A Maidens Grave

student’s seventeen. It was probably one of the two teachers. I’d guess the younger one. Melanie Charrol. She’s twenty-five. No other information on her yet.”
    Wilcox backed into the slaughterhouse. Potter saw nothing inside except blackness. The door slammed shut. Potter scanned the windows again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the young woman. But he saw nothing. He was silently duplicating the motion of her mouth. Lips pursed together, lower teeth touching the upper lips; lips pursed again, though differently, like in a kiss.
    “We should make the call.” LeBow touched Potter’s elbow.
    Potter nodded and the men hurried back to the van insilence, Budd behind them, glaring at one of the troopers who’d returned fire at Wilcox. Stillwell was reading the man the riot act.
    Lips, teeth, lips. What were you trying to say? he wondered.
    “Henry,” Potter said. “Mark down: ‘First contact with a hostage.’ ”
    “Contact?”
    “With Melanie Charrol.”
    “What was the communication?”
    “I don’t know yet. I just saw her lips move.”
    “Well—”
    “Write it down. ‘Message unknown.’ ”
    “Okay.”
    “And add, ‘Subject was removed from view before the threat management team leader could respond.’ ”
    “Will do,” replied meticulous Henry LeBow.
    Inside the van Derek asked what happened but Potter ignored him. He snatched the phone from Tobe Geller and set it on the desk in front of him, cradled it between his hands.
    He looked out through the thick window over the field, where the flurry of activity after the shooting had stopped completely. The front was now quiet; the errant officers—three of them—had been led off by Dean Stillwell, and on the field the remaining troopers and agents stood with dense anticipation and fear and joy at the prospect of battle—a joy possible because there’re thirty of you for each of them, because you’re standing behind a half-ton Detroit picket line and wearing an Owens-Corning body vest, a heavy gun at your side, and because your spouse awaits you in a cozy bungalow with a beer and hot casserole.
    Arthur Potter looked out over this cool and windy afternoon, an afternoon with the taste of Halloween in the air despite the midsummer month.
    It was about to begin.
    He turned away from the window, pushed a rapid-dial button on the phone. Tobe flipped a switch and began the recording. He hit another button and the sound of the ringing crackled through a speaker above their heads.
    The phone rang five times, ten, twenty.
    Potter felt LeBow’s head turn toward him.
    Tobe crossed his fingers.
    Then: Click.
    “We’ve got an uplink,” Tobe whispered.
    “Yeah?” The voice rang through the speaker.
    Potter took a deep breath.
    “Lou Handy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “This is Arthur Potter. I’m with the FBI. I’d like to talk to you.”
     
    “Lou, that shot, it was a mistake.”
    “Was it now?”
    Potter listened carefully to the voice, laced with a slight accent, mountain, West Virginian. He heard self-confidence, derision, weariness. All three combined to scare him considerably.
    “We had a man in a tree. He slipped. His weapon discharged accidentally. He’ll be disciplined.”
    “You gonna shoot him?”
    “It was purely an accident.”
    “Accidents’re funny things.” Handy chuckled. “I was in Leavenworth a few years back and this asshole worked in the laundry room choked to death on a half-dozen socks. Had to’ve been a accident. He wouldn’t go chewing on socks on purpose. Who’d do that?”
    Cool as ice, Potter thought.
    “Maybe this was that kinda accident.”
    “This was a run-of-the-mill, U.S.-certified accident, Lou.”
    “Don’t much care what it was. I’m shooting one of ’em. Eenie meenie miney . . .”
    “Listen to me, Lou . . . .”
    No answer.
    “Can I call you Lou?”
    “You got us surrounded, don’tcha? You got assholes in the trees with guns even if they can’t sit on branches without falling. Guess you can call me what you fucking well like.”
    “Listen to me, Lou. This’s a real tense situation here.”
    “Not for me it ain’t. I ain’t tense at all. Here’s a pretty little blond one. No tits to speak of. Think I’ll pick her.”
    He’s playing with us. Eighty percent he’s bluffing.
    “Lou, Wilcox was in clear view. Our man was only eighty yards away, M-16 with a scope. Those troopers can drop a man at a thousand yards if they have to.”
    “But it’s awful windy out there.