A Maiden's Grave

1:01 A.M.

As they drove through the fields beneath the faint moon the couple in the Nissan reflected on the evening at their daughter's home in Enid, which had been exactly as unpleasant as they'd expected.

When they spoke, however, they spoke not about the children's shabby trailer, the unwashed baby grandson, their stringy-haired son-in-law's disappearing act into the trash-filled backyard to sneak Jack Daniel's. No, they talked only about the weather and unusual road signs they happened to pass.

"We'll get rain this fall. Floodin'."

"Might."

"Something 'bout the trout in Minnesota. I read that."

"Trout?"

"Bad rains I'm talking. Stuckey's's only five miles. Look there. You wanta stop?"

Harriet, their daughter, had made a dinner that could be described only as inedible – woefully overdone and oversalted. And the husband had found what he was sure was some cigarette ash in the succotash. Now they were both starving.

"Might do that. For coffee only. Lookit that wind – whooee! Hope you shut the windows at home. Maybe a piece of pie."

"I did.'

"You forgot last time," the wife reminded shrilly. "Don't want to lose the lamp again. You know what three-way bulbs cost."

"Well," the husband said. "What's going on here?"

"How's that?"

"I'm being stopped. A police car."

"Pull over!"

"I'm doing it," he said testily. "No point in leaving skid marks. I'm doing it."

"What'd you do?"

"I didn't do nothing. I was fifty-seven in a fifty-five zone and that's not a crime in anybody's book."

"Well, pull off the road."

"I'm pulling. Will you just settle? There, happy?"

"Hey, look," the wife offered with astonishment, "there's a lady officer driving!"

"They have ' em now. You know that. You watch Cops. Should I get out or are they going to come up here?"

"Maybe," the wife said, "you oughta go to them. Make the effort. That way if they're right on the borderline of giving you a ticket they might not."

"That's a thought. But I still don't know what I done." And, smiling like a Kiwanian on Pancake Day, the husband climbed out of the Nissan and walked back to the squad car, fishing his wallet out of his pocket.

As Lou Handy drove the cruiser deep into the wheat field, cutting a swath in the tall grain, he was lost in the memory of another field – the one that morning, near the intersection where the Cadillac had broadsided them.

He remembered the gray sky overhead. The feel of the bony knife in his hand. The woman's powdery face, black wrinkles in her makeup, dots of her blood spattering her as he drove the knife downward into her soft body. The look in her eyes, hopelessness and sorrow. Her weird scream, choking, grunting. An animal's sounds.

She'd died the same way that the couple in the Nissan just had, the couple now lying in the trunk of the cruiser he was driving. Hell, they had to die, both of the couples. They'd had something he needed. Their cars. The Cadillac and the Nissan. This afternoon Hank and Ruth'd smashed the fuck out of his Chevy. And tonight, well, he and Pris couldn't keep driving in a stolen squad car. It was impossible. He needed a new car. He had to have one.

And when Lou Handy collected what he was owed, when he'd scratched that itch, he was the most contented man on earth.

Tonight he parked the cruiser, which stunk of cordite and blood, in the field, fifty yards from the road. It'd be found by tomorrow morning but that was okay. In a few hours he and Pris'd be out of the state and flying over the Texas-Mexico border, a hundred feet in the air, on their way to San Hidalgo.

Whoa, hold on tight… Damn, the wind was fierce, buffeting the car and sending the stalks of wheat slapping into the windshield with a clatter like birdshot.

Handy climbed out and trotted back to the road, where Pris sat in the driver's seat of the Nissan. She'd ditched the trooper's uniform and was wearing a sweater and jeans and Handy wanted more than anything else at the moment to tug those Levi's down, them and the cheap nylon panties she always wore, and fuck her right on top of the hood of the tinny Jap car. Holding her ponytail in his right hand the way he liked to do.

But he jumped in the passenger's seat and motioned for her to get going. She pitched her cigarette out the window and gunned the engine. The car shot away off the shoulder, hung a tight U, and sped up to sixty.

Heading back in the direction they'd just come from. North.

It seemed crazy, sure. But Handy prided himself on being as off-the-wall nuts as a man could be and still get on in this life. In reality their destination made sense, though – because where they were going was the last place anyone would think to look for them.

Anyway, he thought, fuck it whether it's crazy or not. His mind was made up. He had business back there. Lou Handy was owed.

The Heiligenstadt Testament, written in 1802 by Beethoven to his brothers, chronicles his despair at his progressive deafness, which a decade and a half later became total.

Melanie Charrol knew this, for Beethoven not only was her spiritual mentor and role model but was a frequent visitor to her music room, where he, not surprisingly, could hear as well as she could. They had had many fascinating conversations about music theory and composition. They both lamented the trend away from melody and harmony in modern composition. She called it "medicinal music" – a phrase Ludwig heartily approved of.

She now sat in the living room of her house, breathing deeply, thinking of the great composer and wondering if she was drunk.

At the bar in the motel in Crow Ridge she'd poured down two brandies in the company of Officer Frances Whiting and some of the parents of the hostages. Frances had gotten in touch with Melanie's parents in St. Louis and told them she was fine. They would return immediately after Danny's operation tomorrow and stop by Hebron for a visit – news that for some reason upset Melanie. Did she want them to stop by or not? She had another brandy in lieu of deciding.

Then Melanie had gone to say goodbye to the girls and their parents. The twins had been asleep, Kielle was awake but snubbing her royally – though if Melanie knew anything about children it was that their moods are fickle as the weather; tomorrow or the next day the little girl would drop by Melanie's cubicle at school and sprawl out upon the immaculate desktop to show off her latest X-Men comic or Power Rangers card. Emily was, of course, in an absurdly frilly and feminine nightgown, fast asleep. Shannon, Beverly, and Jocylyn were the centerpiece of the action. At the moment, coddled and the center of loving attention, they were cheerful and defiant and she could see from their gestures that they were recalling aspects of the evening in detail that Melanie herself could not bear. They had even dubbed themselves "the Crow Ridge Ten" and were talking about having T-shirts printed up. Reality would hit home later, when everyone began to feel Susan's absence. But for now, why not? Besides, whatever misgivings she'd shared with de l'Epée about the politics of Deafness, the members of its community were nothing if not resilient.

Melanie said goodnight to everyone, refusing a dozen offers to spend the night. Never before had she signed "No, thank you" as often as she had this evening.

Now, in her home, all the windows were locked, all the doors. She burned some incense, had another brandy – blackberry, her grandmother's cure for cramps – and was sitting in her leather armchair, thinking of de l'Epée… well, Arthur Potter. Rubbing the indentation on her right wrist from the wire Brutus had bound it with. She had her Koss headset clamped over her ears and had Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto cranked up so loud the volume was redlined. It was a remarkable piece of music. Composed during what music historians call Beethoven's "second period," the one that produced the Eroica, when he was aware of, and tormented by, his hearing loss but before he had gone completely deaf.

As she listened to the concerto now she wondered if it had been written by Beethoven in anticipation of future years when the deafness would be worse, if he'd built in certain chords and dynamics so that a deaf old man might still make out at least the soul of the piece – for though there were passages she could not hear at all (as faint and delicate as smoke, she imagined) the passion of the music came from its emphatic low notes, two hands crashing down on the bass keys, the theme spiraling downward like a hawk falling on prey, the orchestra's timpani and low-pitched strings churning out what for her was the hopeful spirit of the concerto. A sensation of galloping.

She could imagine, through vibration and notes and sight-reading the score, most of the concerto. She thought now, as she always did, that she'd give her soul to be able to actually hear the entire piece.

Just once before she died.

It was during the second movement that she glanced outside and saw a car slow suddenly as it passed her house. She thought this was odd because the street in front was little traveled. It was a dead end and she knew everyone who lived on the block and what kind of cars they drove. This one she didn't recognize.

She pulled off the headset and walked to the window. She could see that the car, with two people inside, had parked in front of the Albertsons' house. This was curious too because she was sure the family was away for the week. She squinted at the car. The two people – she couldn't see them clearly, just silhouettes – got out and walked through the Albertsons' gate, disappearing behind the tall hedge that bordered the couple's property, directly across from her house. Then Melanie remembered that the family had several cats. Probably friends were feeding the animals while the couple was away. Returning to her couch, she sat down and pulled on the headset once more. Yes, yes…

The music, what she could hear of it, as limited as the sound was to her, was an incredible comfort. More than the brandy, more than the companionship of the parents of her students, more than thoughts about the inexplicable and inexplicably appealing Arthur Potter; it lifted her away, magically, from the horror of this windy day in July.

