A Maiden's Grave (11 page)

So you'll be home then.

She'd be alive.

There'd have been no secret appointments after the recital in Topeka. No lies, no hard decisions.

"Get back, against the wall," she signed to the girls. She had to get them away from Bear, keep them out of sight. They moved as instructed, tearful all of them except lean, young Shannon, once more angry and defiant, the tomboy. And Kielle too – though she was neither angry nor defiant but eerily subdued. The girl troubled Melanie. What was in her eyes? The shadow of exactly what had been in Susan's? Here was a child with the visage of a woman. My God, there's vindictiveness, chill, raw hatred. Is she the one who's really Susan's heir? Melanie wondered.

"He's Magneto," Kielle signed matter-of-factly, glancing in Brutus's direction and addressing her comment to Shannon. It was her own nickname for Handy. The other girl disagreed. "No. He's Mr. Sinister. Not part of Brotherhood. Worst of the worst."

Kielle considered this. "But I think -"

"Oh, you two, stop!" Beverly burst into their conversation, her hands rising and falling like her struggling chest. "This isn't stupid game."

Melanie nodded. "Don't say anything more." Oh, Mrs. Harstrawn, Melanie raged silently, please… How you cry! Red face, blue face, quivering. Please don't do this! Her hands rose. "I can't do it alone."

But Mrs. Harstrawn was helpless. She lay on the tile floor of the killing room, her head against a trough where the hot blood of dying calves and lambs flowed and vanished and she said not a word.

Melanie looked up. The girls were staring at her.

I
have
to do something.

But all she remembered was her father's words – phantom words – as he sat on the front porch swing of their farmhouse last spring. A brilliant morning. He said to her, "This is your home and you'll be welcome here. See, it's a question of belonging and what God does to make sure those that oughta stay someplace do. Well, your place is here, working at what you can do, where your, you know, problem doesn't get you into trouble. God's will."

(How perfectly she'd made out the words then, even the impossible sibilants and elusive glottal stops. As clearly as she understood Handy – Brutus – now.)

Her father had finished. "So you'll be home then." And rose to hitch up the ammonia tank without letting her write a single word of response on the pad she carried around the house.

Suddenly Melanie was aware of Beverly 's head bobbing up and down. A full-fledged asthma attack. The girl's face darkened and she closed her eyes miserably, struggling ferociously to breathe. Melanie stroked her damp hair.

"Do something," Jocylyn signed with her stubby, inept fingers.

The shadows reaching into the room, shadows of machinery and wires, grew very sharp, then began to sway. Melanie stood and walked into the slaughterhouse. She saw Brutus and Stoat rearranging the lights.

Maybe he'll give us one for our room. Please…

"I hope he dies, I hate him," the blond fireball Kielle signed furiously, her round face contorted with hatred as she gazed at Brutus.

"Quiet."

"I want him to die!"

"Stop!"

Beverly lay down on the floor. She signed, "Please. Help."

In the outer room Brutus and Stoat sat close together under a swaying lamp, the light reflecting off Stoat's pale crew cut. They were watching the small TV, clicking through the channels. Bear stood at the window, counting. Police cars, she guessed.

Melanie walked toward the men. Stopped about ten feet from them. Brutus looked over the dark skirt, the ruddy blouse, the gold necklace – a present from her brother, Danny. He was studying her, that damn curious smile on his face. Not like Bear, not staring at her boobs and legs. Just her face and, especially, her ears. She realized it was the way he'd stared at devastated Mrs. Harstrawn – as if he was adding another specimen to a collection of tragedies.

She mimicked writing something.

"Tell me," he said slowly, and so loudly she felt the useless vibrations pelt her. "Say it."

She pointed to her throat.

"You can't talk neither?"

She wouldn't talk. No. Though there was nothing wrong with her vocal cords. And because she'd become deaf relatively late in life, Melanie knew the fundamentals of word formation. Still, following Susan's model, Melanie avoided oralism because it wasn't chic. The Deaf community resented people who straddled both worlds – the Deaf world and the world of the Others. Melanie hadn't tried to utter a single word; in five or six years.

She pointed toward Beverly and breathed in hard. Touched her chest.

"Yeah, the sick one – What about her?"

