A Maiden's Grave

by Jeffery Deaver

  Melanie closed her eyes.

  1:20 A.M.

  Captain Charlie Budd had aged considerably in the last twelve hours.

  Potter studied him in the adulterating fluorescent light of the cramped office of the sheriff of Crow Ridge, which was located in a strip mall off the business loop. Budd no longer appeared young and was easily a decade past callow. And like all of them here tonight, his face showed the patina of disgust.

  And uncertainty too. For they had no idea if they'd been betrayed and if so by whom. Budd and Potter sat across the desk from Dean Stillwell, who leaned into the phone, nodding gravely. He handed the receiver to Budd.

  Tobe and Henry LeBow had just arrived in a mad race from the airport. LeBow's computers were already booted up; they seemed like an extension of his body. Angie's DomTran jet had hung a U-turn somewhere over Nashville and she was due back in Crow Ridge in a half-hour.

  "All right," Budd said, hanging up. "Here're the details. They aren't pretty."

  The two squad cars carrying Handy and Wilcox had left the slaughterhouse and headed south to the Troop C headquarters in Clements, about ten miles south. Between Crow Ridge and the state facility the lead car, driven by the woman who was presumably Priscilla Gunder, braked so suddenly it left twenty-foot skid marks and sent the second car, behind it, off the road. Apparently the woman pulled her pistol and shot the trooper beside her and the one in the backseat, killing them instantly.

  The crime scene investigators speculated that Wilcox, in the second car, had undone his cuffs with the key that Gunder had slipped him and grabbed the gun of the trooper sitting beside him. But because he'd been double-shackled, according to Potter's surrender instructions, it had taken him longer to escape than planned. He'd shot the officer beside him but the driver leapt from the car and fired one shot into Wilcox before Handy, or his girlfriend, shot him in the back.

  "Wilcox wasn't killed outright," Budd continued, brushing his hair, as being in Stillwell's presence made you want to do. "He climbed out and crawled to the first squad car. Somebody--they think it was Handy--finished him with a single shot to the forehead."

  In his mind Potter heard: You kill when people don't do what they're supposed to. You kill the weak because they'll drag you down. What's wrong with that?

  "What about Detective Foster?" Potter asked.

  "She was found beside a stolen car about a mile from her house. Her husband said she left the place about ten minutes after she got the call about the barricade. They think the Gunder woman flagged her down near the highway, took her uniform, killed her, and stole her cruiser. Prelim forensics show some of the prints were Gunder's."

  "What else, Charlie? Tell us." For Potter saw the look on his face.

  Budd hesitated. "After the real Sharon Foster had stripped down to her underwear Handy's girlfriend gagged and handcuffed her. Then she used a knife. She didn't have to. But she did. It wasn't too pleasant what she did. It took her a while to die."

  "And then she drove to the barricade site," Potter spat out angrily, "and waltzed out with him."

  "Where'd they head?" LeBow asked. "Still going south?"

  "Nobody's got a clue," Budd said.

  "They're in a cruiser," Stillwell said. "Shouldn't be hard to find."

  "We've got choppers out looking," Budd offered. "Six of them."

  "Oh, he's already switched cars," Potter muttered. "Concentrate on any report of car theft in south-central Kansas. Anything at all."

  Tobe said, "The engine block of the cruiser'll retain heat for about three hours. Do the choppers have infrared cameras?"

  Budd said, "Three of them do."

  LeBow mused, "What route'd put them the furthest away in that time? He must know we'd be on to them pretty soon."

  In the otherwise drab, functional office five brilliant, red plants sat on a credenza, the healthiest-looking plant life Potter had ever seen indoors. Stillwell was hovering beside a wall map of the four-county area. "He could cut over to 35--that's the turnpike, take him northeast. Or 81'd take him to I-70."

  "How 'bout," Budd asked, "81 all the way into Nebraska, cut over to 29?"

  "Yep," Stillwell continued. " 'S'long drive, but it'd take him up to Winnipeg. Eventually."

  "Was that Canada thing all smoke screen?" Tobe wondered.

  "I don't know," Potter said, feeling that he'd stumbled into a chess game with a man who might be a grand master or who might not even know the movement of the pieces. He stood and stretched, which was tough in the cramped quarters. "The only way we're going to find him, short of luck, is to figure out how the hell he did it. Henry? What was the chronology?"

