A Maidens Grave

Lou?”
    “Thanks for the lights. We checked ’em for microphones . . . the phone too. Didn’t find a fucking thing. A man of your word.”
    Honor. It means something to him, Potter noted, trying once again to comprehend the unfathomable.
    “Say, what are you, Art, a senior agent? Agent in Charge? That’s what they call ’em, right?”
    Never let the HT think you’re in a position to make important decisions by yourself. You want the option to stall while you pretend to talk to your superiors.
    “Nope. Just a run-of-the-mill special agent who happens to like talking.”
    “So you say.”
    “I’m a man of my word, remember?” Potter said, glancing at the “Deceptions” board.
    Time to defuse things, build up some rapport. “So what about some food, Lou? We could start grilling up some burgers. How do you like ’em?”
    Blood red, Potter speculated.
    But he was wrong.
    “Listen up, Art. I just want you to know what kind of nice fellow I am. I’m letting one of ’em go.”
    This news depressed Potter immeasurably. Curiously, with this act of spontaneous generosity, Handy had put them on the defensive. It was tactically brilliant. Potter was now indebted to him and he felt again a shift in the balance of power between predator and prey.
    “I want you to understand that I ain’t all bad.”
    “Well, Lou, I appreciate that. Is it Beverly? The sick girl?”
    “Uh-uh.”
    Potter and the other cops craned forward to look outside. They could see a slight splinter of light as the door opened. Then a blur of white.
    Keep his mind off the hostages, Potter thought. “You done any more thinking about what you folks’re interested in? It’s time to get down to some serious horse trading, Lou. What do you say—”
    The phone clicked into dull static.
    The door to the van suddenly swung open. Dean Stillwell’s head poked in. The sheriff said, “They’re releasing one of them.”
    “We know.”
    Stillwell disappeared outside again.
    Potter spun about in the swivel chair. He couldn’t see clearly. The clouds were very dense now and the fields dim, as if an eclipse had suddenly dipped the earth into shadow.
    “Let’s try the video, Tobe.”
    A video screen burst to life, showing in crisp black-and-white the front of the slaughterhouse. The door was open. They had all five lamps burning, it seemed.
    Tobe adjusted the sensitivity and the picture settled.
    “Who, Henry?”
    “It’s the older girl, Susan Phillips. Seventeen.”
    Budd laughed. “Hey, looks like it may be easier than we thought. If he’s just gonna give ’em away.”
    On the screen Susan looked back into the doorway. A hand pushed her forward. Then the door closed.
    “This is great,” LeBow said enthusiastically, looking out the window, his head close to Potter’s. “Seventeen. And she’s a top student. She’ll tell us a truckload of stuff about the inside.”
    The girl walked in a straight line away from the building. Through the glasses Potter could see how grim her face was. Her hands were tied behind her but she didn’t seem to have suffered from the brief captivity.
    “Dean,” Potter said into the radio microphone, “send one of your men to meet her.”
    “Yessir.” The sheriff was now speaking in a normal tone into his throat mike; he’d finally gotten the hang of the gear.
    A state trooper in body armor and helmet slipped from behind a squad car and cautiously started in a crouch toward the girl, who’d made her way fifty feet from the slaughterhouse.
    The gasp came from deep in Arthur Potter’s throat.
    As if his whole body’d been submerged in ice water he shuddered, understanding perfectly what was happening.
    It was intuition probably, a feeling gleaned from the hundreds of barricades he’d negotiated. The fact that no taker had ever spontaneously released a hostage this early. The fact that Handy was a killer without remorse.
    He couldn’t say for sure what tipped him but the absolute horror of what was about to occur gripped his heart. “No!” The negotiator leapt to his feet, knocking the chair over with a huge crash.
    LeBow glanced at him. “Oh, no! Oh, Christ, no.”
    Charlie Budd’s head swiveled back and forth. He whispered, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
    “He’s going to kill her,” LeBow whispered.
    Potter tore the door open and ran outside, his heart slugging away in his chest. Snatching a flak jacket from the ground, he slipped between two cars and, gasping, ran straight toward