Melanie closed her eyes.

1:20 A.M.

Captain Charlie Budd had aged considerably in the last twelve hours.

Potter studied him in the adulterating fluorescent light of the cramped office of the sheriff of Crow Ridge, which was located in a strip mall off the business loop. Budd no longer appeared young and was easily a decade past callow. And like all of them here tonight, his face showed the patina of disgust.

And uncertainty too. For they had no idea if they'd been betrayed and if so by whom. Budd and Potter sat across the desk from Dean Stillwell, who leaned into the phone, nodding gravely. He handed the receiver to Budd.

Tobe and Henry LeBow had just arrived in a mad race from the airport. LeBow's computers were already booted up; they seemed like an extension of his body. Angie's DomTran jet had hung a U-turn somewhere over Nashville and she was due back in Crow Ridge in a half-hour.

"All right," Budd said, hanging up. "Here're the details. They aren't pretty."

The two squad cars carrying Handy and Wilcox had left the slaughterhouse and headed south to the Troop C headquarters in Clements, about ten miles south. Between Crow Ridge and the state facility the lead car, driven by the woman who was presumably Priscilla Gunder, braked so suddenly it left twenty-foot skid marks and sent the second car, behind it, off the road. Apparently the woman pulled her pistol and shot the trooper beside her and the one in the backseat, killing them instantly.

The crime scene investigators speculated that Wilcox, in the second car, had undone his cuffs with the key that Gunder had slipped him and grabbed the gun of the trooper sitting beside him. But because he'd been double-shackled, according to Potter's surrender instructions, it had taken him longer to escape than planned. He'd shot the officer beside him but the driver leapt from the car and fired one shot into Wilcox before Handy, or his girlfriend, shot him in the back.

"Wilcox wasn't killed outright," Budd continued, brushing his hair, as being in Stillwell's presence made you want to do. "He climbed out and crawled to the first squad car. Somebody – they think it was Handy – finished him with a single shot to the forehead."

In his mind Potter heard: You kill when people don't do what they're supposed to. You kill the weak because they'll drag you down. What's wrong with that?

"What about Detective Foster?" Potter asked.

"She was found beside a stolen car about a mile from her house. Her husband said she left the place about ten minutes after she got the call about the barricade. They think the Gunder woman flagged her down near the highway, took her uniform, killed her, and stole her cruiser. Prelim forensics show some of the prints were Gunder's."

"What else, Charlie? Tell us." For Potter saw the look on his face. Budd hesitated. "After the real Sharon Foster had stripped down to her underwear Handy's girlfriend gagged and handcuffed her. Then she used a knife. She didn't have to. But she did. It wasn't too pleasant what she did. It took her a while to die."

"And then she drove to the barricade site," Potter spat out angrily, "and waltzed out with him."

"Where'd they head?" LeBow asked. "Still going south?"

"Nobody's got a clue," Budd said.

"They're in a cruiser," Stillwell said. "Shouldn't be hard to find."

"We've got choppers out looking," Budd offered. "Six of them."

"Oh, he's already switched cars," Potter muttered. "Concentrate on any report of car theft in south-central Kansas. Anything at all."

Tobe said, "The engine block of the cruiser'll retain heat for about three hours. Do the choppers have infrared cameras?"

Budd said, "Three of them do."

LeBow mused, "What route'd put them the furthest away in that time? He must know we'd be on to them pretty soon."

In the otherwise drab, functional office five brilliant, red plants sat on a credenza, the healthiest-looking plant life Potter had ever seen indoors. Stillwell was hovering beside a wall map of the four-county area. "He could cut over to 35 – that's the turnpike, take him northeast. Or 81'd take him to 1-70."

"How 'bout," Budd asked, "81 all the way into Nebraska, cut over to 29?"

"Yep," Stillwell continued. " 'S'long drive, but it'd take him up to Winnipeg. Eventually."

"Was that Canada thing all smoke screen?" Tobe wondered.

"I don't know," Potter said, feeling that he'd stumbled into a chess game with a man who might be a grand master or who might not even know the movement of the pieces. He stood and stretched, which was tough in the cramped quarters. "The only way we're going to find him, short of luck, is to figure out how the hell he did it. Henry? What was the chronology?"

LeBow punched buttons. He recited, "At nine thirty-three p.m. Captain Budd said he'd received a call from his division commander about a woman detective who'd gotten Handy to surrender several years ago. She was located in McPherson, Kansas. The commander wondered if he should send the woman to the barricade site. Captain Budd conferred with Agent Potter and the decision was made to ask this detective to come to the site.

"At nine forty-nine p.m. a woman representing herself as Detective Sharon Foster called from her cruiser and reported that she would be at the barricade site by ten-thirty or ten-forty.

"At ten forty-five a woman representing herself to be Detective Sharon Foster, wearing a Kansas State Police uniform, arrived at the barricade and commenced negotiations with subject Handy."

"Charlie," Potter asked, "who was the commander?"

"Ted Franklin over at Troop B." He already had the phone in his hand and was dialing the number.

"Commander Franklin please… it's an emergency… Ted? It's Charlie Budd… Nope, no news. I'm going to put you on the squawk box." There was a click and static filled the room. "Ted, I've got half the FBI here. Agent Arthur Potter in charge."

"Hey, gentlemen," came Franklin's electronic greeting.

"Evening, Commander," Potter said. "We're trying to track down what happened here. You remember who called you about Sharon Foster this evening?"

"I've been racking my brain, sir, trying to remember. Some trooper or another. I frankly wasn't listening to who he was as much as what he had to say."

"A 'he,' you say?"

"Yessir. Was a man."

"He told you about Detective Foster?"

"That's right."

"Did you know her beforehand?"

"I knew about her. She was an up-and-comer. Good negotiating record."

Potter asked, "Then you called her after this trooper called."

"No, I called Charlie first down in Crow Ridge to see if it'd be all right with you folks. Then I called her."

"So," Stillwell said, "somebody intercepted your call to her and got to Detective Foster's just as she was leaving."

"But how?" Budd asked. "Her husband said she left ten minutes after she got the call. How could Handy's girlfriend've got there in time?"

"Tobe?" Potter asked. "Any way to check for taps?"

"Commander Franklin," Tobe asked, "is your office swept for bugs?" A chuckle. "Nope. Not the kind you're talking about." Tobe said to Potter, "We could sweep it, see if there are any. But it'd only tell us yea or nay. There's no way to tell who got the transmission and when."

But no, Potter was thinking. Budd was right. There was simply no time for Priscilla Gunder to get to Foster's house after the phone call from Franklin.

LeBow spoke for all of them. "This just doesn't sound like a tap situation. Besides, who'd know to put the bug in Commander Franklin's office anyway?"

Stillwell said, "Sounds like this was all planned out ahead of time."

Potter agreed. "The trooper who called you, Commander Franklin, wasn't a trooper at all. He was Handy's accomplice. And the girlfriend was probably waiting outside Detective Foster's house all along, while he – whoever he is – made the phone call to you."

"That means somebody'd have to know about the real Sharon Foster in the first place," Budd said. "That Handy'd surrendered to her. Who'd know about her?"

There was silence for a moment as the roomful of clever men thought of clever ways to learn about past police negotiations – through the news, computer databases, sources within the department.

LeBow and Budd were tied for first. "Handy!"

Potter had just arrived there himself. He nodded. "Who'd know better than Handy himself? Let's think back. He's trapped in the slaughterhouse. He suspects he isn't going to get his helicopter or that if he does we're going to track him to the ends of the earth – with or without his M-4 clearance – and so he gets word to his accomplice about Foster. The accomplice calls the girlfriend and they plan out the rescue. But Handy couldn't have called on the throw phone. We'd have heard it." Potter closed his eyes and thought back over the evening's events. "Tobe, those scrambled transmissions you were wondering about… We thought they were Tremain and the Kansas HRU. Could they have been something else?"

The young man tugged at his pierced earlobe then dug several computer disks from a plastic envelope. He handed them to LeBow, who put one in his laptop. Tobe leaned over and pushed keys. On the screen played a stilted, slow-moving graphic representation of two sine waves, overlapping each other.

"There are two!" he announced, his scientist's eyes glowing at the discovery. "Two different frequencies." He looked up. "Both law-enforcement assigned. And retrosignal scrambled."