  LeBow punched buttons. He recited, "At nine thirty-three p.m. Captain Budd said he'd received a call from his division commander about a woman detective who'd gotten Handy to surrender several years ago. She was located in McPherson, Kansas. The commander wondered if he should send the woman to the barricade site. Captain Budd conferred with Agent Potter and the decision was made to ask this detective to come to the site.

  "At nine forty-nine p.m. a woman representing herself as Detective Sharon Foster called from her cruiser and reported that she would be at the barricade site by ten-thirty or ten-forty.

  "At ten forty-five a woman representing herself to be Detective Sharon Foster, wearing a Kansas State Police uniform, arrived at the barricade and commenced negotiations with subject Handy."

  "Charlie," Potter asked, "who was the commander?"

  "Ted Franklin over at Troop B." He already had the phone in his hand and was dialing the number.

  "Commander Franklin please . . . it's an emergency . . . . Ted? It's Charlie Budd . . . . Nope, no news. I'm going to put you on the squawk box." There was a click and static filled the room. "Ted, I've got half the FBI here. Agent Arthur Potter in charge."

  "Hey, gentlemen," came Franklin's electronic greeting.

  "Evening, Commander," Potter said. "We're trying to track down what happened here. You remember who called you about Sharon Foster this evening?"

  "I've been racking my brain, sir, trying to remember. Some trooper or another. I frankly wasn't listening to who he was as much as what he had to say."

  "A 'he,' you say?"

  "Yessir. Was a man."

  "He told you about Detective Foster?"

  "That's right."

  "Did you know her beforehand?"

  "I knew about her. She was an up-and-comer. Good negotiating record."

  Potter asked, "Then you called her after this trooper called."

  "No, I called Charlie first down in Crow Ridge to see if it'd be all right with you folks. Then I called her."

  "So," Stillwell said, "somebody intercepted your call to her and got to Detective Foster's just as she was leaving."

  "But how?" Budd asked. "Her husband said she left ten minutes after she got the call. How could Handy's girlfriend've got there in time?"

  "Tobe?" Potter asked. "Any way to check for taps?"

  "Commander Franklin," Tobe asked, "is your office swept for bugs?"

  A chuckle. "Nope. Not the kind you're talking about."

  Tobe said to Potter, "We could sweep it, see if there are any. But it'd only tell us yea or nay. There's no way to tell who got the transmission and when."

  But no, Potter was thinking. Budd was right. There was simply no time for Priscilla Gunder to get to Foster's house after the phone call from Franklin.

  LeBow spoke for all of them. "This just doesn't sound like a tap situation. Besides, who'd know to put the bug in Commander Franklin's office anyway?"

  Stillwell said, "Sounds like this was all planned out ahead of time."

  Potter agreed. "The trooper who called you, Commander Franklin, wasn't a trooper at all. He was Handy's accomplice. And the girlfriend was probably waiting outside Detective Foster's house all along, while he--whoever he is--made the phone call to you."

  "That means somebody'd have to know about the real Sharon Foster in the first place," Budd said. "That Handy
'd surrendered to her. Who'd know about her?"

  There was silence for a moment as the roomful of clever men thought of clever ways to learn about past police negotiations--through the news, computer databases, sources within the department.

  LeBow and Budd were tied for first. "Handy!"

  Potter had just arrived there himself. He nodded. "Who'd know better than Handy himself? Let's think back. He's trapped in the slaughterhouse. He suspects he isn't going to get his helicopter or that if he does we're going to track him to the ends of the earth--with or without his M-4 clearance--and so he gets word to his accomplice about Foster. The accomplice calls the girlfriend and they plan out the rescue. But Handy couldn't have called on the throw phone. We'd have heard it." Potter closed his eyes and thought back over the evening's events. "Tobe, those scrambled transmissions you were wondering about . . . We thought they were Tremain and the Kansas HRU. Could they have been something else?"

  The young man tugged at his pierced earlobe then dug several computer disks from a plastic envelope. He handed them to LeBow, who put one in his laptop. Tobe leaned over and pushed keys. On the screen played a stilted, slow-moving graphic representation of two sine waves, overlapping each other.