Melanie mimicked taking medicine.

Brutus shook his head. "I don't give a shit. Go back and sit down."

Melanie pushed her hands together, a prayer, a plea. Brutus and Stoat laughed. Brutus called something to Bear, and Melanie suddenly felt the firm vibrations of his footsteps approach. Then an arm was around her chest and Bear was dragging her across the floor. His fingers squeezed her nipple hard. She yanked his hand away and the tears came again.

In the killing room she pushed away from him and collapsed on the floor. Melanie grabbed one of the lights, which rested on the ground, and clutched it, hot and oily, to her chest. It burned her fingers but she clung to it like a life preserver. Bear looked down, seemed to ask a question.

But just as she'd done that spring day with her father on the farmhouse porch, Melanie gave no response; she simply went away.

That day last May, she'd climbed the creaking stairs and sat in an old rocking chair in her bedroom. Now, she lay on the killing room floor. A child again, younger than the twins. Mercifully she closed her eyes and went away. To anyone watching it seemed that she'd slipped into a faint. But in fact she wasn't here at all; she'd gone someplace else, someplace safe, someplace not another living soul knew about.

When he recruited hostage negotiators Arthur Potter found himself in the peculiar position of interviewing clones of himself. Middle-aged, frumpy, easygoing cops.

For a time it was thought that psychologists ought to be used for negotiating; but even though a barricade resembles a therapy session in many ways, shrinks just didn't work out. They were too analytical, focused too much on diagnostics. The point of talking to a taker isn't to figure out where he fits in the
DSM IV
but to persuade him to come out with his hands up. This requires common sense, concentration, a sharp mind, patience (well, Arthur Potter worked hard at that), a healthy sense of self, the rare gift of speaking well, and the rarer talent of listening.

And most important, a negotiator is a man with controlled emotions.

The very quality that Arthur Potter was wrestling with at the moment. He struggled to forget the image of Susan Phillips's chest exploding before him, feeling the hot tap of blood droplets striking his face. There'd been many deaths in the barricades he'd worked over the years. But he'd never been so close to such a cold-blooded death as this one.

Henderson called. The reporters had heard a gunshot and were champing to get some information. "Tell them I'll make a statement within a half-hour. Don't leak it, Pete, but he just killed one."

"Oh, God, no." But the SAC didn't sound upset at all; he seemed almost pleased – perhaps because Potter had assumed point position on this megatragedy in progress.

"Executed her. Shot her in the back. Listen, this could all go bad in a big way. Get on the horn to Washington and push the HRT assembly, okay?"

"Why'd he do it?"

"No apparent reason," Potter said, and they hung up.

"Henry?" Potter said to LeBow. "I need some help here. What should we stay away from?"

Negotiators try to increase the rapport with their takers by dipping into personal matters. But a question about a sensitive subject can send an agitated taker into a frenzy, even prompting him to kill.

"There's so little data," the intelligence officer said. "I guess I'd avoid his military service. His brother Rudy."

"Parents?"

"Relation unknown. I'd steer clear on general principles until we learn more."

"His girlfriend? What's her name?"

"Priscilla Gunder. No problems there, it looks like. Fancied themselves a regular Bonnie and Clyde."

"Unless," Budd pointed out, "she dumped him when he went to prison."

"Good point," Potter said, deciding to let Handy bring up the girlfriend and just echo or reflect whatever he said.

"Definitely avoid the ex-wife. It seems there was some bad blood there."

"Personal relations in general, then," Potter summarized. It was typical in criminal takings. Usually mentally disturbed takers wanted to talk about the ex-spouse they were still in love with. Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse and announced, "I want to try to get one out. Who should we go for? What do we know about the hostages so far?"

"Just a few isolated facts. We won't have anything substantive till Angie gets here."

"I was thinking…" Budd began.

"Yes, go ahead."

"That girl with the asthma. You asked about her before but he's had a spell of her choking up a storm – if I know asthma. Handy's the sort who'd have a short fuse for something like that, seems to me. He's probably ready to boot her out."

"It's a good thought, Charlie," Potter said. "But the psychology of negotiating is that once you've had a refusal you have to go on to a different issue or person. For the time being Beverly's non-negotiable. It'd be weak of us to try to get her and too weak of him to give in when he's already refused. Henry, you have anything at all on the others?"