"Are they both Tremain's?" Potter wondered aloud.

Ted Franklin asked what the frequencies were.

"Four hundred thirty-seven megahertz and four hundred eighty point four," Tobe responded.

"No," Ted Franklin answered. "The first one is assigned to HRU. The second isn't a state police signal. I don't know whose it is."

"So Handy had another phone in the slaughterhouse?" Potter asked. "Not a phone," Tobe said. "It'd be a radio. And four eighty is often reserved for federal operations, Arthur."

"Is that right?" Potter considered this, then said, "But a radio wasn't found at the site, was it?"

Budd dug through a black attache" case. He found the sheet that listed the inventory of evidence found at the crime scene and the initial chain of custody. "No radio."

"Could've hidden it, I suppose. There'd be a million nooks and crannies in a place like that." Potter considered something. "Is there any way to trace the transmissions?"

"Not now. You have to triangulate on a real-time signal." Tobe said this as if Potter had asked if it could snow in July.

"Commander Franklin," the agent asked, "you got a phone call, right? From this supposed trooper? It wasn't a radio transmission?"

"A landline, right. And it wasn't patched in from a radio either. You can always tell."

Potter paused and examined one of the flowers. Was it a begonia? A fuchsia? Marian had gardened. "So Handy radioed Mr. X, who then called Commander Franklin. Then X called Handy's girlfriend and gave her the go-ahead to intercept Sharon Foster. Tobe?"

The young agent's eyes flashed with understanding. He snapped his fingers and sat up. "You got it, Arthur," he responded to the request that Potter was about to make. "Pen register of all incoming calls to your office, Commander Franklin. You object to that?"

"Hell, no. I want this boy as much as you do."

"You have a direct line?" Tobe asked.

"I do, yes, but half of my calls come in from the switchboard. And when I pick up I don't know where it's coming in from."

"We'll do them all," Tobe said patiently, undaunted.

Who's Handy's accomplice? Potter wondered.

Tobe asked, "Henry? A warrant request, please."

LeBow printed one out on Stillwell's NEC and handed it to Potter then called up on his screen the Federal Judiciary Directory. Potter placed a call to a judge who sat on the district court of Kansas. He explained about the request. At home at this hour, the judge agreed to sign the warrant on the basis of the evidence Potter presented; he'd been watching CNN and knew all about the incident.

As a member of the bars of D.C. and Illinois, Potter signed the warrant request. Tobe faxed it to the judge, who signed and returned it immediately. LeBow then scrolled through Standard amp; Poor's Corporation Directory and found the name of the chief general counsel of Midwestern Bell. They served the warrant via fax to the lawyer at home. One phone conversation and five minutes later the requested files were dumped ingloriously into LeBow's computer.

"Okay, Commander Franklin," LeBow said, scrolling through his screen, "it looks like we have seventy-seven calls coming into your HQ today, thirty-six into your private line."

Potter said, "You're a busy man."

"Heh. The family can attest to that."

Potter asked when the call about Foster came in.

"About nine-thirty."

Potter said, "Make it a twenty-minute window."

Keys tapped.

"We're down to about sixteen total," LeBow said. "That's getting workable."

"If Handy had a radio," Budd said, "what'd the range of that thing be?"

"Good question, Charlie,'* Tobe said. "That'll narrow things down even more. If it's standard law-enforcement issue I'd guess three miles. Our Mr. X would have to've been pretty close to the barricade."

Potter lowered his head to the screen. "I don't know these towns, other than Crow Ridge, and there's no listing of any calls from there to you, Commander. Charlie, take a look. Tell us what's nearby."

"Hysford's about seventeen miles. Billings, nowhere near."

"That's the missus," volunteered Commander Franklin.

"How 'bout this? A three-minute call from Towsend to your office at nine twenty-six. Was that about how long you talked to the trooper, Commander Franklin?"

"About, yessir."

"Where's Towsend?"

"Borders Crow Ridge," Budd said. "Good-sized town."

"Can you get us an address?" Budd asked Tobe.

The downloaded files from the phone company didn't include addresses but a single call to Midwestern Bell's computer center pinpointed a pay phone.

"Route 236 and Roosevelt Highway."

"It's the main intersection," Stillwell said, discouraged. "Restaurants, hotels, gas stations. And that highway's a feeder for two interstates. Could've been anybody and he could've been on his way to anywhere." Potter's eyes were on the five red plants. His head rose suddenly and he reached for the telephone. But it was a curious gesture – he stopped suddenly and seemed momentarily flustered, as if he'd committed some grievous social faux pas at a formal dinner party. His hand slipped off the receiver.

"Henry, Tobe, come with me. You too, Charlie. Dean, will you stay here and man the fort?"

"You bet, sir."

"Where are we going?" Charlie asked.

"To talk to somebody who knows Handy better than we do."

2:00 A.M.

He wondered how they'd announce their presence.

There was a button on the jamb of the front door, just like any other. Potter looked at Budd, who shrugged and pushed it.

"I thought I heard something inside. A doorbell. Why's that?"

Potter had heard something too. But he'd also noticed a red light flash inside, through a lace curtain.

There was no response.

Where was she?

Potter found himself about to call, "Melanie?" And when he realized that would be futile, he lifted his fist to knock. He shook his head at that gesture too and lowered his hand. Seeing the lights inside a lifeless house, he felt a stab of uneasiness and he pulled his jacket away from his hip, where the Glock sat. LeBow noticed the gesture but said nothing.

"Wait here," Potter told the three men.

He walked slowly along the dark porch of the Victorian house, looking in the windows of the place. Suddenly he stopped, seeing shoeless feet, legs sprawled on a couch, motionless.

Alarmed now, in a panic, he hurriedly completed his circuit of the porch. But he couldn't get any view of her – only her unmoving legs. He rapped loudly on the glass, shouted her name.

Nothing.

She should be able to feel the vibration, he thought. And there was the red flashing light – the "doorbell" – above the entryway, flashing in her clear view.

"Melanie!"

He drew his pistol. Tried the window. It was locked.

Do it.

His elbow crashed into the glass and sent a shower of shards onto the parquet floor. He reached in, unlocked the window, and started through. He froze when he saw the figure – Melanie herself, sitting up, terrified, staring at the intruder coming through her window. She blinked away the sleep and gasped.

Potter held up his hands to her, as if surrendering, an expression of horror on his own face at the thought of how he must have frightened her. Still, he was more perplexed than anything else: Why on earth, he wondered, would she be wearing stereo headphones?

Melanie Charrol opened the door and motioned her visitors inside.

The first thing that Arthur Potter saw was a large watercolor of a violin, surrounded by surreal quarter- and half-notes in rainbow colors.

"Sorry about the window," he said slowly. "You can deduct it from your taxes."

She smiled.

"Evening, ma'am," Charlie Budd said. And Potter introduced her to Tobe Geller and Henry LeBow. She looked out the door at the car parked two doors down, the two people standing behind a hedge, looking at the house.

He saw her face. He said to her, "They're ours."

Melanie frowned. He explained, "Two troopers. I sent them here earlier tonight to keep an eye on you."

She shook her head, asking, Why?

Potter hesitated. "Let's go inside."

With flashing lights, a Hebron PD squad car pulled up. Angeline Scapello, looking exhausted though no longer soot-smudged, climbed out and hurried up the stairs. She nodded to everyone, and like her fellow threat management team members she wasn't smiling.

Melanie's house had a homey air about it. Thick drapes. In the air, incense. Spicy. Old prints, many of them of classical composers, hung on the walls, which were covered with striped paper, forest green and gold. The largest print was of Beethoven. The room was full of antique tables, beautiful Art Nouveau vases. He thought with some embarrassment of his own Georgetown apartment, a shabby place. He'd stopped decorating it thirteen years ago.

Melanie was wearing blue jeans, a black cashmere sweater. Her hair was no longer in the awkward braid but hung loose. The bruises and cuts on her face and hands were quite prominent, as were the chestnut Betadine stains. Potter turned to her, tried to think of words that required exaggerated lip movements. "Lou Handy's escaped."

She didn't understand at first. When he repeated it her eyes went wide with horror. She started to sign then stopped in frustration and grabbed the stack of paper.

LeBow touched her arm. "Can you type?" He mimicked keyboarding.

She nodded. He opened his two computers, booted them into word-processing programs, hooked up a serial port cable, and set the units side by side. He sat at one, Melanie at the other.