  "There are two!" he announced, his scientist's eyes glowing at the discovery. "Two different frequencies." He looked up. "Both law-enforcement assigned. And retrosignal scrambled."

  "Are they both Tremain's?" Potter wondered aloud.

  Ted Franklin asked what the frequencies were.

  "Four hundred thirty-seven megahertz and four hundred eighty point four," Tobe responded.

  "No," Ted Franklin answered. "The first one is assigned to HRU. The second isn't a state police signal. I don't know whose it is."

  "So Handy had another phone in the slaughterhouse?" Potter asked.

  "Not a phone," Tobe said. "It'd be a radio. And four eighty is often reserved for federal operations, Arthur."

  "Is that right?" Potter considered this, then said, "But a radio wasn't found at the site, was it?"

  Budd dug through a black attache case. He found the sheet that listed the inventory of evidence found at the crime scene and the initial chain of custody. "No radio."

  "Could've hidden it, I suppose. There'd be a million nooks and crannies in a place like that." Potter considered something. "Is there any way to trace the transmissions?"

  "Not now. You have to triangulate on a real-time signal." Tobe said this as if Potter had asked if it could snow in July.

  "Commander Franklin," the agent asked, "you got a phone call, right? From this supposed trooper? It wasn't a radio transmission?"

  "A landline, right. And it wasn't patched in from a radio either. You can always tell."

  Potter paused and examined one of the flowers. Was it a begonia? A fuchsia? Marian had gardened. "So Handy radioed Mr. X, who then called Commander Franklin. Then X called Handy's girlfriend and gave her the go-ahead to intercept Sharon Foster. Tobe?"

  The young agent's eyes flashed with understanding. He snapped his fingers and sat up. "You got it, Arthur," he responded to the request that Potter was about to make. "Pen register of all incoming calls to your office, Commander Franklin. You object to that?"

  "Hell, no. I want this boy as much as you do."

  "You have a direct line?" Tobe asked.

  "I do, yes, but half of my calls come in from the switchboard. And when I pick up I don't know where it's coming in from."

  "We'll do them all," Tobe said patiently, undaunted.

  Who's Handy's accomplice? Potter wondered.

  Tobe asked, "Henry? A warrant request, please."

  LeBow printed one out on Stillwell's NEC and handed it to Potter then called up on his screen the Federal Judiciary Directory. Potter placed a call to a judge who sat on the district court of Kansas. He explained about the request. At home at this hour, the judge agreed to sign the warrant on the basis of the evidence Potter presented; he'd been watching CNN and knew all about the incident.

  As a member of the bars of D.C. and Illinois, Potter signed the warrant request. Tobe faxed it to the judge, who signed and returned it immediately. LeBow then scrolled through Standard & Poor's Corporation Directory and found the name of the chief general counsel of Midwestern Bell. They served the warrant via fax to the lawyer at home. One phone conversation and five minutes later the requested files were dumped ingloriously into LeBow's computer.

  "Okay, Commander Franklin," LeBow said, scrolling through his screen, "it looks like we have seventy-seven calls coming into your HQ today, thirty-six into your private line."

  Potter said, "You're a busy man."

  "Heh. The family can attest to that."

  Potter asked when the call about Foster came in.

  "About nine-thirty."

  Potter said, "Make it a twenty-minute window."

  Keys tapped.

  "We're down to about sixteen total," LeBow said. "That's getting workable."

  "If Handy had a radio," Budd said, "what'd the range of that thing be?"

  "Good question, Charlie," Tobe said. "That'll narrow things down even more. If it's standard law-enforcement issue I'd guess three miles. Our Mr. X would have to've been pretty close to the barricade."

  Potter lowered his head to the screen. "I don't know these towns, other than Crow Ridge, and there's no listing of any calls from there to you, Commander. Charlie, take a look. Tell us what's nearby."

  "Hysford's about seventeen miles. Billings, nowhere near."

  "That's the missus," volunteered Commander Franklin.

  "How 'bout this? A three-minute call from Towsend to your office at nine twenty-six. Was that about how long you talked to the trooper, Commander Franklin?"

  "About, yessir."

  "Where's Towsend?"

  "Borders Crow Ridge," Budd said. "Good-sized town."

  "Can you get us an address?" Budd asked Tobe.

