Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

Budd pushed the play button. The hiss of static brayed from the tiny speaker.

"I knew all about it, Charlie."

"But -"

"Tobe has his magic wands. They pick up magnetic recording equipment. We're always sweeping locations for bugs. He told me somebody had a recorder. He narrowed it down to you."

"You knew?" He stared at the agent, then shook his head in disgust with himself – for having been outsmarted at something he didn't think was very smart to begin with.

"Who was it?" Potter asked. "Marks? Or the governor?"

"Marks. Those girls… he's really in a state about them. He wanted to give Handy whatever he wanted in order to get them released. Then he was going to track him down. He had this special homing device he was going to put in the chopper. You could track 'em from a hundred miles away and they'd never know."

Potter nodded at the crestfallen captain. "I figured it was something like that. Any man willing to sacrifice himself is willing to sacrifice somebody else."

"But how'd you swap the cassettes?" Budd asked.

Angie Scapello stepped down through the open doorway of the van and nodded a greeting to the men. She walked past Budd, touching his arm very lightly as she passed.

"Hi, Charlie."

"Hey, Angie," he said, not smiling.

"Say, what time do you have?" she asked him.

He lifted his left wrist. "Hell, it's gone. My watch. Damn. And Meg just gave it to me for my -"

Angie held up the Pulsar.

Budd was nodding, understanding it all. "Got it," he said, and hung his head even lower, if that was possible. "Oh, brother."

"I used to teach the pickpocket recognition course at Baltimore PD," she explained. "I borrowed the recorder when we were strolling around in the gully – having our loyalty talk – and switched cassettes."

Budd smiled miserably. "You're good. I'll give you that. Oh, man. I've been messin' up all night long. I don't know what to say. I've let you down."

"You confessed. No harm done."

"It was Marks?" Angie asked.

"Yep." Budd sighed. "At first I was thinking like him – that we should do anything to save those girls. I gave Arthur an earful about that this morning. But you were right, a life's a life. Doesn't matter if it's a girl or a trooper. We gotta stop him here."

"I appreciate that Marks had noble motives," Potter said. "But we have to do things a certain way. Acceptable losses. Remember?"

Budd closed his eyes. "Man, I almost ruined your career."

The negotiator laughed. "You didn't come close, Captain. Believe me, you were the only one at risk. If you'd given that tape to anyone your career in law enforcement would've been over."

Budd looked very flustered then stuck out his hand.

Potter shook it warmly though Budd didn't grip it very hard, either out of shame or out of concern about the fluffy pads of bandages on the agent's skin.

They all fell silent as Potter gazed up at the sky. "When's the deadline?"

Budd looked again at his wrist blankly for a moment then he realized that he was holding his watch in his right hand. "Forty minutes. What's the matter?" The captain's eyes lifted to the same jaundiced cloud that Potter was targeting.

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this one. This deadline."

"Why?"

"I just am."

"Intuition," Angie said. "Listen to him, Charlie. He's usually right."

Budd looked down from the sky and found Potter looking at him. "I'm sorry, Arthur. I'm plumb outta ideas."

Potter's eyes zipped back and forth over the grass, blackened by the fire and by the shadow of the van. "A helicopter," he blurted suddenly.

"What?"

Potter felt a keen sense of urgency seize him. "Get me a helicopter."

"But I thought we weren't going to give him one."

"I just need to show him one. A big one. At least a six-seater – eight- or ten- if you can find one."

"If I can find one?" Budd exclaimed. "Where? How?"

A thought slipped into Potter's mind from somewhere.

Airport.

There was an airport nearby. Potter tried to remember. How did he know that? Had somebody told him? He hadn't driven past it. Budd hadn't told him; SAC Henderson hadn't said anything. Where -

It was Lou Handy. The taker had mentioned it as a possible source of a helicopter. He must've driven by it on the way here.

He told this to Budd.

"I know it," the captain said. "They got a couple choppers there but I don't know if there's anybody's there who can even fly one. I mean, if we found one in Wichita they might make it here in time. But hell, it'll take more'n forty minutes to track down a pilot."

"Well, forty minutes is all we have, Charlie. Get a move on."

"The truth…" Melanie is crying.

And de l'Epée is the one person she doesn't want to cry in front of. But cry she does. He rises from his chair and sits on the couch next to her.

"The truth is," she continues, "that I just don't like who I am, what I've become, what I'm a part of."

It's time to confess and nothing can stop her now.

"I told you about how I lived for being Deaf. It became my whole life?"

"Miss Deaf Farmhand of the Year."

"I didn't want any of it. Not. One. Bit." She grows vehement. "I got so damn tired of the self-consciousness of it all. The politics of being part of the Deaf world, the prejudice the Deaf have – oh, it's there. You'd be surprised. Against minorities and other handicapped. I'm tired of it! I'm tired of not having my music. I'm tired of my father…"

"Yes, what?" he asks.

"I'm tired of him using it against me. My deafness."

"How does he do that?"

"Because it makes me more scared than I already am! It keeps me at home. That piano I told you about? The one I wanted to play 'A Maiden's Grave' on? They sold it when I was nine. Even though I could still hear enough to play and could for a couple years more. They said – well, he said, my father said – they didn't want me to learn to love something that would be taken away from me." She adds, "But the real reason was that he wanted to keep me on the farm."

So you'll be home then .

Melanie looks into de l'Epée eyes and says what she's never said to anyone. "I can't hate him for wanting me to stay at home. But selling the piano – that hurt so much. Even if I'd had only one day of playing music it would have been better than nothing. I'll never forgive him for that."

"They had no right to do that," he agrees. "But you managed to break away. You've got a job away from home, you're independent -" His voice fades.

And now for the hard part.

"What is it?" de l'Epée asks softly.

"A year ago," she begins, "I bought some new hearing aids. Generally they don't work at all but these seemed to have some effect with certain pitches of music. There was a recital in Topeka I wanted to go to. Kathleen Battle. I'd read in the paper that she was going to sing some spirituals as part of the program and I thought…"

"That she'd sing 'Amazing Grace'?"

"I wanted to see if I could hear it. I was desperate to go. But I had no way of getting there. I can't drive and the buses would have taken forever. I begged ray brother to take me. He'd been working all day on the farm but he said he'd take me anyway."

"We got there just in time for the concert. Kathleen Battle walked out on stage wearing this beautiful blue dress. She smiled to the audience… And then she began to sing."

"And?"

"It was useless." Melanie breathes deeply, kneads her ringers. "It…"

"Why are you so sad?"

"The hearing aids didn't work at all. Everything was muddled. I could hardly hear anything and the notes I could hear were all off key to me. We left at intermission. Danny was doing his best to cheer me up. He…"

She falls silent.