A Maidens Grave

to cooperate. His statement was being taken down by the very same tape recorder he’d slipped Budd earlier in the evening.
    “And what exactly were you doing at the savings and loan?” Potter asked.
    “Making bad loans to myself. Well, to fictional people and companies. Writing them off and keeping the money.” He shrugged as if to say, Isn’t it obvious?
    Marks, the prosecutor specializing in white-collar crime, had learned well from his suspects: he’d bled the Wichita institution’s stockholders, and the public, for close to five million dollars—much of it spent already, it seemed. “I thought with the turnaround in the real estatemarket,” he continued, “some of the bank’s legitimate investments would pay off and we could cover up the shortfall. But when I went over the books I saw we just weren’t going to make it.”
    The Resolution Trust Corporation, the government agency taking over failed banking institutions, was about to come in and seize the place.
    “So you hired Lou Handy to burn it down,” Budd said. “Destroy all the records.”
    “How did you know him?” the agent asked.
    Budd beat Marks to it. “You prosecuted Handy five years ago, wasn’t it? The convenience-store heist—the barricade Sharon Foster talked him out of.”
    The assistant attorney general nodded. “Oh, yes, I remembered him. Who wouldn’t? Smart son of a bitch. He took the stand in his own defense and nearly ran circles around me. Had to do some digging to find him for the S&L job, you can bet. Checked with his parole officer, some of my contacts on the street. Offered him two hundred thousand to torch the place as part of a robbery. Only he got caught. So I had no choice—I had to cut a deal with him. I’d help him escape, otherwise he’d blow the whistle on me. That cost me another three hundred thousand.”
    “How’d you get him out? Callana’s maximum-security.”
    “Paid two guards their annual salaries in cash to do it.”
    “Was one of them the guard Handy killed?”
    Marks nodded.
    “Saved some money there, didn’t you?” Charlie Budd asked bitterly.
    “You left a car for him with the guns, the scrambled radio, and the TV in it,” Potter continued. “And the tools to get the money out of the slaughterhouse where you’d hidden it for him.”
    “Well, hell, we couldn’t exactly leave the money in the car. Too risky. So I sealed it up in this old steam pipe behind the front window.”
    Potter asked, “What were the escape plans going to be?”
    “Originally, I’d arranged for a private plane to fly him and his buddies out of Crow Ridge, from that little airport up the road. But he never made it. He had the accident—with the Cadillac—and lost about a half-hour.”
    “Why did he take the girls?”
    “He needed them. With the delay he knew he didn’t have time to get the money and make it to the airport—with the cops right on his tail. But he wasn’t going to leave without the cash. Lou figured with the hostages inside and me working to get him out, it didn’t matter how many cops were at the slaughterhouse. He’d get out sooner or later. He radioed me from inside and I agreed to convince the FBI to give him a helicopter. That didn’t work but by then I remembered Sharon Foster’s negotiation with Handy a few years ago. I found out where she was stationed now and called Pris Gunder—his girlfriend—and told her to drive over to Foster’s house. Then I pretended I was a trooper and called Ted Franklin at state police.”
    Potter asked, “So your heart-rending offer to give yourself up for the girls . . . that was all an act.”
    “I did want them out. I didn’t want anyone to die. Of course not!”
    Of course, Potter thought cynically. “Where’s Handy now?”
    “I have no idea. Once he got out of the barricade that was it. I’d done everything I’d agreed. I told him he was on his own.”
    Potter shook his head. Budd asked coldly, “Tell me, Marks, how’s it feel to’ve murdered those troopers?”
    “No! He promised me he wouldn’t kill anyone! His girlfriend was just going to handcuff Foster. He—”
    “And the other troopers? The escort?”
    Marks stared at the captain for a minute and when no credible lie came to mind whispered, “It wasn’t supposed to work out like this. It wasn’t. ”
    “Call for some baby-sitters,” Potter said. But before Budd could, his phone buzzed.
    “Hello?” He listened for a moment. His eyes went wide. “Where?