"Sure, I'm going to Canada. I've got myself a special priority. I've talked to the fucking FAA myself."
As if he hadn't spoken, her southern-accented voice rasped, "You're a cop killer, Lou. You touch down anywhere in these United States, with or without hostages, you're dead meat. Every cop in the country knows your face. Wilcox's too. And believe me, they'll shoot first and read rights to your bleeding body. And I promise you, Lou, any ambulance carrying you to a prison hospital's gonna take its own sweet fucking time gettin' you there."
Potter had heard enough of her hardball tactics. He was sure she'd push Handy right back into his hole. He reached for her shoulder. But he stopped when he heard Handy say, "Nobody can catch me. I'm the worst thing you'll ever come across. I'm cold death."
It wasn't Handy's words that gave Potter pause but the tone of his voice. He sounded like a scared child. Almost pathetic. However unorthodox her style, Foster had touched something in Handy. She turned to him. "Can I make a surrender offer?" LeBow, Budd, and D'Angelo all looked at Potter. What was in Handy's mind? he wondered. A sudden awareness of the hopelessness of the situation? Maybe a reporter had managed to broadcast that federal Hostage Rescue had arrived and surrounded the slaughterhouse, and Handy had heard it on his television. Or maybe he'd simply gotten tired. It happened. In an instant the energy dissipates. HTs ready to come out with guns blazing will just sit on the floor when HRT kicks in the door and look at the approaching agents without the energy to lift their hands over their heads.
Yet there was another possibility, one that Potter hated to consider. Which was that this young woman was simply better than he was. That she'd breezed in, assessed Handy, and then pegged him right. Again the jealousy tore at him. What should I do?
He thought suddenly of Melanie. What would be most likely to save her?
Potter nodded to the young detective. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Lou, what'll it take to make you come out?"
Potter thought: Lemmefuck you.
"Can I fuck you?"
"You'd have to ask my husband and he'd say no." A pause.
"There's nothing I want but freedom. And I got that."
"Do you?" Foster asked softly. Another pause. Longer than the first.
Potter speculated. Fuck, yeah. And nobody's taking it away from me. But Handy said, in effect, just the opposite. "I don't… I don't want to die."
"Nobody wants to shoot you, Lou."
"Everybody wants to shoot me. And I go back, the judge'll give me the needle."
"We can talk about that." Her voice was gentle, almost motherly.
Potter stared at the yellow square of light. Somewhere in his heart he was beginning to believe that he'd made some very serious mistakes tonight. Mistakes that had cost lives.
Foster turned to the agent. "Who can guarantee the state won't seek the death penalty?"
Potter told her that Roland Marks was nearby, sent Budd to find him. A moment later Marks climbed into the van and Foster explained to him what Handy wanted.
"He'll surrender?" The assistant attorney general's cold eyes were on Potter, who felt all the censure and scorn he'd fired at Marks earlier that day flow right back at himself. For the first time today Potter found he couldn't hold Marks's eye.
"I think I can get him to," Foster said.
"Yes indeed. I'll guarantee whatever he wants. Put a big red seal on it. Ribbons too. I can't get an existing-sentence reduction -"
"No. I'm sure he understands that."
"But I'll guarantee we don't go sticking those little needles in his arm."
"Lou. The state assistant attorney general is here. He's guaranteeing that they won't go after the death penalty if you surrender."
"Yeah?" There was a pause, the sound of a hand over the receiver. Then: "Same for my boy Shep here?"
Foster frowned. LeBow turned his computer to her and she read about Wilcox, She looked at the AG, who nodded.
"Sure, Lou. Both of you. And the other guy with you?"
Potter thought: Son of a bitch had himself an accident.
Handy laughed. "Had a accident."
Foster lifted an inquiring eyebrow to Potter, who said, "Believed dead."
"Okay, you and Wilcox," the blond detective said, "you got a deal."
The same deal that Potter, through Charlie Budd, had offered him. Why was Handy accepting it now? A moment later he found out.
"Hold up, you frigid bitch. That's not all."
"I love it when you talk dirty, Lou."
"I also want a guarantee to stay outta Callana. I killed that guard there. I go back and they'll pound me to death for sure. No more federal time."
Foster looked once more at Potter, who nodded to Tobe. "Call Justice," he whispered. "Dick Allen."
The deputy attorney general in Washington.
"Lou," Foster said, "We're checking on it now."
Potter again anticipated: I'm still horny. Let's fuck.
Handy's voice brightened and the old devil was back. "Come sit on my cock while we're waiting."
"I would, Lou, but I don't know where it's been."
"In my Jockeys for way too long."
"Just keep it there for a while longer then."
Potter was patched through to Allen, who listened and agreed reluctantly that if Handy was willing to surrender he could serve his state time first. Allen would also waive the federal charges for the escape though not for the murder of the guard. The practical effect of this was that Handy wouldn't have to surrender to any federal jailers until about fifty years after he'd died of old age.
Foster relayed this to Handy. There was a long pause. A moment later Handy's voice said, "Okay, we'll do it."
Foster looked at Potter with a cocked eyebrow. He nodded numbly, dumbfounded.
"But I gotta see it in writing," Handy said.
"Okay, Lou. We can arrange that."
Potter was already writing the terms out longhand. He handed the sheet to Henry LeBow to type and print out.
"So, that's it," LeBow said, eyes on his blue screen. "Score one for the good guys."
Laughter broke out. Potter's face burned as he watched the elation on the faces of Budd and the other federal agents. He smiled too but he understood – as did no one else on the threat management team – that he had both won and lost. And he knew that it was not his strength or courage or intelligence that had failed him but his judgment.
Which is the worst defeat a man can suffer.
"Here we go," LeBow said, offering the printout to Potter. He and Marks signed the document and Stevie Gates made one last run to the slaughterhouse. When he returned he wore a perplexed expression and carried a bottle of Corona beer, which Handy had given him.
"Agent Potter?" Sharon Foster had apparently been calling his name several times. He looked up. "Would you like to coordinate the surrender?"
He stared at her for a moment and nodded. "Yes, of course. Tobe, call Dean Stillwell. Ask him to please come in here."
Tobe made the call. Unfazed, LeBow continued to type in information on the incident log. Detective Sharon Foster glanced at Potter with a look that he took to be one of sympathy; it was patronizing and hurt far more than a snide smile of triumph would have. As he looked at her he felt suddenly very old – as if everything he'd known and done in his life, every way he looked at things, every word he'd said to strangers and to friends was, in an instant, outmoded and invalid. If not an outright lie.
He was in camouflage gear so no one saw the lean man lying in a stand of starkly white birch not far from the command van.
His hands clasped the night-vision binoculars, sweat dotting his palms copiously.
Dan Tremain had been frozen in this position for an hour, during which time a helicopter had come and gone, the federal HRT had arrived and assembled nearby, and a squad car had streaked up to the van, bearing a young policewoman.