A Maiden's Grave (14 page)

He was surprised. The woman it depicted was more beautiful than he'd thought. Unlike the other photos, this was in color. She had wavy blond hair, very curly bangs, smooth pale skin, radiant eyes. The picture seemed less like a staff photograph than like a model's head shot. There was something childlike about everything except the eyes. He himself pinned it up, next to the picture of the twins. "Does she have family here?" Potter asked.

Angie looked at her notes. "The dean at Laurent Clerc told me her parents have a farm not far from the school but they're in St. Louis this weekend. Melanie's brother had an accident last year and he's having some kind of fancy surgery tomorrow. She was taking tomorrow off to go visit him."

"Farms," Budd muttered. "Most dangerous places on earth. You should hear some of the calls we get."

A console phone buzzed, a scrambled line, and Tobe pushed the button, spoke into his stalk mike for a moment. "It's the CIA," he announced to the room, then began speaking rapidly into the mike. He tapped several keys, conferred with Derek, and turned on a monitor. "Kwo got a SatSurv image, Arthur. Take a look."

A monitor slowly came to life. The background was dark green, like a glowing radar screen, and you could make out patches of lighter green, yellow, and amber. There was a faint outline of the slaughterhouse and a number of red dots surrounding it.

"The green's the ground," Tobe explained. "The yellow and orange, those are trees and natural thermal sources. The red are troopers." The slaughterhouse was a blue-green rectangle. Only toward the front was there any shift in the color, where the windows and doors were located. "There's probably a little heat rising from the lamps. Doesn't tell us much. Other than nobody's actually on the roof."

"Tell them to keep broadcasting."

"You know what it costs, don't you?" Tobe asked.

"Twelve thousand an hour," LeBow said, typing happily, "Now ask him if he cares."

Potter said, "Keep it on-line, Tobe."

"Will do. But I want a cost-of-living this year, we're so rich."

Then the door opened and a trooper entered, brown bags in his arms, and the van filled with the smell of hot greasy burgers and fries. Potter sat down at his chair, gripping the phone in his fingers.

The first exchange was about to begin.

Stevie Gates again.

"Glutton for punishment?" Potter asked.

"Bored just sitting on my butt, sir."

"Nothing to pitch this time, Officer. You'll be going the distance."

Dean Stillwell stood beside the trooper as, Potter instructing, two FBI agents in flak jackets were suiting Gates up with two layers of thin body armor under his regular uniform. They were standing behind the van. Charlie Budd was nearby, directing the placement of the huge halogen spotlights, trained on the slaughterhouse. There was still plenty of summer light left in the day but the overcast had grown thicker and with every passing minute it seemed more like dusk.

"All set, Arthur," Budd announced.

"Hit 'em," Potter ordered, looking up from the trooper for a moment.

The halogens burst to life, shooting their streams of raw white light onto the front and sides of the slaughterhouse. Budd ordered a few adjustments and the lights focused on the door and the windows on either side of it. The wind was gusting sharply and the troopers had to anchor the legs of the lights with sandbags.

Suddenly a curious sound came from the field. "What's that?" Budd wondered aloud.

Stillwell said, "Somebody's laughing. Some of the troopers. Hank, what's going on out there?" the sheriff called over his radio. He listened, then looked at the slaughterhouse through field glasses. "Look in the window."

Potter ducked his head around the van. With the spotlights, nobody in the slaughterhouse would have a prayer of an effective sniper shot. He trained his Leicas on the window.

"Very funny," he muttered.

Lou Handy had put on sunglasses against the glaring lights. With exaggerated gestures he mopped his forehead and mugged for his laughing audience.

"Enough of that," Stillwell radioed sternly, speaking to his troops. "This isn't David Letterman."

Potter turned back to Gates, nodded at the thin armor. "You'll get a nasty bruise if you're shot. But it's important to look unthreatening."

HTs get very nervous, Angie explained, when they see troopers dressed up like alien spacemen plodding toward them. "You've got to dress for success."

"I'm about as unthreatening as can be. 'S'way I feel anyway. Should I leave my sidearm here?"

"No. But keep it out of sight," Potter said. "Your first responsibility is your own safety. Never compromise that. If it's between you and the hostage, save yourself first."

"Well -"

"That's an order, Trooper," Stillwell said solemnly. He'd grown into his role of containment officer like a natural.

Potter continued, "Walk up there slowly, carry the food at your side, in plain view. Don't move fast, whatever happens."

"Okay." Gates seemed to be memorizing these orders.

Tobe Geller stepped out of the doorway of the van, carrying a small box attached to a wire burgeoning into a stubby black rod. He hooked the box to the trooper's back, under the vest. The rod he clipped into Oates's hair with bobby pins.

"Couldn't use this with Arthur here," Tobe said. "Need a full head of hair."

"What is it?"

"Video camera. And earphone."

"That little thing? No foolin'."

