A Maidens Grave

of hot metal, in his hip pocket.
    I’ll think about that later.
    Delegate.
    Phil Molto was setting up the press table: a folding fiberboard table, a small portable typewriter, paper and pencils. Budd was no news hog but he supposed this setup would be useless for today’s high-tech reporters. Did they even know how to type, those pretty boys and girls? They seemed like spoiled high-school kids.
    He guessed, though, that this arrangement had less to do with journalism than with politics. How did Potter know how to handle all these things? Maybe living in the nation’s capital helped. Politics one way or another. The earnest young captain felt totally incompetent.
    Shame too. The tape recorder melted into fiery plastic and ran down his leg.
    Forget about it. Fifty minutes to five—fifty minutes to the deadline. He kept a meaningless smile on his face but he couldn’t sweep from his mind the image of the teenage girl falling to ground, dying.
    He somehow knew in his heart more blood would be spilled. Marks was right. In the van he had sided with the assistant attorney general.
    Forty-nine minutes . . .
    “Okay,” he told his lieutenant. “Guess that’ll do. Youride herd on ’em, Phil. Make sure they sit tight. They can wander around a little behind the lines and take notes on whatever they want—”
    Was that okay? he wondered. What would Potter say?
    “—but suit ’em up in flak jackets and make sure they keep their heads down.”
    Quiet Phil Molto nodded.
    The first car arrived a minute later, containing two men. They climbed out, flashed press credentials, and as they looked around hungrily the older of them said, “I’m Joe Silbert, KFAL. This is Ted Biggins.”
    Budd got a kick out of their dress—dark suits that didn’t fit very well and black running shoes. He pictured them racing down the hall of a TV station, shouting, “Exclusive, exclusive!” while papers spun in their wakes.
    Silbert looked at the press table and laughed. Budd introduced himself and Molto and said, “Best we could do.”
    “It’s fine, Officer. Only I hope you don’t mind if we use our own stone tablet to write on?”
    Biggins hefted a large portable computer onto the table.
    “Long as we see what you write before you send it.” For so Potter had instructed him.
    “File it,” Silbert said. “We say ‘file it,’ not ‘send it.’ ” Budd couldn’t tell if he was making a joke.
    Biggins poked at the typewriter. “What exactly is this?”
    The men laughed. Budd told them the ground rules. Where they could go and where they couldn’t. “We’ve got a couple troopers you can talk to if you want. Phil here’ll send ’em over.”
    “They hostage rescue?”
    “No. They’re from Troop K, up the road.”
    “Can we talk to some hostage rescue boys?”
    When Budd grinned Silbert smiled too, like a co-conspirator, and the reporter realized he wasn’t going to catch the captain in any slip-ups about whether or not HRT was on the scene.
    “We’re going to want to talk to Potter sometime soon,” Silbert groused. “He planning on avoiding us?”
    “I’ll let him know you’re here,” Budd said cheerfully, the Switzerland of law enforcers. “Meanwhile Phil here’ll bring you up to date. He’s got profiles of the escapees andpictures of them. And he’ll get you suited up in body armor. Oh, and I was thinking you might want to get the human-interest angle from some troopers. What it’s like to be on a barricade. That sort of thing.”
    The reporters’ faces were solemn masks but Budd wondered again if they were laughing at him. Silbert said, “Fact is, we’re mostly interested in the hostages. That’s where the story is. Anybody here we can talk to about them?”
    “I’m just here to set up the press table. Agent Potter’ll be by to give you the information he thinks you oughta have.” Is that the right way to put it? Budd wondered. “Now I got some things need looking after so I’ll leave you be.”
    “But I won’t,” said Molto, cracking a rare smile.
    “I’m sure you won’t, Officer.” Their computer whirred to life.
     
    What Melanie had smelled in the air of the killing room, what had forced her from her music room: mud, fish, water, diesel fuel, methane, decaying leaves, wet tree bark.
    The river.
    The fishy breeze had been strong enough to start the lamp swaying. That told her that somewhere near the back of the slaughterhouse was an open doorway. It occurred to her that maybe