A Maiden's Grave

by Jeffery Deaver

  But no one wanted to play the game. Until Melanie signed, "Go out for dinner?"

  "Arcade!" Shannon signed suddenly. "Mortal Kombat!"

  Kielle sat up. "I want to go to real restaurant. I want steak medium rare and potatoes and pie--"

  "Whole pie?" Susan asked, mock astonishment on her face.

  Choking back tears, Melanie couldn't think of anything to say. Feebly she signed, "Yes. Whole pies for everyone!"

  The girls glanced at her but their eyes returned immediately to Susan.

  "Might get bellyaches." Mrs. Harstrawn gave an exaggerated frown.

  "No," Kielle responded. "Whole pie would be crass." She gave an indignant glance to Susan. "Only Philistines eat whole pies. We'll order one piece each. And I'm going to have coffee."

  "They don't let us drink coffee," Jocylyn stopped rubbing her tearful eyes long enough to sign.

  "I'm having coffee. Black coffee," Shannon the knee-kicker signed.

  "With cream," Kielle continued. "When my mother makes coffee she puts it in glass cup and pours cream in. It swirls like cloud. I'm going to have coffee in real restaurant."

  "Coffee ice cream maybe." Beverly struggled to suck air into her lungs.

  "With sprinkles," Suzie offered.

  "With sprinkles and Reese's Pieces," echoed Anna, her junior by thirty-some seconds. "Like at Friendly's!"

  And, once again, Melanie could think of nothing to say.

  "Not that kind of restaurant. I mean fancy restaurant." Kielle didn't understand why nobody else was excited at the prospect.

  A huge smile on Susan's face. "We're all decided. Fancy restaurant. Steak, pie, and coffee for everybody. No Philistines allowed!"

  Suddenly twelve-year-old Jocylyn broke into hysterical tears and leapt to her feet. Mrs. Harstrawn was up in an instant, cradling the rotund girl, pulling her close. Slowly she calmed down. Melanie lifted her hands to say something comforting and witty. Finally she signed, "Whipped cream on everyone's pie."

  Susan turned to Melanie. "You still ready to go on stage?"

  The young teacher stared back at her student for a moment then smiled, nodding.

  Mrs. Harstrawn, eyes flitting nervously to the main room of the slaughterhouse, where the men stood talking, their heads down, signed, "Maybe Melanie can recite her poems again."

  Melanie nodded and her mind went blank. She had a repertoire of two dozen poems she'd been planning on performing. Now she could remember nothing but the first stanza of her "Birds on a Wire." Melanie lifted her hands, signed:

  "Eight gray birds, sitting in dark.

  Cold wind blows, it isn't kind.

  Sitting on wire, they lift their wings

  and sail off into billowy clouds."

  "Pretty, isn't it?" Susan asked, looking directly at Jocylyn. The girl wiped her face on the sleeve of her bulky blouse and nodded.

  "I wrote some poems," Kielle signed emphatically. "Fifty of them. No, more. They're about Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. And X-Men too. Jean Grey and Cyclops. Shannon's read them!"

  Shannon nodded. On the girl's left forearm was a faux tattoo of another X-Man, Gambit, which she'd drawn with Pentel marker.

  "Why don't you tell us one?" Susan asked her.

  Kielle thought for a minute then confessed that her poems still needed some work.

  "Why are birds gray in your poem?" Beverly asked Melanie. Her signing was abrupt, as if she had to finish every conversation before one of her wrenching asthma attacks.

  "Because we all have a little gray in us," Melanie answered, amazed that the girls were actually rallying, distracted from the horror unfolding around them.

  "If it's about us I'd rather be pretty bird," Suzie said, and her twin nodded.

  "You could have made us red," suggested Emily, who was dressed in a Laura Ashley floral. She was more feminine than all the rest of the students combined.

  Then Susan--who knew facts that even Melanie did not; Susan, who was going to attend Gallaudet College next year with straight A's--explained to the other girls' fascination that only male cardinals were red. The females were brownish gray.

  "So, they're cardinals?" Kielle asked.

  When Melanie didn't respond the little girl tapped her shoulder and repeated the question.

  "Yes," Melanie answered. "Sure. It's about cardinals. You're all flock of pretty cardinals."

