A Maiden's Grave Page 9

  "Susan. Please, will you--"

  "And what's hers?" Pointing at the blond, the younger teacher.

  "Melanie."

  Mel-a-nee. She was the one that really pissed him off. When he'd found her looking out the window just after the shooting he'd grabbed her arm and she'd gone apeshit, totally freaked. He'd let her wander around 'cause he knew she wouldn't cause any trouble. At first he'd thought it was funny, her being such a little mouse. Then it made him mad--that skittish light in her eyes that made him want to stamp his foot just to see her jump. It always pissed him off, seeing no spirit in a woman.

  This little bitch was the opposite of Pris. Oh, he'd like to see the two of them tangle. Pris'd pull out that Buck knife she kept down her bra sometimes, hot against her left tit, open it up, and come after her. Little blondie here'd take a dump in her pants. She seemed a hell of a lot younger than that Susan.

  Now, she interested him, Suze did. Good old Donna had her muddy eyes that told him nothing, and the younger teacher had her scared eyes that hid everything. But Miss Teenager here . . . well, her eyes said a lot and she didn't care if he read it. He figured that she was smarter than the other two put together.

  And ballsier.

  Like Pris, he thought, with approval. "Susan," Handy said slowly. "I like you. You've got spunk. You don't know what the fuck I'm saying. But I like you." To the older teacher he said, "Tell her that."

  After a pause Donna gestured with her hands.

  Susan gave him a drop-dead look and responded.

  "What'd she say?" Handy barked.

  "She said to please let the little girls go."

  Handy grabbed the woman's hair and pulled hard. More little bird screeches. Melanie shook her head, tears streaming. "What the fuck did she say?"

  "She said, 'Go to hell.' "

  He pulled her hair harder; tufts of the dyed strands popped from her skull. She whined in pain. "She said," Donna gasped, "she said, 'You're an asshole.' "

  Handy laughed hard and shoved the teacher to the ground.

  "Please," she called. "Let them go, the girls. Keep me. What does it matter if you have one hostage or six?"

  "Because, you stupid cunt, I can shoot a couple of 'em and still have some left over."

  She gasped and turned away quickly, as if she'd just walked into a room and found a naked man leering at her.

  Handy walked to Melanie. "You think I'm an asshole too?"

  The other teacher started to move her hands but Melanie responded before she'd gotten the question out.

  "What'd she say?"

  "She said, 'Why do you want to hurt us, Brutus? We didn't hurt you.' "

  "Brutus?"

  "That's what she calls you."

  Brutus. Sounded familiar but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. He frowned slightly. "Tell her she knows the fucking answer to that question." As he walked out the doorway Handy called, "Hey, Sonny, I'm learning sign language. Lemme show you."

  Bonner looked up.

  Handy extended his middle finger. The three men laughed and Handy and Wilcox started down the corridor into the back of the slaughterhouse. When they were exploring the maze of hallways and butcher and processing rooms Handy asked Wilcox, "Think he'll behave?"

  "Sonny? Fuck, I guess. Any other time he'd be on 'em like a rooster. But there ain't nothing like having a hundred armed cops outside your door to keep a pecker limp. What the fuck d'they do here?" Wilcox was gazing at the machinery, the long tables, gears and governors and belts.

  "Whatta you think?"

  "I don't know."

  "It's a fucking slaughterhouse."

  " 'Processing,' that's what it means?"

  "Shoot 'em and gut 'em. Yeah. Processing."

  Wilcox pointed to an old machine. "What's that?"

  Handy walked over and looked at it. He grinned. "Shit. It's a old steam engine. Hell, lookit."

  "What'd they use that for here?"

  "See," Handy explained, "this is why the world's got itself into deep shit. Back then, see, that was a turbine." He pointed to an old rusted spine covered with rotting fan blades. "That was how things worked. It went around and did things. That was the steam age and it was like the gas age too. Then we got into the electric age and you couldn't see what things did too well. Like you can see steam and fire but you can't see electricity doing anything. That's what got us into World War Two. Now we're in the electronic age. It's computers and everything and it's fucking impossible to see how things work. You can look at a computer chip and not see a thing even though it's totally doing what it oughta do. We've lost control."

  "It's all pretty fucked up."

  "What? Life or what I'm saying?"

  "I don't know. It just sounds all fucked up. Life, I guess."

  They'd emerged into a large dim cavern. Must have been the warehouse. They tied or chocked shut the back doors.

  "They can blow 'em open," Wilcox said. "A couple cutting charges'd do it."

  "They could drop an A-bomb on us too. Either way them girls die. If that's what they want that's what they'll get."

  "Elevator?"

  "Nothing much we can do 'bout that," Handy said, looking at the big service elevator. "They wanta come rappelling in, we can get the first half-dozen of 'em. You know, their necks. Always aim for their necks."

  Wilcox glanced at him then drawled, "So, whatcha thinking?"

  I do get that look in my eyes, Handy thought. Pris says so all the time. Damn, he missed her. He wanted to smell her hair, listen to the sound of her bracelet as she shifted gears in her car, wanted to feel her underneath him as they fucked on the shag carpet of her apartment.

  "Let's send one back to 'em," Handy said.

  "One of the girls?"

  "Yeah."

  "Which one?"

  "I don't know. That Susan maybe. She's all right. I like her."

  Wilcox said, "I'd vote her most likely to hump. Not a bad idea to get her out of Bonner's sight. He'd be sniffing her lickety-split 'fore sunset. Or that other one, Melanie."

  Handy said, "Naw, let's keep her. We oughta hang on to the weak ones."

  "Second that."

  "Okay, it'll be Susan." He laughed. "Not many girls around can look me in the eye and tell me I'm an asshole, I'll tell you that."

  Melanie kept her arm tight around Kielle's shoulders, which were oddly muscular for an eight-year-old, and reached out a little further to rub the arm of one of the twins.

  The girls were sandwiched in between her and Susan, and Melanie admitted reluctantly to herself that her gesture was only partially to reassure the younger ones; she also wanted the comfort for herself, the comfort of being close to her favorite student.

  Melanie's hands were still shaking. She'd been unnerved when Brutus had grabbed her earlier as she was looking out the window, sending her message to the policeman in the field. And downright terrified when he'd pointed at her a few minutes ago and demanded to know her name.

  She glanced at Susan and saw her looking angrily at Mrs. Harstrawn.

  "What's the matter?" Melanie signed.

  "My name. Giving it to him. Shouldn't have done that. Don't cooperate."

  "We have to," the older teacher signed.

  Melanie added, "Can't make them mad at us."

  Susan laughed derisively. "What difference does it make if they're mad? Don't give in. They're assholes. They're worst type of Other."

  "We can't--" Melanie began.

  Bear stamped his foot. Melanie felt the vibrations and jumped. His fat lips were working fast and all she could make out was "Shut up." Melanie looked away. She couldn't stand the sight of his face, the way the black hairs at the edge of his beard curled outward, his fat pores.

  His eyes kept returning to Mrs. Harstrawn. And Emily.

  When he looked away Melanie slowly brought her hand up and switched from American Sign Language to Signed Exact English and fingerspelling. This was a clumsy way of communicating--she had to spell out words and put them into En
glish word order. But it allowed the use of small hand motions and avoided the broad gestures necessary to communicate in ASL.

  "Don't make them mad," she told Susan. "Take it easy."

  "They're assholes." Susan refused to switch from ASL.

  "Sure. But don't provoke!"

  "They won't hurt us. We're no good to them dead."

  Exasperated, Melanie said, "They can hurt us without killing us."

  Susan just grimaced and looked away.

  Well, what does she want us to do? Melanie thought angrily. Grab their guns away and shoot them? Yet at the same time she thought: Oh, why can't I be like her? Look at her eyes! How strong she is! She's eight years younger than me but I feel like the child when I'm around her.

  Some of her envy could be attributed to the fact that Susan was the highest in the hierarchy of the world of the Deaf. She was prelingually deaf--born deaf. But more than that, she was Deaf of Deaf: both her parents had been deaf. Politically active in Deaf issues even at seventeen, accepted at Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., on a full scholarship, unyielding about the use of ASL versus SEE, militantly rejecting oralism--the practice of forcing the deaf to try to speak. Susan Phillips was the chic, up-to-the-minute Deaf young woman, beautiful and strong, and Melanie would rather have one Susan by her side at a time like this than a roomful of men.

  She felt a small hand tug at her blouse.

  "Don't worry," she signed to Anna. The twins hugged each other, their cheeks together, their remarkable eyes wide and tearful. Beverly sat by herself, her hands in her lap, and stared mournfully at the floor, struggling to breathe.

  Kielle signed, "We need Jean Grey and Cyclops," referring to two of her favorite X-Men. "They'd tear them apart."

  Shannon responded, "No, we need Beast. Remember? He had the blind girlfriend?" Shannon studied Jack Kirby's art religiously and intended to be a superhero-comic artist.

  "Gambit too," Kielle signed. Pointing to Shannon's tattoo.

  Shannon's own comics--surprisingly good, Melanie thought, for an eight-year-old--featured characters with disabilities, like blindness and deafness, that they could mutate to their advantage as they solved crimes and saved people. The two girls--Shannon, gangly and dark; Kielle, compact and fair--fell into a discussion of whether optic blasts, plasmoids, or psychic blades would be the weapons of choice to save them now.

  Emily cried for a moment into the sleeve of her dress, printed with black and purple flowers. Then she bowed her head, praying. Melanie saw her two fists lift and open outward. It was the ASL word for "sacrifice."

  "Don't worry," Melanie repeated to those girls who were looking at her. But no one paid attention. If they focused on anyone it was on Susan though the girl was signing nothing, merely gazing steadily at Bear, who stood near the entrance to the killing room. Susan was their rallying point. Her presence alone gave them confidence. Melanie found herself struggling to keep from crying.

  And it'll be so dark in here tonight!

  Melanie leaned forward and looked out the window. She saw the grass bending in the wind. The Kansas wind, relentless. Melanie remembered her father telling her about the sea captain Edward Smith, who came to Wichita in the 1800s and got the idea of mounting sails on Conestoga wagons--literally prairie schooners. She'd laughed at the idea and at her father's humorous telling of the tale, never knowing whether to believe it or not. Now, she was stung at the memory of the storytelling and wished desperately for anything, mythical or real, to sweep her away from the killing room.

  She thought suddenly: And what about that man outside? The policeman?

  There had been something so reassuring in the way he'd stood up there on the hill after Brutus had fired his gun out the window and Bear was running around, his fat belly jiggling, ripping open boxes of bullets in a panic. The man stood on the hilltop waving his arms, trying to calm things down, stop the shooting. He was looking directly at her.

  What would she call him? No animals came to mind. Nothing sleek and heroic anyway. He was old--twice her age probably. And he dressed frumpy. His glasses seemed thick and he was a few pounds heavy.

  Then it occurred to her. De l'Epee.

  That's what she'd call him. After Charles Michel de l'Epee, the eighteenth-century abbe who was one of the first people in the world to really care about the Deaf, to treat them as intelligent human beings. The man who created French Sign Language, the predecessor of ASL.

  It was a perfect name for the man in the field, thought Melanie, who could read French and knew that the name itself meant a kind of sword. Her de l'Epee was brave. Just the way his namesake had stood up to the Church and the popular sentiment that the Deaf were retarded and freaks, he was standing up to Stoat and Brutus, up there on the hill, bullets flying around him.

  Well, she had sent him a message--a prayer, in a way. A prayer and a warning. Had he seen her? Could he understand what she'd said even if he had? She closed her eyes for a brief moment, concentrating all her thoughts on de l'Epee. But all she sensed was the temperature, which had grown cooler, her fear, and--to her dismay--the vibration of footsteps as a man, no, two men, approached slowly over the resonant oak floor.

  As Brutus and Stoat appeared in the doorway Melanie glanced at Susan, whose face hardened once again, looking up at their captors.

  I'll make my face hard too.

  She tried but it trembled and soon she was crying again.

  Susan! Why can't I be like you?

  Bear walked up to the other men. He was gesturing to the main room. The light was dim and the phony science of lipreading gave her a distorted message. She believed he said something about the phone.

  Brutus responded, "So let the fucker ring."

  This was very strange, Melanie reflected, as the urge to cry diminished. Why, she thought again, can I understand him so well? Why him and not the others?

  "We're going to send one back."

  Bear asked a question.

  Brutus answered, "Miss Deaf Teen." He nodded at Susan. Mrs. Harstrawn's face blossomed with relief.

  My God, thought Melanie in despair, they're going to let her go! We'll be here all alone without her. Without Susan. No! She choked a sob.

  "Stand up, honey," Brutus said. "Your . . . day. You're going home."

  Susan was shaking her head. She turned to Mrs. Harstrawn and signed a defiant message, with her fast, crisp signing. "She says she isn't going. She wants you to release the twins."

  Brutus laughed. "She wants me . . . ."

  Stoat said, "Get . . . up." He pulled Susan to her feet.

  And then Melanie's heart was pounding, her face burned red, for, to her horror, she realized that the first thought in her mind was: Why couldn't it have been me?

  Forgive me, God. De l'Epee, please forgive me! But then she made her shameful wish once again. And again still. It looped through her mind endlessly. I want to go home. I want to sit down by myself with a big bowl of popcorn, I want to watch closed-captioned TV, I want to clap the Koss headsets around my ears and feel the vibrations of Beethoven and Smetana and Gordon Bok . . . .

  Susan struggled away from Stoat's grip. She thrust the twins toward him. But he pushed the little girls aside and brutally tied Susan's hands behind her. Brutus stared out through the half-open window. "Hold up here," Brutus said, pushing Susan to the floor beside the door. He glanced back. "Sonny, go keep our lady friends company . . . that scattergun with you."

  Susan looked back into the killing room.

  In the girl's face Melanie saw the message: Don't worry. You'll be all right. I'll see to it.

  Melanie held her gaze for only a moment then looked away, afraid that Susan would read her own thoughts and would see in them the shameful question: Why can't it be me, why can't it be me, why can't it be me?

  1:01 P.M.

  Arthur Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse and the fields surrounding it through the jaundice glass of the van's window. He was watching a trooper run the electrical line up to the front door. Five caged li
ghts hung from the end of the cable. The officer backed away and Wilcox came out once more, pistol in hand, to retrieve the wire. He didn't, as Potter had hoped, run the line through the door, which would then have to remain open, but fed it through a window. He returned inside and the thick metal door swung tightly shut.

  "Door is still secure," the negotiator said absently, and LeBow typed.

  More faxes arrived. More background on Handy and on the hostages from the school the girls attended. LeBow greedily looked over the sheets and entered relevant data in the "Profiles" computer. The engineering and architect's diagrams had been transmitted. They were helpful only for the negatives they presented--how hard an assault would be. There were no tunnels leading into the slaughterhouse and if the P&Z variance documents from 1938 were accurate there had been significant construction on the roof of the building--with plans to create a fourth story--which would make a helicopter assault very difficult.

  Tobe stiffened suddenly. "They've popped the cover on the phone." His eyes stared intently at a row of dials.

  "Is it still working?"

  "So far."

  Looking for bugs.

  The young agent relaxed. "It's back together again. Whoever did it knows his equipment."

  "Henry, who?"

  "No way of knowing yet. I'd have to guess Handy. The military training, you know."

  "Downlink," Tobe called.

  Potter lifted a curious eyebrow at LeBow and picked up the phone as it rang.

  "Hello. That you, Lou?"

  "Thanks for the lights. We checked 'em for microphones . . . the phone too. Didn't find a fucking thing. A man of your word."

  Honor. It means something to him, Potter noted, trying once again to comprehend the unfathomable.

  "Say, what are you, Art, a senior agent? Agent in Charge? That's what they call 'em, right?"

  Never let the HT think you're in a position to make important decisions by yourself. You want the option to stall while you pretend to talk to your superiors.

  "Nope. Just a run-of-the-mill special agent who happens to like talking."

  "So you say."

  "I'm a man of my word, remember?" Potter said, glancing at the "Deceptions" board.

  Time to defuse things, build up some rapport. "So what about some food, Lou? We could start grilling up some burgers. How do you like 'em?"

  Blood red, Potter speculated.

  But he was wrong.

  "Listen up, Art. I just want you to know what kind of nice fellow I am. I'm letting one of 'em go."