And all the while the phone inside the slaughterhouse rang and rang and rang.
Potter spoke into the radio mike. "Dean, I hate to say it but we've got to stop him. Hail him on the bullhorn and try to get him over to the sidelines. If he doesn't come, send out a couple of men."
"Handy's just playing with him," Budd said. "I don't think he's in any real danger. They could've shot him easy by now, they'd wanted to."
"He's not who I'm worried about," Potter snapped.
"What?"
Angie said, "We're trying to get hostages out, not in."
"He's making our job harder," Potter said simply, not explaining the terrible mistake Marks was now making.
With a whining ricochet, a bullet split a rock beside the lawyer's leg. Marks remained on his feet. He turned and he was listening to Dean Stillwell, whose voice was being picked up by the Big Ear and relayed into the van. To Potter's relief the sheriff wasn't cowed by the man's authority. "You there, Marks, you're to get under cover immediately or you'll be arrested. Come back this way."
"We've got to save them." Marks's raw voice filled the van. It sounded resolute but terrified and for a moment Potter's heart went out to him.
Another shot.
"No, sir. Do you understand? You're about to be placed under arrest." Potter called Stillwell and told him he was doing great. "Tell him he's endangering the girls doing this."
The sheriff's voice, mixing with the ragged wind, filled the van as he relayed this message.
"No! I'm saving them," the assistant AG shouted and started forward again.
Potter tried the throw phone again. No answer. "Okay, Dean. Go get him. No covering fire under any circumstances." Stillwell sighed. "Yessir. I've got some volunteers. I hope it's okay but I green-lighted pepper spray if he resists."
"Give him a blast for me," Potter muttered, and turned back to watch. Two troopers in body armor and helmets slipped from the line of trees and, crouching, headed through the field.
Handy fired several more times. He hadn't noticed the troopers yet and was aiming only around Marks, the shots always near-misses. But one bullet hit a rock and ricocheted upwards, shattering the windshield of a squad car.
The two troopers kept low to the ground, running perpendicularly to the front of the slaughterhouse. Their hips and sides were easy targets if Handy decided to turn malicious and draw blood. Potter frowned. One of the men looked familiar.
"Who're those troopers?" Potter asked Stillwell. "Is one of them Stevie Gates?"
"Yessir."
Potter exhaled a deep sigh. "He just got back from a run, Dean. What's he thinking of?"
"Well, sir, he wanted to go out again. Was really insistent about it."
Potter shook his head.
Marks was now only forty yards from the slaughterhouse, the two troopers closing in slowly, scrambling through the buffalo grass. Marks saw them and shouted for them to get away.
"Sir," the voice through the speaker called – Potter recognized it as Oates's – "our orders're to bring you back."
"Fuck your orders. If you care about those girls just leave me alone."
They heard a whoop of distant laughter the Big Ear was picking up. "Turkey shoot," resounded Handy's voice, riding on the wind. Another deafening gunshot. A rock beside one of the troopers flew into the air. They both dropped to their bellies, began crawling like soldiers toward the assistant AG.
"Marks," Gates called, breathing hard. "We're bringing you back, sir. You're interfering with a federal operation."
Marks whirled around. "What're you going to do to stop me, Trooper? You work for me. Don't you forget it."
"Sheriff Stillwell has authorized me to use all necessary force to stop you, sir. And I aim to."
"You're downwind, son. Pepper-spray me and you're the only one who'll get a faceful of it."
Handy fired again. The bullet split an ancient post two feet from Oates's head. The convict, still in a playful mood, laughed hard.
"Jesus," somebody muttered.
"No, sir," Gates said calmly, "my orders're to shoot you in the leg and drag you back."
Potter and LeBow stared at each other. The negotiator's fervent thumb pressed the transmit button. "He is bluffing, isn't he, Dean?"
"Yep" was Stillwell's unsteady reply. "But… he sounds pretty determined. I mean, don't you think?"
Potter did think.
"Would he do it?" LeBow asked.
Potter shrugged.
Angie said, "He's drawn his weapon."
Gates was aiming steadily at Marks's lower extremities.
Well, this is escalating into a full-blown disaster, Potter thought.
"Sir," Gates called, "I will not miss. I'm an excellent shot and I'm just about to bring you down."
The assistant AG hesitated. The wind ripped the handkerchief from his fingers. It rose a few feet above his head.
A shot.
Handy's bullet struck the white cloth. It jerked and floated away on the breeze.
Again, through the Big Ear, the distant sound of Handy laughing. Marks looked back at the slaughterhouse. Called out, "You son of a bitch, Handy. I hope you rot in hell."
More laughter – or perhaps it was only the wind.
Standing tall, the assistant AG walked off the field. As if strolling through his own backyard. Potter was pleased to see that Stevie Gates and his partner kept low as terriers as they crawled after the man under cover of the sumptuous, windswept grass.
"You could've ruined everything," Arthur Potter snapped. "What the hell were you thinking?"
He had to look up into Marks's eyes – the man was well over six feet tall – but still felt he was talking to a snotty child caught misbehaving.
The assistant attorney general began firmly, "I was thinking -"
"You never exchange hostages. The whole point of negotiation is to devalue them. You were as good as saying to him, 'Here I am, I'm worth more than all of those girls combined.' If he'd gotten you it would've made my job impossible."
"I don't see why," Marks answered.
"Because," Angie said, "a hostage like you would have boosted his sense of power and control a hundred times. He'd up his demands and stick to them. We'd never get him to agree to anything reasonable."
"Well, I kept thinking about those girls in there. What they were going through."
"He never would have let them go."
"I was going to talk him into it."
LeBow rolled his eyes and continued to type up the incident.
Potter said, "I'm not going to arrest you." He'd considered it and concluded that the fallout would be too thorny. "But if you interfere in any way with this barricade again I will and I'll have the U.S. Attorney make sure you do time."
To Potter's astonishment, Marks wasn't the least contrite. The witty facade was gone, yes; but he seemed, if anything, irritated that Potter had interfered with his plans. "You do things by the book, Potter." A large index finger pointed bluntly at the agent. "But the book doesn't say anything about a psycho who gets his kicks killing children."
The phone buzzed. LeBow took the call and said to Potter, "Jocylyn's gotten a clean bill of health from the medics. She's fine. You want to debrief her now?"
"Yes, thank you, Henry. Tell them to send her in. Stevie Gates too." To Marks he said, "I'll ask you to leave now."
Marks buttoned his suit jacket, brushed away the rock dust that had powdered his jacket from Handy's target practice. He strode to the door and muttered something. Potter believed he heard: "blood on your hands." But as to the other words, he didn't have a clue.
3:40 P.M.
For precious minutes she wept uncontrollably.
Angie Scapello and Arthur Potter sat with Jocylyn and struggled to look calm and reassuring while in their hearts they wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake answers out of her.
Impatience, Arthur Potter's nemesis.