  "Not archbishops?" Mrs. Harstrawn signed, and rolled her eyes. Susan laughed. Jocylyn nodded but seemed stymied that someone had once again beaten her to a punch line.

  Tomboy Shannon, devourer of Christopher Pike books, asked why Melanie didn't make the birds hawks, with long silver beaks and claws that dripped blood.

  "It is about us then?" Kielle asked. "The poem?"

  "Maybe."

  "But there are nine, including you," Susan pointed out to her teacher with the logic of a teenager. "And ten with Mrs. Harstrawn."

  "So there are," Melanie responded. "I can change it." Then thought to herself: Do something. Whipped cream on pie? Bullshit. Take charge!

  Do something!

  Go talk to Brutus.

  Melanie rose suddenly, walked to the doorway. Looked out. Then back at Susan, who signed, "What are you doing?"

  Melanie's eyes returned to the men. Thinking: Oh, don't rely on me, girls. That's a mistake. I'm not the one to do it. Mrs. Harstrawn's older. Susan's stronger. When she says something, people--hearing or deaf--always listen.

  I can't . . . .

  Yes, you can.

  Melanie took a step into the main room, feeling the spatter of water that dripped from the ceiling. She dodged a swinging meat hook, walked closer to the men. Just the twins. And Beverly. Who wouldn't let seven-year-old girls go? Who wouldn't have compassion for a teenager racked by asthma?

  Bear looked up and saw her, grinned. Crew-cut Stoat was slipping batteries into a portable TV and paid no attention. Brutus, who had wandered away from the other two, was gazing out the window.

  Melanie paused, looked back into the killing room. Susan was frowning. Again she signed, "What are you doing?" Melanie sensed criticism in her expression; she felt like a high-school student herself.

  Just ask him. Write the words out. Please let little ones go.

  Her hands were shaking, her heart was a huge, raw lump. She felt the vibrations as Bear called something. Slowly Brutus turned.

  He looked at her, tossed his wet hair.

  Melanie froze, feeling his eyes on her. She pantomimed writing something. He walked up to her. She was frozen. He took her hand, looked at her nails, a small silver ring on her right index finger. Released it. Looked into her face and laughed. Then he walked back to the other two men, leaving her alone, his back to her, as if she posed no threat whatsoever, as if she were younger than the youngest of her students, as if she were not there at all.

  She felt more devastated than if he'd slapped her.

  Too frightened to approach him again, too ashamed to return to the killing room, Melanie remained where she was, gazing out the window at the row of police cars, the crouching forms of the policemen, and the scruffy grass bending in the wind.

  Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse through the bulletproof window in the truck.

  They'd have to talk soon. Already Lou Handy was looming too large in his mind. There were two dangers inherent in negotiating. First, making the hostage taker bigger than life before you begin and therefore starting out on the defensive--what Potter was beginning to feel now. (The other--his own Stockholming--would come later. He'd deal with it then. And he knew he would have to.)

  "Throw phone ready?"

  "Just about." Tobe was programming numbers into a scanner on the console. "Should I put an omni in it?"

  Throw phones were lightweight, rugged cellular phones containing a duplicate transmitting circuit that sent to the command post any conversations on the phone and a read-out of the numbers called. Usually the HTs spoke only to the negotiators but sometimes they called accomplices or friends. These c
onversations sometimes helped the threat management team in bargaining or getting a tactical advantage.

  Occasionally a tiny omnidirectional microphone was hidden in the phone. It'd pick up conversations even when the phone wasn't being used by the HTs. It was every negotiator's dream to know exactly what was said inside a barricade. But if the microphone was found, it might mean reprisals and would certainly damage the negotiator's credibility--his only real asset at this stage of the situation.

  "Henry?" Potter asked. "Your opinion. Could he find it?"

  Henry LeBow tapped computer keys and called up Handy's rapidly growing file. He scrolled through it. "Never went to college, got A's in science and math in high school. Wait, here we go . . . . Studied electronics in the service for a while. He didn't last long in the army. He knifed his sergeant. That's neither here nor there . . . . No, I'd say don't put the mike in. He could spot it. He excelled in engineering."

  Potter sighed. "Leave it out, Tobe."

  "Hurts."

