A Maidens Grave

slowly, and so loudly she felt the useless vibrations pelt her. “Say it.”
    She pointed to her throat.
    “You can’t talk neither?”
    She wouldn’t talk. No. Though there was nothing wrong with her vocal cords. And because she’d become deaf relatively late in life, Melanie knew the fundamentals of word formation. Still, following Susan’s model, Melanie avoided oralism because it wasn’t chic. The Deaf community resented people who straddled both worlds—the Deaf world and the world of the Others. Melanie hadn’t tried to utter a single word in five or six years.
    She pointed toward Beverly and breathed in hard. Touched her chest.
    “Yeah, the sick one . . . . What about her?”
    Melanie mimicked taking medicine.
    Brutus shook his head. “I don’t give a shit. Go back and sit down.”
    Melanie pushed her hands together, a prayer, a plea. Brutus and Stoat laughed. Brutus called something to Bear, and Melanie suddenly felt the firm vibrations of his footsteps approach. Then an arm was around her chest and Bear was dragging her across the floor. His fingers squeezed her nipple hard. She yanked his hand away and the tears came again.
    In the killing room she pushed away from him and collapsed on the floor. Melanie grabbed one of the lights, which rested on the ground, and clutched it, hot and oily, to her chest. It burned her fingers but she clung to it like a life preserver. Bear looked down, seemed to ask a question.
    But just as she’d done that spring day with her father on the farmhouse porch, Melanie gave no response; she simply went away.
    That day last May, she’d climbed the creaking stairs and sat in an old rocking chair in her bedroom. Now, she lay on the killing room floor. A child again, younger than the twins. Mercifully she closed her eyes and went away. To anyone watching it seemed that she’d slipped into a faint. But in fact she wasn’t here at all; she’d gone someplace else, someplace safe, someplace not another living soul knew about.
     
    When he recruited hostage negotiators Arthur Potter found himself in the peculiar position of interviewing clones of himself. Middle-aged, frumpy, easygoing cops.
    For a time it was thought that psychologists ought to be used for negotiating; but even though a barricade resembles a therapy session in many ways, shrinks just didn’t work out. They were too analytical, focused too much on diagnostics. The point of talking to a taker isn’t to figure out where he fits in the DSM IV but to persuade him to come out with his hands up. This requires common sense,concentration, a sharp mind, patience (well, Arthur Potter worked hard at that), a healthy sense of self, the rare gift of speaking well, and the rarer talent of listening.
    And most important, a negotiator is a man with controlled emotions.
    The very quality that Arthur Potter was wrestling with at the moment. He struggled to forget the image of Susan Phillips’s chest exploding before him, feeling the hot tap of blood droplets striking his face. There’d been many deaths in the barricades he’d worked over the years. But he’d never been so close to such a cold-blooded death as this one.
    Henderson called. The reporters had heard a gunshot and were champing to get some information. “Tell them I’ll make a statement within a half-hour. Don’t leak it, Pete, but he just killed one.”
    “Oh, God, no.” But the SAC didn’t sound upset at all; he seemed almost pleased—perhaps because Potter had assumed point position on this megatragedy in progress.
    “Executed her. Shot her in the back. Listen, this could all go bad in a big way. Get on the horn to Washington and push the HRT assembly, okay?”
    “Why’d he do it?”
    “No apparent reason,” Potter said, and they hung up.
    “Henry?” Potter said to LeBow. “I need some help here. What should we stay away from?”
    Negotiators try to increase the rapport with their takers by dipping into personal matters. But a question about a sensitive subject can send an agitated taker into a frenzy, even prompting him to kill.
    “There’s so little data,” the intelligence officer said. “I guess I’d avoid his military service. His brother Rudy.”
    “Parents?”
    “Relation unknown. I’d steer clear on general principles until we learn more.”
    “His girlfriend? What’s her name?”
    “Priscilla Gunder. No problems there, it looks like. Fancied themselves a regular Bonnie and Clyde.”
    “Unless,” Budd pointed out,