Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

Melanie stole to the doorway. Brutus and Stoat were at the windows, looking away from the killing room. Beverly was standing by the door and Melanie could see a trooper approaching with an attache" case. So they were exchanging the girl for something. With luck, they'd be busy for some minutes – long enough for Melanie and the others to get to the dock.

Melanie bent over Mrs. Harstrawn, who was now soaked in Bear's blood. The woman stared at the ceiling.

"Come on," Melanie signed. "Get up."

The teacher didn't move.

"Now!" Melanie signed emphatically.

Then the woman signed words Melanie had never seen before in ASL. "Kill me."

"Get up!"

"Can't. You go."

"Come on." Melanie's hands stabbed the air. 'No time !" She slapped the woman, tried to pull her to her feet; the teacher was dead weight.

Melanie grimaced in disgust. "Come on. Or I'll have to leave you!"

The teacher shook her head and closed her eyes. Melanie put the knife, still open, into the pocket of her skirt and, pulling Emily by the hand, slipped out of the doorway. They stepped into the door leading to the back of the slaughterhouse and vanished through the dim corridors.

Lou Handy looked at the cash, a surprisingly small pile for that much money, and said, "We should've thought of this before. Every little bit helps."

Wilcox looked out the window. "How many snipers you think they got on us?"

"Oh… lessee… 'bout a hundred. And with us nailing that trooper of theirs, they've probably got one'r two ready to shoot away and pretend they didn't hear the order not to."

"I always thought you'd be a good sniper, Lou."

"Me? Naw, I'm too, you know, impatient. I knew some of 'em in the service. You know what you do mosta the time? You gotta lie on your belly for a couple, three days 'fore you can make one shot. Not move a muscle. What's the fun of that?"

He flashed back to his days in the military. They seemed both easier and harder than life on the run, and very similar to life in prison.

"The shooting'd be fun, though."

"I'll give you that – Oh, fucking hell!"

He'd glanced at the back of the slaughterhouse and saw bloody footprints leading out of the room where the girls had been.

"Shit," Wilcox spat out.

Lou Handy was a man driven by positive forces, he truly believed. He rarely lost his temper and, yes, he was a murderer but when he killed he killed for expediency but hardly ever from rage.

Yet, a few times in his life, a fierce anger bubbled up from his soul and he became the crudest man on earth. Unstoppably cruel.

"That cunt," he whispered, his voice cracking. "That cocksucking cunt."

They ran to the doorway, where the bloody prints disappeared.

Handy said, "Stay here."

"Lou -"

"Stay the fuck here!" Handy raged. "I'm gonna fix her clock like I shoulda done a long time ago." He plunged into the murky bowels of the slaughterhouse, the knife in his hand, held low, with the blade up, as he'd been taught not in the army but on the streets of Minneapolis.

Sight is a miracle and it's the foremost of our senses. But we are as often informed by the adjunct perception, sound.

The sight of a river tells us what it is but the sound of water also can explain its character: placid or deadly or dying itself. For Melanie Charrol, deprived of this sense, smell had taken over. River rapids were airy and electric. Still water smelled stale. Here the Arkansas River smelled ominous – pungent and deep and decaying, as if it were the grave of many bottom feeders.

Still, it said, Come to me, come to me, I'm your way out.

Melanie followed its call unerringly. Through the maze of the deserted slaughterhouse she led the little girl in the hopeless Laura Ashley dress. The floorboards were rotting through in many places, but the bare bulbs from the main portion of the slaughterhouse were so bright that even back here enough light filtered into these reaches to illuminate their path. Occasionally she paused, lifted her nose, and breathed the air to make certain they were headed in the right direction. Then she'd turn once more toward the river, spinning around and looking behind her when the panic got to be too much.

Smell has not replaced sound as our primitive warning system.

But Brutus and Stoat didn't seem to have noticed the escape yet.

The teacher and student continued through the increasing gloom, pausing often and feeling their way along. The thin shafts of light were Melanie's only salvation, and now she glanced up at them. The upper part of the walls had rotted away and it was from there that the faint heavenly glow filled the murky underworld sky of this part of the slaughterhouse.

Then there it was, in front of them! A narrow door below a sign that said Dock . Melanie tightened her grip on Emily's hand and tugged the little girl along behind her. They pushed through the door and found a large loading-dock area. It was mostly empty but there were some oil drums that looked like they might still float. But the large door opening onto the outside was raised only a foot or so – high enough for them to crawl under but not high enough to push out one of the drums.

They walked to it and slipped outside.

Freedom, she thought, breathing the intoxicating air.

She laughed to herself at the irony – here she was rejoicing at being Outside, tearfully thankful for escaping from the horrible Inside. Motion startled her, she saw a boat not far offshore. Two officers in it. Somehow, they'd already spotted the girls and were now rowing toward the dock.

Melanie turned Emily around, signed, "Wait here for them. Stay down, hide behind that post."

Emily shook her head. "But aren't you -"

"I'm going back. I can't leave her."

"Please." The little girl's tears streaked down her face. The wind tossed her hair around her head. "She didn't want to come."

"Go."

"Come with me. God wants you to. He told me He does."

Melanie smiled, embraced the little girl, and stepped back. Looked over her tattered, filthy dress. "Next week, we have date. Shopping."

Emily wiped tears and walked to the edge of the dock. The policemen were very close, one smiling at the girl, the other scanning the building with a short black shotgun pointed toward the black windows above their heads.

Melanie glanced at them, waved, then slipped back beneath the loading-dock door. Once inside, she took Bear's knife from the pocket of her bloody skirt and started back into the slaughterhouse, instinctively following the same route she'd taken to arrive here.

Her neck hairs stirred suddenly and she felt a wave of the sixth sense that some deaf people claim they possess. When she looked, yes, yes, there he was – Brutus, about fifty feet away, crouching, making his way from one piece of machinery to another. In his hand he too held a short knife.

She shivered in terror and ducked behind a stack of employee lockers. She thought of climbing into one but remembered that he'd hear any sound she made. Then the sixth sense came back, pelting her neck. Melanie realized, though, that this wasn't anything supernatural at all; it was the vibration of Brutus's voice, calling to Stoat.

What was he saying?

A moment later, she learned. The lights went out and she was plunged into blackness.

She dropped to the ground, paralyzed with terror. Deaf, and now blind. She curled into a ball for a moment, praying she'd faint, the terror was so great. She realized she'd dropped the knife. She patted the ground but soon gave up on it; she knew that Brutus would have heard the sound of the weapon falling and was probably making his way toward her right now. He could be kicking aside everything in his way and she'd never know, while Melanie herself had to crawl carefully over the ground, picking her way silently over bits of metal and wood, machinery and tools.