The Cat Dancers cr-1

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Peacemaker,” Cam replied. “Replica.”

  Kenny snorted. “Why bother?” he asked. “Single-action revolver-that’s useless.”

  Cam shrugged, and in the process he palmed the revolver into his right hand and brought it up. Kenny stiffened when the gun appeared. Cam pretended to admire the heavy weapon. “Bobby Lee said I had to hand over all of my Sheriff’s Office gear,” he said. “But then he made sure I owned some personal weapons. I took that as a hint. So this is what I carry these days. I can still group pretty good at fifty feet.” He turned the gun over, half-cocked it, and spun the cylinder. He was careful not to point it at Kenny, whose empty hand was no longer visible, he noticed. Cop instincts. He let down the hammer on the one empty cylinder and slid the gun back into his jacket pocket. By then, both of Kenny’s hands were back on the table, and they sipped some more whiskey.

  “So what are you going to do?” Kenny asked.

  Cam shrugged again. “Don’t know yet,” he said. “Part of me wants to go digging around in this bombing case, but I know that would just piss everybody off.”

  “Feds would grab your ass up for interfering,” Kenny said. “Especially the ATF broomhilda they have on this case.”

  “Yeah, I do know that. I may just take that trip everyone keeps talking about.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Kenny said. “Remove yourself from temptation.”

  “It’s hard, though,” Cam said. “So much unfinished business.”

  “That’s our problem now,” Kenny said, finishing his scotch. “I think all we have to do is find Marlor, and then this whole mess-that chair, the bombing-will unwind for us.”

  Cam nodded. “About that other theory,” he began. Kenny didn’t shut him off this time.

  “One guy couldn’t pull all this off,” Cam said. “So it would have to be a small cell, people who trusted one another implicitly. I’m talking experienced people. Veteran cops.”

  “Someone like me?” Kenny asked.

  Cam didn’t reply.

  “Or someone like you?” Kenny said with a grin.

  Cam stared at him, wondering if this was perhaps an oblique invitation.

  “I mean, hell,” Kenny said, “don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

  “In the heat of the moment, maybe,” Cam said, remembering one street fight he’d been in as a young cop, where the situation would have justified his just blasting one meth-eyed suspect to hell and gone. Instead, he’d shouted the kid into submission. “But if someone had proposed organizing a squad, no. For one thing, it would be very hard to do.”

  “Would it?” Kenny asked.

  “Hell yes,” Cam said. “They’d have to have some kind of initiation process. A new recruit would have to do something way out there that would give the rest of the cell a lock on him.”

  Kenny nodded thoughtfully.

  “And they would need a secure comms system,” Cam continued, watching Kenny carefully, looking for some sign of acknowledgment. “A system within a system, maybe,” he said. “Some sort of code that could be overlaid on the existing secure comms. And a way to get around without calling attention to themselves.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” Kenny said, his face revealing nothing. “Although what we would see as simple justice, the law would call murder, straight up, every time.”

  “Damned right, but being cops, they might think they were invulnerable, that being inside the system was such an advantage, they’d never be caught.”

  “I don’t know, Cam,” Kenny said. “You know everybody in the Sheriff’s Office. We all talk trash about doing bad guys, but no one I know would jeopardize his job and his pension, not to mention his personal freedom, for a moment of satisfaction.”

  “Business before pleasure, huh?” Cam said.

  “Yeah, exactly. I mean, who wouldn’t like to pop some lowlife right in front of his mother? But, hell, Cam, get real. Ain’t a cop in the world who wants to go inside for that.”

  “The only thing that could really threaten a cell like that would be another cop who got curious,” Cam said carefully. “He or she would have to be dealt with.”

  “Yeah, and?” Kenny said, listening intently now.

  “And maybe that’s the initiation fee,” Cam said. “A warning maybe, and then some direct action.”

  “A warning like that would go a long way to proving that the cell exists,” Kenny said. “They wouldn’t be that dumb.”

  “Unless they’d already made the decision to solve their problem.”