  The downloaded files from the phone company didn't include addresses but a single call to Midwestern Bell's computer center pinpointed a pay phone.

  "Route 236 and Roosevelt Highway."

  "It's the main intersection," Stillwell said, discouraged. "Restaurants, hotels, gas stations. And that highway's a feeder for two interstates. Could've been anybody and he could've been on his way to anywhere."

  Potter's eyes were on the five red plants. His head rose suddenly and he reached for the telephone. But it was a curious gesture--he stopped suddenly and seemed momentarily flustered, as if he'd committed some grievous social faux pas at a formal dinner party. His hand slipped off the receiver.

  "Henry, Tobe, come with me. You too, Charlie. Dean, will you stay here and man the fort?"

  "You bet, sir."

  "Where are we going?" Charlie asked.

  "To talk to somebody who knows Handy better than we do."

  2:00 A.M.

  He wondered how they'd announce their presence.

  There was a button on the jamb of the front door, just like any other. Potter looked at Budd, who shrugged and pushed it.

  "I thought I heard something inside. A doorbell. Why's that?"

  Potter had heard something too. But he'd also noticed a red light flash inside, through a lace curtain.

  There was no response.

  Where was she?

  Potter found himself about to call, "Melanie?" And when he realized that would be futile, he lifted his fist to knock. He shook his head at that gesture too and lowered his hand. Seeing the lights inside a lifeless house, he felt a stab of uneasiness and he pulled his jacket away from his hip, where the Glock sat. LeBow noticed the gesture but said nothing.

  "Wait here," Potter told the three men.

  He walked slowly along the dark porch of the Victorian house, looking in the windows of the place. Suddenly he stopped, seeing shoeless feet, legs sprawled on a couch, motionless.

  Alarmed now, in a panic, he hurriedly completed his circuit of the porch. But he couldn't get any view of her--only her unmoving legs. He rapp
ed loudly on the glass, shouted her name.

  Nothing.

  She should be able to feel the vibration, he thought. And there was the red flashing light--the "doorbell"--above the entryway, flashing in her clear view.

  "Melanie!"

  He drew his pistol. Tried the window. It was locked.

  Do it.

  His elbow crashed into the glass and sent a shower of shards onto the parquet floor. He reached in, unlocked the window, and started through. He froze when he saw the figure--Melanie herself, sitting up, terrified, staring at the intruder coming through her window. She blinked away the sleep and gasped.

  Potter held up his hands to her, as if surrendering, an expression of horror on his own face at the thought of how he must have frightened her. Still, he was more perplexed than anything else: Why on earth, he wondered, would she be wearing stereo headphones?

  Melanie Charrol opened the door and motioned her visitors inside.

  The first thing that Arthur Potter saw was a large watercolor of a violin, surrounded by surreal quarter-and half-notes in rainbow colors.

  "Sorry about the window," he said slowly. "You can deduct it from your taxes."

  She smiled.

  "Evening, ma'am," Charlie Budd said. And Potter introduced her to Tobe Geller and Henry LeBow. She looked out the door at the car parked two doors down, the two people standing behind a hedge, looking at the house.

  He saw her face. He said to her, "They're ours."

  Melanie frowned. He explained, "Two troopers. I sent them here earlier tonight to keep an eye on you."

  She shook her head, asking, Why?

  Potter hesitated. "Let's go inside."

  With flashing lights, a Hebron PD squad car pulled up. Angeline Scapello, looking exhausted though no longer soot-smudged, climbed out and hurried up the stairs. She nodded to everyone, and like her fellow threat management team members she wasn't smiling.

  Melanie's house had a homey air about it. Thick drapes. In the air, incense. Spicy. Old prints, many of them of classical composers, hung on the walls, which were covered with striped paper, forest green and gold. The largest print was of Beethoven. The room was full of antique tables, beautiful Art Nouveau vases. He thought with some embarrassment of his own Georgetown apartment, a shabby place. He'd stopped decorating it thirteen years ago.

  Melanie was wearing blue jeans, a black cashmere sweater. Her hair was no longer in the awkward braid but hung loose. The bruises and cuts on her face and hands were quite prominent, as were the chestnut Betadine stains. Potter turned to her, tried to think of words that required exaggerated lip movements. "Lou Handy's escaped."