A Maidens Grave

curious too because she was sure the family was away for the week. She squinted at the car. The two people—she couldn’t see them clearly, just silhouettes—got out and walked through the Albertsons’ gate, disappearing behind the tall hedge that bordered the couple’s property, directly across from her house. Then Melanie remembered that the family had several cats. Probably friends were feeding the animals while the couple was away. Returning to her couch, she sat down and pulled on the headset once more.
    Yes, yes . . .
    The music, what she could hear of it, as limited as the sound was to her, was an incredible comfort. More than the brandy, more than the companionship of the parents of her students, more than thoughts about the inexplicable and inexplicably appealing Arthur Potter; it lifted her away, magically, from the horror of this windy day in July.
    Melanie closed her eyes.

1:20 A.M.
    Captain Charlie Budd had aged considerably in the last twelve hours.
    Potter studied him in the adulterating fluorescent light of the cramped office of the sheriff of Crow Ridge, which was located in a strip mall off the business loop. Budd no longer appeared young and was easily a decade past callow. And like all of them here tonight, his face showed the patina of disgust.
    And uncertainty too. For they had no idea if they’d been betrayed and if so by whom. Budd and Potter sat across the desk from Dean Stillwell, who leaned into the phone, nodding gravely. He handed the receiver to Budd.
    Tobe and Henry LeBow had just arrived in a mad race from the airport. LeBow’s computers were already booted up; they seemed like an extension of his body. Angie’s DomTran jet had hung a U-turn somewhere over Nashville and she was due back in Crow Ridge in a half-hour.
    “All right,” Budd said, hanging up. “Here’re the details. They aren’t pretty.”
    The two squad cars carrying Handy and Wilcox had left the slaughterhouse and headed south to the Troop C headquarters in Clements, about ten miles south. Between Crow Ridge and the state facility the lead car, driven by the woman who was presumably Priscilla Gunder, braked so suddenly it left twenty-foot skid marks and sent the second car, behind it, off the road. Apparently the woman pulled her pistol and shot the trooper beside her and the one in the backseat, killing them instantly.
    The crime scene investigators speculated that Wilcox, in the second car, had undone his cuffs with the key that Gunder had slipped him and grabbed the gun of the trooper sitting beside him. But because he’d been double-shackled, according to Potter’s surrender instructions, it had taken him longer to escape than planned. He’d shot the officer beside him but the driver leapt from the car and fired one shot into Wilcox before Handy, or his girlfriend, shot him in the back.
    “Wilcox wasn’t killed outright,” Budd continued, brushing his hair, as being in Stillwell’s presence made you want to do. “He climbed out and crawled to the first squad car. Somebody—they think it was Handy—finished him with a single shot to the forehead.”
    In his mind Potter heard: You kill when people don’t do what they’re supposed to. You kill the weak because they’ll drag you down. What’s wrong with that?
    “What about Detective Foster?” Potter asked.
    “She was found beside a stolen car about a mile from her house. Her husband said she left the place about ten minutes after she got the call about the barricade. They think the Gunder woman flagged her down near the highway, took her uniform, killed her, and stole her cruiser. Prelim forensics show some of the prints were Gunder’s.”
    “What else, Charlie? Tell us.” For Potter saw the look on his face.
    Budd hesitated. “After the real Sharon Foster had stripped down to her underwear Handy’s girlfriend gagged and handcuffed her. Then she used a knife. She didn’t have to. But she did. It wasn’t too pleasant what she did. It took her a while to die.”
    “And then she drove to the barricade site,” Potter spat out angrily, “and waltzed out with him.”
    “Where’d they head?” LeBow asked. “Still going south?”
    “Nobody’s got a clue,” Budd said.
    “They’re in a cruiser,” Stillwell said. “Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
    “We’ve got choppers out looking,” Budd offered. “Six of them.”
    “Oh, he’s already switched cars,” Potter muttered. “Concentrate on any report of car theft in