A Maiden's Grave (3 page)

As always, an element of circus.

Arthur Potter stood beside the FBI resident agency's best car, a Ford Taurus, and surveyed the scene. Police cars drawn into a circle like pioneers' wagons, press minivans, the reporters holding their chunky cameras like rocket launchers. There were fire trucks everywhere (Waco was on everyone's mind).

Three more government-issue sedans arrived in caravan, bringing the total FBI count to eleven. Half the men were in navy-blue tactical outfits, the rest in their pseudo Brooks Brothers.

The military jet bearing Potter, reserved for civilian government transport, had touched down in Wichita twenty minutes before and he'd transferred to a helicopter for the eighty-mile flight northwest to the tiny town of Crow Ridge.

Kansas was just as flat as he'd expected, though the chopper's route took them along a wide river surrounded by trees, and much of the ground here was hilly. This, the pilot told him, was where the mid-high-grass and short-grass prairies met. To the west had been buffalo country. He pointed toward a dot that was Larned, where a hundred years ago a herd of four million had been sighted. The pilot reported this fact with unmistakable pride.

They'd sped over huge farms, one- and two-thousand-acre spreads. July seemed early for harvest but hundreds of red and green-and-yellow combines were shaving the countryside of the wheat crop.

Now, standing in the chill wind beneath a dense overcast sky, Potter was struck by the relentless bleakness of this place, which he would have traded in an instant to be back amid the Windy City tenements he'd left not long before. A hundred yards away was a red brick industrial building, like a castle, probably a hundred years old. In front of it sat a small school bus and a battered gray car.

"What's the building?" Potter asked Henderson, special agent in charge of the FBI's Wichita resident agency.

"An old slaughterhouse," the SAC responded. "They'd drive herds from western Kansas and Texas up here, slaughter 'em, then barge the carcasses down to Wichita."

The wind slapped them hard, a one-two punch. Potter wasn't expecting it and stepped back to keep his balance.

"They've lent us that, the state boys." The large, handsome man was nodding at a van that resembled a UPS delivery truck, painted olive drab. It was on a rise overlooking the plant. "For a command post." They walked toward it.

"Too much of a target," Potter objected. Even an amateur sportsman could easily make the hundred-yard rifle shot.

"No," Henderson explained. "It's armored. Windows're an inch thick."

"That a fact?"

With another fast look at the grim slaughterhouse he pulled open the door of the command post and stepped inside. The darkened van was spacious. Lit with the glow from faint yellow overhead lights, video monitors, and LED indicators. Potter shook the hand of a young state trooper, who'd stood to attention before the agent was all the way inside.

"Your name?"

"Derek Elb, sir. Sergeant." The red-haired trooper, in a perfectly pressed uniform, explained that he was a mobile command post technician. He knew SAC Henderson and had volunteered to remain here and help if he could. Potter looked helplessly over the elaborate panels and screens and banks of switches and thanked him earnestly. In the center of the van was a large desk, surrounded by four chairs. Potter sat in one while Derek, like a salesman, enthusiastically pointed out the surveillance and communications features. "We also have a small arms locker."

"Let's hope we won't be needing it," said Arthur Potter, who in thirty years as a federal agent had never fired his pistol in the line of duty.

"You can receive satellite transmissions?"

"Yessir, we have a dish. Any analog, digitized or microwaved signal."

Potter wrote a series of numbers on a card and handed it to Derek. "Call that number, ask for Jim Kwo. Tell him you're calling for me and give him that code right there."

"There?"

"That one. Tell him we want a SatSurv scan fed into -" he waved his hand at the bank of monitors – "one of those. He'll coordinate the tech stuff with you. All that loses me, frankly. Give him the longitude and latitude of the slaughterhouse."

"Yessir," Derek said, jotting notes excitedly. In seventh heaven, techie that he was. "What is that, exactly? SatSurv?"

"The CIA's satellite surveillance system. It'll give us a visual and infrared scan of the grounds."

"Hey, I heard about that.
Popular Science
, I think." Derek turned away to make the call.