Where did he go? she typed.

We don't know, that's why we came to see you.

Melanie nodded slowly. Did he kill anyone escaping? She could touch-type and she kept her eyes on Potter as she asked this.

He nodded. Wilcox – the one you called Stoat – was killed. Troopers too.

Again she nodded, frowning, thinking over the implications of this.

Potter typed, I have to ask you to do something you're not going to want to do.

She looked at his message, wrote: I've already been through the worst. Her hands danced over the keys invisibly, not a single mistake.

God compensates.

I want you to go back to the slaughterhouse. In your mind.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She wrote nothing but merely nodded.

We don't understand certain things about the barricade. If you can help us to I think we can figure out where he's gone.

"Henry," Potter called, rising and pacing. LeBow and Tobe caught each other's eyes. "Call up his profile and the chronology. What do we know about him?"

LeBow began to read but Potter said, "No, let's just speculate."

"He's a clever boy," Budd offered. "He comes across like a hick but he's got some smarts."

Potter added, He plays the dummy but that's largely an act, I think.

Melanie typed, Amoral.

Yes.

Dangerous, Budd offered.

Let's go beyond that.

He's evil, she wrote. Evil personified.

But what kind of evil?

Silence for a moment. Angie typed, Cold death.

Potter nodded and spoke aloud, "Right. Lou Handy's cold evil. Not passionate evil. Let's keep that in mind."

Angie continued, Not a sadist. Then he'd be passionate. He feels nothing for the pain he causes. If he needs pain or death to get his way, he'll cause pain or death. Like blinding the hostages – simply another tool for him.

Potter leaned forward and typed, So, he's calculating. "And?" Budd prompted.

Potter shook his head. Yes, he's calculating, but you're right, Charlie, what does that mean?

The men stopped speaking while Melanie's fingers danced over the keyboard. Potter walked around her and stood close as she typed. His hand brushed her shoulder and it seemed to him that she leaned into his fingers. She wrote: Everything he does has a purpose. He's one of those few people who isn't driven by life; he drives it.

Angie typed, Control, control, control.

Potter found his hand was resting on Melanie's shoulder. She lowered her cheek to it. Maybe it just was an accident as her head turned. Maybe not.

"Control and purpose," Potter said. "Yes, that's it. Type this out so she can see it, Henry. Everything he's done today has a purpose. Even if it seemed random. Killing Susan – it was to make clear that he was serious. He demanded a helicopter that seated eight but he had no problem giving away most of the hostages. Why? To keep us busy. To stretch out the time to give his accomplice and girlfriend a chance to set up the real Sharon Foster. He brought with him a TV, a scrambled radio, and guns."

Angie leaned forward to type, So what is his purpose?

"Well, escaping," Budd laughed. "What else would it be?" He leaned forward and two-finger typed, To escape.

No!! Melanie typed.

"Right!" Potter shouted, and pointed at her, nodding. "Escape wasn't his priority at all. How could it've been? He virtually let himself get trapped. There was only one trooper on his tail after the accident with the Cadillac. The three of them could've ambushed him, taken his car, and escaped. Why would anybody let themselves get trapped?"

"Hell," Budd said, "a spooked rabbit'll run right into a fox's den not even thinking." He dutifully hunted-and-pecked this in.

But he does think, Melanie wrote. We can't forget that. And he isn't spooked.

Not spooked at all, Angie offered. Remember the voice stress analysis.

Potter nodded to Melanie, smiling and gripping her shoulder once more. Calm as ordering a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.

Melanie typed, I called him Brutus. But he's really like a ferret.

Budd continued, Well, if he's a ferret, then he'd go to ground only if he knew he wasn't trapped at all. If he had an escape route.

Melanie typed, When he first walked into the slaughterhouse Bear said that there was no way out. And Brutus said, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all."

Potter nodded, mused, "He could've run, but no, he risked taking a detour to the slaughterhouse and getting trapped. But it wasn't that great a risk at all because he knew he could get out. He had guns and he had a radio to call his accomplice and work out some escape plan. Maybe he'd already thought up substituting his girlfriend for Foster." He typed, Melanie, tell us exactly what happened when they picked you up.

She typed, We found the wreck. He was killing those people. In no hurry.

He was confident?

Very. He took his own sweet time, Melanie typed, grim-faced.

Potter unfurled a map. What route did you drive?

I don't know roads, Melanie wrote. Past a radio station, a farm with lots of cows. She frowned for a moment then traced the route on the map. Maybe this.

The prison's south of the slaughterhouse ninety or so miles, Potter typed. The three of them drove north to here, had the accident with the Cadillac here, took the van and drove all the way around here… He traced a route that had Handy driving well past the slaughterhouse then doubling back.

Melanie typed, No, We drove straight to the slaughterhouse. That was one thing I thought funny. He seemed to know where it was.

But if he went straight there, Potter typed, when did you pass the airport?

We didn't, she explained.

So he knew about it ahead of time. When he was asking me for the helicopter he knew there was an airport just two or three miles up the road. How did he know?

Budd typed, He'd already arranged to fly out of there.

But, LeBow typed as fast as he could speak the words, if it was just a few miles up the road, and if there was an airplane or helicopter waiting for him, why go to the slaughterhouse at all?

"Why?" Potter muttered. "Henry, tell me what we know. Let's start with what he had with him."

You're carrying a key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.

He went into the slaughterhouse with hostages, the guns, a can of gasoline, ammunition, a TV, the radio, a set of tools -

"The tools, yes," Potter said, as LeBow typed. He turned to Melanie. "Did you see him use them?"

No, Melanie answered. But I was in killing room for most of time. Toward end I remembered them walking around looking at the machinery and fixtures. I thought they were taking a nostalgic look at the place, maybe they were looking for something, though.

Potter snapped his fingers. "Dean told us something similar."

LeBow scanned through the incident chronology. He read, " 'Seven-fifty-six p.m. Sheriff Stillwell reported that a trooper under his command observed Handy and Wilcox searching the factory, testing doors and fixtures. Reason unknown.' "

"Okay. Good. Let's put the tools on hold for a minute. Those are the things he had with him when he went in. What did we give him?"

"Just the food and the beer," Budd said. "Oh, and the money."

"The money!" Potter cried. "Money he didn't ask for in the first place."

Angie typed, And he never tried to bargain up the fifty thousand. Why not?

There's only one reason a man doesn't want money, LeBow typed. He's got more than he needs.

Potter was nodding excitedly. There's money hidden in the building. It was part of his plan all along – to stop at the slaughterhouse and pick it up.

That's why he had the tools – to get the cash out from where it was hidden, Budd managed to type. Potter nodded.

"Where did it come from?" Tobe wondered.

"He's a bank robber," Budd said wryly. "That's one possibility."

"Henry," Potter said, "jump into Lexis/Nexis and let's read about that most recent robbery of his. The arson."

In five minutes LeBow was on-line with Mead Data. He read newspaper accounts and summarized, "Handy was found with twenty thousand stolen from the Farmers amp; Merchants heist in Wichita."

"Had he ever burned anything before that?"

LeBow scrolled through the news accounts and his own sixteen-page profile of Louis J. Handy. "No prior arson."

Then why the fire? Potter typed.

He always has a purpose, Angie reminded.

Melanie nodded emphatically then shivered and closed her eyes. Potter wondered what terrible memory had intruded into her thoughts. The agent and Budd looked at each other, four eyebrows arched. Then: "Yep, Charlie. That's right." Potter reached down to the keyboard. He wasn't there to rob that bank at all. He was there to burn it down.

LeBow was reading the profile. "And he shot his accomplice in the back when they'd been trapped by the troopers. Maybe so no one would find out what he was really doing there."

But why did he do it? Budd typed.

Someone hired him? Potter asked the question. LeBow nodded. "Of course."

"And whoever did," Potter said, "was paying him a ton of money. A lot more than fifty thousand. That's why he didn't think to ask for cash from us. He was already a rich man. Henry, get into the Corporation Trust database and get me the corporate documents on the bank."

The intelligence officer went offline with Mead and was soon scrolling through the articles of incorporation, bylaws, and securities filings of the bank. "Closely held, so it's limited public information. But we do know that the directors are also the officers. Here we go: Clifton Burbank, Stanley L. Poole, Cynthia G. Grolsch, Herman Gallagher. The ZIP codes are close together. All near Wichita. Burbank and Gallagher live in the city proper. Poole lives in Augusta. Ms. Grolsch is in Derby." Potter recognized none of the names but any one of them could have some connection to Handy. As could, say, an embezzling teller, a former employee who'd been fired, the spurned lover of one of the directors. But Arthur Potter would much rather have too many possibilities than none at all. "Charlie, what hotels are near that pay phone where Mr. X called Ted Franklin? In Towsend."