  “But we haven’t lost any cops that way,” Kenny pointed out. “Every line-of-duty casualty we’ve ever had was thoroughly investigated. No mysteries. Not one.”

  Cam nodded, no longer looking at Kenny. He was almost afraid to because of what he might read from Kenny’s eyes. They went way back. Plus, he’d been expecting Kenny to dismiss the whole notion, to call it all total bullshit. But that was not what was happening here. He decided to change tack.

  “I can see one guy being able to take out the two minimart robbers,” he said. “But the incidents at Annie’s house-that would have to have been organized. Not one guy carrying a grudge, acting on sudden impulse.”

  “Not one cop carrying a grudge,” Kenny said carefully. “She was universally despised in the Sheriff’s Office. You were probably the only cop in town who felt something besides contempt for her.”

  Cam stared at his scotch. He knew that Kenny was a lot more complicated than his skirt-chasing, cop-as-cowboy public persona indicated. “It wasn’t love,” he said. “I think it was more like comfortable companionship.”

  Kenny sniffed and made a face. “Well,” he said, “you know my history with her. She went after other cops, too. Don’t know who appointed her God, but that’s how she acted.”

  Cam felt a surge of anger, but he hadn’t come here to fight, he reminded himself. He wanted to leave Kenny at least neutralized, so he didn’t point out that it was Kenny’s own actions that had brought the court’s sanctions. “Our relationship was a lot of things,” he continued. “Some old, some new, some just spur of the moment. You should also know that she wasn’t exactly happy the way the minimart case came out. But that was business, and, if you remember, more our fuckup than hers.”

  Kenny grunted. “SWAT’s fuckup, you mean, and there was a lot more history between her and us than just that case. But either way, this has to be James Marlor. I’m sure of it. Occam’s razor: The simplest solution is usually the solution. Cop vigilantes don’t make sense, especially when there’s a perfectly good suspect right there. All we have to do is find his ass. Then it’s over.”

  “I suppose,” Cam said. He wanted to leave it on an agreeable note. A disarming note, just in case. “I guess I do need to just get on with the rest of my life.”

  “And your coming inheritance,” Kenny pointed out. “Assuming the feds let go of that.”

  Cam wondered if that remark was a subtle threat, a little hint that the tables could still be turned. He smiled as he stood up. “Don’t have it yet,” he said.

  “The taxman won’t take it all.”

  “They’ll try,” Cam said. “Remember what you get when you put the words the and IRS together.”

  “Enjoy your time off, then,” Kenny said. He remained seated at the table. His face was an interesting mixture of friendliness and quiet satisfaction. He chuckled. “Although the guys’re making book on how long you’ll stay away.”

  “I may surprise you there,” Cam said, rubbing his stubbly beard. “Might grow to like it.”

  Kenny tipped his empty glass up at him. “Happy trails, then,” he said. “Just remember-if you’re going to make the break, make the break. Don’t look back. And if we’ve got a vigilante problem, trust me, we’ll take care of it.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Cam said, and then walked out of the house. And that was that, he thought.

  From his car, he could see Kenny’s face in a front window as he backed out and then
drove down the long drive toward the blacktop. He had come out here expecting vehement denial and some good arguments as to why he was all wet about a vigilante problem. Instead, he’d gotten-what, exactly? Kenny had brought up a disturbing possibility-that the investigation might well indeed turn around and focus on the man with all that newfound money. And the sheriff had been awfully quick to accommodate his leave of absence. If they couldn’t find Marlor, they very well might come after someone besides Marlor for all three murders.

  “If you’re going to do something, you better do it quick,” he said aloud.

  His personal cell phone rang. It was Jay-Kay. “I have good news, “she said. “A Lexington-area cell phone was used four miles from that place in the mountains you are interested in. Do I need to amplify that?”

  “You do not, and thank you very, very much.”

  “Be careful, Just Cam. I may not be the only one who knows that.”

