A Maiden's Grave

by Jeffery Deaver

  She didn't understand at first. When he repeated it her eyes went wide with horror. She started to sign then stopped in frustration and grabbed the stack of paper.

  LeBow touched her arm. "Can you type?" He mimicked keyboarding.

  She nodded. He opened his two computers, booted them into word-processing programs, hooked up a serial port cable, and set the units side by side. He sat at one, Melanie at the other.

  Where did he go? she typed.

  We don't know, that's why we came to see you.

  Melanie nodded slowly. Did he kill anyone escaping? She could touch-type and she kept her eyes on Potter as she asked this.

  He nodded. Wilcox--the one you called Stoat--was killed. Troopers too.

  Again she nodded, frowning, thinking over the implications of this.

  Potter typed, I have to ask you to do something you're not going to want to do.

  She looked at his message, wrote: I've already been through the worst. Her hands danced over the keys invisibly, not a single mistake.

  God compensates.

  I want you to go back to the slaughterhouse. In your mind.

  Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She wrote nothing but merely nodded.

  We don't understand certain things about the barricade. If you can help us to I think we can figure out where. he's gone.

  "Henry," Potter called, rising and pacing. LeBow and Tobe caught each other's eyes. "Call up his profile and the chronology. What do we know about him?"

  LeBow began to read but Potter said, "No, let's just speculate."

  "He's a clever boy," Budd offered. "He comes across like a hick but he's got some smarts."

  Potter added, He plays the dummy but that's largely an act, I think.

  Melanie typed, Amoral.

  Yes.

  Dangerous, Budd offered.

  Let's go beyond that.

  He's evil, she wrote. Evil personified.

  But what kind of evil?

  Silence for a moment. Angie typed, Cold death.

  Potter nodded and spoke aloud, "Right. Lou Handy's cold evil. Not passionate evil. Let's keep that in mind."

  Angie continued, Not a sadist. Then he'd be passionate. He feels nothing for the pain he causes. If he needs pain or death to get his way, he'll cause pain or death. Like blinding the hostages--simply another tool for him.

  Potter leaned forward and typed, So, he's calculating.

  "And?" Budd prompted.

  Potter shook his head. Yes, he's calculating, but you're right, Charlie, what does that mean?

  The men stopped speaking while Melanie's fingers danced over the keyboard. Potter walked around her and stood close as she typed. His hand brushed her shoulder and it seemed to him that she leaned into his fingers. She wrote: Everything he does has a purpose. He's one of those few people who isn't driven by life; he drives it.

  Angie typed, Control, control, control.

  Potter found his hand was resting on Melanie's shoulder. She lowered her cheek to it. Maybe it just was an accident as her head turned. Maybe not.

  "Control and purpose," Potter said. "Yes, that's it. Type this out so she can see it, Henry. Everything he's done today has a purpose. Even if it seemed random. Killing Susan--it was to make clear that he was serious. He demanded a helicopter that seated eight but he had no problem giving away most of the hostages. Why? To keep us busy. To stretch out the time to give his accomplice and girlfriend a chance to set up the real Sharon Foster. He brought with him a TV, a scrambled radio, and guns."

  Angie leaned forward to type, So what is his purpose?

  "Well, escaping," Budd laughed. "What else would it be?" He leaned forward and two-finger typed, To escape.

  No!! Melanie typed.

  "Right!" Potter shouted, and pointed at her, nodding. "Escape wasn't his priority at all. How could it've been? He virtually let himself get trapped. There was only one trooper on his tail after the accident with the Cadillac. The three of them could've ambushed him, taken his car, and escaped. Why would anybody let themselves get trapped?"

  "Hell," Budd said, "a spooked rabbit'll run right into a fox's den not even thinking." He dutifully hunted-and-pecked this in.

  But he does think, Melanie wrote. We can't forget that. And he isn't spooked.

  Not spooked at all, Angie offered. Remember the voice stress analysis.

  Potter nodded to Melanie, smiling and gripping her shoulder once more. Calm as ordering a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.

  Melanie typed, I called him Brutus. But he's really like a ferret.

