Angie was frowning.
"What?" Budd asked, seeing the hopeless expression on her face. It matched that on Potter's.
"What's the matter?" Frances Whiting whispered.
Potter grabbed the field glasses, wiped the greasy smoke residue off them, and looked out.
Oh, Christ, no… Desperately Potter said, "Lou, it was a mistake."
"You shoot at Shep it was a mistake. You don't get me my chopper on time it's not your fault… Don't you know me by now, Art?"
Only too well.
Potter set down the glasses. He turned away from the window, glanced up at the pictures above the diagram of the slaughterhouse. Who will it be? he wondered.
Emily?
Donna Harstrawn?
Beverly?
Potter thinks suddenly: Melanie. He's going to pick Melanie.
Frances understood and cried out, "No, please no. Do something!"
"There's nothing to do," Angie whispered.
Tremain leaned his miserable face down to the window and looked out.
Handy's voice filled the van. He sounded reasonable, wise. "You're a lot like me, Art. Loyal. That's what I think. You're loyal to them that do what they're supposed to and you don't have time for those that don't." A pause. "You know just what I'm saying, don't you, Art? I'll leave the body outside. You can come get it. Flag of truce."
"Lou, isn't there anything I can do?" Potter heard the desperation in his own voice. Hated it. But it was there just the same.
Who will it be?
Angie had turned away.
Budd shook his head sorrowfully. Even boisterous Roland Marks could find nothing to say.
"Tobe," Potter said softly, "please turn down the volume."
He did. But still everyone jumped at the stark sound of the gunshot, which filled the van as a huge metallic ring.
As he stumbled toward the slaughterhouse, where the body lay pale in the halogen lights, he pulled off his flak jacket and dropped it on the ground. His helmet too he left behind.
Dan Tremain walked on, tears in his eyes, gazing at the still body, the bloody body, lying in the posture of a rag doll.
He crested the rise and saw from the corner of his eye troopers standing from their places of cover. They were staring at him; they knew he was responsible for what had happened, for this unconscionable death. He was walking up Calvary Hill.
And in the window of the processing plant: Lou Handy, a gun pointed directly at Tremain's chest. It made no difference, he was no threat; the captain had dropped the utility belt holding his Glock service pistol some yards back. On he stumbled, nearly falling, then just catching his balance like a drunk with some irrepressible sense of survival. His despair was deepened by Lou Handy's face – the red eyes, set back under bony brows, the narrow jaw, the five o'clock shadow. He was smiling, an innocuous smile of curiosity, as he gazed at the sorrow on the cop's face. Sampling, tasting.
Tremain gazed at the body lying there in front of him. Fifty feet away, forty. Thirty.
I'm mad, Tremain thought. And continued to walk, staring into the black eye of the muzzle of Handy's gun.
Twenty feet. Blood so red, skin so pale.
Handy's mouth was moving but Tremain could hear nothing. Maybe God's judgment is to make me deaf as those poor girls.
Ten feet. Five.
He slowed. The troopers were standing now, all of them, staring at him. Handy could pick any of them off, as they could him, but there would be no shooting. This was the Christmas Eve during World War I when the enemy troops shared carols and food. And helped each other collect and bury the shattered bodies strewn throughout no-man's-land.
"What have I done?" he muttered. He dropped to his knees and touched the cold hand.
He cried for a moment then hefted the body of the trooper in his arms – Joey Wilson, Outrider Two – and lifted it effortlessly, looking into the window. At Handy's face, which was no longer smiling but, oddly, curious. Tremain memorized the foxlike cast of his face, the cold eyes, the way the tip of his tongue lay against his upper lip. They were only feet apart.
Tremain turned and started back to the police line. In his mind he heard a tune, floating aimlessly. He couldn't think of what it might be for a minute then the generic instrument turned into the bagpipe he remembered from years ago and the tune became "Amazing Grace," the traditional song played at the funerals of fallen policemen.
8:45 P.M.
Arthur Potter thought about the nature of silence.
Sitting in the medical tent. Staring at the floor as medics attended to his burnt arms and hands.
Days and weeks of silence. Silence thicker than wood, perpetual silence. Is that what Melanie's day-to-day life was like?
He himself had known quiet. An empty house. Sunday mornings, filled only with the faint tapping of household motors and pumps. Still summer afternoons by himself on a back porch. But Potter was a man who lived in a state of anticipation and for him the silence was, on good days at least, the waiting state before his life might begin again – when he would meet someone like Marian, when he would find someone other than takers and terrorists and psychos with whom he might share his thoughts.
Someone like Melanie? he wondered.
No, of course not.
He felt a chill on the back of his hand and watched the medic apply some kind of ointment, which had the effect of dulling most of the stinging immediately.
Arthur Potter thought of Melanie's photograph, saw it hanging over the diagram of the slaughterhouse. He thought of his reaction when he understood, a few minutes ago, that Handy was going to kill another hostage. She was the first person in his mind.
He stretched. A joint somewhere in his back popped softly and he admonished himself: Don't be a damn fool…
But in another part of his lavish mind Arthur Potter English-lit major thought, If we have to be foolish it ought to be in love. Not in our careers, where lives hang in the balance; not with our gods or in our lust for beauty and learning. Not with our children, so desirous and so unsure. But in love. For love is nothing but the purest folly and we go there for the purpose of being impassioned and half-crazy. In matters of the heart the world will always be generous with us, and forgiving.
Then he laughed to himself and shook his head as reality descended once more – like the dull ache that returned along his seared arms. She's twenty-five – less than half your age. She's deaf, both lower- and upper-case. And, for heaven's sake, it's your wedding anniversary today. Twenty-three years. Not a single one missed. Enough nonsense. Get back to the command van. Get to work.
The medic tapped him on the shoulder. Potter looked up, startled.
"You're all set, sir."
"Yes, thank you."
He rose and walked unsteadily back to the van.
A figure appeared in the doorway.
Potter looked up at Peter Henderson. "You all right?" the SAC asked.
He nodded cautiously. Tremain might have been the main perp but Potter would have bet a week's salary that Henderson had played some role in the assault. Ambition? A desire to get back at the Bureau, which betrayed him? Yet this would be even harder to prove than the existence of the suspected gas bomb in the generator. Forensics of the heart are always elusive.
Henderson looked at the burns. "You'll get yourself a medal for this."
"My first wound in the line of duty." Potter smiled.
"Arthur, I just wanted to apologize for losing my temper before. It gets dull down here. I was hoping for some action. You know how it is."
"Sure, Pete."
"I miss the old days."
Potter shook the man's hand. They talked about Joe Silbert and his fellow reporters. They'd refer the matter to the U.S. attorney but concluded there was probably nothing to hold them for. Obstruction of justice is a tricky charge and absent interfering with an ongoing criminal prosecution judges usually come down on the side of the First Amendment. Potter had contented himself by walking ominously up to Silbert, who stood in a circle of troopers, cool as a captured revolutionary leader. The agent had told him that he was going to cooperate in every way with the widow of the dead trooper, who would undoubtedly be bringing a multimillion-dollar wrongful-death action against the TV station and Silbert and Biggins personally.