  31

  As he drove back toward Triboro, he received a message from dispatch to meet the sheriff at the Triboro Arboretum. He got there twenty minutes early. The front gates were closed, but the service road on the back side didn’t have any gates. The place was a combination arboretum and botanical garden out in the middle of a high-end residential district. Right now, it was more garden than arboretum, courtesy of an ice storm that had taken down about 60 percent of the trees a year ago. He parked toward the back in the staff parking lot, turned off his lights, and waited. There was a single amber streetlight illuminating the entire parking lot. Security wasn’t a big issue at an arboretum.

  He saw a cruiser with just its parking lights on coming up fast through the service entrance, and a moment later Bobby Lee was getting into the passenger side of the Merc.

  “Sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger,” he said as he closed the door.

  “Me, too,” Cam said. He wondered if the sheriff knew how the entire operations department tracked him from street sighting to street sighting. What they called him on the net. He probably did.

  The sheriff gave Cam’s face a once-over. “You need a shave, Lieutenant.”

  “Might be growing a beard,” Cam said.

  They sheriff rolled his eyes. “You’re taking this leave of absence far too seriously, I do believe. Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  Cam didn’t have to ask what they were talking about.

  “I do want you to take a look. See if you can develop something besides bull-pen rumors on these incidents, or even past incidents. Something substantial.”

  “Like evidence.”

  “Yeah, evidence would be nice.”

  “I’d need computer access,” Cam said immediately.

  “For?”

  “To look into back cases. See if there have been any other suspects who’ve been evened out.”

  “Okay, but how would we get you in without people like the system administrator knowing?”

  Cam shrugged. “I don’t know, Sheriff,” he said. “But I know someone who probably does.”

  The sheriff looked at him blankly for a moment, and then he remembered. “But she works for the feds,” he said.

  “That was my second consideration,” Cam said. “The feds would have to know that I was doing this officially. Otherwise, we cross paths-”

  “And they’d freak. Right. Can you trust that woman?”

  “With my personal safety? No. But she would be a reliable channel back to the feds.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “Shows them we’re looking into our possible problem. Here’s what I suggest: You go directly to Jay-Kay. Tell her I’m working undercover. Then you hire her on some pretext. She invents a fictitious consultant or associate, who would be me, and I’ll do my thing as I need to, using her for the computer side. That accomplishes two things: It covers my ass, because I’m official, and covers yours, because you’re taking proactive steps to see if there’s anything going on.”

  He didn’t add the third consideration: If he was working undercover, it would neutralize any federal efforts, and Kenny’s, too, for that matter, to pin something on him.

  The sheriff nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that computes. The problem is that I’d need to leave you on LOA to maintain the cover. Administratively, I mean. That means no paycheck.”

  Cam smiled. “I’ll take it as back pay when we bag the bastard.”

  The sheriff grunted.

  “How will we communicate?” Cam asked.

  “I’ll get us some pagers,” Bobby Lee said. “We talk only when we can meet. No phones, and no damned E-mail.”

  “And nobody in the Office but you in the loop?”

  The sheriff nodded. “Not my preference, but for something like this…”

  “How about Steven Klein?”

  “I’ll think about it. Steven likes to showboat sometimes, impress people with what he knows. Especially at dinner parties.”

  Cam thought about the Sheriff’s Office own Internal Affairs people, but then he discarded the idea. “What changed your mind?” he asked.

  The sheriff looked over at him. His face was drawn in the amber light and he looked older than Cam had remembered.

  “The feds have stopped talking to us,” he said.

  “Well, I’ve been talked to,” Cam said, and he told the sheriff about his night visitor. The sheriff swore when Cam was finished.

  “Could you tag him from a picture?” the sheriff asked.

  “Probably not,” Cam admitted. “That forty-five had most of my attention. I was just surprised all to hell when he did that. Definitely an older cop. Of course the uniform and the car could all have been a fake, too. Somebody buying an old cruiser from a Sheriff’s Office auction.”

  “Looked and sounded real, did he?”

  “Yes, sir, he did.”

  “And he admitted doing the two shooters and the judge?”

  “No-o, he didn’t,” Cam said. “He was just there to tell me to get out of town.”

  “Son of a bitch. Then it’s true.”

  “He wasn’t one of ours, Sheriff,” Cam said.

  “That’s small consolation. I’ve got to report this to the feds.”

  “If they’re not talking to you, why talk to them?” Cam asked. “Start your own internal investigation, within the county sheriff’s network. At some point, they’ll want to trade information, and you’ll have something to tell them.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile, I have to make it look like I got the message,” Cam said.

  32

  Two days later, Cam was walking steadily up a ragged trail on the north side of Blackberry Mountain. The Sinclair Reservoir glinted across its two thousand acres to the northwest, casting the trees behind him into black silhouettes in the morning’s hazy glare. His two shepherds ranged ahead of him, crossing and recrossing the winding trail, noses down and tails wagging enthusiastically. There was a mist lingering across the tops of the ridges, and the heavy air made his footsteps seem unusually loud. A light breeze flowing down from the heights couldn’t make up its mind as to whether it wanted to be warm or cold. Since it was officially bow-hunting season, he wore a bright orange nylon vest over his lumber man’s jacket. He carried a six-foot-long yew walking stick, and he had the big Colt in one jacket pocket and a thin can of pepper spray in the other. He was toting a small backpack on his upper back. He didn’t plan to stay out overnight, but he never went into the woods without a pack continuing a minimal amount of survival gear, especially in the fall. The western Carolina mountain weather could change seasons on a hiker dramatically in just a few hours, and there were dark clouds gathering over the Blue Ridge to the west.

  Cam was no stranger to mountain trails. He went up into the hills and mountains just about every weekend, usually taking his dogs, and had been doing so for many years. Today, the shepherds were wearing their bark collars. He wasn’t exactly trying to sneak up on Marlor’s cabin, but he didn’t want the dogs to give Marlor a half ho
ur’s warning that someone was coming, either. Sound carried on these wooded slopes. He climbed steadily, although not in any great hurry. This was probably also a trail used to gather ginseng root, based on some occasional digs he’d seen. More than a few impoverished mountain people supplemented their welfare checks by gathering roots up in these hills.

  He’d followed the same route as the Surry County deputy had taken to the abandoned farm on the north side of the mountain. After a half hour’s search, he’d discovered what he believed to be Marlor’s pickup truck hidden in a ramshackle tractor barn. The doors had been locked, so he hadn’t been able to get in to make sure, but he’d cast the dogs out to find a trail, and they’d promptly discovered a small footpath leading up and across the northern slope. He consulted a handheld GPS unit from time to time to make sure he was headed in the right direction. He was watchful as he climbed, aware that sometimes there might be other beings watching him. There were some folks up here who enjoyed startling the flatlanders by standing motionless next to a big tree right off the trail and not moving or saying anything until the hikers were within five feet of them. That was one reason he’d brought the dogs-they would spot any human and most game animals long before he ever would. Otherwise, he’d feel obliged to do his hiking Indian-style: move, stop, look, and listen. It was interesting to do it that way, but not if you were trying to get somewhere and back before full dark descended.

  He’d gone to a phone booth and talked to Jay-Kay via a landline to find out how she’d sniffed out the cell phone. With the phone company’s help, she’d located the single tower that would serve any cell phone that was activated within five miles of the cabin’s GPS coordinates on the south side of Blackberry Mountain. Then she’d located two other towers within line of sight of the cabin, but much farther away, one to the east and one to the west. Atmospherics aside, there was a higher probability that a signal from a cell phone activated up at or near the cabin would hit the first tower, while being rejected by the other two. But if all three towers recorded a hit, even a rejected hit, the topography of the south slope made it likely that the signal was originating on the mountain. Then she had her tigers initiate a continuous scan of the towers’ servers for a Lexington-area phone meeting these criteria. There had been only one hit like that, and she’d called him immediately. There was always the chance that it had been an itinerant hiker from Lexington, but it was better than the nothing they’d had for days.