A Maiden's Grave Page 7

  "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 Oates. 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 Oates. "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. Oates 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.

  Oates 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!

  Oates 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 & Stoltz plant.

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

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

  Oates 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 phum
p 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 Stillwell, 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.

  Arthur Potter looked out over this cool and windy afternoon, an afternoon with the taste of Halloween in the air despite the midsummer month.

  It was about to begin.

  He turned away from the window, pushed a rapid-dial button on the phone. Tobe flipped a switch and began the recording. He hit another button and the sound of the ringing crackled through a speaker above their heads.

  The phone rang five times, ten, twenty.

  Potter felt LeBow's head turn toward him.

  Tobe crossed his fingers.

  Then: Click.

  "We've got an uplink," Tobe whispered.

  "Yeah?" The voice rang through the speaker.

  Potter took a deep breath.

  "Lou Handy?"

  "Yeah."

  "This is Arthur Potter. I'm with the FBI. I'd like to talk to you."

  "Lou, that shot, it was a mistake."

  "Was it now?"

  Potter listened carefully to the voice, laced with a slight accent, mountain, West Virginian. He heard self-confidence, derision, weariness. All three combined to scare him considerably.

  "We had a man in a tree. He slipped. His weapon discharged accidentally. He'll be disciplined."

  "You gonna shoot him?"

  "It was purely an accident."

  "Accidents're funny things." Handy chuckled. "I was in Leavenworth a few years back and this asshole worked in the laundry room choked to death on a half-dozen socks. Had to've been a accident. He wouldn't go chewing on socks on purpose. Who'd do that?"

  Cool as ice, Potter thought.

  "Maybe this was that kinda accident."

  "This was a run-of-the-mill, U.S.-certified accident, Lou."

  "Don't much care what it was. I'm shooting one of 'em. Eenie meenie miney . . ."

  "Listen to me, Lou . . . ."

  No answer.

  "Can I call you Lou?"

  "You got us surrounded, don'tcha? You got assholes in the trees with guns even if they can't sit on branches without falling. Guess you can call me what you fucking well like."

  "Listen to me, Lou. This's a real tense situation here."

  "Not for me it ain't. I ain't tense at all. Here's a pretty little blond one. No tits to speak of. Think I'll pick her."

  He's playing with us. Eighty percent he's bluffing.

  "Lou, Wilcox was in clear view. Our man was only eighty yards away, M-16 with a scope. Those troopers can drop a man at a thousand yards if they have to."

  "But it's awful windy out there. Maybe your boy didn't compensate."

  "If we'd've wanted your man dead he'd be dead."

  "That don't matter. I keep telling you. Accident or not," he snarled, "gotta teach you people some manners."

  The bluff factor dropped to sixty percent.

  Stay calm, Potter warned himself. Out of the corner of his eye he watched young Derek Elb wipe his palms on his pants and stuff a piece of gum into his mouth. Budd paced irritatingly, looking out the window.

  "Let's just put it down to a mishap, Lou, and get on with what we have to talk about."

  "Talk about?" He sounded surprised. "Whatta we gotta talk about?"

  "Oh, lots," Potter said cheerfully. "First of all, is everybody doing okay in there? You have any injuries? Anybody hurt?"

  His instinct was to ask specifically about the girls but negotiators try never to talk about the hostages if possible. You have to make the HT think that the captives have no
bargaining value.

  "Shep's a little bent outta shape, as you'd imagine, but otherwise everybody's right as rain. Course, ask again in five minutes. One of 'em ain't gonna be feeling so good."

  Potter wondered: What did she say to me? He pictured Melanie's face again. Lips, teeth, lips . . .

  "You need any first-aid supplies?"

  "Yeah."

  "What?"

  "A medevac chopper."

  "That's kind of a tall order, Lou. I was thinking more bandages or morphine, something like that. Antiseptic."

  "Morphine? That wouldn't be to make us all dopey, would it? You'd like that, bet."

  "Oh, we wouldn't give you enough to dope you up, Lou. You need anything at all?"

  "Yeah, I need to shoot somebody's what I need. Little blondie here. Put a bullet 'tween the tits she don't have."

  "That wouldn't do anybody any good now, would it?"

  Potter was thinking: He likes to talk. He's unstable but he likes to talk. That's always the first hurdle, sometimes insurmountable. The quiet ones are the most dangerous. The agent cocked his head and prepared to listen carefully. He had to get into Handy's mind. Fall into his speech patterns, guess what the man is going to say, how he's going to say it. Potter would play this game all night until, by the time things were resolved one way or another, part of him would be Louis Jeremiah Handy.

  "What's your name again?" Handy asked.

  "Arthur Potter."

  "You go by Art?"

  "Arthur, actually."

  "Ain't you got the info on me?"

  "Some. Not much."

  Potter thought spontaneously: I killed a guard escaping.

  "I killed me a guard when we were escaping. Didn't you know that?"

  "Yes, I did."

  Potter thought: So the girl without any tits don't mean shit to me.

  "So killing this girl, little blondie here, it don't mean nothing to me."

  Potter pushed a mute button--a special device on the phone, which cut off his voice without a click on the other end. "Who's he talking about?" he asked LeBow. "Which hostage? Blond, twelve or under?"

  "I don't know yet," the intelligence officer responded. "We can't get a clear look inside and don't have enough information."

  Into the phone he said, "Why d'you want to hurt anybody, Lou?"

  He'll change the subject, Potter guessed.

  But Handy said, "Why not?"

  Theoretically Potter knew he should be talking about frivolous things, stretching out the conversation, winning the man over, making him laugh. Food, sports, the weather, conditions inside the slaughterhouse, soft drinks. You never talked to the HTs about the incident itself at first. But he was assessing the risk that Handy was about to kill the girl and the bluff ratio was down to thirty percent; he couldn't afford to chat about hamburgers and the White Sox.