Potter bent down and trained his Leica field glasses through the thick windows. He studied the slaughterhouse. A skull of a building. Stark against the sun-bleached grass, like dried blood on yellow bone. That was the assessment of Arthur Potter English lit major. Then, in an instant, he was Arthur Potter the Federal Bureau of Investigation's senior hostage negotiator and assistant director of the Bureau's Special Operations and Research Unit, whose quick eyes noted relevant details: thick brick wall, small windows, the location of the power lines, the absence of telephone lines, the cleared land around the building, and stands of trees, clusters of grass, and hills that might provide cover for snipers – both friend and foe.

The rear of the slaughterhouse backed right onto the river.

The river, Potter mused. Can we use it somehow?

Can
they
?

The roof was studded with parapets, a medieval castle. There was a tall, thin smokestack and a bulky elevator hut that would make a helicopter landing difficult, at least in this choppy wind. Still, a copter could hover and a dozen tactical officers could rappel onto the building with little difficulty. He could make out no skylights.

The long-defunct Webber amp; Stoltz Processing Company, Inc., he decided, resembled nothing so much as a crematorium.

"Pete, you have a bullhorn?"

"Sure." Henderson stepped outside and, crouching, jogged to his car to get it.

"Say, you wouldn't have a bathroom here, would you?" Potter asked Derek.

" 'Deed we do, sir," said Derek, immensely proud of Kansas technology. The trooper pointed to a small door. Potter stepped inside and put on an armor vest beneath his dress shirt, which he then replaced. He knotted his tie carefully and pulled on his navy-blue sports coat once again. He noted that there was very little slack on the draw strap of the Second Chance vest but in his present state of mind his weight had virtually ceased to trouble him.

Stepping outside into the cool afternoon, he took the black megaphone from Henderson and, crouching, hurried through a winding path between hills and squad cars, telling the troopers, eager and young most of them, to holster their pistols and stay under cover. When he was about sixty yards from the slaughterhouse he lay on a hilltop and peered at it through the Leica glasses. There was no motion from inside. No lights in the windows. Nothing. He noted that the glass was missing from the front-facing windows but he didn't know if the men inside had knocked it out for better aim or if local schoolboys had been practicing with rocks and.22s.

He turned on the bullhorn and, reminding himself not to shout and thus distort the message, said, "This is Arthur Potter. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'd like to talk to you men in there. I'm having a cellular telephone brought up. I'll be getting it to you in about ten or fifteen minutes. We are not planning an assault. You're in no danger. I repeat: We are not planning an assault."

He expected no response and received none. In a crouch he hurriedback to the van and asked Henderson, "Who's in charge locally? I want to talk to them."

"Him, there."

Crouching beside a tree was a tall, sandy-haired man in a pale blue suit. His posture was perfect.

"Who is he?" Potter asked, polishing his glasses on his lapel.

"Charles Budd. State police captain. He's got investigative and tactical experience. No negotiating. Spit-shined record."

"How long on the force?" To Potter, Budd looked young and callow. You expected to see him ambling over the linoleum in the Sears appliance department to shyly pitch an extended warranty.

"Eight years. Flew upstream fast to get the ribbons."

Potter called, "Captain?"

The man turned his blue eyes to Potter and walked behind the van. They shook firm hands and made introductions.

"Hey, Peter," Budd said.

"Charlie."

To Potter he said, "So you're the big gun from Washington, that right? Pleasure to meet you, sir. Real honor."

Potter smiled.

"Okay, sir, near as I can tell, here's the situation." He pointed to the slaughterhouse. "There's been movement in those two windows there. A glint, maybe a gun barrel. Or a scope. I'm not sure. Then they -"

"We'll get to that, Captain Budd."

"Oh, hey, call me Charlie, why don't you?"

"Okay, Charlie. How many people you have here?"

"Thirty-seven troopers, five local deputies. Plus Pete's boys. Yours, I mean."

Potter recorded this in a small black notebook.

"Any of your men or women have hostage experience?"

"The troopers? A few of them probably've been involved in your typical bank robbery or convenience store situations. The local cops, I'm sure they never have. Most of the work round here's DWI and farm workers playing mumbledypeg on each other Saturday night."

"What's the chain of command?"

"I'm supervisor. I've got four commanders – three lieutenants and one sergeant waiting for rank – overseeing those thirty-seven, pretty evenly split. Two squads of ten, one nine, one eight. You're writing all this down, huh?"

