“Mary Ellen says she saw the mountain lion,” Marshall said. “So I guess it’s official.”
Cam nodded, still not wanting to talk about what had happened to Kenny. Marshall cleared his throat.
“We’re going to have to file a report,” he prompted.
“I know,” Cam said. “And I’ll give you a debrief at the appropriate time. Do you guys have a secure phone at the station?”
Marshall laughed. “We’re the Park Service, remember?”
“The Sheriff’s Office will have one,” Mary Ellen said.
Cam nodded. “I’m going to make a report when we get back in. How about I let you guys listen in to that? Save me from having to do it twice?”
“That’d be fine,” Marshall said. “I mean, I know we’re not-”
Cam cut him off. “Yes, you are. You need to know this. My deputy was killed by that cat.”
Marshall blinked. “Oh” was all he could manage.
“But it wasn’t the cat’s fault,” Cam said. “Kenny was cat dancing.”
“Oh my God,” Marshall said. “That’s real?”
They all heard the sound of an approaching helicopter at the same time, which ended their conversation. They came out of the tent and started taking it apart. The wind was rising, and there was more of the cloud bank on their side of the ridge now, although it didn’t appear to be roaring down at them yet.
The helicopter came in from the east, circled the landing zone once, lined up with the wind sweeping across the meadow, and then put down just below where the camp had been. It was the same crew who’d brought them in.
They began throwing bags into the hatch as soon as the crewman got it open, crouching to keep below the rotor blades. Cam definitely saw lightning flash across the big ridge and down into the Chop, which by now was ominously dark. When all the gear was loaded, they put Frack aboard and climbed into the aircraft. The crewman took one last look around the landing area, spoke into his intercom, and then hopped aboard. He slid the hatch closed and checked that they had fastened their seat belts.
The helo rose smoothly and immediately banked down toward the river. Cam looked out across the snow-covered meadow and saw the unmistakable shape of a German shepherd bounding across the frozen snow in pursuit of the helo. He yelled to get the crewman’s attention and then pointed below them. The crewman looked out, said something on the intercom. Frack, in the meantime, had spotted his partner out the window and started barking. The crewman listened and then shook his head.
“No go,” he shouted. “Pilot says we’re outta here.”
“Bullshit,” Cam yelled back. “You can’t leave her here to starve.”
The crewman tried again as the helo gained altitude. Below, and now behind them, Frick valiantly tried to keep up, as if she knew they were in the aircraft.
The crewman made a disappointed face and shook his head again. This time, Cam unbuckled, got up, signaled for Frack to follow him, stepped past the strapped-in crewman, and opened the hatch between the crew compartment and the cockpit. He signaled Frack again and the big dog went through the door and began doing the monster mash on the two pilots: furious barking, lots of snapping teeth, saliva spraying the sides of their helmets. Cam had to steady himself as the helo swerved violently a couple of times, and then the pilot, clearly getting the message, turned the bird around and prepared to put it back down on the ground. Cam called Frack back into the cabin, ignoring the amazed look on the crewman’s face. He thought he saw Mary Ellen grinning from behind her oversize sunglasses.
They landed again and the crewman slid open the door. Cam jumped out and called to Frick, who was a good hundred yards away but still gamely coming on. She put on a few extra knots and managed to jump right into the hatch once she got there, claws scrabbling on the metal deck. Cam got back aboard and buckled in after some serious reunion greetings from both dogs. The helo lifted back off with an angry lurch. There was some lengthy conversation on the intercom between the pilots and the crewman, who kept eyeing Cam and the two shepherds. Cam hauled his. 45 out of the parka pocket and began popping empty shells out of the cylinder. The crewman stopped talking when he saw the gun, and for the rest of the flight back to Pineville, he sat as far from his passengers as he could, his sun visor pulled completely down. Behind them, the winter storm finally spilled over the ridge and buried the Chop under the first winter storm of the season. Cam hunched into his still-damp clothes, remembering the feel of Mary Ellen’s arms around him. It had been a long time.