"Hell, there's a bunch. Four or five at least. Holiday Inn, a Ramada, I think a Hilton and some local one. Towsend Motor Lodge. Maybe another one or two."

Potter told Tobe to start calling. "Find out if any of those directors were registered in the hotels today or if anybody from any of those towns was registered."

In five minutes they had an answer. Tobe snapped his fingers. Everyone, except Melanie, looked at him. "Somebody registered from Derby, Kansas. Same as Cynthia Grolsch."

"Too much of a coincidence," Potter muttered, taking the phone. He identified himself, spoke to the clerk for a few moments. Finally he shook his head grimly, asked, "And what room?" He jotted down Holiday Inn. Rm. 611 on a pad. To the clerk he said, "No. And don't mention this call." He hung up, tapped the pad. "May be our Judas. Let's go have a talk with 'em, Charlie."

Melanie glanced at the pad of paper. Her face went still.

Who? Who is it? Her eyes flared. She stood up abruptly, pulled a leather jacket from a hook.

"Let them handle it," Angie said.

Melanie looked back to Potter, her eyes flaring. She typed, Who is it?

"Please." Potter took her by the shoulders. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

Slowly she nodded, pulled off the jacket, slung it over her shoulder. She looked like an aviatrix from the thirties.

Potter said, "Henry, Angie, and Tobe stay here. Handy knows about Melanie. He might come back." He said to her, "I'll be back soon." Then he hurried to the door. "Come on, Charlie."

After they'd gone Melanie smiled at the agents who remained. She typed Tea? Coffee?

"Not for me," Tobe said.

"No, thank you. Want to play solitaire?" LeBow booted up the game.

She shook her head. I'm going to take a shower. Long day.

"Gotcha."

Melanie disappeared and a few minutes later they heard the sound of running water from a bathroom.

Angie began working on her incident report while Tobe called up Doom II on his laptop and started to play. Fifteen minutes later he'd been blown apart by aliens. He stood up and stretched. He looked over Henry LeBow's shoulder, made a suggestion about the red queen, which was not received very generously at all, and then paced in the living room. He glanced at the sideboard, where he'd left the keys to the government pool car. They were gone. He wandered to the front of the house and glanced outside at the empty street. Why, he wondered, would Potter and Budd have taken two separate cars to the Holiday Inn?

But his blood lust was insatiable and he stopped worrying about such a trivial matter as he returned to his computer and prepared to blast his way out of the fortress of Doom.

2:35 A.M.

It had been Hawaiian Night at the Holiday Inn.

Steel guitar still pumped through the PA and limp plastic leis hung around the night clerks' necks.

Agent Arthur Potter and Captain Charles Budd walked between two fake palms and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.

For a change Budd was the law enforcer looking perfectly confident; it was Potter who was ill-at-ease. The last kick-in the agent had been involved in was the arrest of a perp who happened to be wearing a turquoise Edwardian suit and silver floral polyester shirt, which carbon-dated the bust to around 1977.

He remembered that he wasn't supposed to stand in front of the door. What else? He was reassured to glance at Budd, who had a shiny black leather cuffcase on his belt. Potter himself had never cuffed a real suspect – only volunteers at the live-fire hostage rescue drills on the Quantico back lot. "I'll defer to you on this one, Charlie." Budd raised surprised eyebrows. "Well, sure, Arthur."

"But I'll back you up."

"Oh. Good."

Both men pulled their weapons from the hip holsters. Potter chambered a round again – twice in one night and three years from the last barricade in which a bullet had rested in his gun's receiver and meant business.

At room 611 they stopped, exchanged glances. The negotiator nodded.

Budd knocked, a friendly tap. Shave and a haircut.

"Yeah?" the gruff voice called. "Hello? Who's there?"

"It's Charlie Budd. Can you open up for a minute? Just found something interesting."

"Charlie? What's going on?"

The chain fell, a deadbolt clicked, and when Roland Marks opened the door he found himself staring into the muzzles of two identical automatic pistols: one steady, one shaking, and both safeties off.

"Cynthia's a director of the S amp;L, yes. It's a nominal position. I'm really the one who calls the shots. We kept it in her maiden name. She's not guilty of anything."

The assistant attorney general could protest all he wanted but it would be up to the grand and petit juries to decide his wife's fate.

No raillery. Marks was now playing straight man. His eyes were red and damp and Potter, feeling nothing but contempt, had no trouble holding his gaze.

The AG had been read his rights. It was all over and he knew it. So he decided to cooperate. His statement was being taken down by the very same tape recorder he'd slipped Budd earlier in the evening.

"And what exactly were you doing at the savings and loan?" Potter asked.

"Making bad loans to myself. Well, to fictional people and companies. Writing them off and keeping the money." He shrugged as if to say, Isn't it obvious?

Marks, the prosecutor specializing in white-collar crime, had learned well from his suspects: he'd bled the Wichita institution's stockholders, and the public, for close to five million dollars – much of it spent already, it seemed. "I thought with the turnaround in the real estate market," he continued, "some of the bank's legitimate investments would pay off and we could cover up the shortfall. But when I went over the books I saw we just weren't going to make it."

The Resolution Trust Corporation, the government agency taking over failed banking institutions, was about to come in and seize the place.

"So you hired Lou Handy to burn it down," Budd said. "Destroy all the records."

"How did you know him?" the agent asked.

Budd beat Marks to it. "You prosecuted Handy five years ago, wasn't it? The convenience-store heist – the barricade Sharon Foster talked him out of."

The assistant attorney general nodded. "Oh, yes, I remembered him. Who wouldn't? Smart son of a bitch. He took the stand in his own defense and nearly ran circles around me. Had to do some digging to find him for the S amp;L job, you can bet. Checked with his parole officer, some of my contacts on the street. Offered him two hundred thousand to torch the place as part of a robbery. Only he got caught. So I had no choice – I had to cut a deal with him. I'd help him escape, otherwise he'd blow the whistle on me. That cost me another three hundred thousand."

"How'd you get him out? Callana's maximum-security."

"Paid two guards their annual salaries in cash to do it."

"Was one of them the guard Handy killed?"

Marks nodded.

"Saved some money there, didn't you?" Charlie Budd asked bitterly. "You left a car for him with the guns, the scrambled radio, and the TV in it," Potter continued. "And the tools to get the money out of the slaughterhouse where you'd hidden it for him."

"Well, hell, we couldn't exactly leave the money in the car. Too risky. So I sealed it up in this old steam pipe behind the front window." Potter asked, "What were the escape plans going to be?"

"Originally, I'd arranged for a private plane to fly him and his buddies out of Crow Ridge, from that little airport up the road. But he never made it. He had the accident – with the Cadillac – and lost about a half-hour."

"Why did he take the girls?"

"He needed them. With the delay he knew he didn't have time to get the money and make it to the airport – with the cops right on his tail. But he wasn't going to leave without the cash. Lou figured with the hostages inside and me working to get him out, it didn't matter how many cops were at the slaughterhouse. He'd get out sooner or later. He radioed me from inside and I agreed to convince the FBI to give him a helicopter. That didn't work but by then I remembered Sharon Foster's negotiation with Handy a few years ago. I found out where she was stationed now and called Pris Gunder – his girlfriend – and told her to drive over to Foster's house. Then I pretended I was a trooper and called Ted Franklin at state police."

Potter asked, "So your heart-rending offer to give yourself up for the girls… that was all an act."

"I did want them out. I didn't want anyone to die. Of course not!"

Of course, Potter thought cynically. "Where's Handy now?"

"I have no idea. Once he got out of the barricade that was it. I'd done everything I'd agreed. I told him he was on his own."

Potter shook his head. Budd asked coldly, "Tell me, Marks, how's it feel to've murdered those troopers?"

"No! He promised me he wouldn't kill anyone! His girlfriend was just going to handcuff Foster. He -"

"And the other troopers? The escort?"

Marks stared at the captain for a minute and when no credible lie came to mind whispered, "It wasn't supposed to work out like this. It wasn't."

"Call for some baby-sitters," Potter said. But before Budd could, his phone buzzed.

