A Maidens Grave

weapon then stormed out of the van.
    Budd said, “I’ll do the same, sir. I’m sorry. I really am. You should have Dean here assist you. I—”
    Potter pulled the captain aside. He said in a whisper, “I need your help, Charlie. But what you did, it was a personal judgment call. That, I don’t need from you. Understand?”
    “Yessir.”
    “You still want to be on the team?”
    Budd nodded slowly.
    “Okay, now go on out there and give them the order to unchamber.”
    “Sir—”
    “Arthur.”
    “I’ve got to go home and look my wife in the eye and tell her that I disobeyed an FBI agent’s direct order.”
    “How long you been married?”
    “Thirteen years.”
    “Get hitched in junior high?”
    Budd smiled grimly.
    “What’s her name?”
    “Meg. Margaret.”
    “You have children?”
    “Two girls.” Budd’s face remained miserable.
    “Go on now. Do what I asked.” Potter held his eyes.
    The captain sighed. “I will, yessir. It won’t happen again.”
    “Keep your head down.” Potter smiled. “And don’t delegate this one, Charlie.”
    “No sir. I’ll check everybody.”
    Stillwell looked on sympathetically as Budd, hangtail, walked out the door.
    Tobe was stacking up audiocassettes. All conversations with the takers would be recorded. The tape recorder was a special unit with a two-second delay built in, so that an electronic voice added a minute-by-minute time stamp onto the recording yet didn’t block out the conversation. He looked up at Potter. “Who was it who said, ‘I’ve met the enemy and he is us’? Was that Napoleon? Or Eisenhower, or somebody?”
    “I think it was Pogo,” Potter said.
    “Who?”
    “Comic strip,” Henry LeBow said. “Before your time.”

12:33 P.M.
    The room was growing dark.
    It was only early afternoon but the sky had filled with purple clouds and the windows in the slaughterhouse were small. Need that juice and need it now, Lou Handy thought, peering through the dimness.
    Water dripped and chains hung from the gloomy shadows of the ceiling. Hooks everywhere and overhead conveyors. There were rusted machines that looked like parts of cars a giant had been playing with and said fuck it and tossed down on the floor.
    Giant, Handy laughed to himself. What the hell’m I talking about?
    He wandered through the ground floor. Wild place. What’s it like to make money knocking off animals? he wondered. Handy had worked dozens of jobs. Usuallysweat labor. Nobody ever let him operate fancy equipment, which would have doubled or tripled his salary. The jobs always ended after a month or two. Arguments with the foreman, complaints, fights, drinking in the locker room. He had no patience to wait it out with people who couldn’t understood that he wasn’t your average person. He was special. Nofuckingbody in the world had ever caught on to this.
    The floor was wood, solid as concrete. Beautifully joined oak. Handy was no craftsman, like Rudy’d been, but he could appreciate good work. His brother had laid flooring for a living. Handy was suddenly angry at that asshole Potter. For some reason the agent had brought Rudy to mind. It infuriated Handy, made him want to get even.
    He walked to the room where they’d put the hostages. It was semicircular, sided in porcelain tile, windowless. The blood drain. He guessed that if somebody fired a gun in the middle of the room it’d be loud enough to shatter eardrums.
    Didn’t much matter with this buncha birds, he thought. He looked them over. What was weird was that these girls—most of ’em—were pretty. That oldest one especially, the one with the black hair. The one looking back at him with a go-to-fucking-hell expression on her face. She’s what, seventeen, eighteen? He smiled at her. She stared back. Handy gazed at the rest of them. Yep, pretty. It blew him away. They’re freaks and all and you’d think they’d look a little gross, like retards do—like no matter how pretty, there’s still something wrong, the corners don’t meet even. But no, they looked normal. But damn, they cry a lot. That was irritating . . . that sound their throats make. They’re fucking deaf—they shouldn’t be making those fucking sounds!
    Suddenly, in his mind, Lou Handy saw his brother.
    The red dot appearing where Rudy’s skull joined his spine. Then more dots, the tiny gun bucking in his fingers. The shudder in his brother’s shoulders as the man stiffened, did a spooky little dance, and fell dead.
    Handy