A Maidens Grave

mostly for pilferings at McConnell Air Force Base and internecine battles with Indian Affairs and BATF. The career of the thirty-nine-year-old agent was at a complete standstill.
    “Risks?” Potter asked LeBow. “He going to get in our way?”
    “He’s not in any position to do anything,” the intelligence officer said. “Not officially.”
    “He’s desperate.”
    “I’m sure he is. I said ‘not officially.’ We still have to keep our eyes on him.”
    Potter chuckled. “So, we’ve got an assistant attorney general ready to hand himself over to the takers and a SAC who wants to hand me over to them.”
    We have met the enemy  . . .
    He turned back to the window, thinking of Melanie, recalling what Jocylyn had said. She just closes her eyes. Doesn’t do anything. What does that mean? he wondered.
    Tobe broke into Potter’s musings. “Handy’s expecting a chopper in an hour, five minutes.”
    “Thank you, Tobe,” Potter responded.
    He looked out over the slaughterhouse and thought: A key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.
     
    “Officer.”
    Charlie Budd was walking back to the van from his own unmarked car, where he’d just typed in a computer request for 211s in a four-county area. The only robberies today had been a convenience store, a gas station, and a Methodist church. The booty in none of them matched the weapons, TV, and tools that the HTs had brought with them.
    “Come over here, Officer,” the man’s low voice said.
    Oh, brother. What now?
    Roland Marks leaned against the side of a supply van, smoking a cigarette. Budd thought he’d be ten miles away by now but there was purpose in his eyes and he looked like he was here to stay.
    “You witnessed that little travesty,” Marks announced. Budd had been in the corner of the van as Potter read the riot act. Budd looked around then wandered through the grass to the dark-featured man and stood upwind of the smoke. He said nothing.
    “I love summer afternoons, Captain. Remind me of growing up. I played baseball every day. Did you? You look like you could run like the wind.”
    “Track and field. Four-forty and eight-eighty mostly.”
    “All right.” Marks’s voice dropped again, softer than Budd thought it possibly could and still be audible. “We had the luxury, you and I’d dance around a bit like we were on a dinner cruise and you’d get my meaning and then go off and do what you ought to. But there’s no time for that.”
    I was never cut out to be an officer, Budd thought, and replayed for the hundredth time the bullet cutting down seventeen-year-old Susan Phillips. He choked suddenly and turned it into an odd-sounding cough. “Say, I’m real busy right now, sir. I have to—”
    “Answer me yes or no. Did I see something in your eyes in the van?”
    “Don’t know what you mean, sir.”
    “Sure, maybe what I did was out of line. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. But you weren’t completely sure Potter was right either. And—no, hold up there. I think if we took a vote more people in that van’d come down on my side than his.”
    Budd summoned his courage from somewhere and said, “It’s not a popularity contest, sir.”
    “Oh, no, it’s not. That’s exactly right. It’s a question about whether those girls live, and I think Potter doesn’t care if they do or not.”
    “Noooo. That’s not true. Not by a long shot. He cares a lot.”
    “What’m I seeing in your face, Officer? Just what I saw in the van, right? You’re scared shitless for those little things in that slaughterhouse.”
    Our number-one priority isn’t getting those girls out alive  . . . .
    Marks continued, “Come on now, Officer. Admit it.”
    “He’s a good man,” Budd said.
    “I know he’s a good man. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
    “He’s doing the best—”
    “There is no way in hell,” Marks said slowly, “I’m letting those girls in there die. Which is something he’s willing to do . . . and that’s been eating at you all day. Am I right?”
    “Well—”
    Marks’s hand dug into his suit jacket and he pulled out a wallet, flipped it open. For a crazy moment Budd though he was going to display his AG’s office ID. But what Budd found himself looking at had far more impact on him. Three photos in glossy sleeves of young girls. One had knitted eyebrows and slightly distorted features. The handicapped daughter.
    “You’re a father of girls, Budd. Am I right?”
    The