A Maidens Grave

convenience store situations. The local cops, I’m sure they never have. Most of the work round here’s DWI and farm workers playing mumbledypeg on each other Saturday night.”
    “What’s the chain of command?”
    “I’m supervisor. I’ve got four commanders—three lieutenants and one sergeant waiting for rank—overseeing those thirty-seven, pretty evenly split. Two squads of ten, one nine, one eight. You’re writing all this down, huh?”
    Potter smiled again. “Where are they deployed?”
    Like the civil war general Budd would one day resemble he pointed out the clusters of troopers in the field.
    “Weapons? Yours, I mean.”
    “We issue Glocks here, sir, as sidearms. We’ve got about fifteen riot guns between us. Twelve-gauge, eighteen-inch barrels. I’ve got six men and a woman with M-16s, in those trees there and over there. Scopes on all of ’em.”
    “Night scopes?”
    He chuckled. “Not round here.”
    “Who’s in charge of the local men?”
    “That’d be the sheriff of Crow Ridge. Dean Stillwell. He’s over yonder.”
    He pointed to a lanky, mop-haired man, whose head was down as he talked to one of his deputies.
    Another car pulled up and braked to a quick stop. Potter was greatly pleased to see who was behind the wheel.
    Short Henry LeBow climbed from the car and immediately pulled on a rumpled tweed businessman’s hat; his bald crown had offered a glistening target more than once during the two hundred hostage negotiations he and Potter had worked together. LeBow trudged forward, a pudgy, shy man, and the one hostage-incident intelligence officer Potter would rather work with than anyone else in the world.
    LeBow listed under the weight of two huge shoulder bags.
    The men shook hands warmly and Potter introduced him to Henderson and Budd.
    “Look what we have here, Henry. An Airstream trailer to call our very own.”
    “My. And a river to catch fish in. What is that?”
    “The river? The Arkansas,” Budd said, with the emphasis on the second syllable.
    “Takes me back to my youth,” LeBow offered.
    At Potter’s request Henderson returned to his car to radio the FBI resident agency in Wichita and find out when Tobe Geller and Angie Scapello would arrive. Potter,LeBow, and Budd climbed into the van. LeBow shook Derek’s hand then opened his satchels, extracting two laptop computers. He turned them on, plugged them into a wall socket, and then connected a small laser printer.
    “Dedicated line?” LeBow asked Derek.
    “Right there.”
    LeBow plugged in and no sooner had he gotten all his equipment on line than the printer started to groan.
    “Goodies already?” Potter asked.
    LeBow read the incoming fax, saying, “Prison department profiles, probation reports, yellow sheets and indictments. Very preliminary, Arthur. Very raw. ” Potter handed him the material delivered by the agents in Chicago and the voluminous notes he’d begun jotting on the plane. In terse words they described the escape of Lou Handy and two other inmates from a federal prison in southern Kansas, their murder of a couple in a wheat field several miles from the slaughterhouse and the taking of the hostages. The intelligence officer looked over the hard copies and then began typing the data into one of his computers.
    The door opened and Peter Henderson entered. He announced that Tobe Geller would be here momentarily and Angie Scapello would be arriving within the hour. Tobe had been flown in via Air Force F-16 from Boston, where he’d been teaching a course in computer-programming profiling as a way to establish the identity of criminal hackers. He should arrive any minute. Angie was taking a Marine DomTran jet from Quantico.
    “Angie?” LeBow said. “I’m pleased about that. Very pleased.”
    Agent Scapello resembled Geena Davis and had huge, brown eyes that no amount of failing to wear makeup could make less seductive. Still, LeBow’s excitement had nothing to do with her appearance and everything to do with her specialty—hostage psychology.
    En route to the barricade Angie would stop at the Laurent Clerc School and gather as much information about the hostages as she could. If Potter knew her at all he guessed she was already on the horn to the school, writing up profiles of the girls.
    LeBow taped a large sheet of blank paper on the wallabove the desk and hung a black marker by a string from it. The sheet was divided in half. The left was headed “Promises,” the right,