A Maidens Grave

of killing another of the girls. I don’t have a lot of ideas. I’d like to get your opinion. What do you think of him?”
    “Me?”
    “Sure.”
    “Oh, I don’t know.”
    “We never know in this business. Give me an educated guess. You’ve heard his profile. You’ve talked to Angie . . . . She’s quite a lady, isn’t she?”
    “Say, ’bout that, Arthur . . . the thing is, I’m a married man. She’s been chatting me up an awful lot. I mentioned Meg must’ve been a dozen times and she doesn’t seem to pay any attention to it.”
    “Consider it flattery, Charlie. You’re in control of the situation.”
    “Sorta in control.” He looked back at the van but didn’t see the dark-haired agent anywhere.
    Potter laughed. “So now, give me some thoughts.”
    Budd fidgeted with his fingers, maybe thinking he should actually be pretending to hold his glass of whisky. Potter smoked as he had come to do so much else in recent years—not actually doing it, not pantomiming, only imagining. It was for him a type of meditation.
    “I guess what I’m thinking,” Budd said slowly, “is that Handy’s got a plan of some kind.”
    “Why?”
    “Partly it’s what Angie was saying. Everything he does has a purpose. He’s not a crazed kick killer.”
    “What sort of plan were you thinking of?”
    “Don’t know exactly. Something he thinks is gonna outsmart us.”
    Budd’s hands slipped into his rear pockets again. The man’s nervous as a fifteen-year-old at his first school dance, Potter reflected.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I’m not sure exactly. Just an impression. Maybe because he’s got this holier-than-thou attitude. He doesn’t respect us. Every time he talks to us what I hear is, you know, contempt. Like he knows it all and we don’t know anything.”
    This was true. Potter had noticed it himself. Not a shred of desperation, no supplication, no nervous banter, no tin defiance; all the things you usually heard from hostage takers were noticeably absent here.
    Along with the flattest VSA line Potter had ever seen.
    “A breakout,” Budd continued. “That’s what I’d guess. Maybe setting fire to the place.” The captain laughed. “Maybe he’s got fireman outfits in there—in those bags he brought in with him. And he’ll sneak out in all the confusion.”
    Potter nodded. “That’s happened before.”
    “Has it?” Budd asked, incredulous that he’d thought of this strategy and, accordingly, very pleased with himself.
    “Medical-worker outfits one time. And police uniforms another. But I’d given all the containment officers handouts, like what I distributed earlier, so the HTs werespotted right away. Here, though, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be his style. But you’re right on about his attitude. That’s the key. It’s saying something to us. I just wish I knew what.”
    Again Budd was fiddling nervously with his pockets.
    “Those tools,” Potter mused, “might have something to do with it. Maybe they’ll set a fire, hide in a piece of machinery or even under the floor. Then climb out when the rescue workers are there. We should make sure that everybody, not just the troopers, has a copy of the profile flyers.”
    “I’ll take care of it.” Budd laughed nervously again. “I’ll delegate it.”
    Potter had calmed considerably. He thought of Marian. The infrequent evenings he was home they used to sit together by the radio listening to NPR and share one cigarette and a glass of sherry. Occasionally, once a week, perhaps twice, the cigarette would be stubbed out and they would climb the stairs to their ornate bed and forgo the musical programming for that evening.
    “This negotiation stuff,” Budd said. “It’s pretty confusing to me.”
    “How so?”
    “Well, you don’t seem to talk to him about what I’d talk to him about—you know, the stuff he wants and the hostages and everything. Business. Mostly, it seems that you just chat.”
    “You ever been in therapy, Charlie?”
    The young officer seemed to snicker. He shook his head. Maybe analysis was something Kansans didn’t go in for.
    Potter said, “I was. After my wife died.”
    “I was going to say, I’m sorry to hear that happened.”
    “You know what I talked to the therapist about? Genealogy.”
    “What?”
    “It’s my hobby. Family trees, you know.”
    “You were paying good money to a doctor to talk about hobbies?”
    “And it was the best money I ever spent. I started to feel