"Hello?" He listened for a moment. His eyes went wide. "Where? Okay, we're moving."

Potter cocked an eyebrow.

"They found the other squad car, the one Handy and his girlfriend were in. He's going south, looks like. Toward Oklahoma. The cruiser was twenty miles past the booking center. There was a couple in the trunk. Dead. Handy and his girlfriend must've stolen their wheels. No ID on them so we don't have a make or tag yet." Budd stepped close to the assistant AG. The captain growled, "The only good news is that Handy was in a hurry. They died fast."

Marks grunted in pain as Budd spun him around and shoved him hard into the wall. Potter did nothing to interfere. Budd tied the attorney's hands together with plastic wrist restraints then cuffed his right wrist to the bed frame.

"It's too tight," Marks whined.

Budd threw him down on the bed. "Let's go, Arthur. He's got a hell of a lead on us. Brother, he could be nearly to Texas by now."

She was surrounded by the Outside.

And yet it wasn't as hard as she'd thought.

Oh, she supposed the driver had honked furiously at her when she crossed the center line a moment ago. But, all things considered, she was doing fine. Melanie Charrol had never in her life driven a car. Many deaf people did, of course, even if they weren't supposed to, but Melanie had always been too afraid. Her fear wasn't that she'd be in an accident. Rather, she was terrified that she'd do something wrong and be embarrassed. Maybe get in the wrong lane. Stop too far away from a red light or too close. People would gather around the car and laugh at her.

But now she was cruising down Route 677 like a pro. She didn't have musician's ears any longer but she had musician's hands, sensitive and strong. And those fingers learned quickly not to overcompen-sate on the wheel and she sped straight toward her destination.

Lou Handy had had a purpose; well, so did she.

Bad is simple and good is complicated. And the simple always wins. That's what everything comes down to in the end. Simple always wins… that's just nature and you know what kind of trouble people get into ignoring nature.

Through the night, forty miles an hour, fifty, sixty.

She glanced down at the dashboard. Many of the dials and knobs made no sense to her. But she recognized the radio. She turned switches until it lit up: 103.4. Eyes flicking up and down, she figured out which was the volume and pushed the button until the line in the LED indicator was all the way at full. She heard nothing at first but then she turned up the bass level and she heard thumps and occasionally the sliding sound of tones and notes. The low register, Beethoven's register. That portion of her hearing had never deserted her completely.

Maybe his Ninth Symphony was playing, the soaring, inspiring "Ode to Joy." This seemed too coincidental, considering her mission at the moment, and 103.4 was probably rap or heavy metal. But it sent a powerful, irresistible beat through her chest. That was enough for her.

There!

She braked the car to a screeching stop in the deserted parking lot of the hardware supply store. The windows held just the assortment of goods she'd been looking for.

The brick sailed tidily through the glass and if it set off an alarm, which it probably did, she couldn't hear it so she felt no particular pressure to hurry. Melanie leaned forward and selected what seemed to be the sharpest knife in the display, a ten-inch butcher, Chicago Cutlery. She returned leisurely to the driver's seat, dropped the long blade on the seat next to her, then put the car in gear and sped away.

As she forced the engine to speed the car up to seventy through the huge gusts of silent wind, Melanie thought of Susan Phillips. Who would soon be sleeping forever in a grave as silent as her life had been.

A Maiden's Grave…

Oh, Susan, Susan… I'm not you. I can't be you and I won't even ask you to forgive me for that, though I would have once. After today I know I can't listen to imaginary music for the rest of my life. I know if you were alive now you'd hate me for this. But I want to hear words, I want to hear streams of snazzy consonants and vowels, I want to hear my music.

You were Deaf of Deaf, Susan. That made you strong, even if it killed you. I've been safe because I'm weak. But I can't be weak anymore. I'm an Other and that's just the way it is.

And Melanie realizes now, with a shock, why she could understand that son of a bitch Brutus so well. Because she is like him. She feels exactly what he feels.

Oh, I want to hurt, I want to pay them all back: Fate, taking my music away from me. My father, scheming to keep it away. Brutus and the man who hired him, kidnaping us, toying with us, hurting us, every one of us – the students, Mrs. Harstrawn, that poor trooper. And of course Susan.

The car raced through the night, one of her elegant hands on the steering wheel, one caressing the sensuous wooden handle of the knife.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

The wind buffeted the car fiercely and, overhead, black strips of clouds raced through the cold sky at a thousand miles an hour.

That saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost but now I'm found.

Was blind, but now I see.

Melanie dropped the knife back onto the seat and gripped the wheel in both hands, listening to the powerful bass beat resonate in her chest. She supposed the wind howled like a mad wolf but of course that was something she couldn't know for sure.

So you'll be home then.

Never.

They were three miles outside of Crow Ridge, speeding south, when Budd sat up straight, making his perfect posture that much better. His head snapped toward Potter. "Arthur!"

The FBI agent cringed. "Of course. Oh, hell!"

The car skidded to a stop on the highway, ending up perpendicular to the roadway and blocking both lanes.

"Where is it, Charlie? Where?"

"A half-mile that way," Budd cried, pointing to the right. "That intersection we just passed. It's a shortcut. It'll take us right there."

Arthur Potter, otherwise the irritatingly prudent driver, took the turn at speed and, on the verge of an irrigation ditch, managed to control his mad, tire-smoking skid.

"Oh, brother," Budd muttered, though it wasn't Potter's insane driving but his own stupidity he was lamenting. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before."

Potter was furious with himself too. He realized exactly where Handy was. Not going south at all but heading directly back to his money. All the other evidence had been removed from the slaughterhouse by the police. But Crime Scene had never gotten the scrambled radio – or the cash. They were still there, hidden. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As he drove, hunched over the wheel, Potter asked Budd to call Tobe at Melanie's house. When the connection was completed he took the phone from the captain.

"Where's Frank and HRT?" the agent asked.

"Hold on," Tobe responded. "I'll find out." A moment later he came back on. "They're about to touch down in Virginia."

Potter sighed. "Damn. Okay, call Ted Franklin and Dean Stillwell, have them send some men to the slaughterhouse. Handy's on his way. If he's not there already. But it's vital not to spook him. This might be our only chance to nail him. I want them to roll in without lights and sirens and park at least a half-mile away on side roads. Remember to tell him Handy's armed and extremely dangerous. Tell him we're going to be inside. Charlie and me."

"Where are you now?"

"Hold on." Potter asked Budd, who gave him their whereabouts. Into the phone he said, "Charlie says, Hitchcock Road, just off Route 345. About two minutes away."

A pause.

"Charlie Budd's with you?" Tobe asked uncertainly.

"Well, sure. You saw him leave with me."

"But you took both cars."

"No. We just took mine."

Another pause. "Hold on, Arthur."

Uneasy, Potter said to Budd, "Something's going on there. At Melanie's."

Come on, Tobe. Talk to me.

A moment later the young agent came on. "She's gone, Arthur. Melanie. She left the shower running and took the other car."

A chill ran through him. Potter said, "She's going to the Holiday Inn to kill Marks."

"What?" Budd cried.

"She doesn't know his name. But she knows the room number. She saw what I wrote down."

"And I left him trussed up there without a guard. I forgot to call."

Potter remembered the look in her eyes, the cold fire. He asked Tobe, "Did she take a weapon? Was there one in the car?"

Tobe called something to LeBow.

"No, we've both got ours. Nothing in the car."

"Well, get some troopers over to the hotel fast." He had an image of her madly going for Marks despite the troopers. If she had a gun or knife they'd kill her instantly.

"Okay, Arthur," Tobe said. "We're on it."

Just then the sulky landscape took on a familiar tone – deja vu from a recurring nightmare. A moment later the slaughterhouse loomed ahead of them. The battlefield was littered with coffee cups and tread marks – from squad cars, not the swales of covered wagons. The field was deserted. Potter folded up the phone and handed it back to Budd. He cut the engine and coasted silently the last fifty feet. "What about Melanie?" Budd whispered.

There was no time to think about her. The agent lifted his finger to his lips and gestured toward the door. The two men stepped outside into the fierce wind.

They were walking through the gully down which Stevie Gates had carried Shannon and Kielle like bags of wheat. "Through the front door?" Budd whispered.

Potter nodded yes. It was wide open; they could enter without having to risk squeaky hinges. Besides, the windows were five feet off the ground. Budd might make the climb but Potter, already exhausted and breathing heavily, knew that he wouldn't be able to.

