"I intend to be a plaintiff's witness," Potter explained to the reporter, whose facade cracked momentarily, revealing beneath it a very scared, middle-aged man of questionable talents and paltry liquidity.
The negotiator now sat back in his chair and gazed at the slaughterhouse through the yellow window.
"How many minutes to the next deadline?"
"Forty-five."
Potter sighed. "That's going to be a big one. I'll have to do some thinking about it. Handy's mad now. He lost control in a big way."
Angie said, "And what's worse is that you helped him get it back. Which is a form of losing control in itself."
"So he's resentful in general and resentful at me in particular."
"Though he probably doesn't know it," Angie said.
"It's lose-lose." Potter's eyes were on Budd, gazing mournfully at the slaughterhouse.
The phone buzzed. Tobe picked it up, blew soot off the receiver, and answered. "Yeah," the young man said. "I'll tell him." He hung up. "Charlie, that was Roland Marks. He asked if you could come see him right away. He's got his friend with him. Somebody he wants you to meet. He said it's critical."
The captain kept his eye on the battlefield. "He's… Where is he?"
"Down by the rear staging area."
"Uh-huh. Okay. Say, Arthur, can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure you can."
"Outside?"
"Taken up imaginary smoking, have you?" Potter asked.
"Arthur started a trend in Special Ops," Tobe said. "Henry's taken up imaginary sex."
"Tobe," barked LeBow, typing away madly.
The young agent added, "I'm not being critical, Henry. I'm going to imaginary AA."
Budd smiled wanly and he and Potter stepped outside. The temperature had dropped ten degrees and it seemed to the negotiator that the wind was worse.
"So, what's up, Charlie?"
They stopped walking. The men gazed at the van and the burnt field around it – the devastation that the fire had caused.
"Arthur, there's something I have to tell you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tape recorder. He looked down and turned it over and over in his hands.
"Oh," the agent said. "About this?" Potter held up a small cassette.
Budd frowned and flipped open the recorder. There was a cassette inside.
"That one's blank," Potter said. "It's a special cassette. Can't be recorded on."
Budd pushed the play button. The hiss of static brayed from the tiny speaker.
"I knew all about it, Charlie."
"But -"
"Tobe has his magic wands. They pick up magnetic recording equipment. We're always sweeping locations for bugs. He told me somebody had a recorder. He narrowed it down to you."
"You knew?" He stared at the agent, then shook his head in disgust with himself – for having been outsmarted at something he didn't think was very smart to begin with.
"Who was it?" Potter asked. "Marks? Or the governor?"
"Marks. Those girls… he's really in a state about them. He wanted to give Handy whatever he wanted in order to get them released. Then he was going to track him down. He had this special homing device he was going to put in the chopper. You could track 'em from a hundred miles away and they'd never know."
Potter nodded at the crestfallen captain. "I figured it was something like that. Any man willing to sacrifice himself is willing to sacrifice somebody else."
"But how'd you swap the cassettes?" Budd asked.
Angie Scapello stepped down through the open doorway of the van and nodded a greeting to the men. She walked past Budd, touching his arm very lightly as she passed.
"Hi, Charlie."
"Hey, Angie," he said, not smiling.
"Say, what time do you have?" she asked him.
He lifted his left wrist. "Hell, it's gone. My watch. Damn. And Meg just gave it to me for my -"
Angie held up the Pulsar.
Budd was nodding, understanding it all. "Got it," he said, and hung his head even lower, if that was possible. "Oh, brother."
"I used to teach the pickpocket recognition course at Baltimore PD," she explained. "I borrowed the recorder when we were strolling around in the gully – having our loyalty talk – and switched cassettes."
Budd smiled miserably. "You're good. I'll give you that. Oh, man. I've been messin' up all night long. I don't know what to say. I've let you down."
"You confessed. No harm done."
"It was Marks?" Angie asked.
"Yep." Budd sighed. "At first I was thinking like him – that we should do anything to save those girls. I gave Arthur an earful about that this morning. But you were right, a life's a life. Doesn't matter if it's a girl or a trooper. We gotta stop him here."
"I appreciate that Marks had noble motives," Potter said. "But we have to do things a certain way. Acceptable losses. Remember?"
Budd closed his eyes. "Man, I almost ruined your career."
The negotiator laughed. "You didn't come close, Captain. Believe me, you were the only one at risk. If you'd given that tape to anyone your career in law enforcement would've been over."
Budd looked very flustered then stuck out his hand.
Potter shook it warmly though Budd didn't grip it very hard, either out of shame or out of concern about the fluffy pads of bandages on the agent's skin.
They all fell silent as Potter gazed up at the sky. "When's the deadline?"
Budd looked again at his wrist blankly for a moment then he realized that he was holding his watch in his right hand. "Forty minutes. What's the matter?" The captain's eyes lifted to the same jaundiced cloud that Potter was targeting.
"I'm getting a bad feeling about this one. This deadline."
"Why?"
"I just am."
"Intuition," Angie said. "Listen to him, Charlie. He's usually right."
Budd looked down from the sky and found Potter looking at him. "I'm sorry, Arthur. I'm plumb outta ideas."
Potter's eyes zipped back and forth over the grass, blackened by the fire and by the shadow of the van. "A helicopter," he blurted suddenly.
"What?"
Potter felt a keen sense of urgency seize him. "Get me a helicopter."
"But I thought we weren't going to give him one."
"I just need to show him one. A big one. At least a six-seater – eight- or ten- if you can find one."
"If I can find one?" Budd exclaimed. "Where? How?"
A thought slipped into Potter's mind from somewhere.
Airport.
There was an airport nearby. Potter tried to remember. How did he know that? Had somebody told him? He hadn't driven past it. Budd hadn't told him; SAC Henderson hadn't said anything. Where -
It was Lou Handy. The taker had mentioned it as a possible source of a helicopter. He must've driven by it on the way here.
He told this to Budd.
"I know it," the captain said. "They got a couple choppers there but I don't know if there's anybody's there who can even fly one. I mean, if we found one in Wichita they might make it here in time. But hell, it'll take more'n forty minutes to track down a pilot."
"Well, forty minutes is all we have, Charlie. Get a move on."
"The truth…" Melanie is crying.
And de l'Epée is the one person she doesn't want to cry in front of. But cry she does. He rises from his chair and sits on the couch next to her.
"The truth is," she continues, "that I just don't like who I am, what I've become, what I'm a part of."
It's time to confess and nothing can stop her now.
"I told you about how I lived for being Deaf. It became my whole life?"
"Miss Deaf Farmhand of the Year."
"I didn't want any of it. Not. One. Bit." She grows vehement. "I got so damn tired of the self-consciousness of it all. The politics of being part of the Deaf world, the prejudice the Deaf have – oh, it's there. You'd be surprised. Against minorities and other handicapped. I'm tired of it! I'm tired of not having my music. I'm tired of my father…"