  "Does."

  The phone buzzed and Potter took the call. Special Agent Angie Scapello had arrived in Wichita and was being choppered directly to the Laurent Clerc School in Hebron. She and the Hebron PD officer who'd be acting as interpreter would be arriving in a half-hour.

  He relayed this information to LeBow, who typed it in. The intelligence officer added, "I'll have CAD schematics of the interior in ten minutes." LeBow had sent a field agent to dig up architectural or engineering drawings of the slaughterhouse. These would be transmitted to the command post and printed out through computer-assisted drafting software.

  Potter said to Budd, "Charlie, I'm thinking we've got to consolidate them. The hostages. The takers're going to want power in there but I don't want to do that. I want to get them a single electric lantern. Battery powered. Weak. So they'll all have to be in the same room."

  "Why?"

  LeBow spoke. "Keep the takers and the hostages together. Let Handy talk to them, get to know them."

  "I don't know, sir," the captain said. "Those girls're deaf. That's gonna be a spooky place. If they're in a room that's lit with just one lantern, they'll . . . well, the way my daughter'd say, they'll freak."

  "We can't be worried much about their feelings," Potter said absently, watching LeBow transcribe notes into his electronic tablet of stone.

  "I don't really agree with you there, sir," Budd said.

  Silence.

  Tobe was assembling the cellular phone, while he simultaneously gazed at six TV stations on a single monitor, the screen split miraculously by Derek Elb. All the local news was about the incident. CBS was doing a special report, as was CNN. Sprayed-haired beauties, men and women, held microphones like ice cream cones and spoke into them fervently. Potter noticed that Tobe'd taken to the control panel of the command van as if he'd designed it himself, and then reflected that perhaps he had. He and red-haired Derek had become fast friends.

  "Think about it, though," Budd persisted. "That's a scary place at high noon. At night? Brother, it'll be awful."

  "Whatever happens," Potter replied, "these next twenty-four hours aren't going to be very pleasant for those girls. They'll just have to live with it. We need to bunch them up. A single lantern'll do that."

  Budd grimaced in frustration. "There's a practical matter too. I'm thinking if it's too dark they might panic. Try to run. And get hurt."

  Potter looked at the brick walls of the old processing plant, as dark as dried blood.

  "You don't want them to get shot, do you?" Budd asked in exasperation, drawing LeBow's glance, though not Potter's.

  "But if we turn the power on," the agent said, "they'll have the whole slaughterhouse to hide themselves in. Handy could put them in ten different rooms." Potter pressed his cupped hands together absently as if making a snowball. "We have to keep them together."

  Budd said, "What we could do is get a generator truck here. Feed in a line. Four or five auto repair lights--you know, those caged lights on hooks. Just enough current to light up the main room. And that way if you ordered an assault we could shut down the juice any time we wanted. Which you couldn't do with a battery unit. And, look, at some point we're gonna have to communicate with those girls. Remember, they're deaf. If it's dark, how're we gonna do that?"

  That was a good point, one that Potter hadn't considered. In an assault someone would have to issue sign language evacuation instructions to the girls.

  Potter nodded. "Okay."

  "I'll get on it."

  "Delegate it, Charlie."

  "I aim to."

  Tobe pushed buttons. A hiss of static filled the van. "Shit," he muttered. He added to LeBow, "Got two men with Big Ears closer than they ought to be," referring to small parabolic microphones that under good conditions could pick up a whisper at a hundred yards. Today they were useless.

  "Damn wind," LeBow muttered.

  "Throw phone's ready," Tobe announced, pushing a small olive-drab backpack toward Potter. "Both downlink circuits're ready to receive."

  "We'll--"

  A phone buzzed. Potter grabbed it.

  "Potter here."

  "Agent Potter? We haven't met." A pleasant baritone boomed out of the speaker. "I'm Roland Marks, the assistant attorney general of the state."

  "Yes?" Potter asked coolly.

  "I'd like to share some thoughts with you, sir."

  Potter's impatience surged. There's no time for this, he thought to himself.

  "I'm very busy right now."

  "Some thoughts about state involvement. Just my two cents' worth."

  Potter had Charlie Budd, he had his containment troops, he had his command van. He needed nothing else from the state of Kansas.