They remained motionless for some minutes but there was no sign of Handy. No cars in sight, no headlights approaching, no flashlights. And no sound except that of the extraordinary wind. Potter nodded toward the front door.

They crouched and hurried between hillocks up to the front of the slaughterhouse, the red-and-white brick, blood and bone. They paused beside the spot where the body of Tremain's trooper had been dumped. The pipe by the window, Potter remembered. Filled with half a million dollars, the bait drawing Handy back to us. They paused on either side of the door. This isn't me, Potter thought suddenly. This isn't what I was meant to do. I'm a man of words, not a soldier. It's not that I'm afraid. But I'm out of my depth.

Not afraid, not afraid…

Though he was.

Why? Because, he supposes, for the first time in years, there is someone else in his life. Somehow, existence has become somewhat more precious to him in the past twelve hours. Yes, I want to talk to her, to Melanie. I want to tell her things, I want to hear how her day went. And, yes, yes, I want to take her hand and climb the stairs after dinner, feel the heat of her breath on my ear, feel the motion of her body beneath me. I want that! I…

Budd tapped his shoulder. Potter nodded and, guns before them, they stepped inside the slaughterhouse.

Like a cave.

Darkness everywhere. The wind roared through the holes and ill-fitting joints of the old place so loudly that the men could hear virtually nothing else. They stepped instinctively behind a large metal structure, some kind of housing. And waited. Gradually Potter's eyes became accustomed to the inky darkness. He could just make out two slightly lighter squares of the windows on the other side of the door. Beside the closest one was a stubby pipe about two feet in diameter, rising in an L shape from the floor like a vent on a ship. Potter pointed to it and Budd squinted, nodding.

As they made their way forward, like blind men, Potter understood what Melanie had gone through here. The wind stole his hearing, the darkness his vision. And the cold was dulling his sense of touch and smell.

They paused, Potter feeling panic stream down his spine like ice water. Once he gasped as Budd lifted his hand alarmingly and dropped into a crouch. Potter too had seen the leveraging shadow but it turned out to be merely a piece of sheet metal bending in the breeze.

Then they were five yards from the pipe. Potter stopped, looked around slowly. Heard nothing other than the wind. Turned back.

They started forward but Budd was tapping his shoulder. The captain whispered, "Don't slip. Something's spilled there. Oil, looks like."

Potter too looked underfoot. There were large dots of silvery liquid – more like mercury than water or oil – at the base of the pipe. He bent down, reached forward with a finger.

He touched cold metal. Not oil. Steel nuts.

The end plate was off the pipe. Handy had been here al -

The gunshot came from no more than ten feet away. An ear-shattering bang, ringing painfully off the tile and metal and exposed wet brick. Potter and Budd spun around.

Nothing, blackness. The faint motion of shadow as clouds obscured the moon.

Then the choked sound of Charlie Budd whispering, "I'm sorry, Arthur."

"What?"

"I'm… I'm sorry. I'm hit."

The shot had been fired into his back. He fell to his knees and Potter saw the ragged exit wound low in his belly. Budd keeled over onto the floor.

The agent started forward instinctively. Careful, he reminded himself, turning toward where the gunshot had come from. Guard yourself first.

The piece of pipe caught Potter squarely on the shoulder, knocking the wind out of him. He dropped hard to the ground and felt the sinewy hand yank his pistol from his grip.

"You alone? You two?" Handy's voice was a whisper. Potter couldn't speak. Handy twisted his arm up behind his back, bent a little finger brutally. The pain surged through Potter's hand into his jaw and head. "Yes, yes. Just the two of us."

Handy grunted as he rolled Potter over and bound his hands before him with thin wire, the strands cutting into his flesh.

"There's no way you're going to -" Potter began. Then a blurring motion, as Handy was slammed sideways into the pipe where the money'd been hidden. With a hollow ringing sound, the side of his head connected with the metal.

Charlie Budd, face dripping sweat as copious as the blood he shed, drew back his fist once more and slammed it into Handy's kidney. The convict wheezed with pain and pitched forward.

As Potter struggled futilely to get to his feet, Budd groped in the dark for his service automatic. He felt himself starting to black out and lurched sideways. Recovered slightly then staggered into a large cube of stained butcher block.

Handy leapt at him, growling in fury, throwing his arms around Budd's neck, pulling him down to the floor. The convict had been hurt, yes, but he still had his strength; Budd's was draining rapidly from his body.

"Oh, brother," Budd coughed. "I can't -"

Handy took Budd by the hair. "Come on, sport. Only round one."

"Go to hell," the trooper whispered.

"There's a boy." Handy got his arms around Budd and pulled him to his feet. "Ain't heard the bell. Come on. Fans're waiting."

The trooper, bleeding badly, eyes unfocused, pulled away and began flailing at Handy's lean face. One blow struck with surprising force and the convict jerked back in surprise. But after the initial burst of pain dissipated, Handy laughed.

"Come on," he taunted. "Sugar Ray, come on…"

When Budd connected a final time Handy moved in close and rained a half-dozen blows into his face. Budd dropped to his knees.

"Hey, down for the count."

"Leave him… alone," Potter called.

Handy pulled the gun from his belt.

"No!" the agent cried.

"Arthur…"

To Potter, Handy said, "He's lucky I'm doing it this way. I had more time, wouldn't be painless. Nosir."

"Listen to me," Potter began desperately.

"Shhh," Handy whispered.

The wind swelled, a mournful wail.

The three gunshots were fast and were soon replaced by the sound of Potter's voice crying. "Oh, Charlie, no, no, no…"

3:00 A.M.

Through the murky chutes, where the condemned longhorns had walked, between rectangular boulders of butcher block, beneath a thousand rusting meat hooks, clanging like bells…

And all the while the wind screamed around them, hooting through crevices and broken windows like a steam whistle on a tug.

Potter's wrists stung from the wire. He thought of Melanie's hands. Of her perfect nails. He thought of her hair, spun honey. He wished fervently that he'd kissed her earlier in the evening. With his tongue he pushed a tooth, loosened in his fall, from its precarious perch and spit it out. His mouth filled and he spit again; blood spurted to the floor.

"You poor fuck," Handy said with great satisfaction in his voice. "You just didn't get it, did you, Art? You just didn't fucking get it."

Ahead of them, some illumination. It wasn't light so much as a vague lessening of the darkness. From outside, faint starlight and the sliver of moon.

"You didn't have to kill him," the agent found himself saying.

"This way. Go there." Handy pushed him into a moldy corridor. "You been in this line of work how long, Art?" Potter didn't answer. "Probably twenty, twenty-five years, I'd guess. An' I'll bet mosta that's been doing what you did today – talking to assholes like me." Handy was a small man but his grip was ferocious. Potter's fingers tingled as he felt the circulation cut off.

They passed through a dozen rooms, black and stinking – the bloody dream of Messrs. Stoltz and Webber.

Handy pushed Potter through a back doorway. Then they were outside, rocking against the blast of wind.

"Whoa, bumpy ride tonight." Handy tugged Potter toward a grove of trees. He saw the outline of a car. Engine blocks take three hours to cool. If he'd had an infrared viewer they'd have seen it.

And Charlie Budd would still be alive…

"Twenty-five years," Handy shouted over the wind. "You always been on the other side of the police line. The safe side. You ever think what it'd be like being a hostage yourself? Wouldn't that be a fuckin' experience? Come on, Art, hustle. I want you to meet Pris. She's a ball buster, she is.

"Yessir, that's what you're gonna be – a hostage. You know, people don't experience stuff. Most people've never shot anybody. Most people've never walked into a bank and pulled a gun. Most people've never looked at a girl and not said a fucking word but just stared and stared while she cried like a swatted pup and then started taking off her clothes. 'Cause she figured that's what you want her to do.

"And most people've never been up close when somebody dies. I mean, touching 'em when it happens. When the last cell of somebody's body stops swimming around. I done all that. You don't even come close to feeling stuff like that. Like I've felt. That's experience, Art.

"You tried to stop me. You shouldn't've done that. I'm going to kill you, you probably know that. But not for a while. I'm taking you with us. And there ain't nothing you can say to stop me. You can't offer me a six-pack, you can't offer me a M-the-fuck-4 priority to Canada. When we're safe and away then the only thing I want is you dead. And if we don't get safe and away, then I want you dead too."