57
Cam awoke in his motel room with a violent chill and had to collect his wits for a moment to remember where he was. He’d reported back to Bobby Lee from the Carrigan County Sheriff’s Office, and, as promised, he’d let the two rangers listen in to his report of what had happened to Kenny up on the mountain. The sheriff took it all in and told Cam to return to Triboro the following day. They’d found him a motel room, where he’d proceeded to crash after telling Mary Ellen he’d meet her at the local pub that evening.
Now his head hurt, his knees were really sore, and he was pretty sure he was running a temperature. He tried to get a look at his watch but he was having trouble getting the little dial light to come on. He decided to take a hot bath to see if he could shake off the chills. Afterward, he staggered back to bed and got under all the covers. Then the room became unbearably hot, so he got up and turned on the air conditioner full blast. He lay there wishing he had some aspirin, then began talking to himself about how he might manage to find a store. Then he heard voices outside. There was a knock on the door, followed by another. Finally, the door was opened from the outside, revealing a worried-looking motel desk clerk and Mary Ellen Goode.
“Knock, knock,” she called as she came into the room. Cam smiled weakly, and tried to say something, but he only managed to chatter his teeth at her. She shivered in the icy room and turned off the air conditioner. She thanked the clerk and closed the door behind him. “Look at you,” she said, shaking her head. “You stood me up, you know.”
“Wha-what time is it?” he asked between feverish chills.
“Eleven-thirty,” she said. She found his room key card and said she’d be right back. Twenty minutes later, she fed him some Tylenol and made him drink a bottle of water with it.
“Thanks for checking on me,” he said. “I’ve never crashed like this before.”
“It’s called ‘post-incident letdown,’” she told him.“We see it all the time after a rescue. People survive by running on adrenaline; then the body exacts its price.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry about your deputy.”
Cam nodded, even though it hurt his throbbing head. “He was a good guy and a good cop,” he said. “I still can’t quite believe it.”
“That he was one of them?”
Cam said yes. The Tylenol was beginning to work. There were sounds from the room next door: a muffled male voice, followed by girlish giggling.
“Kenny told me that it was all real. That they helped James Marlor fry those two guys. They were proud of what they’d been doing.”
“And the judge?”
“No,” he said. “He said they didn’t do that. Then, at the very end, he said something that didn’t make any sense at all. Something about looking in the mirror. I think it was just final delirium.”
“And you feel like shit because you had to leave him there.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I know there was nothing I could have done, but you just don’t leave your wounded out there.”
“Was he still alive when you climbed out?”
“Well, no, but still…”
The noises from next door became more amorous and less frivolous.
“They’re doing better than we are,” Cam said with a weak grin.
Her smile brightened the room. “You guys, you never quit, do you? There’s the bottle of Tylenol, and you need to drink another water. Want to try for breakfast?”
He thought about breakfast and his stomach generated a wave o
f nausea, which she apparently detected. She moved the wastebasket nearer the bed. “Sorry I brought that up, so to speak,” she said. “Why don’t you call me when you’re operational. I’ll go back with you after the inquest, if you really think I can help.”
He nodded, not trusting his stomach just now. He closed his eyes. There was something else he needed to tell her, but he couldn’t think of what it was. Then the lights went out and he heard the door close. Things reached a climax of sorts in the adjacent room. Some guys have all the luck, he thought.
58
“Look in a mirror’?” Jay-Kay said. “If I look in a mirror, I see myself.”
They were sitting in the living room of her Charlotte apartment. Cam and Mary Ellen had convoyed back to Triboro and met with Bobby Lee and Steven Klein. The sheriff had been as interested in what she had to say as in what Cam had told him. Then the three of them, minus the DA, had all gone down to Charlotte at the request of Special Agent McLain of the FBI’s Charlotte field office. Cam had briefed McLain on events up in Carrigan County. McLain took notes without comment, as did two other special agents who sat in. Cam was a little uneasy at the fact that the feds weren’t saying anything, but Bobby Lee did not seem too worried about it. They’d broken for coffee, and McLain had disappeared for a few minutes. He’d come back and suggested quietly that Cam, Mary Ellen, and the sheriff meet him at Jay-Kay’s apartment in an hour.