Tobe ran the wire down Oates's back and plugged it into the transmitter. "The resolution isn't very good," Potter said, "but it'll help when you get back."

"How's that?"

"You seem pretty cool, Stevie," LeBow said. "But at best you'll remember about forty percent of what you see up there."

"Oh, he's a fifty percenter," Potter said, "if I'm not mistaken."

"The tape won't tell us too much on its own," the intelligence officer continued, "but it should refresh your memory."

"Gotcha. Say, those burgers sure smell good," Gates joked, while his face said that food was the last thing on his mind. "Angie?" Potter asked.

The agent walked up to the trooper and tossed the mass of dark, windblown hair from her face. "Here's a picture of the girl who's coming out. Her name's Jocylyn." Quickly, she repeated her assessment on how to best handle her.

"Don't talk to her," Angie concluded. "She won't understand your words and it might make her panic, thinking she's missing something important. And keep smiling."

"Smiling. Sure. Piece of cake." Gates swallowed.

Potter added, "Now, she's overweight and can't run very fast, I'd guess." He unfurled a small map of the grounds of the slaughterhouse. "If she could hustle I'd tell you to duck into that gully there, the one in front of the place, and then just run like hell. You'd be oblique targets. But as it is I think you'll just have to walk straight back."

"Like the girl who got shot?" Budd asked, and nobody was happy he had.

"Now, Stevie," Potter continued, "you should go up to the door. But under no circumstances are you to go inside."

"What if he says he won't release her 'less I do?"

"Then you leave her. Leave the food and walk away. But I think he'll let her go. Get as close as you can to the door. I want you to look inside. Look for what kinds of weapons they have, radios, any signs of blood, any hostages or hostage takers we might not know about."

Budd asked, "How could more've gotten in?"

"They might have been waiting inside for Handy and the others to arrive."

"Oh, sure." Budd looked discouraged. "Didn't think of that."

Potter continued to Gates, "Don't engage him in a dialogue, don't argue, don't say anything, except to answer his questions directly."

"You think he'll ask me stuff?"

Potter looked at Angie, who said, "It's possible. He might want to tease you a little. The sunglasses – he's got a playful streak in him. He might want to test you. Don't rise to the bait."

Gates nodded uncertainly.

Potter continued, "We'll be monitoring your conversations and I can feed you answers through your earphone."

Gates smiled a faint smile. "Those'll be the longest hundred yards of my life."

"There's nothing to worry about," Potter said. "He's a lot more interested in food right now than he is in shooting anybody."

This logic seemed to reassure Gates though the memory loomed in Potter's mind that some years ago he'd said similar words to an officer who a few moments later had been shot in the knee and wrist by a hostage taker who decided impulsively that he didn't want the painkillers and bandages the officer was bringing him.

Potter added an asthma inhaler to the bag of hamburgers. "Don't say anything about that. Just let him find it and decide to give it to Beverly or not."

Budd held up several pads of paper and the markers Derek had provided. "Should we include these?"

Potter considered. The pads and pens would give the hostages a chance to communicate with their captors and improve the Stockholming between them. But sometimes small deviations from what they expected set off HTs. The inhaler was one deviation. How would Handy feel about a second? He asked Angie's opinion.

"He may be a sociopath," she said after a moment. "But he hasn't had any temper tantrums or emotional outbursts, has he?"

"No. He's been pretty cool."

In fact he'd been frighteningly calm.

"Sure," Angle said, "add them."

"Dean, Charlie," Potter said, "come here a minute." The sheriff and the captain huddled. "Who're the best rifle shots you've got?"

"That'd be Sammy Bullock and – what do you think? Chris Felling? That's Christine. I'd say she's better'n Sammy. Dean?"

"If I was a squirrel sitting four hundred yards away from Chrissy and I saw her shoulder her piece, I wouldn't even bother to run. I'd just kiss my be-hind goodbye."

Potter wiped his glasses. "Have her load and lock and get a spotter with glasses to keep a watch on the door and windows. If it looks like Handy or one of the others is about to shoot, she's green-lighted to fire. But she's to aim for the doorjamb or windowsill."

"I thought you said there'd be no warning shots," Budd said.

'That's the rule," Potter said sagely. "And it's absolutely true – unless there's an exception to it."

"Oh."

"Go on and take care of that, Dean."

"Yessir." The sheriff hurried away, crouching.

Potter returned to Gates. "Okay, Trooper. Ready?"

Frances said to the young man, "Can I say 'Good luck'?"

"Please do," Gates said earnestly. Budd patted him on his Kevlared shoulder.

Melanie Charrol knew many Bible-school stories.

The lives of the Deaf used to be tied closely with religion, and many of them still were. The poor lambs of God… pat them on the head and force them to learn enough speech to struggle through catechism and Eucharist and confession (always among themselves of course
so
they didn't embarrass the hearing congregation). Abbe de l'Epée, good-hearted and brilliant though he was, created French Sign Language primarily to make sure his charges' souls could enter heaven.