Handy suddenly quivered with fury, grabbed Potter by the lapels. "You shouldn'ta tried to stop me!"

There was a crinkling sound in Potter's jacket pocket. Handy smiled. "What've we got here?"

No! Potter thought, twisting away. But Handy reached inside the sports coat and lifted the photo from the pocket.

"What's'is?"

The picture of Melanie Charrol. The one that had been pinned up on the bulletin board in the van.

"Your girlfriend, huh, Art?"

"There's nowhere in the world," Potter said, "you'll be safe."

Handy ignored him. "We'll be away for a while, Pris and me. But I'm gonna hold on to this snapshot here. We'll come back and visit her. Melanie, she's a pistol. She got me down on my back, knocked the wind clean outta me. Did this – see these scratches? And she pitched that little girl out the door 'fore I could say boo. And got that other one, the pretty little one Sonny had his eye on, got her out too. Oh, Melanie'll get her payback." As if revealing trade secrets Handy added, "A man can't let anybody walk on him. Especially a woman. May be a month, may be two months. She'll find Pris and me in her bed waiting for her. And she can't even scream for help."

"You'd be nuts to come back here. Every cop in the state knows your face."

Handy was angry again. "I'm owed! I am fucking owed!" He shoved the photo into his pocket and dragged Potter after him.

They were headed for the airport – "Bumpy ride tonight." They'd kill him as soon as they were safe. Maybe drop him from the airplane, three thousand feet over a wheat field.

"There she is now, Pris." Handy nodded at the Nissan, parked in a grove of trees. "She's quite a gal, Art. I was shot one time, got hit in the side, and the same shit trooper got me'd drawn down on Pris. She had her piece in her hand but he could've nailed her 'fore she could lift it even. What happens but, cool as ice, she unbuttons her blouse, smiling all the time? Yessir, yessir. He wanted to shoot her, that man did! But he couldn't bring himself to. Soon as he glanced down at her titties she lifted her Glock and took him out, pow, pow, pow. Three in the chest. Then walked over and put one in the head in case he was in armor. You think your girlfriend'd be that cool? Oh, I'll betcha not, Art."

Handy stopped, pulled Potter to a halt and then looked around, head up, sniffing the air, frowning. Melanie had called him Brutus and given the other two the names of creatures but the agent knew Handy was more animal-like than either Wilcox or Bonner.

Handy's eyes turned toward the car.

Potter could see the open driver's door and the woman inside, who'd impersonated Sharon Foster, gazing out the windshield. Her blond hair was pulled back in the same ponytail as before. But she'd changed clothes. No longer in uniform, she was now wearing pants and a dark turtleneck.

"Pris?" Handy whispered.

She didn't respond.

"Pris?" Louder. "Prissy?" Rising on the wind.

Handy shoved Potter to the ground. The agent fell and rolled helplessly on the grass then watched as Handy ran to the driver's seat and cradled his girlfriend.

The convict howled in horror and rage.

Potter squinted. No, not a turtleneck, not a garment at all. The slit in the woman's throat extended from one jugular vein to another and the dark sweater was half the blood in her body streaming down over her shoulders and arms and breasts. Her sole plea for help had been to lift a bloody hand to the windshield and gesture madly, leaving a finger-painting of her terror on the dirty glass.

"No, no, no!" Handy cradled her, rocking frantically back and forth.

Potter rolled to his side and tried to scrabble away. He got only three feet then heard the snap of brush and rush of feet. A boot slammed into his ribs. Potter dropped to the ground, lifting his bound hands to his face. "You did this! You snuck up on her! You did this, you fuck!"

Potter curled up, tried to ward off the vicious kicks.

Handy backed up and lifted the pistol.

Potter closed his eyes and lowered his hands.

He tried to picture Marian but she wouldn't come to mind. No, only Melanie was in his thoughts as, for the second time tonight, he prepared to die.

Arthur Potter was suddenly aware of the wind around him. Howling, hissing, it rose and formed words. But they were words not of this earth: eerie syllables rising deep from within some banshee mimicking the language of pitiful humans. He couldn't make out the content at first, a phrase repeated manically, spoken in pure loathing and fury. Then the scream coalesced, and as Handy whirled around Potter heard the malformed words over and over, "I hate you I hate you I hate you…" The knife plunged deep into Handy's shoulder and he cried in agony as Melanie Charrol's strong hands pulled the long blade from his flesh and drove it again into him – into his right arm. The gun dropped to the ground. Potter rolled forward and scooped it up.

Handy swung a fist at her face but she leapt back easily, still holding the knife in front of her. Handy dropped to his knees, eyes closed, gripping his arm, from which blood poured and poured, spiraling down his right finger, extended like God's in the Sistine Chapel.

Potter struggled to his feet and walked around Handy, stopped beside Melanie. She looked at his hands and untied the wire binding them. The young woman was quivering fiercely. So she too had made the same deduction about Handy that he and Budd had – that he'd be returning here for his money. She hadn't gone after Marks at all.

"Go ahead, do it," Handy snarled to Potter, as if he were the long-suffering victim of tonight's events.

Feeling the weight of the Glock in his fingers, Potter glanced down at Handy's creased, hating face. The agent said nothing, did nothing. Have you ever done anything bad?

Then suddenly Arthur Potter understood how different he truly was from Handy and had always been. During the barricades the agent was like an actor – he became someone else for a short while, became someone he distrusted, feared, even loathed. But this talent was mercifully balanced by his uncanny ability to relinquish the role, to return.

And so it was Melanie Charrol who stepped forward and drove the long knife deep between Handy's ribs, all the way to the bloody handle. The thin man choked, coughed blood, and fell backwards, shivering. Slowly she drew the knife out.

Potter took the weapon from her, wiped the handle on his sports coat, dropped it on the ground. He stood back, watching Melanie crouch beside Handy, who was trembling as the last of life fled his wiry body. She crouched over him, her head down, her eyes on him. In the dimness of the night Potter couldn't see her expression clearly though he detected what he believed was a faint smile on her face, one of curiosity.

And he sensed something else. In her posture, in the tilt of her head near his, it seemed as if she were inhaling the man's pain like spiced incense wafting through her house.

Lou Handy's mouth moved. A wet sound rose, a rattle, but so soft that Arthur Potter was nearly as deaf to it as Melanie would be. When the man quivered violently once, then again, and was finally still, Potter helped her to her feet.

His arm around her shoulders, they walked through the night while around them saplings and sedge and buffalo grass whipped from side to side in the sinewy wind. Fifty yards up the road they came to the government car Melanie had commandeered for the drive here from Hebron.

She turned to him, zipping up her battered brown leather jacket.

He gripped her shoulders, felt the wind slap her hair against his hand. A dozen things he might have said to her came to mind. He wanted to ask if she was all right, ask what she was feeling, tell her what he intended to explain to the troopers, tell her how many times he thought about her during the barricade.

But he said nothing. The moon had slipped behind a lesion of black cloud and the field was very dark; she couldn't, he told himself, see his lips anyway. Potter suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her on the mouth, quickly, ready to step away at the least hesitation. But he felt none and held her tightly to him, dropping his face to the cool, fragrant skin of her neck. They remained in this embrace for a long moment. When he stepped back the moon was out once again and there was pale white light on both their faces. But still he remained silent and merely guided her into the driver's seat of the car.

Melanie started the engine and, glancing back, she lifted her hands off the wheel and gestured to him in sign language.

Why would she do that? he wondered. What could she be saying?

Before he could tell her to wait, to write out the words, she put the car in gear and drove to the dirt road, rocking slowly over the uneven field. The car made an abrupt turn and disappeared behind a row of trees. The brake lights flashed once and then she was gone.

He trudged back to the bloody Nissan. Here, he smudged all the fingerprints but his own and then rearranged the bloody knife, the guns, and the two bodies until the crime scene told a credible, if dishonest, story.

"But what exactly is a lie, Charlie? The truth's a pretty slippery thing. Are any words ever one hundred percent honest?"

He was surveying his handiwork when, suddenly, it occurred to him what Melanie had said a few moments before. The words were among the few in his own paltry vocabulary of sign language, words he in fact had signed to her earlier in the evening. "I want to see you again." Was this right? He lifted his hands and repeated the sentence to himself. Awkwardly at first, then smooth as a pro. Yes, he believed that was it.

Arthur Potter saw a car approaching in the distance. Turning his collar against the relentless stream of wind, he sat down on the rocky ground to wait.