  "This isn't a good time, I'm afraid."

  "Is it true that they've kidnaped eight young girls?"

  Potter sighed. "And two teachers. From the deaf school in Hebron. Yes, that's right. We're just about to establish contact and we're on a very tight schedule. I don't--"

  "How many takers are there?"

  "I'm afraid I don't have time to discuss the situation with you. The governor's been briefed and you can call our special agent in charge, Peter Henderson. I assume you know him."

  "I know Pete. Sure." The hesitant voice suggested he had little confidence in the man. "This could be a real tragedy, sir."

  "Well, Mr. Marks, my job is to make sure it doesn't turn out that way. I hope you'll let me get on with it."

  "I was thinking, maybe a counselor or priest could help out. In Topeka we've got ourselves this state employee assistance department. Some top-notch--"

  "I'm hanging up now," Potter said rather cheerfully. "Pete Henderson can keep you informed of our progress."

  "Wait a minute--"

  Click.

  "Henry, pull some files. Roland Marks's. Assistant AG. Find out if he can make trouble. See if he's filed to run in any elections, got his eye on any appointments."

  "Just sounds like some do-good, knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal to me," scowled Henry LeBow, who'd voted Democratic all his life, Eugene McCarthy included.

  "All right," Potter said, forgetting immediately about the attorney general's call, "let's get a volunteer with a good arm. Oh, one more thing." Potter buttoned his navy jacket and lifted a finger to Budd. He motioned to the door. "Step out here, would you please, Charlie?"

  Outside they stood in the faint shadow of the van. "Captain," Potter said, "you better tell me what's eating you. That I stepped on your toes back there?"

  "Nope," came the chilly response. "You're federal. I'm state. It's in the Constitution. Preeminence, they call it."

  "Listen," Potter said firmly, "we don't have time for delicacies. Get it off your chest now. Or live with it, whatever it is."

  "What're we doing? Taking off our insignias and going at it?" Budd laughed without much humor.

  Potter said nothing but lifted an eyebrow.

  "All right, how's this? What's eating me is I know you're supposed to be goo
d at this and I've never done a negotiation before. I hear you barking orders right and left like you know exactly what you're doing but don't you think there's one thing you neglected to mention?"

  "What?"

  "You didn't say hardly three words about those girls in there."

  "What about them?"

  "I just thought you should've reminded everybody that our number-one priority is getting those girls out alive."

  "Oh," Potter said, his mind elsewhere as he scanned the battlefield. "But that's not our number-one priority at all, Charlie. The rules of engagement are real clear. I'm here to get the takers to surrender and, if they don't, to help Hostage Rescue engage and neutralize them. I'll do everything in my power to save the people inside. That's why it's me, not HRT, running the show. But those men in there aren't leaving Crow Ridge except in body bags or handcuffs. And if that means those hostages have to die, then they're going to die. Now if you could find me that volunteer--a fellow with a good arm to pitch the phone. And hand me that bullhorn too, if you'd be so kind."

  NOON

  As he walked through a shallow gully that eventually ran into the south side of the slaughterhouse, Arthur Potter said to Henry LeBow, "We'll want engineer reports on any modifications to the building. EPA too. I want to know if there're any tunnels."

  The intelligence officer nodded. "It's being done. And I'm checking on easements too."

  "Tunnels?" Budd asked.

  Potter told him about the terrorist barricade at the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, three years before. The Hostage Rescue Team had completely surprised the HTs by sneaking through a steam tunnel into the basement of the building. The tycoon had ordered the furnace installed away from the house so the noise and smoke wouldn't disturb his guests, never knowing that his sense of social decorum would save the lives of fifteen Israeli tourists a hundred years later.

  The agent noticed that Dean Stillwell had reorganized troopers and agents in good defensive positions around the building. Halfway to the slaughterhouse Potter paused suddenly and looked toward the glint of water in the distance.

  To Budd, Potter said, "I want all river traffic stopped."

  "Well, um, that's the Arkansas River."

  "So you told us."

  "I mean, it's a big river."

  "I can see."

  "Well, why? You thinking they'll have accomplices floating in on rafts?"

  "No." In the ensuing silence Potter challenged Budd to figure it out. He wanted the man to start thinking.