A Maiden's Grave Page 12

  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."

  Click.

  2:00 P.M.

  Hell, Potter thought, slamming his fist on the table.

  "Oh, brother," muttered Budd. Then: "Oh, Jesus."

  Potter picked up the binoculars and saw a young girl appear in the window of the slaughterhouse. She was chubby and her round cheeks glistened with tears. When the muzzle of the gun touched her short-cut hair, she closed her eyes.

  "Call it out, Tobe."

  "Four minutes thirty."

  "That's her?" Potter whispered to LeBow. "Jocylyn?"

  "I'm sure."

  "You've noted that the scatter guns are twelve-gauge?" Potter asked evenly.

  LeBow said he had. "And that they're possibly low on ammo."

  Derek glanced at them, shocked at this cold-blooded conversation.

  "Jesus God," Budd rasped. "Do something."

  "What?" Potter asked.

  "Well, call him back and tell him you'll give him the ammo."

  "No."

  "Four minutes."

  "But he's going to shoot her."

  "I don't think he will." Will he, won't he? Potter debated. He honestly couldn't tell.

  "Look at him," Budd said. "Look out there! That girl's got a gun to her head. I can see her crying from here."

  "Which is just what he wants us to see. Calm down, Charlie. You never negotiate weapons or armor."

  "But he's going to kill her!"

  "Three minutes thirty."

  "What if," Potter said, struggling to control his impatience, "he's completely out of ammo? He's sitting in there with two empty pistols and an empty scatter gun?"

  "Well, maybe he's got one shell left and he's just about to use it on that girl."

  A hostage situation is a homicide in progress.

  Potter continued to gaze at the unhappy face of the child. "We have to assume there are nine fatalities right now--the girls inside. A hundred rounds of twelve-gauge shells? That could double the number of casualties."

  "Three minutes," Tobe sang out.

  Outside Stillwell shifted uncomfortably and ruffled his mop of hair. He looked at the van then back at the slaughterhouse. He hadn't heard the exchange but he, like all the other troopers, could see the poor girl's head in the window.

  "Two minutes thirty."

  "Send him some blanks. Or some shells that'll jam the guns."

  "That's a good idea, Charlie. But we don't have any such thing. He won't waste another hostage this early." Is this true? Potter wondered.

  "Waste a hostage?" The voice of another trooper--Derek the technician--cut through the van. Potter believed the man appended in a whisper, "Son of a bitch."

  "Two minutes," Tobe said in his unflappable voice.

  Potter hunched forward, gazing out the window. He saw the officers behind their Maginot line of cars, some looking back at the van uneasily.

  "One minute thirty."

  What's Handy doing? What's he thinking? I can't see into him. I need more time. I need to talk to him more. An hour from now I'd know whether he'd kill her or not. Right now, all I see is smoke and danger.

  "One minute," Tobe called out.

  Potter picked up the phone. Pressed the rapid-dial button.

  Click.

  "Uplink."

  "Lou."

  "Art, I've decided I want a hundred rounds of Glock ammo too."

  "No."

  "Make that a hundred and one rounds of Glock. I'm about to lose one in thirty seconds. I'll need something to replace it."

  "No ammo, Lou."

  Derek leapt forward and grabbed Potter's arm. "Do it. For God's sake!"

  "Sergeant!" Budd cried, and pulled the man away, shoved him into the corner.

  Handy continued, "Remember that Viet Cong dude got shot? It was on film? In the head? The blood squirting up into the air like a fucking fountain."

  "I can't do it, Lou. Don't you follow? We have a bad connection, or something?"

  "You're supposed to be negotiating!" Budd whispered. "Talk to him." Now he seemed to regret pulling Derek Elb off.

  Potter ignored him.

  "Ten seconds, Arthur," Tobe said, fingering his earring hole nervously. He'd turned away from his precious dials and was looking out the window.

  The seconds passed, ten minutes or an hour. Absolute silence in the control van, except for the static on the open line, the sound bleeding through the van's speakers. Potter realized he was holding his breath. He resumed breathing.

  "Lou, are you there?"

  No answer.

  "Lou?"

  Suddenly the gun lowered and a hand grabbed the girl by the collar. She opened her mouth as she was dragged back into the slaughterhouse.

  Potter speculated: Yo, Art, what's happening, homes?

  "Hey, Art, how's it hanging?" Handy's cheerful voice crackled over the speakers.

  "Fair to middlin'. How about you?"

  "Doing peachy. Here's the deal. I shoot one an hour till that chopper's here. On the hour, ev
ery hour, starting at four."

  "Well, Lou, I'll tell you right now we're going to need more time than that to get a big chopper."

  Potter guessed: Fuck that. You'll do what I tell you.

