A Maidens Grave

sounds pretty determined. I mean, don’t you think?”
    Potter did think.
    “Would he do it?” LeBow asked.
    Potter shrugged.
    Angie said, “He’s drawn his weapon.”
    Oates was aiming steadily at Marks’s lower extremities.
    Well, this is escalating into a full-blown disaster, Potter thought.
    “Sir,” Oates called, “I will not miss. I’m an excellent shot and I’m just about to bring you down.”
    The assistant AG hesitated. The wind ripped the handkerchief from his fingers. It rose a few feet above his head.
    A shot.
    Handy’s bullet struck the white cloth. It jerked and floated away on the breeze.
    Again, through the Big Ear, the distant sound of Handy laughing. Marks looked back at the slaughterhouse. Called out, “You son of a bitch, Handy. I hope you rot in hell.”
    More laughter—or perhaps it was only the wind.
    Standing tall, the assistant AG walked off the field. As if strolling through his own backyard. Potter was pleased to see that Stevie Oates and his partner kept low as terriers as they crawled after the man under cover of the sumptuous, windswept grass.
     
    “You could’ve ruined everything,” Arthur Potter snapped. “What the hell were you thinking?”
    He had to look up into Marks’s eyes—the man was well over six feet tall—but still felt he was talking to a snotty child caught misbehaving.
    The assistant attorney general began firmly, “I was thinking—”
    “You never exchange hostages. The whole point of negotiation is to devalue them. You were as good as saying to him, ‘Here I am, I’m worth more than all of those girls combined.’ If he’d gotten you it would’ve made my job impossible.”
    “I don’t see why,” Marks answered.
    “Because,” Angie said, “a hostage like you would have boosted his sense of power and control a hundred times.He’d up his demands and stick to them. We’d never get him to agree to anything reasonable.”
    “Well, I kept thinking about those girls in there. What they were going through.”
    “He never would have let them go.”
    “I was going to talk him into it.”
    LeBow rolled his eyes and continued to type up the incident.
    Potter said, “I’m not going to arrest you.” He’d considered it and concluded that the fallout would be too thorny. “But if you interfere in any way with this barricade again I will and I’ll have the U.S. Attorney make sure you do time.”
    To Potter’s astonishment, Marks wasn’t the least contrite. The witty facade was gone, yes; but he seemed, if anything, irritated that Potter had interfered with his plans. “You do things by the book, Potter.” A large index finger pointed bluntly at the agent. “But the book doesn’t say anything about a psycho who gets his kicks killing children.”
    The phone buzzed. LeBow took the call and said to Potter, “Jocylyn’s gotten a clean bill of health from the medics. She’s fine. You want to debrief her now?”
    “Yes, thank you, Henry. Tell them to send her in. Stevie Oates too.” To Marks he said, “I’ll ask you to leave now.”
    Marks buttoned his suit jacket, brushed away the rock dust that had powdered his jacket from Handy’s target practice. He strode to the door and muttered something. Potter believed he heard: “blood on your hands.” But as to the other words, he didn’t have a clue.

3:40 P.M.
    For precious minutes she wept uncontrollably.
    Angie Scapello and Arthur Potter sat with Jocylyn and struggled to look calm and reassuring while in their heartsthey wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake answers out of her.
    Impatience, Arthur Potter’s nemesis.
    He kept a smile on his face and nodded with reassurance while the chubby twelve-year-old cried and cried, resting her round, red face in her hands.
    The door opened and Stevie Oates stepped inside, pulled off his helmet. Despite the cold his hair was damp with sweat. Potter turned his attention from the girl to the trooper.
    “You should stand down for a while, Stevie.”
    “Yessir, I think I will. Those last couple shots were kind of, well . . . close.”
    “Sobered you up pretty fast, did they?”
    “Yessir. Sure did.”
    “Tell me everything you saw when you went up there with the food.”
    As Potter expected, even with the aid of the videotape from the camera perched over his ear, Oates couldn’t provide much detail about the interior of the slaughterhouse.
    “Any thoughts on Handy’s state of mind?”
    “Seemed calm. Wasn’t