Read Online A Maidens Grave by Jeffery Deaver - Free Book Online Page B

archbishops?” Mrs. Harstrawn signed, and rolled her eyes. Susan laughed. Jocylyn nodded but seemed stymied that someone had once again beaten her to a punch line.
    Tomboy Shannon, devourer of Christopher Pike books, asked why Melanie didn’t make the birds hawks, with long silver beaks and claws that dripped blood.
    “It is about us then?” Kielle asked. “The poem?”
    “Maybe.”
    “But there are nine, including you,” Susan pointed outto her teacher with the logic of a teenager. “And ten with Mrs. Harstrawn.”
    “So there are,” Melanie responded. “I can change it.” Then thought to herself: Do something. Whipped cream on pie? Bullshit. Take charge!
    Do something!
    Go talk to Brutus.
    Melanie rose suddenly, walked to the doorway. Looked out. Then back at Susan, who signed, “What are you doing?”
    Melanie’s eyes returned to the men. Thinking: Oh, don’t rely on me, girls. That’s a mistake. I’m not the one to do it. Mrs. Harstrawn’s older. Susan’s stronger. When she says something, people—hearing or deaf—always listen.
    I can’t . . . .
    Yes, you can.
    Melanie took a step into the main room, feeling the spatter of water that dripped from the ceiling. She dodged a swinging meat hook, walked closer to the men. Just the twins. And Beverly. Who wouldn’t let seven-year-old girls go? Who wouldn’t have compassion for a teenager racked by asthma?
    Bear looked up and saw her, grinned. Crew-cut Stoat was slipping batteries into a portable TV and paid no attention. Brutus, who had wandered away from the other two, was gazing out the window.
    Melanie paused, looked back into the killing room. Susan was frowning. Again she signed, “What are you doing?” Melanie sensed criticism in her expression; she felt like a high-school student herself.
    Just ask him. Write the words out. Please let little ones go.
    Her hands were shaking, her heart was a huge, raw lump. She felt the vibrations as Bear called something. Slowly Brutus turned.
    He looked at her, tossed his wet hair.
    Melanie froze, feeling his eyes on her. She pantomimed writing something. He walked up to her. She was frozen. He took her hand, looked at her nails, a small silver ring on her right index finger. Released it. Looked into herface and laughed. Then he walked back to the other two men, leaving her alone, his back to her, as if she posed no threat whatsoever, as if she were younger than the youngest of her students, as if she were not there at all.
    She felt more devastated than if he’d slapped her.
    Too frightened to approach him again, too ashamed to return to the killing room, Melanie remained where she was, gazing out the window at the row of police cars, the crouching forms of the policemen, and the scruffy grass bending in the wind.
     
    Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse through the bulletproof window in the truck.
    They’d have to talk soon. Already Lou Handy was looming too large in his mind. There were two dangers inherent in negotiating. First, making the hostage taker bigger than life before you begin and therefore starting out on the defensive—what Potter was beginning to feel now. (The other—his own Stockholming—would come later. He’d deal with it then. And he knew he would have to.)
    “Throw phone ready?”
    “Just about.” Tobe was programming numbers into a scanner on the console. “Should I put an omni in it?”
    Throw phones were lightweight, rugged cellular phones containing a duplicate transmitting circuit that sent to the command post any conversations on the phone and a read-out of the numbers called. Usually the HTs spoke only to the negotiators but sometimes they called accomplices or friends. These conversations sometimes helped the threat management team in bargaining or getting a tactical advantage.
    Occasionally a tiny omnidirectional microphone was hidden in the phone. It’d pick up conversations even when the phone wasn’t being used by the HTs. It was every negotiator’s dream to