  Budd continued, Well, if he's a ferret, then he'd go to ground only if he knew he wasn't trapped at all. If he had an escape route.

  Melanie typed, When he first walked into the slaughterhouse Bear said that there was no way out. And Brutus said, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all."

  Potter nodded, mused, "He could've run, but no, he risked taking a detour to the slaughterhouse and getting trapped. But it wasn't that great a risk at all because he knew he could get out. He had guns and he had a radio to call his accomplice and work out some escape plan. Maybe he'd already thought up substituting his girlfriend for Foster." He typed, Melanie, tell us exactly what happened when they picked you up.

  She typed, We found the wreck. He was killing those people. In no hurry.

  He was confident?

  Very. He took his own sweet time, Melanie typed, grim-faced.

  Potter unfurled a map. What route did you drive?

  I don't know roads, Melanie wrote. Past a radio station, a farm with lots of cows. She frowned for a moment then traced the route on the map. Maybe this.

  The prison's south of the slaughterhouse ninety or so miles, Potter typed. The three of them drove north to here, had the accident with the Cadillac here, took the van and drove all the way around here . . . . He traced a route that had Handy driving well past the slaughterhouse then doubling back.

  Melanie typed, No. We drove straight to the slaughterhouse. That was one thing I thought funny. He seemed to know where it was.

  But if he went straight there, Potter typed, when did you pass the airport?

  We didn't, she explained.

  So he knew about it ahead of time. When he was asking me for the helicopter he knew there was an airport just two or three miles up the road. How did he know?

  Budd typed, He'd already arranged to fly out of there.

  But, LeBow typed as fast as he could speak the words, if it was just a few miles up the road, and if there was an airplane or helicopter waiting for him, why go to the slaughterhouse at all?

  "Why?" Potter muttered. "Henry, tell me what we know. Let's start with what he had with him."

  You're carrying a key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.

  He went into the slaughterhouse with hostages, the guns, a can of gasoline, ammunition, a TV, the radio, a set of tools--

  "The tools, yes," Potter said, as LeBow typed. He turned to Melanie. "Did you see him use them?"

  No, Melanie answered. But I was in killing room for most of time. Toward end I remembered them walking around looking at the machinery and fixtures. I thought they were taking a nostalgic look at the place, maybe they were looking for something, though.

  Potter snapped his fingers. "Dean told us something similar."

  LeBow scanned through the incident chronology. He read, " 'Seven-fifty-six p.m. Sheriff Stillwell reported that a trooper under his command observed Handy and Wilcox searching the factory, testing doors and fixtures. Reason unknown.' "

  "Okay. Good. Let's put the tools on hold for a minute. Those are the things he had with him when he went in. What did we give him?"

  "Just the food and the beer," Budd said. "Oh, and the money."

  "The money!" Potter cried. "Money he didn't ask for in the first place."

  Angie typed, And he never tried to bargain up the fifty thousand. Why not?

  There's only one reason a man doesn't want money, LeBow typed. He's got more tha
n he needs.

  Potter was nodding excitedly. There's money hidden in the building. It was part of his plan all along--to stop at the slaughterhouse and pick it up.

  That's why he had the tools--to get the cash out from where it was hidden, Budd managed to type. Potter nodded.

  "Where did it come from?" Tobe wondered.

  "He's a bank robber," Budd said wryly. "That's one possibility."

  "Henry," Potter said, "jump into Lexis/Nexis and let's read about that most recent robbery of his. The arson."

  In five minutes LeBow was on-line with Mead Data. He read newspaper accounts and summarized, "Handy was found with twenty thousand stolen from the Farmers & Merchants heist in Wichita."

  "Had he ever burned anything before that?"

  LeBow scrolled through the news accounts and his own sixteen-page profile of Louis J. Handy. "No prior arson."

  Then why the fire? Potter typed.

  He always has a purpose, Angie reminded.

  Melanie nodded emphatically then shivered and closed her eyes. Potter wondered what terrible memory had intruded into her thoughts. The agent and Budd looked at each other, four eyebrows arched. Then: "Yep, Charlie. That's right." Potter reached down to the keyboard. He wasn't there to rob that bank at all. He was there to burn it down.

