A Maidens Grave

squinted, drew back, and launched the phone in a low arc. It passed well over the rocks he’d been worried about and rolled to a stop only thirty feet from the arched brick doorway of the Webber & Stoltz plant.
    “Excellent,” Budd muttered, clapping Stillwell on the back. The sheriff smiled with cautious pride.
    “Maybe it’s a good omen,” LeBow suggested.
    Oates refused to present his back to the darkened windows of the slaughterhouse and eased backward into the grass until he was lost to sight.
    “Now let’s see who’s the brave one,” Potter mumbled.
    “What do you mean?” Budd asked.
    “I want to know who’s the gutsiest and most impulsive of the three in there.”
    “Maybe they’re drawing straws.”
    “No. My guess is that two of them wouldn’t go out there for any money and the third can’t wait. I want to see who that third one is. That’s why I didn’t ask for Handy specifically.”
    “I bet it’s him, though,” Budd said.
    But it wasn’t. The door opened and Shepard Wilcox walked out.
    Potter studied him through the binoculars.
    Taking a casual stroll. Looking around the field. Wilcox sauntered toward the phone. A pistol butt protruded from the middle of his belt. “Looks like a Glock,” Potter said of the gun.
    LeBow wrote down the information in a small notebook, the data to be transcribed when he returned to the command post. He then whispered, “Thinks he’s the Marlboro man.”
    “Looks pretty confident,” Budd said. “But I suppose he’s got all the cards.”
    “He’s got none of the cards,” the negotiator said softly. “But either one’ll give you all the confidence in the world.”
    Wilcox snagged the strap of the phone’s backpack and gazed again at the line of police cars. He was grinning.
    Budd laughed. “It’s like—”
    The crack of the gunshot echoed through the field and with a soft phump the bullet slapped into the ground ten feet from Wilcox. In an instant he had the pistol in his hand and was firing toward the trees where the shot had come from.
    “No!” cried Potter, who leapt up and raced into the field. Through the bullhorn he turned to the cops behind the squad cars, all of whom had drawn their pistols or lifted shotguns and chambered rounds. “Hold your fire!” He waved his hands madly. Wilcox fired twice at Potter. The first shot vanished into the cloudy sky. The second split a rock a yard from Potter’s feet.
    Stillwell was shouting into his throat mike, “No return fire! All unit commanders, no return fire!”
    But there was return fire.
    Dirt kicked up around Wilcox as he flung himself to the ground and with carefully placed shots shattered three police car windshields before reloading. Even under these frantic conditions Wilcox was a fine marksman. From a window of the slaughterhouse came the repeated explosions of a semiautomatic shotgun; pellets hissed through the air.
    Potter remained standing, in plain view, waving his hands. “Stop your firing!”
    Then, suddenly, complete silence fell over the field.The wind vanished for a moment and stillness descended. The hollow cry of a bird filled the gray afternoon; the sound was heartbreaking. The sweet smell of gunpowder and fulminate of mercury, from primers, was thick.
    Gripping the phone, Wilcox backed toward the slaughterhouse.
    To Stillwell, Potter called, “Find out who fired. Whoever fired the first shot—I want to see him in the van. The ones who fired afterwards—I want them off the field and I want everybody to know why they’re being dismissed.”
    “Yessir.” The sheriff nodded and hurried off.
    Potter, still standing, turned the binoculars onto the slaughterhouse, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside when Wilcox entered. He was scanning the ground floor when he observed a young woman looking through the window to the right of the slaughterhouse door. She was blond and seemed to be in her mid-twenties. Looking right at him. She was distracted for a moment, glanced into the bowels of the slaughterhouse then back to the field, terror in her eyes. Her mouth moved in a curious way—very broadly. She was saying something to him. He watched her lips. He couldn’t figure out the message.
    Potter turned aside and handed LeBow the binoculars. “Henry, fast. Who’s that? You have any idea?”
    LeBow had been inputting the identities of those hostages they had information about. But by the time he looked, the woman was gone. Potter described her.
    “The oldest