A Maidens Grave

startled Potter.
    “We checked into that. The place is too old. It’s not wired for modern current.” Potter pointed to the“ Deceptions” board and LeBow wrote. “But we’ll run a line in and get you some lights.”
    “Do that and then we’ll talk.”
    The balance of power was shifting subtly to Handy. Time to be tough. “All right. Fair enough. Now listen, Lou, I have to warn you. Don’t try to get out of the building. There’ll be snipers sighting on you. You’re perfectly safe inside.”
    He’ll be angry, Potter anticipated. A mini tantrum. Obscenities and expletives.
    “Oh, I’m perfectly safe anywhere,” Handy whispered into the phone. “Bullets pass right through me. I have strong medicine. When do I get some lights?”
    “Ten minutes, fifteen. Give us Beverly, Lou. If you do—”
    Click.
    “Damn,” Potter muttered.
    “Little eager there, Arthur,” LeBow said. Potter nodded. He’d made the classic mistake of negotiating against himself. Always wait for the other side to ask you for something. Understandably he’d pushed when he heard Handy’s hesitation and upped the stakes himself. But he’d scared off the seller. Still, at some point he’d have to go through this exercise. Hostage takers can be pushed a certain distance, and bribed a certain amount further. Half the battle was finding out how far and when to do which.
    Potter called Stillwell and told him he’d warned the takers about leaving the slaughterhouse. “You’re green-lighted to contain them, as discussed.”
    “Yessir,” Stillwell said.
    Potter asked Budd, “What’s the ETA on that power truck?”
    “Should be just ten minutes.” He was looking out the window morosely.
    “What’s the matter, Charlie?”
    “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that was good what you did there. Talking him out of shooting her.”
    Potter sensed there was something else on Budd’s mind. But he said only, “Oh, Handy was the one who decided not to shoot. I had nothing to do with it. The problem is, I don’t know why yet.”
    Potter waited five minutes, then pushed speed dial.
    The phone rang a million times. “Could you please turn that down a little, Tobe?” Potter nodded at the speaker above his head.
    “Sure . . . . Okay, uplink.”
    “Yeah?” Handy barked.
    “Lou, you’ll have a power line in about ten minutes.”
    Silence.
    “What about the girl, Beverly?”
    “Can’t have her,” he said abruptly, as if surprised that Potter hadn’t figured this out yet.
    Silence for a moment.
    “Thought you said if you got power—”
    “I’d think about it. I did, and you can’t have her.”
    Never get drawn into petty bickering. “Well, have you done any thinking about what you fellows want?”
    “I’ll get back to you on that, Art.”
    “I was hoping—”
    Click.
    “Downlink terminated,” Tobe announced.
     
    Stillwell brought the trooper in, a short, swarthy young man. He leaned the offending weapon by the door, its black bolt locked back, and walked up to Potter.
    “I’m sorry, sir, I was on this branch and there was this gust of wind. I—”
    “You were told to unchamber your weapon,” Potter snapped.
    The trooper stirred and his eyes darted around the room.
    “Here now,” Stillwell said, looking faintly ridiculous with a bulky flak jacket on under his Penney’s suit. “Tell the agent what you told me.”
    The trooper looked icily at Stillwell, resenting the new chain of command. He said to Potter, “I never received that order. I was locked and loaded from the git-go. That’s SOP for us, sir.”
    Stillwell grimaced but he said, “I’ll take responsibility, Mr. Potter.”
    “Oh, brother . . . .” Charlie Budd stepped forward. “Sir,”he said formally to Potter, “I have to say—it’s my fault. Mine alone.”
    Potter lifted an inquiring hand toward him.
    “I didn’t tell the snipers to unchamber. I should’ve, like you ordered me to. The fact is, I concluded that I wasn’t going to have troopers in the field unprotected. It’s my fault. Not this man’s. Not Dean’s.”
    Potter considered this and said to the sniper, “You’ll stand down and assist at the rear staging area. Go report to Agent-in-Charge Henderson.”
    “But I slipped, sir. It wasn’t my fault. It was an accident.”
    “There’re no accidents in my barricades,” Potter said coldly.
    “But—”
    “That’s all, Trooper,” Dean Stillwell said. “You heard your order. Dismissed.” The man snagged his