  LeBow was reading the profile. "And he shot his accomplice in the back when they'd been trapped by the troopers. Maybe so no one would find out what he was really doing there."

  But why did he do it? Budd typed.

  Someone hired him? Potter asked the question. LeBow nodded. "Of course."

  "And whoever did," Potter said, "was paying him a ton of money. A lot more than fifty thousand. That's why he didn't think to ask for cash from us. He was already a rich man. Henry, get into the Corporation Trust database and get me the corporate documents on the bank."

  The intelligence officer went off-line with Mead and was soon scrolling through the articles of incorporation, bylaws, and securities filings of the bank. "Closely held, so it's limited public information. But we do know that the directors are also the officers. Here we go: Clifton Burbank, Stanley L. Poole, Cynthia G. Grolsch, Herman Gallagher. The ZIP codes are close together. All near Wichita. Burbank and Gallagher live in the city proper. Poole lives in Augusta. Ms. Grolsch is in Derby."

  Potter recognized none of the names but any one of them could have some connection to Handy. As could, say, an embezzling teller, a former employee who'd been fired, the spurned lover of one of the directors. But Arthur Potter would much rather have too many possibilities than none at all. "Charlie, what hotels are near that pay phone where Mr. X called Ted Franklin? In Towsend."

  "Hell, there's a bunch. Four or five at least. Holiday Inn, a Ramada, I think a Hilton and some local one. Towsend Motor Lodge. Maybe another one or two."

  Potter told Tobe to start calling. "Find out if any of those directors were registered in the hotels today or if anybody from any of those towns was registered."

  In five minutes they had an answer. Tobe snapped his fingers. Everyone, except Melanie, looked at him. "Somebody registered from Derby, Kansas. Same as Cynthia Grolsch."

  "Too much of a coincidence," Potter muttered, taking the phone. He identified himself, spoke to the clerk for a few moments. Finally he shook his head grimly, asked, "And what room?" He jotted down Holiday Inn. Rm. 611 on a pad. To the clerk he said, "No. And don't mention this call." He hung up, tapped the pad. "May be our Judas. Let's go have a talk with 'em, Charlie."

  Melanie glanced at the pad of paper. Her face went still.

  Who? Who is it? Her eyes flared. She stood up abruptly, pulled a leather jacket from a hook.

  "Let them handle it," Angie said.

  Melanie looked back to Potter, her eyes flaring. She typed, Who is it?

  "Please." Potter took her by the shoulders. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

  Slowly she nodded, pulled off the jacket, slung it over her shoulder. She looked like an aviatrix from the thirties.

  Potter said, "Henry, Angie, and Tobe stay here. Handy knows about Melanie. He might come back." He said to her, "I'll be back soon." Then he hurried to the door. "Come on, Charlie."

  After they'd gone Melanie smiled at the agents who remained. She typed Tea? Coffee?

  "Not for me," Tobe said.

  "No, thank you. Want to play solitaire?" LeBow booted up the game.

  She shook her head. I'm going to take a shower. Long day.

  "Gotcha."

  Melanie disappeared and a few minutes later they heard the sound of running water from a bathroom.

  Angie began working on her incident report while Tobe called up Doom II on his laptop and started to play. Fifteen minutes later he'd been blown apart by aliens. He stood up and stretched. He looked over Henry LeBow's shoulder, made a suggestion about the red queen, which was not received very generously at all, and then paced in the living room. He glanced at the sideboard, where he'd left the keys to the government pool car. They were gone. He wandered to the front of the house and glanced outside at the empty street. Why, he wondered, would Potter and Budd have taken two separate cars to the Holiday Inn?

  But his blood lust was insatiable and he stopped worrying about such a trivial matter as he returned to his computer and prepared to blast his way out of the fortress of Doom.

  2:35 A.M.

  It had been Hawaiian Night at the Holiday Inn.

  Steel guitar still pumped through the PA and limp plastic leis hung around the night clerks' necks.

