A Maidens Grave

The Farmers & Merchants S&L.”
    Henry LeBow scrolled through the screen, then continued, “Handy, Wilcox, a two-time felon named Fred Laskey, and Priscilla Gunder—Handy’s girlfriend—robbed the Farmers & Merchants S&L in Wichita. Handy ordered a teller to take him into the vault but she moved too slow for him. Handy lost his temper, beat her, and locked her and another woman teller inside the vault, then went outside and got a can of gas. Doused the inside of the bank and lit it. The fire was the reason he was caught. If they’d just run with the twenty thousand they’d have made it but it took him another five minutes or so to torch the place. That gave the cops and Pete Henderson’s men time to roll up, silent.”
    He summarized the rest of the drama: There was a shootout in front of the bank. The girlfriend got away and Handy, Wilcox, and Laskey stole another car but got stopped by a roadblock a mile away. They’d climbed out and walked toward the cops. Handy fired a hidden gun through Laskey’s back, killing him and wounding two of the arresting officers before being wounded himself.
    “Pointless.” Budd shook his head. “That fire. Burning up those women.”
    “Oh, no, the fire was one way to regain control of the situation,” Angie said.
    Potter quoted, “ ‘They didn’t do what I wanted. When I wanted it.’ ”
    “Maybe people like Handy’ll become your specialty, Arthur,” Tobe said.
    Two years until retirement; as if I need a specialty, thought Potter. And one that includes the Lou Handys of the world.
    Budd sighed.
    “You all right, Captain?” Potter asked.
    “I don’t know if I’m exactly made for this kind of work.”
    “Ah, you’re doing fine.”
    But of course the young trooper was right. He wasn’t made for this line of work; nobody was.
    “Listen, Charlie, the troopers’re probably getting antsy by now. I want you to make the rounds, you and Dean. Calm ’em down. See about coffee. And for God’s sake make sure their heads’re down. Keep yours that way too.”
    “I’ll come with you, Charlie,” Angie said. “If it’s okay with Arthur.”
    “Catch up with him, Angie. I want to talk to you for a moment.”
    “I’ll meet you outside,” she called, and pulled her chair closer to Potter.
    “Angie, I need an ally,” Potter said. “Someone inside.” She glanced at him. “Melanie?”
    “Was that really just a fluke, what she did? Or can I count on some help?”
    Angie thought for a minute. “When Melanie was a high-school student there, Laurent Clerc was an oralist school. Signing was forbidden.”
    “It was?”
    “It was a mainstream school. But Melanie realized that was stifling her—which is what all educators are now coming to realize. What she did was to develop her own sign language, one that was very subtle—basically just using the fingers—so the teachers didn’t notice it the way you’d see people signing in ASL. Her language spread through the school like wildfire.”
    “She created a language?”
    “Yep. She found that the ten fingers alone weren’t enough for a working vocabulary and syntax. So the variable element she introduced was brilliant. It had never been done in sign language before. She used rhythm. She overlaid a temporal structure on the finger shapes. Her inspiration was apparently orchestral conductors.”
    Arthur Potter, who, after all, made his living with language, was fascinated.
    Angie continued, “Right around that time there were protests to shift to a curriculum where ASL was taught and one of the reasons cited by the deaf teachers in favor of doing so was that so many students were using Melanie’s language. But Melanie wouldn’t have anything to dowith the protests. She denied that she’d invented the language—as if she was afraid the administration would punish her for it. All she wanted to do was study and go home. Very talented, very smart. Very scared. She had a chance to go to Gallaudet College in Washington this summer on a fellowship. She turned it down.”
    “Why?”
    “Nobody knew. Her brother’s accident maybe.”
    Potter recalled that the young man was having surgery tomorrow. He wondered if Henderson had gotten in touch with the family. “Maybe,” he mused, “there’s just a certain timidity that goes along with being deaf.”
    “Excuse me, Agent Potter.” Frances Whiting leaned forward. “Is that like a certain amount of fascism goes along with being a federal agent?”
    Potter