  But with playful menace in his voice Handy said, "How much more time?"

  "A couple of hours. Maybe--"

  "Fuck no. I'll give you till five."

  Potter paused for a judicious moment. "I think we can work with that."

  A harsh laugh. Then: "And a whole 'nother thing, Art."

  "What's that?"

  A pause, tension building. At last, Handy growled, "With those burgers I want some Fritos. Lots of Fritos."

  "You got it. But I want that girl."

  "Oh, hey," Budd whispered, "maybe you shouldn't push him."

  "Which girl?"

  "Jocylyn. The one you just had in the window."

  "Jocylyn," Handy said with sudden animation, again startling Potter. "Funny 'bout that name."

  Potter snapped his fingers, pointed at LeBow's computer. The intelligence officer scrolled through the profile of Handy, and both men tried to find some reference to Jocylyn: mother, sister, probation officer. But there was nothing.

  "Why's that funny, Lou?"

  " 'Bout ten years ago I fucked a waitress named Jocylyn and enjoyed it very much."

  Potter felt the chill run from his legs to his shoulders.

  "She was tasty. Before I met Pris of course."

  Potter listened to Handy's tone. He closed his eyes. He speculated: She was a hostage too, that Jocylyn, and I killed her 'cause . . . He couldn't guess the rest of what Handy might say.

  "Haven't thought about her for years. My Jocylyn was a hostage too, just like this one. She didn't do what I told her. I mean, she just didn't. So I had to use my knife."

  Some of this is part of his act, Potter thought. The cheerful reference to the knife. But there was something revealing in the words too. Didn't do what I told her. Potter wrote down the sentence and pushed it to LeBow to type in.

  "I want her, Lou," Potter said.

  "Oh, don't you worry. I'm faithful to my Pris now."

  "When we get the food, let's exchange. How 'bout it, Lou?"

  "She's not much good for anything, Art. I think she peed her pants. Or maybe she just don't shower much. Even Bonner wouldn't come close to her. And he's a horny son of a bitch as you probably know."

  "We're working on your chopper and you'll have the food there soon. You owe me a girl, Lou. You killed one. You owe me."

  Budd and Derek gazed at Potter in disbelief.

  "Naw," Handy said. "Don't think so."

  "You're only going to have room in the chopper for four or five hostages. Give me that one." Sometimes you have to lie down; sometimes you have to hit. Potter snapped, "Jesus Christ, Lou, I know you're willing to kill them. You made your damn point. So just let her go, all right? I'll send a trooper up with the food; let him come back with the girl."

  A pause.

  "You really want that one?"

  Potter thought: Actually, I'd like 'em all, Lou.

  Time for a joke? Or too early?

  He gambled. "I'd really like them all, Lou."

  A harrowing pause.

  Then a raucous laugh from the speaker. "You're a pistol, Art. Okay, I'll send her out. Let's synchronize our Timexes, boys. The clock's running. You get the fat one for the food. Fifteen minutes. Or I might change my mind. And a big beautiful chopper at five in the p.m."

  Click.

  "All right!" Tobe shouted.

  Budd was nodding. "Good, Arthur. That was good."

  Derek sat sullenly at his control panel for a moment but finally cracked a smile and apologized. Potter, ever willing to forgive youthful enthusiasm, shook the trooper's hand.

  Budd was smiling in relief. He said, "Wichita's the aviation capital of the Midwest. Hell, we can get a chopper here in a half-hour."

  "We aren't getting him one," Potter said. He gestured to the "Promises/Deceptions" chart. LeBow wrote, Helicopter seating eight, due on hourly deadlines. Commencing at 5 p.m.

  "You're not going to give it to him?" Budd whispered.

  "Of course not."

  "But you lied."

  "That's why it's on the 'Deceptions' side of the board."

  Typing again, LeBow said, "We can't let him go mobile. Especially in a chopper."

  "But he's going to kill another one at five."

  "So he says."

  "But--"

  "That's my job, Charlie," Potter said, finding patience somewhere. "It's what I'm doing here, to talk him out of it."

  And poured himself a cup of extremely bad coffee from a stainless steel pot.

  Potter slipped a cellular phone into his pocket and stepped outside, crouching until he was in the gully, which protected him from the slaughterhouse.

  Budd accompanied him part of the way. The young captain had found out that the Hutchinson police were in charge of stopping the river traffic and had ordered them to do so, incurring the wrath of several charterers of container barges bound for Wichita, whose meters were running to the tune of two thousand dollars an hour.

  "Can't please everybody," the negotiator observed, distracted.

