouth. Lips pursed together, lower teeth touching the upper lips; lips pursed again, though differently, like in a kiss.

"We should make the call." LeBow touched Potter's elbow.

Potter nodded and the men hurried back to the van in silence, Budd behind them, glaring at one of the troopers who'd returned fire at Wilcox. Stillwell was reading the man the riot act.

Lips, teeth, lips. What were you trying to say? he wondered.

"Henry," Potter said. "Mark down: 'First contact with a hostage.' "

"Contact?"

"With Melanie Charrol."

"What was the communication?"

"I don't know yet. I just saw her lips move."

"Well -"

"Write it down. 'Message unknown.' "

"Okay."

"And add, 'Subject was removed from view before the threat management team leader could respond.' "

"Will do," replied meticulous Henry LeBow.

Inside the van Derek asked what happened but Potter ignored him. He snatched the phone from Tobe Geller and set it on the desk in front of him, cradled it between his hands.

He looked out through the thick window over the field, where the flurry of activity after the shooting had stopped completely. The front was now quiet; the errant officers – three of them – had been led off by Dean Still-well, and on the field the remaining troopers and agents stood with dense anticipation and fear and joy at the prospect of battle – a joy possible because there're thirty of you for each of them, because you're standing behind a half-ton Detroit picket line and wearing an Owens-Corning body vest, a heavy gun at your side, and because your spouse awaits you in a cozy bungalow with a beer and hot casserole.