"Well, this girl Jocylyn Weiderman. I have a note from Angie that she's been in and out of counseling for depression. Cries a lot and has attacks of hysteria. She might try to panic and run. Get herself killed."

"I'll buy that," said Budd.

"Good," Potter announced. "Let's try for her."

As he was reaching for the phone Tobe held up a hand. "Downlink."

The phone buzzed; the recorder turned.

"Hello?" Potter asked.

Silence.

"How's everything doing in there, Lou?"

"Not bad."

The thick window of the command van was right next to him but Potter's head was up, gazing at what LeBow had mounted – the CAD diagram of the slaughterhouse. It was a hostage rescue team's nightmare. The spot where Handy seemed to be at the moment was a single large room – a holding pen for the livestock. But in the back of the slaughterhouse were three stories of warrens – small offices, cutting and packing rooms, sausage grinding and stuffing rooms and storage areas, interconnected with narrow corridors.

"You fellows must be pretty tired," Potter offered.

"Listen, Art. I'm gonna tell you what we want. You probably got a tape recorder going but're gonna pretend you don't."

"Sure, we're taking down every word. I'm not going to lie to you. You know the drill."

"You know, I hate the way I sound on tape. One of my trials they played a confession tape of me in court. I didn't like the way I sounded. I don't know why I confessed either. I guess I was just anxious to tell somebody what I done to that girl."

Potter, eager to learn everything about this man, asked, "What
did
you do exactly, Lou?" He speculated:
It was real nasty. I don't think you want to hear about it
.

"Oh, wasn't pleasant, Art. Not pretty at all. I was proud of my work, though."

"Asshole," Tobe muttered.

"Nobody likes how they sound on tape, Lou," Potter continued easily. "I've got to give this training seminar once a year. They tape it. I hate how I sound."

Shut the fuck up, Art. Listen.

"Don't much care, Art. Now, get your pencil ready and listen. We want a chopper. A big one. One that seats eight."

Nine hostages, three HTs, and the pilot. That leaves five left over. What's going to happen to them?

LeBow was writing all this down on his computer. He'd padded the keys with cotton so that they were nearly silent.

"Okay, you want a helicopter. The police and the Bureau only have two-seaters. It'll take some time until we can get -"

"Like I say, Art. Don't much care. Chopper and a pilot. That's number one. Got it?"

"Sure do, Lou. But like I told you before, I'm just a special agent. I don't have the authority to requisition a chopper. I'll have to get on the horn to Washington."

"Art, you ain't listening. That's
your
problem. It's gonna be my theme for the day. Don't. Much. Care. The clock's running, whether you gotta call the airport that's up the road a couple miles or the Pope in his holy city."

"Okay. Keep going."

"We want some food."

"You got it. Anything in particular?"

"McDonald's. Lots of it."

Potter motioned to Budd, who picked up his phone and began whispering orders.

"It's on its way."

Get into him. Get inside his head. He's going to ask for liquor next, Potter guessed.

"And a hundred rounds of twelve-gauge shells, double-ought, body armor, and gas masks."

"Oh, well, Lou, I guess you know I can't do that."

"I don't know that at all."

"I can't give you weapons, Lou."

"Even if I was to give you a girl?"

"Nope, Lou. Weapons and ammunition are deal breakers. Sorry."

"You use my name a lot, Art. Hey, if we
was
to do some horse trading, which one of the girls would you want? Anybody in particular? Say we weren't talking about guns and such."

LeBow raised his eyebrows and nodded. Budd gave Potter a thumbs-up.

Melanie, Potter thought automatically. But he believed their assessment was right and that they had to try for the girl most at risk – Jocylyn, the troubled student.

Potter told him there was one girl in particular they wanted.

"Describe her."

LeBow spun the computer around. Potter read the fine print on the screen then said, "Short dark hair, overweight. Twelve. Her name's Jocylyn."

"Her? That weepy little shit. She whines like a pup with a busted leg. Good riddance. Thanks for picking her, Art. She's the one gets shot in five minutes, you don't agree to the guns 'n' ammo."