  Agent Arthur Potter and Captain Charles Budd walked between two fake palms and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

  For a change Budd was the law enforcer looking perfectly confident; it was Potter who was ill-at-ease. The last kick-in the agent had been involved in was the arrest of a perp who happened to be wearing a turquoise Edwardian suit and silver floral polyester shirt, which carbon-dated the bust to around 1977.

  He remembered that he wasn't supposed to stand in front of the door. What else? He was reassured to glance at Budd, who had a shiny black leather cuffcase on his belt. Potter himself had never cuffed a real suspect--only volunteers at the live-fire hostage rescue drills on the Quantico back lot. "I'll defer to you on this one, Charlie."

  Budd raised surprised eyebrows. "Well, sure, Arthur."

  "But I'll back you up."

  "Oh. Good."

  Both men pulled their weapons from the hip holsters. Potter chambered a round again--twice in one night and three years from the last barricade in which a bullet had rested in his gun's receiver and meant business.

  At room 611 they stopped, exchanged glances. The negotiator nodded.

  Budd knocked, a friendly tap. Shave and a haircut.

  "Yeah?" the gruff voice called. "Hello? Who's there?"

  "It's Charlie Budd. Can you open up for a minute? Just found something interesting."

  "Charlie? What's going on?"

  The chain fell, a deadbolt clicked, and when Roland Marks opened the door he found himself staring into the muzzles of two identical automatic pistols: one steady, one shaking, and both safeties off.

  "Cynthia's a director of the S&L, yes. It's a nominal position. I'm really the one who calls the shots. We kept it in her maiden name. She's not guilty of anything."

  The assistant attorney general could protest all he wanted but it would be up to the grand and petit juries to decide his wife's fate.

  No raillery. Marks was now playing straight man. His eyes were red and damp and Potter, feeling nothing but contempt, had no trouble holding his gaze.

  The AG had been read his rights. It was all over and he knew it. So he decided to cooperate. His statement was being taken down by the very same tape recorder he'd slipped Budd earlier in the evening.

  "And what exactly were you doing at the savings and loan?" Potter asked.

  "Making bad loans to myself. Well, to fictional people and companies. Writing them off and keeping the money." He shrugged as if to say, Isn't
it obvious?

  Marks, the prosecutor specializing in white-collar crime, had learned well from his suspects: he'd bled the Wichita institution's stockholders, and the public, for close to five million dollars--much of it spent already, it seemed. "I thought with the turnaround in the real estate market," he continued, "some of the bank's legitimate investments would pay off and we could cover up the shortfall. But when I went over the books I saw we just weren't going to make it."

  The Resolution Trust Corporation, the government agency taking over failed banking institutions, was about to come in and seize the place.

  "So you hired Lou Handy to burn it down," Budd said. "Destroy all the records."

  "How did you know him?" the agent asked.

  Budd beat Marks to it. "You prosecuted Handy five years ago, wasn't it? The convenience-store heist--the barricade Sharon Foster talked him out of."

  The assistant attorney general nodded. "Oh, yes, I remembered him. Who wouldn't? Smart son of a bitch. He took the stand in his own defense and nearly ran circles around me. Had to do some digging to find him for the S&L job, you can bet. Checked with his parole officer, some of my contacts on the street. Offered him two hundred thousand to torch the place as part of a robbery. Only he got caught. So I had no choice--I had to cut a deal with him. I'd help him escape, otherwise he'd blow the whistle on me. That cost me another three hundred thousand."

  "How'd you get him out? Callana's maximum-security."

  "Paid two guards their annual salaries in cash to do it."

  "Was one of them the guard Handy killed?"

  Marks nodded.

  "Saved some money there, didn't you?" Charlie Budd asked bitterly.

  "You left a car for him with the guns, the scrambled radio, and the TV in it," Potter continued. "And the tools to get the money out of the slaughterhouse where you'd hidden it for him."

  "Well, hell, we couldn't exactly leave the money in the car. Too risky. So I sealed it up in this old steam pipe behind the front window."

  Potter asked, "What were the escape plans going to be?"

  "Originally, I'd arranged for a private plane to fly him and his buddies out of Crow Ridge, from that little airport up the road. But he never made it. He had the accident--with the Cadillac--and lost about a half-hour."