A Maidens Grave

somebody.”
    “Tell me.”
    Should she? Yes, no?
    Yes, she decides. She has to. But just as she is about to speak, something intrudes.
    The smell of the river?
    The thud of approaching feet.
    Brutus?
    Alarmed, she opened her eyes. No, there was nothing. The slaughterhouse was peaceful. None of their three captors was nearby. She closed her eyes and struggled back into the music room. But de l’Epée was gone.
    “Where are you?” she cried. But realized that though her lips were moving she could no longer hear any words.
    No! I don’t want to leave. Come back, please . . . .
    Then Melanie realized that it wasn’t the breeze from the river that booted them out of the room; it was her own self. She had grown timid once again, ashamed, and could not confess.
    Even to the man who seemed more than willing to listen to anything she wanted to say, however foolish, however dark.
     
    They caught the glint of light about fifty yards away.
    Joe Silbert and Ted Biggins walked silently through the field on the left flank of the slaughterhouse. Silbertpointed to the light, a flash off the field glasses or a piece of equipment dangling from the belt of one of the hostage rescue troopers, a reflection from the brilliant halogen lights.
    Biggins grumbled that the lights were too bright. There’d be lens flare, he was worried.
    “You want me to go fucking shut them off?” Silbert whispered. He wanted a cigarette badly. They continued through the woods until they broke into an open field. Silbert looked through the camera, pushing the zoom button. The troopers, he could see, were clustered on a brush-filled ridge overlooking the slaughterhouse. One of them—hidden behind the school bus—was actually at the slaughterhouse, hovering just below a window.
    “Damn, they’re good,” Silbert whispered. “One of the best teams I’ve ever seen.”
    “Fucking lights,” muttered Biggins.
    “Let’s get going.”
    As they walked through the field Silbert looked for patrolling troops. “I thought we had baby-sitters all over the place.”
    “Those lights’re really a pain.”
    “This is almost too easy,” Silbert muttered.
    “Oh, my God.” Biggins was looking up in the air.
    “Perfecto,” Silbert whispered, laughing softly.
    The men gazed up at the top of the windmill.
    “It’ll get us above the lights,” Biggins the sticking record said.
    Forty feet in the air. They’d have a spectacular view of the field. Silbert grinned and began to climb. At the top they stood on the rickety platform. The mill was long abandoned and the blades were missing. It rocked back and forth in the wind.
    “That going to be a problem?”
    Biggins pulled a retractable monopod from his pocket and extended it, screwing the joints tight. “So what can I do about it? Like, I’ve got a Steadicam in my fucking pocket?”
    The view was excellent. Silbert could see troopers were clustered on the left side of the slaughterhouse. With grim respect he thought of Agent Arthur Potter, who’d lookedhim in the eye and said there’d be no assault. It was obvious the troopers were getting ready for an imminent kick-in.
    Stillwell took a small sponge-covered microphone from his pocket and held it in his hand. He spoke into his scrambled cellular phone and called the remote transmission van, which was back near the main press tent. “You cocksucker,” he said to Kellog when the man answered. “I was hoping they’d bust your ass.”
    “Naw, I told that trooper they could fuck your wife and they let me go.”
    “The other guys, they’re at the press table?”
    “Yep.”
    Silbert had in fact never told any of the other reporters about the press pool arrangement. He and Biggins, Kellog and Bianco and the two reporters now sitting at the pool site, pretending to type stories on the gutted Compaq, were all employees of KFAL in Kansas City.
    Biggins plugged the mike into the camera and unfolded the parabolic antenna. He clipped it to the handrail of the windmill and began speaking into the mike, “Testing, testing, testing . . .”
    “Cut the crap, Silbert, you gonna give us some pictures?”
    “Ted’s sending the level now.” Silbert gestured toward the antenna and Biggins adjusted it while he spoke. “I’m switching to radio,” the anchorman said, then took the microphone and shoved an earphone in his left ear.
    After a moment Kellog said, “There. Five by five. Jesus H. Christ, we got the visual. Where the fuck are you? In a