Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

More laughter – or perhaps it was only the wind.

Standing tall, the assistant AG walked off the field. As if strolling through his own backyard. Potter was pleased to see that Stevie Gates and his partner kept low as terriers as they crawled after the man under cover of the sumptuous, windswept grass.

"You could've ruined everything," Arthur Potter snapped. "What the hell were you thinking?"

He had to look up into Marks's eyes – the man was well over six feet tall – but still felt he was talking to a snotty child caught misbehaving.

The assistant attorney general began firmly, "I was thinking -"

"You never exchange hostages. The whole point of negotiation is to devalue them. You were as good as saying to him, 'Here I am, I'm worth more than all of those girls combined.' If he'd gotten you it would've made my job impossible."

"I don't see why," Marks answered.

"Because," Angie said, "a hostage like you would have boosted his sense of power and control a hundred times. He'd up his demands and stick to them. We'd never get him to agree to anything reasonable."

"Well, I kept thinking about those girls in there. What they were going through."

"He never would have let them go."

"I was going to talk him into it."

LeBow rolled his eyes and continued to type up the incident.

Potter said, "I'm not going to arrest you." He'd considered it and concluded that the fallout would be too thorny. "But if you interfere in any way with this barricade again I will and I'll have the U.S. Attorney make sure you do time."

To Potter's astonishment, Marks wasn't the least contrite. The witty facade was gone, yes; but he seemed, if anything, irritated that Potter had interfered with his plans. "You do things by the book, Potter." A large index finger pointed bluntly at the agent. "But the book doesn't say anything about a psycho who gets his kicks killing children."

The phone buzzed. LeBow took the call and said to Potter, "Jocylyn's gotten a clean bill of health from the medics. She's fine. You want to debrief her now?"

"Yes, thank you, Henry. Tell them to send her in. Stevie Gates too." To Marks he said, "I'll ask you to leave now."

Marks buttoned his suit jacket, brushed away the rock dust that had powdered his jacket from Handy's target practice. He strode to the door and muttered something. Potter believed he heard: "blood on your hands." But as to the other words, he didn't have a clue.

For precious minutes she wept uncontrollably.

Angie Scapello and Arthur Potter sat with Jocylyn and struggled to look calm and reassuring while in their hearts they wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake answers out of her.

Impatience, Arthur Potter's nemesis.

He kept a smile on his face and nodded with reassurance while the chubby twelve-year-old cried and cried, resting her round, red face in her hands.

The door opened and Stevie Gates stepped inside, pulled off his helmet. Despite the cold his hair was damp with sweat. Potter turned his attention from the girl to the trooper.

"You should stand down for a while, Stevie."

"Yessir, I think I will. Those last couple shots were kind of, well… close."

"Sobered you up pretty fast, did they?"

"Yessir. Sure did."

"Tell me everything you saw when you went up there with the food."

As Potter expected, even with the aid of the videotape from the camera perched over his ear, Gates couldn't provide much detail about the interior of the slaughterhouse.

"Any thoughts on Handy's state of mind?"

"Seemed calm. Wasn't edgy."

Like he was buying a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.

"Anybody hurt?"

"Not that I could see."

LeBow dutifully typed in the paltry intelligence. Gates could recall nothing else. Potter pointed out to the discouraged officer that it was good news he hadn't seen blood or bodies. Though he knew his own face didn't mask the discouragement he felt; they wouldn't get anything helpful from the twelve-year-old girl, who continued to weep and twine her short dark hair around fingers that ended in chewed nails.

"Thanks, Stevie. That's all for now. Oh, one question. Were you really going to shoot Marks in the leg?"

The young man grew serious for a moment then broke into a cautious grin. "The best way I can put it, sir, is I wasn't going to know until I pulled the trigger. Or didn't pull the trigger. As the case might be."

"Go get some coffee, Trooper," Potter said.

"Yessir."

Potter and Angie turned their attention back to Jocylyn. Her eyes were astonishingly red; she huddled in the blanket one of Stillwell's officers had given her.

Finally the girl was calm enough that Potter could begin to question her through Officer Frances Whiting. The negotiator noted that while Frances 's hands moved elegantly and with compact gestures Jocylyn's were broad and awkward, stilted: the difference, he guessed, between someone speaking smoothly and someone inserting "um"s and "you know"s into their speech. He wondered momentarily how Melanie signed. Staccato? Smooth?

"She isn't answering your questions," Frances said.

"What's she saying?" Angie asked, her quick, dark eyes picking up patterns in the signing.

"That she wants her parents."

"Are they at the motel?" he asked Budd.

The captain made a call and told him, "They should be, within the hour."

Frances relayed that information to her. Without acknowledging that she understood, the girl started another jag of crying.

"You're doing fine," Angie said encouragingly.

The negotiator glanced at his watch. A half-hour to the helicopter deadline. "Tell me about the men, Jocylyn. The bad men."

Frances's hands flew and the girl finally responded. "She says there are three of them. Those three there." The girl was gesturing at the wall. "They're sweaty and smell bad. The one there." Pointing at Handy. "Brutus. He's the leader."

"Brutus?" Potter asked, frowning.

Frances asked the question and watched a lengthy response, during which Jocylyn pointed to each of the takers.

"That's what Melanie calls him," she said. "Handy's 'Brutus.' Wilcox is 'Stoat.' And Bonner is 'Bear.' " The officer added, "Signing's very metaphoric. 'Lamb' is sometimes used for 'gentle,' for instance. The Deaf often think in poetic terms."

"Does she have any idea where they are in the slaughterhouse?" He asked this of Frances, and Angie said, "Talk to her directly, Arthur. It'll be more reassuring, make her feel more like an adult. And don't forget to smile."

He repeated the question, smiling, to the girl, and Frances translated her response as she pointed to several locations near the front of the big room then touched Handy's and Wilcox's pictures. Tobe moved the Post-Its emblazoned with their names. LeBow typed.

Jocylyn shook her head. She rose and placed them more exactly. She signed some words to Frances, who said, "Bear – Bonner – is in the room with her friends."

Jocylyn put Bear's Post-It in a large semicircular room about twenty-five feet from the front of the slaughterhouse. Tobe placed all the hostage markers in there.

Jocylyn rearranged them too, being very precise.

"That's where everyone is, she says. Exactly."

Potter's eye strayed to Melanie's tab.

Jocylyn wiped tears, then signed.

"She says Bear watches them all the time. Especially the little girls."

Bonner. The rapist.

Potter asked, "Are there any other doorways or windows that aren't on the diagram?"

Jocylyn studied it carefully. Shook her head.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you see any guns?"

"They all have guns." The girl pointed to Tobe's hip.

He asked, "What kind were they?"

She frowned and pointed to the agent's hip again.