“Oh shit,” Cam said softly.
The figure in the chair wore a hood, as before. The humming sound came rumbling over the computer’s speakers, making one of them buzz. Then came the electronically distorted voice.
“All rise,” it began, repeating the mocking introduction to a court session. The humming got louder, then diminished slightly. “Tell the lieutenant he has something of ours, and we want it back.”
“What the hell?” Bobby Lee said. “Is he talking about you?”
Sure sounded like it, Cam thought. And the voice was saying “We” now, instead of “I,” he noticed.
“The lieutenant has a face that belongs to us. He didn’t earn it. We want it back. We’ll trade. This face for our face.”
With that, a robed and gloved hand descended over the back of the chair and lifted the hood from the face of a clearly terrified Mary Ellen Goode.
Cam felt his gut tighten. This was definitely not supposed to have happened. “This face for our face. And Richter’s the designated mule. We’ll tell him where and when. Play ball, or she fries and dies.”
The screen faded out to black and both of them stood there in shock.
Cam somberly explained to Bobby Lee what the term face meant to the cat dancers. And then he remembered something: He had brought back Kenny’s camera. He had no idea if the film was still good after repeated dunkings, but the camera was physically intact and it was upstairs in his office. He told Bobby Lee.
The sheriff stared at him. He cleared his throat carefully, as if trying to get his voice back, and sent Cam to retrieve the camera so their forensics people could try to salvage any pictures. Cam did that, gave the camera to a tech, and went back to the sheriff’s office.
Bobby Lee called McLain’s office. He put it on the speakerphone. Special Agent McLain was not available.
“Make him goddamn available,” Bobby Lee demanded, to Cam’s surprise. “That’s not a request. And now would be really nice.”
They went on hold for five minutes, during which time Cam called Jay-Kay. No answer. Then McLain finally came on the line. Bobby Lee told him what had happened. McLain swore and said he’d dispatch some people to Jay-Kay’s building.
“You know what this is really about, don’t you?” the sheriff asked.
“They want Lieutenant Richter, not the pictures,” McLain said.
“Got that shit right. And we’re not going to play that game.”
Cam, thinking of Mary Ellen’s white face, started to say something, but Bobby Lee waved him off.
“I think I need to bring a team to Triboro,” McLain said.
“We don’t deal with hostage takers here in Manceford County, Special Agent,” Bobby Lee said. “We talk to them-once-let them know how things stand, and if they don’t play ball, we kill them. All of them.”
“We need to come up there, Sheriff,” McLain said again.
“I think you need to find your consultant. These bastards have the ranger, but where’s your wizard?”
“On it,” McLain said. “But I still think we need to come up there.”
“Come quick, then,” Bobby Lee said. Then he hung up and called the operations people back and told them to round up a SWAT team. Cam decided this would be a good time to go out into the parking lot and get some fresh air. As he was standing out there, the lab tech came across the parking lot from the Walker Forensics Building with an envelope. He saw Cam and veered over to give the envelope to him.
“The pictures survived,” he said. “Those disposables are water-resistant, to start with. That thing was shrink-wrapped, and the film cartridge was sealed against light.” He looked around hesitantly. “Had to be a brave scooter taking those pix,” he added.
“You have no idea,” Cam told him.
“Is this what happened to Sergeant Cox?”
“No comment,” Cam replied, although he was nodding.
“Damn,” the tech said with a shudder.
Cam thanked him and opened the envelope. He was surprised that there were about two dozen eight-by-ten pictures in the stack.
Some of them were panoramic scenes in the Smokies, then some close-ups of paw prints in sand and river mud, more shots looking up into rocky ravines, and several of the rock face in the Chop, showing the cave entrance. Then the dramatic ones: the cat coming out onto the ledge, bathed in the flash, already gathering itself as Kenny swung in; a coveted face shot, which had to have been taken when Kenny was no more than eight feet away; a second shot, this one very blurred, as Kenny swung back out; and then one where the cat filled the entire frame as it made the leap out toward Kenny. After those came the ones showing Cam’s efforts to blind the cat, which were mostly out of focus, except for one beauty where the furious animal was in perfect focus. He could just see part of a shepherd in the background. There were some badly overexposed panels, and then a final picture of a campfire scene.
