Melanie looked pleased at this. Frances watched her sign but then the officer frowned and shook her head. Melanie repeated her words. To Potter, Frances said, "I don't understand what she means. What she said was, 'If you hadn't been with me I couldn't have done it.'

But he understood.

He heard a chug of engine and turned to see a harvester. As he watched the ungainly vehicle he believed for a moment it was driving hordes of insects before it. Then he realized he was watching husks and dust thrown skyward by the thresher blades.

"They'll do that all night," Frances translated.

Potter looked at Melanie.

She continued, "Moisture's critical. When conditions're right they run like nobody's business. They have to."

"How do you know that?"

"She says she's a farm girl."

She looked straight into his eyes. He tried to believe that Marian had gazed at him thus so he could root this sensation in sentiment or nostalgia and have done with it. But he couldn't. The look, like the feeling it engendered, like this young woman herself, was an original.

Potter recalled the final phrase that Frances had taught him. He hesitated then impulsively signed the words. As he did it seemed to him that he felt the hand shapes with absolute clarity, as if only his hands could express what he wanted to say.

"I want to see you again," Potter signed. "Maybe tomorrow?"

She paused for an endless moment then nodded yes, smiled.

She reached out suddenly toward him and closed her hands on his arm. He pressed a bandaged hand against her shoulder. They stood in this ambiguous embrace for a moment then he lifted his fingers to her hair and touched the back of her head. She lowered her head and he his lips, nearly touching them to the thick blond plait. But suddenly he smelled the musky scent of her scalp, her sweat, latent perfume, blood. The smells of lovers coupling. And he could not kiss her.

How young she is! And as he thought that, in one instant, his desire to embrace her vanished and his old man's fantasy – never articulated, hardly formed – blew away like the chaff shot from the thresher he'd been staring at.

He knew he had to leave.

Knew he'd never see her again.

He stepped back suddenly and she looked at him, momentarily perplexed.

"I have to go talk to the U.S. attorney," he said abruptly.

Melanie nodded and offered her hand. He mistook it for a signing gesture. He stared down, waiting. Then she extended it further and took his fingers warmly. They both laughed at the misunderstanding. Suddenly she pulled him forward, kissed his cheek.

He walked to the door, stopped, turned. " 'Be forewarned.' That's what you said to me, isn't it?"

Melanie nodded, her eyes hollow once again. Hollow and forlorn. Frances translated her response: "I wanted you to know how dangerous he was. I wanted you to be careful."

Then she smiled and signed some more. Potter laughed when he heard the translation. "You owe me a new skirt and blouse. And I expect to be repaid. You better not forget. I'm Deaf with an attitude. Poor you."

Potter wandered back to the van, thanked Tobe Geller and Henry LeBow, who were taking commercial flights back to their respective homes. A squad car whisked them away. He shook Dean Stillwell's hand once more and felt a ridiculous urge to give him a present of some sort, a ribbon or a medal or a federal agent decoder ring. The sheriff brushed aside his mop of hair and had the presence of mind to order his men – federal and state alike – to walk carefully, reminding them that they were, after all, at a crime scene and evidence still needed to be gathered.

Potter stood beneath one of the halogen lights, looking out at the stark slaughterhouse.

"Night, sir," a voice drawled from behind him. He turned to Stevie Gates. The negotiator shook his hand. "Couldn't have done it without you, Stevie."

The boy did better dodging bullets than fielding compliments. He looked down at the ground. "Yeah, well, you know."

"A word of advice."

"What's that, sir?"

"Don't volunteer so damn much."

"Yessir." The trooper grinned. "I'll keep that in mind." Then Potter found Charlie Budd and asked him for a lift to the airport. "You're not going to hang around for a while?" asked the young captain.

"No, I should go."

They climbed into Budd's unmarked car and sped away. Potter caught a last glimpse of the slaughterhouse; in the stark spotlights the dull red-and-white structure gave the appearance of bloody, exposed bone. He shuddered and turned away.

Halfway to the airport Budd said, "I appreciate the chance you gave me."

"You were good enough to confess something to me, Charlie -"

"After I almost fixed your clock."

"- so I better confess something to you."

The captain rubbed his tawny hair and left it looking like he'd been to the Dean Stillwell hair salon. He meant, Go ahead, I can take it.

"I kept you with me as an assistant 'cause I needed to show everybody that this was a federal operation and state took second place. I was putting you on a leash. You're a smart man and I guess you figured that out."

"Yup. Didn't seem you really needed a high-priced gofer like me. Ordering Fritos and beer and helicopters. It was one of the things made me put that tape recorder in my pocket. But the way you talked to me, treated me, was one of the things that made me take it out."

"Well, you've got a right to be good and mad. But I just wanted to say you did a lot better than I expected. You were really part of the team. Handling that session by yourself – you were a natural. I'd have you negotiate with me any time."

"Oh, brother, not for any money. Tell you what, Arthur – I'll run 'em to ground and you get 'em out of their holes."

Potter laughed. "Fair enough, Charlie."

They drove in silence through the miles and miles of wheat. The windswept grain was alive in the moonlight, like the silken coat of an animal eager to run. "I've got a feeling," Budd said slowly, "you're thinking you made a mistake tonight."

Potter said nothing, watching the bug eyes of the threshers.

"You're thinking that if you'd come up with what that Detective Foster did you could've got 'em out sooner. Maybe even saved that girl's life, and Joey Wilson's."

"It did cross my mind," Potter said after a minute. Oh, how we hate to be pegged and explained. What's so compelling about the idea that our selves are mysteries to everyone but us? I let you in on the secrets, Marion. But only you. It's an aspect of love, I think, and reasonable enough there. But how queasy it makes us feel when strangers have the eye to see us so unfurled.

"But you kept 'em alive through three or four deadlines," Budd continued.

"That girl though, Susan…"

"But he shot her before you even started negotiating. There was nothing you could've said to save her. Besides, Handy had plenty of chances to ask for what Sharon offered him, and he never did. Not once."

This was true. But if Arthur Potter knew anything about his profession it was that the negotiator was the closest thing to God in a barricade and that every death fell on his shoulders and his only. What he'd learned – and what had saved his heart over the years – was that some of those deaths simply weigh less than others.

They drove another three miles and Potter realized he'd grown hypnotized, staring at the moon-white wheat. Budd was talking to him once again. The subject was domestic, the man's wife and his daughters.

Potter looked away from the streaming grain and listened to what the captain was telling him.

In the tiny jet Arthur Potter slipped two sticks of Wrigley's into his mouth and waved goodbye to Charlie Budd, who was waving back, though the interior of the plane was very dim and Potter doubted that the captain saw him.