  It was growing even colder--an odd July indeed with temperatures in the mid-fifties--and there was a rich metallic taste to the air, perhaps from the diesel exhaust of the nearby threshers or harvesters or combines, whatever they were. Potter waved at Stillwell, who was walking back and forth among the troopers, grinning laconically, and ordering troops into position.

  Leaving Budd, Potter climbed into a bureau car and drove to the rear staging area. Already, all the networks and local stations from a three-state area were here, as were reporters or stringers from the big-city papers and the wire services.

  He had a brief word with Peter Henderson, who--whatever his other failings and motives--had quickly put together an efficient transport pool, supply staging area, and press tent.

  Potter was known to the press and they descended on him frantically as he walked from the car. They were as he expected them to be: aggressive, humorless, smart, blindered. They'd never changed in all the years Potter had been doing this. His first reaction, as always, was how he would hate to be married to one of them.

  He climbed to the podium that Henderson had installed, and looked into the mass of white video lights. "At about eight-thirty this morning three escaped felons kidnaped and took hostage two teachers and eight students from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas. The felons had earlier in the day escaped from the Callana Federal Penitentiary.

  "They're presently holed up in an abandoned factory along the Arkansas River about a mile and a half from here, on the border of the town of Crow Ridge. They are being contained by several hundred state, local, and federal law enforcers."

  More like a hundred, but Potter would rather bend the truth to the fourth estate than risk nurturing overconfidence on the part of the takers--just in case they happened to catch a news report.

  "There has been one fatality among the hostages . . . ."

  The reporters gasped and bristled at this and their hands shot up. They barked questions but Potter said only, "The identity of the victim and those of the rest of the hostages will not be disclosed until all family members have been notified of the incident. We are in the midst of negotiations with the felons, who've been identified as Louis Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray 'Sonny' Bonner. During the course of the negotiations there will be no press access to the barricade site. You'll be receiving updates as we get new information. That's all I have to say at this time."

  "Agent Potter--"

  "I'm not answering any questions now."

  "Agent Potter--"

  "Agent Potter, please--"

  "Could you compare this situation to the Koresh situation in Waco?"

  "We need the press copters released. Our lawyers have already contacted the director--"

  "Is this like the Weaver situation a
few years--"

  Potter walked out of the press tent amid the silent flashes of still cameras and the blaring of videocam lights. He was almost to the car when he heard a voice. "Agent Potter, can I have a minute?"

  Potter turned to see a man approaching. He had a limp. He didn't look like a typical newsman. He wasn't a pretty boy and while he seemed aggressive and sullen he was not indignant, which raised him--slightly--in Potter's estimation. Older than his colleagues, he was dark-complected, had a deeply lined face. At least he looked like a real journalist. Edward R. Murrow.

  The negotiator said, "No individual statements."

  "I'm not asking for one. I'm Joe Silbert with KFAL in Kansas City."

  "Yessir, if you'll excuse me--"

  "You're a prick, Potter," Silbert said with more exhaustion than anger. "Nobody's ever grounded press choppers before."

  Extreme stakes, the agent thought. "You'll get the news as soon as anybody."

  "Hold up. I know you guys could care less about us. We're a pain in the ass. But we've got our job to do too. This is big news. And you know it. We're going to need fucking more than just press releases and nonbriefings like the one we just had. The Admiral's going to be on your ass so fast you'll wish you were back in Waco."

  Something about the way he uttered the rank suggested that Silbert knew the FBI director personally.

  "There's nothing I can do. Security at the barricade site has to be perfect."

  "I have to tell you that if you suppress too much, those youngsters're going to try some pretty desperate things to get inside your perimeter. They're going to be using de-scrambling scanners to intercept transmissions, they're going to be impersonating officers--"

  "All of which is illegal."

  "I'm just telling you what some of them have been talking about. There are rumblings out there. And I sure as hell don't want to lose an exclusive to some little asshole law-breaking journalism school graduate."

  "I've given orders to arrest any non-law-enforcement personnel within sight of the plant. Reporters included."

  Silbert rolled his eyes. "Arnett had it easier in Baghdad. Jesus Christ. You're a negotiator, I thought. Why won't you negotiate?"

  "I should be getting back."

  "Please! Just listen to my proposal. I want to start a press pool. You allow one or two journalists at a time up near the front. No cameras, radios, recorders. Just typewriters or laptops. Or pen and pencil."

  "Joe, we can't risk the takers' getting any information about what we're doing. You know that. They might have a radio inside."

  An ominous tone slipped into his voice. "Look, you start suppressing, we'll start speculating."

  A barricade in Miami several years ago went hot when the takers heard on their portable radio a newscaster describing an HRT assault on the barricade site. It turned out the reporter was merely speculating as to what might happen but the takers thought it was real and began firing at the hostages.