Cam studied this one carefully. The light wasn’t very good, and the people around the campfire were all wearing balaclavas over their faces, except for one individual: White Eye Mitchell.
The cat dancers?
He looked hard at the eyes, trying to recognize any identifiable features. He thought one might be Kenny, but then he remembered that Kenny had probably taken the picture. Still, those eyes were familiar. They were all dressed in coldweather field gear, so he couldn’t tell much about sizes and shapes. He studied the bulky coats and hats, looking for anything familiar, such as standard-issue police gear or an insignia. In addition to White Eye, there were four people around the fire. The picture taker would make five, so two had been missing from the party. He couldn’t tell when the pictures had been taken.
He hurried back inside the building, where he showed the pictures to the sheriff.
“The Bureau will be desperate to contain this,” the sheriff said. “At least until they catch their bastards. Which probably explains why McLain wants us to do nothing until they get up here.”
“I need to go check my messages,” Cam said, “see if they’ve started the game.”
“You do understand what I was saying earlier, don’t you?” the sheriff asked. “They don’t want the pictures. They want you. They take you out, there’s no one else who can attest to the fact that either cell ever existed. And if they succeed in doing that, your ranger friend becomes entirely expendable.”
“The feds might not be disappointed in that outcome,” Cam said.
The sheriff shook his head. “No, I can’t believe that. They’ll want to control this, but not cover it up.”
“These guys have made contact. We need to move, not wait for any more meetings. Mary Ellen is in deep shit. I can’t sit still for that.”
“Wrong pronoun, Lieutenant, but I don’t disagree. The professional thing for me to do right now is sideline you and get someone else to run this-precisely because of who the hostage is.”
Cam nodded, then thought of something. “Okay, suspend me. Tell me to go home and stay there. Then I might just disobey an order or two. If it all goes south, you can say I was suspended but went out of control.”
“Listen to you,” Bobby Lee said with a wry grin. “Look, this is the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. We’ve got us a problem. We’re gonna take care of it, as always. Go check your messages, gather up your team, then get your ass back down here.”
“We’re not waiting for the feds?”
“What’s that Manceford County Sheriff’s Office motto-the one I’m not supposed to know anything about?”
“Mess with the Best and Die Like the Rest?”
“That’s the one.”
Cam asked the sheriff to forward the E-mail with the embedded video to him, then went upstairs and checked his voice mail. Nothing. To his surprise, he found the entire team waiting up in the MCAT offices. Word had somehow gotten out that something big was shaking, and his guys’ antennas were apparently as sharp as ever. Cam flipped on his computer and then went to sit at the head of the conference tabl
e.
“Okay,” he said. “Kenny Cox.” Everyone waited. He took them through the whole story, finishing with a detailed description of what had happened up in the mountains. At the end, he passed around the photographs of Kenny’s final encounter with a mountain lion. Rolling a chair over to his computer, he opened the most recent video and let them all watch it.
“They’ll give her back in return for these?” Tony asked, pointing at the pictures. “I mean, they have to know we’ll keep copies.”
“Only if I deliver them,” Cam said, and everyone understood immediately.
The phone rang. “Building security says a messenger just brought in what looks like a letter bomb for you, Lieutenant,” the duty officer announced brightly.
“Say again?”
“Well, it’s a FedEx letterpack-size package, all wrapped in brown mailing tape. Address is hand-lettered; return address has the name I. M. Jones, and we recognized the street address-it’s the Triboro city jail.”
“All right, do the drill,” Cam told him.
An hour later, after the obligatory, if officially confined, commotion, the chief of the explosives-disposal unit appeared in Cam’s office and handed him a clear plastic evidence pouch containing a plain white envelope. “Your bomb, sir,” he said with a grin.
“Better safe than sorry,” Cam replied, taking the pouch.
“You bet,” the lieutenant said, and left.
A picture and a hand-printed note were inside the envelope. The picture was of Mary Ellen Goode, without the hood this time, sitting in the electric chair. Her hands, arms, and legs were immobilized. There was a cell phone sitting in her lap, from which a white wire trailed beyond the frame. The note said “Your place. Tonight. Late. Face for a face. We see backup, the cell phone starts the fun.”
