Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

But he didn't have an hour. He had twenty minutes until the next deadline.

Until the next girl would die.

Well, then, a single-entrance assault it would be. Tremain said "Code word 'filly' means green light. Code word 'stallion' means stand down. Acknowledge."

The men responded. Tremain led them into the gully beside the slaughterhouse. There they plastered themselves against the damp earth and fell into absolute stillness and silence, for so they had been instructed, and these were men who lived by their orders before anything else.

Joe Silbert had taught himself to type with two fingers on an Underwood upright that smelled of oil and ink and the bittersweet scent of eraser shavings clogging the carriage.

Technology hadn't changed things for him much and he now pounded away with only his index digits thudding loudly on the large portable Compaq. The orange light of the screen illuminated both him and Ted Biggins, made them look jaundiced and depleted. Silbert supposed that, being almost double Biggins's age, he looked twice as bad.

Philip Molto stood his diligent guard, as instructed by nervous Captain Budd.

"What do you think?" Silbert asked Biggins.

Biggins looked over his colleague's shoulder at the dense single-spaced type on the screen and grunted. "Mind if I take over?" He nodded at the screen.

"Be my guest."

Biggins could touch-type like a demon and his fingers moved quietly and invisibly over the keys. "Hey, I'm a fucking natural at this," he said, his hair perfectly coiffed although he was only an engineer and Silbert was in fact the on-camera reporter.

"Hey, Officer," Silbert called to Molto, "our shift's almost up. We're just going to leave the computer here for the next team. They'll pick up the story where we left it off."

"You guys do that?"

"It's a cooperative thing, you know. You'll keep an eye on the computer?"

"Sure thing, yessir. What's the matter?"

Silbert was frowning, looking out into the stand of trees and juniper bushes behind the police line. "You hear something?"

Biggins was standing up, looking around uneasily. "Yeah."

Molto cocked his head. There were footsteps. A snap of branch, a shuffle.

"There's nobody behind there," the lieutenant said, half to himself. "I mean, nobody's supposed to be."

Silbert's face had the cautious look of a man who'd covered combat zones before. Then he broke into a wry grin. "That son of a bitch. Lieutenant, I think we've got a trespasser here."

The trooper, hand on his pistol, stepped into the bushes. When he returned he was escorting two men in black jogging suits. Press credentials bounced on their chests.

"Well, look who it is," Silbert said. "Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley."

Biggins said to Molto, "If you're going to arrest them, forget trespassing. Charge 'em with being first-degree assholes."

"You boys know each other?"

One of the captives grimaced. "Silbert, you're a son of a bitch. You blow the whistle on us? And don't even let that little shit with you say a word to me."

Silbert said to Molto, "They're with KLTV. Sam Kellog and Tony Bianco. They seem to've forgotten that we're press-pooling."

"Fuck you," Bianco snapped.

Silbert spat out, "I gave up an exclusive just like you did, Kellog. You would've had your turn."

"I'm supposed to arrest you," Molto said to Kellog and Bianco.

"Bullshit, you can't do that."

"I'll think about it on the way back to the press tent. Come on."

"Look, Officer," Kellog said, "as long as we're here…"

"How'd you get here anyway, Kellog?" Biggins said. "Crawl on your belly?"

"Fuck you too."

Molto led them away. As soon as the squad car vanished Silbert barked to Biggins, "Now. Do it."

Biggins unhooked the casing of the computer monitor and pulled it open. From it he took a Nippona LL3R video camera – the subminiature model, which cost one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, weighed fourteen ounces, and was equipped with a folding twelve-inch parabolic antenna and transmitter. It produced a broadcast-quality picture in virtual darkness and had a telescopic lens as smooth as a sniper's rifle-scope. It had an effective range of three miles, which would be more than enough to reach the KFAL mobile transmitting center, where Silbert's colleagues (Tony Bianco and Sam Kellog, as it turned out, not too coincidentally) would soon – if they weren't actually under arrest – be waiting for the transmission. In case they were in fact sacrifices to the First Amendment other technicians were ready to wade into the breach.

Silbert opened his attache case and took out two black nylon running suits – identical to those that Kellog and Bianco had been wearing, except for one difference: on the back were stenciled the words U.S. Marshal . They pulled these on.

"Wait," Silbert said. He bent down to the screen and erased the entire file that Biggins had written – which consisted of the sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog , written about three hundred times. Shift-F3. He switched screens to the generic cop-on-a-stakeout story, which Silbert had filed about three years ago and had called up tonight as soon as they got the computer booted up. The story that prick Arthur Potter had admired.

The two men slipped into the gully behind the command van and hurried through the night in the direction that Dan Tremain and his silent Hostage Rescue Unit had gone.

The gas can.

This was the first thing in her thoughts as she opened her eyes and looked around the killing room.

Emily, on her knees, playing good Christian nurse, brushed the blood away from Melanie's eye. It was swollen, though not closed. The girl ripped the hem of her precious Laura Ashley dress and wiped more of the blood away.

Melanie lay still, as the terrible pain in her head lessened and her vision improved. One of the twins, Suzie (she thought it was Suzie), brushed her hair with her tiny, perfect fingers.

The gas can. There it was.

Finally Melanie sat up and crawled over to Beverly.

"How are you?" she asked the girl.

Sweat had plastered Beverly's blond Dutch-boy hair to her face. She nodded, though her chest continued to rise and fall alarmingly. She used the inhaler again. Melanie had never seen her this sick. The device seemed to be having no effect.

Mrs. Harstrawn still lay on the floor, on her back. She'd been crying again but was now calm. Melanie gently worked the woman's colorful sweater over her shoulders. She muttered some words. Melanie thought she said, "Don't. I'm cold."

"I have to," Melanie signed. Her fingers danced in front of the woman's face but she didn't see the message.

A minute later Mrs. Harstrawn's sweater was off. Melanie looked around and pitched it casually against the wall of the killing room, near the place where the arched opening met the floor toward the rear of the slaughterhouse. Then she scooted forward until she could look into the main room. Bear glanced toward them occasionally but the men were concentrating on the television. Melanie looked at the twins and in faint gestures signed to them, "Go over to gas can."

They looked uneasily at each other, their heads moving identically.

"Do it. Now!" Her signs were urgent – sharp, compact stabs of her fingers.

They rose and crawled slowly toward the red-and-yellow can.

When Suzie looked at her she told the girl to pick up the sweater. Mrs. Harstrawn's mother in Topeka had knitted it. The colors were red and white and blue, very visible – bad news for now; good news once the girls got outside. But Suzie wasn't moving. Melanie repeated the command. There was no time for caution, she explained. "Move! Now!"

Why is she hesitating? She's just staring at me.