And of course vows of silence by monks and nuns, adopting the "affliction" of the unfortunate as penance. (Maybe thinking that they could hear God's voice all the better though Melanie could have told them it didn't work worth squat.)

She leaned against the tile walls of the killing room, as horrible a part of the Outside as ever existed. Mrs. Harstrawn lay on her side, ten feet away, staring at the wall. No tears any longer – she was cried out, dry, empty. The woman blinked, she breathed but she might as well have been in a coma. Melanie rose and lifted her leg away from a pool of black water encrusted with green scum and the splintered bodies of a thousand insects.

Religion.

Melanie hugged the twins, feeling their delicate spines through identical powder-blue cowgirl blouses. She sat down beside them, thinking of some story she'd heard in Sunday school. It was about early Christians in ancient Rome, awaiting martyrdom in the Colosseum. They had, of course, refused to deny their faith. Men and women, children, happily praying on their knees while the centurions came for them. The story was ridiculous, the product of a simple-minded textbook writer, and it seemed inexcusable to adult Melanie Charrol that anyone would include it in a children's book. Yet like the cheapest melodrama the story had wrenched her heart then, at age eight or nine. And it wrenched her heart still.

Staring at the distant light, losing herself in the pulsing meditation of the yellow bulb, growing, shrinking, growing, shrinking, seeing the light turn into Susan's face, then into a beautiful young woman's body torn apart by lions' yellow claws.

Eight gray birds, sitting in dark…

But no, it's just seven birds now.

Was Jocylyn about to die too? Melanie peeked around the corner, seeing the girl standing at a window. She was sobbing, shaking her head. Stoat had her by the arm. They stood near the partially open door.

Motion nearby. She turned her head – the automatic reaction of a deaf person to the movement of gesturing hands. Kielle had closed her eyes. Melanie watched her hands move in a repetitive pattern, confused about the girl's message until she realized that she was summoning Wolverine, another of her comic-book heros.

"Do something," Shannon signed. "Melanie!" Her tiny hands chopped the air.

Do something. Right.

Melanie thought of de l'Epée. She hoped the thought of him would restart her frozen heart. It didn't. She was as helpless as ever, staring at Jocylyn, who looked back toward the killing room and caught Melanie's eye.

"Going to kill me," Jocylyn signed, sobbing; her cheeks, round and pale as a honeydew, glistened from the tears. "Please, help."

The Outside…

"Melanie." Kielle's dark eyes flared. The girl had suddenly appeared beside her. "Do something!"

"What?" Melanie suddenly snapped. "Tell me. Shoot him? Grow wings and fly?"

"Then I will," Kielle said, and turned, bursting toward the men. Without thinking, Melanie leapt after her. The little girl was just past the doorway to the killing room when Bear loomed in front of them. Both Melanie and Kielle stopped abruptly. Melanie put her arm around the girl and looked down, eyes fixed on the black pistol in Bear's waistband.

Grab it. Shoot him. Don't worry what happens. You can do it. His filthy mind is elsewhere. De l'Epée would hear the shot and come running to save them. Grab it. Do it. She actually saw herself pulling the trigger. Her hands began to shake. She stared at the pistol butt, glistening black plastic.

Bear reached forward and touched her hair. The back of his hand, a gentle stroke. A lover's or father's touch.

And whatever strength was within Melanie vanished in that instant. Bear grabbed them by the collars and dragged them back into the killing room, cutting off her view of Jocylyn.

I'm deaf so I can't hear her screams.

I'm deaf so I can't hear her beg me to help her.

I'm deaf, I'm deaf, I'm deaf…

Bear shoved them into the corner and sat down in the doorway. He gazed over the frightened captives.

I'm deaf so I'm dead already. What does it matter; what does anything matter?

Melanie closed her eyes, drew her beautiful hands into her lap, and, untethered, slipped away from the killing room once again.

"Run the HP, Tobe," Potter ordered.

Inside the van Tobe opened an attaché case, revealing the Hewlett-Packard Model 122 VSA, which resembled a cardiac-care monitor.

"These all one-ten, grounded?" He nodded at the outlets. Derek Elb told him yes.

Tobe plugged in and turned on the machine. A small strip of paper, like a cash-register receipt, fed out, and a grid appeared in green on the black screen. He glanced at the others in the room. LeBow pointed at Potter, himself, Angie, and Budd. "In that order."

Frances and Derek looked on curiously.

"Five says you're wrong," Potter offered. "Me, Angie, you, and Charlie."

Budd laughed uneasily. "What're you talking about?"

Tobe said, "Everybody, quiet." He pushed a microphone toward Angie.

"The rain in Spain falls -"

"That's enough," Tobe said, holding the microphone out to Potter.

He recited, "The quick brown fox…"

Henry LeBow was cut off during a lengthy quotation from
The Tempest
.