A Maiden's Grave by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online

general—”
    Potter glanced at him with a firm smile. “I’ve already spoken to him and the governor on the plane here.”
    Budd nodded, still grinning, and the negotiator proceeded with the briefing.
    Early that morning, he explained, three men had murdered a guard and escaped from Callana maximum-security federal penitentiary outside Winfield, Kansas, near the Oklahoma border. Louis Jeremiah Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray “Sonny” Bonner. As they drove north their car was struck by a Cadillac. Handy and the escapees murdered the couple inside and got as far as the slaughterhouse before a state trooper caught up with them.
    “Handy, thirty-five, was serving a life sentence for robbery, arson, and murder. Seven months ago he, Wilcox, Handy’s girlfriend, and another perp robbed the Farmers & Merchants S&L in Wichita. Handy locked two tellers in the cash cage and set the place on fire. It burned to the ground, killing them both. During the getaway the fourth robber was killed, Handy’s girlfriend escaped, and Handy and Wilcox were arrested. Visual aids, Henry?”
    With an optical scanner LeBow had digitized mug shots of the three HTs and assembled them onto a single sheet of paper, showing front, side, and three-quarter views, highlighting distinguishing scars and characteristics. These were now spewing out of his laser printer. He distributed stacks to the people assembled in the van.
    “Keep one of those and pass them out to the officers under you,” Potter said. “I want everybody in the field to get one and memorize those pictures. If it comes down to a surrender things may get confusing and we’ve got too many plain-clothesmen here to risk misidentification of the HTs. I want everybody to know exactly what the bad guys look like.
    “That’s Handy on top. The second one is Shep Wilcox. He’s the closest thing Handy has to a friend. They’veworked together on three or four jobs. The last fellow, the fat one with the beard, is Bonner. Handy apparently’s known him for some time but they’ve never worked together. Bonner’s got armed robbery on his sheet but he was in Callana for interstate flight. He’s a suspected serial rapist though they only got him for his last assault. Stabbed the victim repeatedly—while he was in flagrante. She lived. She was seventeen years old and had to change her eleventh plastic surgery appointment to testify against him. Henry, what can you tell us about the hostages?”
    LeBow said, “Very sketchy so far. Inside we have a total of ten hostages. Eight students, two teachers from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas, about fifteen miles west of here. They were on their way to a Theater of the Deaf performance in Topeka. They’re all female. The students range in age from seven to seventeen. I’ll be receiving more data soon. We do know that they’re all deaf except the older teacher, who can speak and hear normally.”
    Potter had arranged for a sign language interpreter but even so he knew the problems they could anticipate; he’d negotiated in foreign countries many times and negotiated with many foreigners in the United States. He knew the danger—and the frustration—of having to translate information precisely and quickly when lives hung in the balance.
    He said, “Now, we’ve established a threat management team, consisting of myself; Henry LeBow, my intelligence officer and record keeper; Tobe Geller, my communications officer, and Captain Budd, who’ll serve as a state liaison and my right-hand man. I’m the incident commander. There’ll also be a containment officer, who I haven’t picked yet.
    “The TMT has two jobs. The primary one is to effect the surrender of the HTs and the release of the hostages. The secondary job is to assist in a tactical resolution if an assault is called for. This includes gathering intelligence for the hostage rescue team, distracting the HTs, manipulating them however we can to keep casualties to an