A Maidens Grave

too and watched Handy’s progress as he approached up the gully.
    “And the hostages?” Potter asked urgently.
    D’Angelo listened. He said aloud, “Bonner’s dead.”
    Yes, yes, yes?
    “And they found two female hostages. One, white, late thirties. Conscious but incoherent.”
    For chrissake, what about—
    “Second one, white, age mid-twenties. Also conscious.” D’Angelo winced. “Seriously hurt, he says.”
    No. Oh, my God.
    “What?” Potter cried. “What happened to her?” The negotiator lifted his own radio and cut into the channel. “How is she? The younger woman?”
    The HRT agent inside said, “Handy must’ve really done a number on her, sir.”
    “How bad?” Potter said furiously. Budd and D’Angelo stared at him. Handy was approaching, two agents on either side. Potter found he couldn’t look at him.
    The agent inside said into the radio, “Well, sir, she doesn’t look that badly hurt but the thing is he must’ve beat the hell out of her. She can’t hear a word we’re saying.”
    The surrender had happened so fast he’d forgotten to tell the tactical agents Melanie was deaf.
    D’Angelo said something to him and so did Charlie Budd but Potter didn’t hear, so loud was his manic, hysterical laughter. Sharon Foster and nearby troopers looked at him uneasily. Potter supposed, without caring, that he sounded like the crazy old man that he was.
     
    “Lou.”
    “Art, you don’t look nothing like what I thought. You do have to lose a few pounds.”
    Handy stood behind the van, hands cuffed behind him. Sharon Foster was nearby, looking over the prisoners. When Handy glanced at her body, grinning, she staredback contemptuously. Potter knew that after a hard negotiation, particularly one in which there’d been a killing, you felt an urge to insult or belittle your enemy. Potter controlled it himself but she was younger and more emotional. She sneered at Handy, walked away. The convict laughed and turned back to Potter.
    “Your picture doesn’t do you justice,” the negotiator said to him.
    “Fuckers never do.”
    As always, after a surrender, the hostage taker appeared minuscule compared with the image in Potter’s mind. Handy’s features were hard and compact, his face lean and lined and pale. He knew Handy’s height and weight but still he was surprised at how diminished he seemed.
    Potter scanned the crowd for Melanie. He didn’t see her. Troopers, firemen, medics, and Stillwell’s now-disbanded containment force were milling about outside the slaughterhouse. The car and the school bus and the processing plant itself were of course crime scenes and since by agreement this was technically now a state operation Budd had formally arrested Handy and Wilcox and was trying to preserve the site for the forensic teams.
    Where is she?
    There was a brief incident when Potter arrested Handy on federal charges. Handy’s eyes went cold. “What the fuck is this?”
    “I’m just preserving our rights,” Potter said. SAC Henderson explained that it was a mere technicality, and Roland Marks too confirmed that everyone would adhere to the written agreement, though Potter had a bad moment when he thought Marks was going to take a swing at the convict. The assistant AG muttered, “Fucking child killer,” and stormed off. Handy laughed at his receding back.
    Shep Wilcox, grinning, looked around, disappointed, it seemed, there were no reporters present.
    The older teacher, Donna Harstrawn, was brought out on a gurney. Potter went to her and walked alongside the medics. He looked at one of the techs, eyebrow raised. “She’ll be okay,” the young man whispered. “Physically, I mean.”
    “Your husband and children are at the Days Inn,” he told her.
    “It was . . .” she began, and fell silent. Shook her head. “I can’t see anyone now. Please. No . . . I don’t ever . . .” Her words dissolved, incoherent.
    Potter squeezed her arm and stopped walking, watched them carry her up the hill to the waiting ambulance.
    He turned back to the slaughterhouse just as Melanie Charrol was being escorted out. Her blond hair in disarray. She too—like Handy—seemed smaller than Potter expected. He started forward but paused. Melanie hadn’t seen him; she was walking quickly, her eyes on Donna Harstrawn. Her clothes were dark—gray skirt, black stockings, burgundy blouse—but it seemed to Potter that they were saturated with blood.
    “What’s all that blood on her?” he