Potter smiled again. "Where are they deployed?"

Like the civil war general Budd would one day resemble he pointed out the clusters of troopers in the field.

"Weapons? Yours, I mean."

"We issue Glocks here, sir,
as
sidearms. We've got about fifteen riot guns between us. Twelve-gauge, eighteen-inch barrels. I've got six men and a woman with M-16s, in those trees there and over there. Scopes on all of 'em."

"Night scopes?"

He chuckled. "Not round here."

"Who's in charge of the local men?"

"That'd be the sheriff of Crow Ridge. Dean Stillwell. He's over yonder."

He pointed to a lanky, mop-haired man, whose head was down as he talked to one of his deputies.

Another car pulled up and braked to a quick stop. Potter was greatly pleased to see who was behind the wheel.

Short Henry LeBow climbed from the car and immediately pulled on a rumpled tweed businessman's hat; his bald crown had offered a glistening target more than once during the two hundred hostage negotiations he and Potter had worked together. LeBow trudged forward, a pudgy, shy man, and the one hostage-incident intelligence officer Potter would rather work with than anyone else in the world.

LeBow listed under the weight of two huge shoulder bags.

The men shook hands warmly and Potter introduced him to Henderson and Budd.

"Look what we have here, Henry. An Airstream trailer to call our very own."

"My. And a river to catch fish in. What is that?"

"The river? The Arkansas," Budd said, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

"Takes me back to my youth," LeBow offered.

At Potter's request Henderson returned to his car to radio the FBI resident agency in Wichita and find out when Tobe Geller and Angie Scapello would arrive. Potter, LeBow, and Budd climbed into the van. LeBow shook Derek's hand then opened his satchels, extracting two laptop computers. He turned them on, plugged them into a wall socket, and then connected a small laser printer.

"Dedicated line?" LeBow asked Derek.

"Right there."

LeBow plugged in and no sooner had he gotten all his equipment on line than the printer started to groan.

"Goodies already?" Potter asked.

LeBow read the incoming fax, saying, "Prison department profiles, probation reports, yellow sheets and indictments. Very preliminary, Arthur. Very
raw
." Potter handed him the material delivered by the agents in Chicago and the voluminous notes he'd begun jotting on the plane. In terse words they described the escape of Lou Handy and two other inmates from a federal prison in southern Kansas, their murder of a couple in a wheat field several miles from the slaughterhouse and the taking of the hostages. The intelligence officer looked over the hard copies and then began typing the data into one of his computers.

The door opened and Peter Henderson entered. He announced that Tobe Geller would be here momentarily and Angie Scapello would be arriving within the hour. Tobe had been flown in via Air Force F-16 from Boston, where he'd been teaching a course in computer-programming profiling as a way to establish the identity of criminal hackers. He should arrive any minute. Angie was taking a Marine DomTran jet from Quantico.

"Angie?" LeBow said. "I'm pleased about that. Very pleased."

Agent Scapello resembled Geena Davis and had huge, brown eyes that no amount of failing to wear makeup could make less seductive. Still, LeBow's excitement had nothing to do with her appearance and everything to do with her specialty – hostage psychology.

En route to the barricade Angie would stop at the Laurent Clerc School and gather as much information about the hostages as she could. If Potter knew her at all he guessed she was already on the horn to the school, writing up profiles of the girls.

LeBow taped a large sheet of blank paper on the wall above the desk and hung a black marker by a string from it. The sheet was divided in half. The left was headed "Promises," the right, "Deceptions." On it LeBow would record everything Potter offered to Handy and every lie he told the man. This was standard procedure in hostage negotiations. The use of the crib sheet could be explained best by Mark Twain, who'd said that a man needs a good memory to be an effective liar. Surprised, Budd asked, "You really going to lie to him?" LeBow smiled.

"But what exactly is a lie, Charlie?" Potter asked. "The truth's a pretty slippery thing. Are any words ever one hundred percent honest?" He tore pages from his notebook and handed them to LeBow, who took the small sheets, along with the faxes that were spewing from the printer, and began typing on the keyboard of the computer that was labeled "Profiles," the word written long ago on a piece of now dirty masking tape. The label on the second computer read "Chronology." The latter screen contained only two entries: