A Maiden's Grave

by Jeffery Deaver

  "If somebody did jump in--"

  "We woulda seen him," Shaw muttered through the wind.

  "--he'd be right about there by now. Just where that thing is. Whatever it is."

  Shaw struggled to rid himself of memories of last night's dinner--his wife's tuna casserole. "I'm not feeling too well here, Buzz. What's your point, exactly?"

  "I see a hand!" Marboro was standing up.

  "Oh, no, don't do that. We're moving round enough as it is. Sit your heinie down."

  Tuna and cream of mushroom soup and peas and those canned fried onions on top.

  Oh, man, can't keep it down much longer.

  "Looks like a hand and look at that thing--it's red and white--hell, I think it's one of the hostages got away!"

  Shaw turned and looked at the debris, just above the surface of the choppy water, rising and falling. Each glimpse lasted no more than a few seconds. He couldn't tell what it was exactly. It looked sort of like a net float, except, as Buzz Marboro had pointed out, it was red and white. Blue too, he now saw.

  And moving away from them, straight into midstream, pretty damn fast.

  "Don't you see a hand?" Marboro said.

  "No . . . . Wait. You know, it does look like a hand. Sorta." Reluctantly, and to the great distress of his churning gut, Arnie Shaw rose to his feet. That made him feel, he estimated, about a thousand times worse.

  "I can't tell. A branch maybe."

  "I don't know. Look how fast it's moving. It'll be in Wichita 'fore too long." Shaw decided he'd rather have a tooth pulled than be seasick. No--two teeth.

  "Maybe it's just something the takers threw out to, you know, distract us. We go after it and they get away out the back door."

  "Or maybe it's just trash," Shaw said, sitting down. "Hey, what're we thinking of? If they were friendlies they wouldn't've just floated past without calling for help. Hell, we've got our uniforms on. They'd know we're deputies."

  "Sure. What'm I thinking of?" Marboro said, sitting down too.

  One pair of vigilant eyes returned to the ass end of the slaughterhouse. The other pair closed slowly, as their owner swallowed in a desperate effort to calm his stomach. "I'm dying," Shaw whispered.

  Exactly ten seconds later the eyes opened. "Oh, son of a bitch," Shaw spat out slowly. He sat up straight.

  "You just remembered too?" Marboro was nodding.

  Shaw had in fact just remembered--that the hostages were deaf and mute and wouldn't be able to call out for help to save their souls, no matter how close they'd passed by the skiff.

  That was one of the reasons for his dismay. The other was that Shaw knew that while he himself had been an intercollegiate state finals swim champion three years running, Buzz Marboro couldn't dog-paddle more than ten yards.

  Breathing deeply--not for the impending swim but merely to keep his turbulent stomach at bay--Shaw shed his weapons, body armor, helmet, boots. A final breath. He dove headfirst into the raging, murky water and streaked toward the disappearing flotsam as it headed rapidly southeast in the ornery current.

  Arthur Potter gazed at the window where he'd first seen Melanie.

  Then at the window where he'd almost seen her shot.

  "I think we're moving up against the wall here," he said slowly. "If we're lucky we're going to get maybe one or two more out but that's it. Then we'll either have to get him to surrender or have HRT go in. Somebody tell me the weather." Potter was hoping fora hellsapoppin' storm to justify a longer delay in finding a helicopter.

  Derek Elb turned a switch and the Weather Channel snapped on. Potter learned that the rest of the night would be much the same--windy, with clearing skies. No rain. Winds would be out of the northwest at fifteen to twenty miles an hour.

  "We'll have to rely on the wind for an excuse," LeBow said. "And even that's going to be dicey. Fifteen miles an hour? In the service Handy's probably flown in Hueys that've landed in gusts twice that."

  Dean Stillwell called in for Henry LeBow, his laconic voice tripping out of the speaker above their heads.

  "Yes?" the intelligence officer answered, leaning into his microphone.

  "Agent Potter said to relay any information about the takers to you?"

  "That's right," LeBow said.

  Potter picked up the mike and asked what Stillwell had learned.

  "Well, one of the troopers here has a good view inside, sort of an angle. And he said that Handy and Wilcox are walking around inside, looking the place over real carefully."

  "Looking it over?"

  "Pushing on pipes and machinery. It's like they're looking for something."

  "Any idea what?" LeBow asked.

  "Nope. I thought maybe they're checking out places to hide."

  Potter nodded at Budd, recalling it had been the captain's idea that the takers might don rescue-worker uniforms during the surrender or HRT assault. It also wasn't unheard of for takers to, say, leave a back window open, then hide inside closets or crawl spaces for a day or two until law enforcers concluded they were long gone.

  LeBow wrote down the information and thanked Stillwell. Potter said, "I want to make sure everybody's got pictures of the takers. And we'll have to tell Frank and the HRT to go through the place with a fine-tooth comb if it looks like an escape."

  He sat in his chair once more, staring out at the factory.

  "By the way," Stillwell returned over the radio. "I'm having chow brought in for the troopers and the Heartland's delivering you all's supper any time now."

  "Thank you, Dean."

  "Heartland? All right," Derek Elb said, looking particularly pleased.

  Potter's mind, though, wasn't on food. He was thinking something far graver--whether or not he should meet with Handy. He felt the deadlines compressing, sensed somehow that Handy was growing testy and would start making nonnegotiable ultimatums. Face to face, Potter might be able to wear the convict down more efficiently than through their phone conversations.

  Thinking too: It might give me a chance to see Melanie.

  It might give me a chance to save her.

  Yet a meeting between the taker and the incident commander was the most dangerous form of negotiating. There was the physical risk, of course; hostage takers' feelings, both positive and negative, are their most extreme about the negotiator. They often believe, sometimes subconsciously, that killing the negotiator will give them power they don't otherwise have, that the troopers will fall into chaos or that someone less daunting will take the negotiator's place. Even without violence, however, there's a danger that the negotiator will, in the taker's eyes, shrink in authority and stature and lose his opponent's respect.

  Potter leaned against the window. What's inside you, Handy? What's making the wheels go round?

  Something's happening in that cold brain of yours.

  When you talk I hear silence.

  When you don't say a word I hear your voice.

  When you smile I see . . . what? What do I see? Ah, that's the problem. I just don't know.

  The door swung open and the smell of food filled the room. A young deputy from the Crow Ridge Sheriff's Department brought in several boxes, filled with plastic containers of food and cartons of coffee.

  Potter's appetite returned suddenly as the trooper set out the containers. He expected tasteless diner fare--hot beef sandwiches and Jell-O. But the trooper pointed to each of the dishes as he laid them out and said, "That's cherry mos, that's zwieback, bratwurst, goat and lamb pie, sauerbraten, dill potatoes."

  Derek Elb explained, "Heartland's a famous Mennonite restaurant. People drive there from all over the state."

  For ten minutes, they ate, largely in silence. Potter tried to remember the names of the dishes to tell Cousin Linden when he returned to the Windy City. She collected exotic recipes. He was just finishing his second cup of coffee when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Tobe stiffen as a radio transmission came in. "What?" the young agent said in shock into his microphone. "Repeat that, Sheriff."


  Potter turned to him.

  "One of Dean's men just fished the twins out of the river!"

  A collective gasp. Then, spontaneous applause erupted in the van. The intelligence officer plucked the two Post-It tabs representing the girls off the chart and moved them to the margin. He took down their pictures, which joined Jocylyn's, Shannon's, and Kielle's in the "Released" folder of hostage bios.

  "They're being checked for hypothermia but they look fine otherwise. Like drowned rats, he said, but we're not supposed to tell the girls that."

  "Call the hotel," Potter instructed. "Tell their parents."

  Tobe, listening into his headset, laughed. He looked up. "They're on their way over, Arthur. They're insisting on seeing you."

  "Me?"

  "If you're an older man with glasses and a dark sports coat. Only they think your name is de l'Epee . . . ."

  Potter shook his head. "Who?"

  Frances laughed briefly. "Abbe de l'Epee. He created the first widely used sign language."

  "Why would they call me that?"

  Frances shrugged. "I have no idea. He's sort of a patron saint for the Deaf."

  The girls arrived five minutes later. Adorable twins, wrapped up in colorful Barney blankets, no less (another of Stillwell's miracles). They no longer resembled wet rodents at all but girls more awestruck than scared as they stared at Potter. In halting sign language they explained through Frances about how Melanie had gotten them out of the slaughterhouse.

  "Melanie?" Angie asked, nodding toward Potter. "I was wrong. Seems you do have an ally inside."

  Did Handy know what she'd done? Potter wondered. How much more resistance would he tolerate before the payback? And how lethal would it be this time?

  His heart froze as he saw Frances Whiting's eyes go wide with horror. She turned to him. "The girls didn't understand exactly what was going on but I think one of them was raping the teacher."

  "Melanie?" Potter asked quickly.

  "No. Donna Harstrawn."

  "Oh, my good Lord, no," Budd muttered. "And they saw it, those girls?"

  "Bonner?" Angie asked.

  Potter's face showed none of the anguish he felt. He nodded. Of course it would be Bonner. His eyes strayed to the pictures of Beverly and Emily. Both young, both feminine.

  And then to the photo of Melanie.

  Angie asked the girls if Handy had, in effect, set Bonner on the woman, or if the big man had been acting by himself.

  Frances watched the signing, then said, "Bear--that's what they're calling Bonner--looked around a lot while he was doing it. Like he didn't want to get caught. They think Brutus--Handy--would have been mad if he'd seen him."

  "Is Brutus friendly with any of you?" Angie asked the twins.

  "No. He's terrible. He just looks at us with cold eyes, like somebody in one of Shannon's cartoons. He beat up Melanie."

  "Is she all right?"

  One girl nodded.

  Angie shook her head. "This isn't good." She looked at the diagram of the factory. "They're not that far apart, the hostages and the takers, but there doesn't seem to be any Stockholming going on with Handy."

  The more I know about them the more I want to kill them.

  Potter asked about guns and the tools and the TV. But the little girls could offer nothing new. Then one of them handed him a slip of paper. It was soggy but the lettering, written in the waterproof markers Derek had provided, was clear enough. "It's from Melanie," he said, then read out loud: "Dear de l'Epee: There is so much to write toyou. But no time. Be very careful of Handy. He's evil--more evil than anything. You should know: Handy and Wilcox are friends. Handy hates Bear (the fat one). Bear is greedy."

  LeBow asked for the paper so he could type it into the computer. "It's disintegrating," Potter told him. He read aloud again as the intelligence officer typed.

  One of the twins stepped forward and signed timidly. Potter smiled and glanced queryingly at Frances.

  "They want your autograph," she said.

  "Mine?"

  In perfect unison they nodded. Potter took a pen from his shirt pocket, the silver fountain pen that he always carried with him.

  "They're expecting," Frances continued, " 'Abbe de l'Epee.' "

  "Ah, yes. Of course. And that's what they'll have. One for each."

  The girls looked at the two slips of paper and carried them reverently when they left. One girl paused and signed to Frances.

  She said, "Melanie said something else. She said to tell you to be careful."

  Be forewarned. . . .

  "Show me how to say 'Thank you. You're very brave.' "

  Frances did, and Potter mimicked the words with halting gestures. The girls broke into identical smiles then took Frances's hands as she escorted them to a trooper outside for the drive to the Days Inn.

  Budd sat down next to Potter. "Why," he asked, "would Melanie tell us that?" He pointed to the note. "About Bonner being greedy, about the other two being friends?"

  "Because she thinks there's something we can do with it," Angie said.

  "What?"

  Potter looked down at the soggy slip of paper. It was signed, "Love, Melanie C."--which was the reason he hadn't shown the note itself to Henry LeBow. He now folded it up, put the damp paper in his pocket.

  "Look up Bonner," Potter instructed.

  He read from the screen. Ray "Sonny" Bonner had led a useless life. He'd done time for sex offenses and minor robberies, domestic violence, public disorderliness. Lust-driven, not bright. He was a snitch too; he'd testified against his partner at a robbery trial ten years ago.

  Potter and Angie looked up at each other. They smiled.

  "Perfect."

  The decision had been made. Potter would not meet with Handy face to face. A new strategy had presented itself. Riskier, yes. But perhaps better.

  Charlie Budd was suddenly aware that both Angie and Potter were looking at him, studying him.

  "What do you think, Henry?" Potter asked.

  "Say--" Budd began uneasily.

  "I think he's perfect," LeBow offered. "Earnest, straightforward. And he's got a great baritone."

  Potter said, "You've got quite a performance ahead of you, Charlie."

  "Me?" The young captain looked stricken. "How d'you mean that, exactly?"

  "You're taking over the negotiation."

  "What?"

  "And I want you to talk to Handy about surrendering."

  "Yessir," Budd answered Potter. Then: "You're kidding."

  "You're perfect, Charlie," Angie said.

  Potter said, "I've brought up the subject with him. Now it's time to raise surrender as a realistic possibility. Of course he'll say no. But it'll be in his mind as an option. He'll start to weigh the possibilities."

  "There'll be a little more to it than that, though," LeBow said, eyes as ever on his screen.

  "We're upping the ante," Potter said, and began to jot notes on a yellow pad.

  "You know, I'm thinking I wouldn't be very good at this."

  "You ever do any acting?" Angie asked.

  "I dress up like Santa on Christmas for my kids and my brother's. That's it. Never been on stage, never wanted to be."

  "I'll give you a script." Potter thought for a moment, then tore off the top sheets of the yellow pad and began again, writing meticulous notes: two pages' worth of dense writing.

  "This is the gist of it. Just ad-lib. Can you read it okay?"

  Budd scanned the sheets. "Sure, only I don't think I'm ready. I should practice or something."

  "No time for practice," Potter told him. "Just let me give you a few pointers in negotiations."

  "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

  "Listen, Charlie. Concentrate. You've got to break through his barriers quickly and get him to believe this." He tapped the yellow paper.

  Budd's face grew still and he sat forward in front of the desk on which rested the cellular phone.

  "Now I want you to echo things he says. He'll s
ay he wants ice cream. You say, 'Ice cream, sure.' He'll say he's angry. You say, 'Angry, are you?' It shows you're interested in what he says without expressing judgment. It wears him down and makes him think. Do it selectively, though. Not every comment or you'll antagonize him."

  Budd nodded. He was sweating fiercely.

  Angie offered, "Acknowledge his feelings but don't sympathize with him."

  "Right," Potter continued. "He's the enemy. We don't sanction violence and therefore he's doing something wrong. But you should explain that you understand why he feels the way he does. Got it? Don't ramble. You have to be aware of how you sound and how fast you're talking. I'll tell you right now you'll be going way too fast. Make a conscious effort to talk slowly and deliberately. To you it'll feel like you're underwater."

  Angie said, "If you ask him a question and he doesn't respond just let the silence run up. Don't let pauses rattle you."

  "Don't let him manipulate you. He'll do it intentionally and subconsciously--using threats, fast speech, craziness, and silence. Just keep your mind on your goal." Again Potter, rather solemnly this time, tapped the yellow paper. "Most important, don't let him get to you. Let him rant and say terrible things but don't get shook up. Let him laugh at you. Let him insult you. It rolls off you. You're above it all." Potter leaned forward and whispered, "He might tell you he's going to kill all those girls. He may even fire the gun off and let you think he's shot someone. He might tell you he's going to torture them or rape them. Don't let it affect you."

  "What do I say?" Budd said desperately. "If he says that, what do I say?"

  "It's best not to say anything at all. If you feel compelled to respond you say simply that it wouldn't be in the best interests of a solution to do that."

  "Oh, brother."

  Potter looked at his watch. "Let's get this show on the road. Ready?" Potter asked.

  The young captain nodded.

  "Push button one."

  "What?"

  "It's on speed dial," Tobe explained. "Push number one."

  "And then I just talk to him?"

  "You understand the script?" Potter asked.

  Budd nodded again. Potter pointed to the phone. "Oh, brother." He reached for the phone, dialed.

  "Uplink," Tobe whispered.

  "Hey. How you doing, Art?" The voice came through the speakers above their heads. Handy seemed to be smirking.

  "This is Charlie Budd. Is this Lou Handy?"

  "The fuck're you?"

  Budd's eyes were on the sheet in front of him. "I'm with the U.S. attorney's office."