Cam was still sore from his encounters with various river rocks and had to get up and walk around while he talked, but the fever, thankfully, had gone in the night.
“It was practically the last thing he said,” he told them. “He was pretty much delirious by then. That damned thing gutted him.”
The sheriff was visibly upset about losing Kenny and even more upset that Cam had had to leave his body up there in the mountains. He’d asked Mary Ellen if there was any chance of doing a body recovery, and she’d said not until late spring. And by then, of course
…
“Did he positively admit to you that he’d helped to execute those two robbers?” McLain asked.
Cam nodded. “His brother built the chair and did the deed, but Kenny steered him to those two guys. I suspect he may have helped more than he said, but we’ll never know now. He was adamant about the bombing being someone else’s work, though.”
McLain frowned as he considered what Cam was telling him, making Cam wonder how high his own name was on McLain’s suspect list. “And the chair?” McLain asked. “Where is that?”
“Out there somewhere. Marlor said he’d told the people who helped him where it was.”
“Okay,” the sheriff said. “We have two possibles, based on Ms. Bawa’s research. Neither of those men has been injured lately, by the way.”
“The cell was supposedly limited to seven members,” Cam said. “We have two possibles, plus Kenny and Marlor. That leaves three unaccounted for. One of them could be the injured party. Jay-Kay, did your search go after that data, too? Line-of-duty injuries, medical leaves?”
“It did and it didn’t,” she repliled. “Medical information is in a more privileged category than time, leave, and attendance records, but I believe the state office in charge or medical insurance is going to help me with that.”
“Do they know that?” the sheriff asked.
Jay-Kay just smiled. The sheriff didn’t pursue the matter.
“Back to this mirror business,” Cam said. “Let’s assume Kenny was telling the truth.”
“Why start now?” the sheriff asked grumpily.
“Deathbed confession?” Cam suggested. “He had nothing to gain from lying. He swore they didn’t do the bombing at Annie’s house. And then he said, ‘Tell McLain: Look in the mirror.’” He turned to McLain, who was staring absently at the floor. “What do you think he meant, Special Agent?” he asked.
McLain looked up at him suddenly. “What did you just say?”
“I said, ‘What do you-’”
“No-the sergeant’s words.”
“Tell McLain-”
“Yes,” he said. “That makes more sense. Earlier you said tell ‘them.’ Damn, damn, damn!”
Bobby Lee leaned forward. “There’s a second cell?”
“And?” McLain said, a sick look in his face.
“And this one’s federal,” Bobby Lee replied. McLain nodded slowly.
“This isn’t news, is it?” asked Cam from his position near the window. “You already suspected this, didn’t you?”
McLain hesitated and then nodded again.
“Which is why you went radio-silent on us all of a sudden.”
“I had the same problem the sheriff here did,” McLain said. “I didn’t know whom I could trust. Those agents at the meeting today? They’re here from Washington on temporary duty. After you told me about the bombing, I got our Professional Standards people into it.”
“When I was doing a Web scan for James Marlor connections for your office,” Jay-Kay said to McLain, “they told me not to bother with federal connections, that he wasn’t in any of the various nationwide criminal databases or even AFIS. Said they’d already looked. I never did verify that.”
McLain groaned. “He’d have to be in AFIS,” he said. “He’d been in the service. Everyone in the military gets fingerprinted.”
“In your searches, Jay-Kay, did you stay exclusively in the state system?” Cam asked.
She nodded.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on here?” Mary Ellen said.
McLain ignored her. Cam thought the special agent looked as if he were facing bureaucratic execution, and maybe he was. Vigilantes in a sheriffs office was one thing, but in the Bureau? “This thing is worse than I thought,” McLain said. “Here’s what I suggest: Jay-Kay, can you let Ranger Goode stay here with you? I don’t think she should go back to Triboro right now.”
“Why would she be any safer here in Charlotte?” Cam asked.
“Because you lost Sergeant Cox,” McLain said. “People are going to be pissed. And they saw her come in with you.”
“Why would I be in any danger at all?” Mary Ellen asked.
“You probably aren’t, Miss Goode,” McLain said. “But until the sheriff and I get a better fix on who’s involved in this mess, I’d prefer to have you nearby. Sheriff Baggett, are we agreed on that?”
“Absolutely,” Bobby Lee replied. “You obviously think the two cells knew about each other?”
“Yes,” McLain said. “And that would be a lethal combination, wouldn’t it. What I really wonder about is whether or not any of our people did this cat-dancing thing. I’m visualizing the people in our office, and I can’t think of anyone.”
“It might not involve your people,” Cam pointed out. “It could be ATF, DEA, CIA, you know, any of them.”
The meeting broke up, with Mary Ellen agreeing to stay there at Jay-Kay’s apartment while Cam and the sheriff went back to Triboro. McLain promised to be in touch the following morning with a proposed plan of action.
59
The next day was taken up with meetings and more meetings as Cam attended to the administrative consequences of a deputy’s death under extraordinary circumstances. McLain did not call with his plan of action, and the sheriff said that DA Klein had told him to wait for the feds to take the lead. Cam talked to Mary Ellen once at midday to make sure she was okay, and he found out that she had been spending some time with Jay-Kay as that wizard pried the lids off of several supposedly secure state data systems.
At the end of the day, Cam stationed himself outside Bobby Lee’s office and waited. The sheriff finally called him in at 6:30.
“Where are we?” Cam asked without ceremony.
“Have you had a nice day, Lieutenant?” Bobby Lee asked. “Because I’ve just had a wonderful day. Want to hear about my wonderful day?”
Cam sat down. “Show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” he said.
The sheriff actually cracked a smile. “JFC,” he said, which was
about as close to real swearing as Bobby Lee ever came. “It’s been alphabet soup, by the hour: FBI, SBI, ATF, ADA, ME, IA, and so on. By my count, the only one missing was the CIA. How’d you do?”
“About the same,” Cam told him. “Spent a lot of time on rumor control. McLain never did call?”
“He did not. Some anally oriented individuals from the Hoover Building in Washington did call, however. I think I’m ready to start my own vigilante cell.” He paused and then became more serious. “How’re people taking all this?”
“Inquiring minds want to know WTF,” Cam said. “And I’m getting some cold shoulders. As in ‘You were there at the end. Where’s our guy?’”
The sheriff got up and went to the single window in his office. The lights out in the parking lot were on, and yet there were still many personal vehicles parked there.
“I can tell you that you did the right thing,” he said. “But that’ll be small comfort the next time you go into Frank’s Place. Kenny Cox drew some serious water around here. Despite what he’d been doing.”
“Maybe because of what he was doing,” Cam said. “I really may not be able to stay on after this.”
Bobby Lee gave him a strange look. “You may be right about that, Lieutenant. You came back. Kenny Cox didn’t. People’re gonna remember that.”
They were interrupted by a call. The sheriff picked up the phone and identified himself. He listened for a long minute, wrote something down, said, “Okay,” and then hung up.
“That was the ops center,” he announced. “Apparently nine-one-one got a call advising me to check my E-mail. Said if we liked the fry-baby videos, we’d love this one.”
Cam felt a chill as the sheriff went over to his computer, opened his E-mail, looked at it for a moment, and then initiated a download. Cam came around behind him to watch. It was a video, and the sequence was the same as before: a black screen, followed by the chair materializing out of the darkness.
The Cat Dancers cr-1 Page 37