“If we moved right now,” Tony said, “we could get guys in position before it gets too late.”
“This is a cell, Tony,” Cam said. “More than one guy. They have to be watching. That’s why they made this thing look like a letter bomb. As soon as they saw the bomb-squad robot carry the letter out of the building, they’d knew I’d get their message.”
“You can’t go out there alone, boss,” said Horace.
“How about a Trojan horse?” Pardee said. “You go home alone in a big ole Suburban. ’Cept there’re three guys hidden under some stuff in the back of the truck. Pull it into the garage, shut the garage door, get out, and go inside. Three SWAT shooters already in the house-better odds.”
“Or,” said Billy Mays, “we leak some shit to the media wipes, get ’em out front, bring you out in cuffs for a highly visible perp walk, then haul you off in a cruiser. Get it on the TV for the eleven o’clock follies. Then send out a three-pack and pretend to toss your house. Except we send in a dozen guys, bring out nine. Then the next day, we turn you loose, restart the game.”
“Nice try, guys,” Cam said, smiling. “But we’re forgetting something: These are cops, and probably federal agents. Think of what they can do in terms of listening to our comms, knowing when we’re BSing. Hell, for all we know, one of those three SWAT shooters you want in my house could be in the cell.”
“You can’t go out there alone, boss,” Horace said again.
Cam sighed. “This time, I think I have to. I got that woman into this. I need to get her out. I’ve already lost Kenny.”
He searched their faces, watched them sort it out. They understood exactly what he was talking about.
60
Cam decided to go home to wait for the call. The team, all of whom were SWAT-qualified, went to find out where they were going to assemble.
Mary Ellen Goode had trusted him. She knew nothing that was terribly important, and it was all secondhand at that. And now she was dead meat unless everything worked out perfectly. How likely was that? This is all my damned fault, Cam told himself. He swore as he went out the door, startling some people coming in.
He fed the shepherds when he got home and then checked his voice mail and E-mail. Nothing. He made coffee. The sheriff called. The SWAT team was set up at the law-enforcement center downtown. McLain had called back and said he’d asked for the FBI’s hostage-rescue team but was told that would take twenty-fours to set up. He’d canceled it and said he’d have a tactical team up in Triboro by 11:00 P.M. He’d also offered the services of their latest nightsurveillance aircraft, Owl.
“Okay, I give up. What’s Owl?” Cam asked the sheriff.
“A glider with a small jet engine. It can operate at night, carries a pilot and one agent with some pretty sophisticated night-vision gear. They can get on top of a situation, stay there as long as there’s wind aloft, and they are soundless. Unlike our helos.”
“First they have to call,” Cam said.
“Don’t sit in front of any windows,” Bobby Lee told him.
“I’ve got my mutts,” Cam said, looking at the two shepherds, who were sitting on either side of him, fully aware that something was up.
He went around and turned off all unnecessary lights in his house, then activated the roof spots. The dogs followed him from room to room. He cleaned his Sig. 45 and laid out his tactical gear. He had some more coffee. It was only ten o’clock when the phone rang.
But instead of bad guys, the call was from Jay-Kay.
“I’m on Fifty-two from Charlotte,” she said. “What’s the best way to get to your house?”
“What the fuck, Jay-Kay?” Cam said.
“It’s worse than you think,” she said. “Give me directions, please.”
Forty-five minutes later, she was sitting in his living room. He’d showered and changed into his tactical gear. She was wearing a pantsuit. He offered her coffee, but she declined.
“How did it happen?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I went out for some take-away right after my secretary left for the day; her son had a soccer game, so she left early. I left Ranger Goode in the apartment, and when I got back, she was gone.”
“And your security systems?”
“No signs of intrusion.”
“Which meant they were feds, doesn’t it?” he said. “Agents, or at least other FBI people who were already in your system?”
“I don’t know,” she said evenly.
“You said it was worse than I thought. They have Mary Ellen Goode. What’s worse than that?”
“McLain and the Bureau are playing you and your sheriff.”
“Playing how?”
“I’ll show you in a minute, but first tell me where your home PC is.” He pointed to the study. She pulled out a package of CDs from her briefcase and went to the machine.
“I’m going to execute a wipe disc on your machine,” she said. “First, we save all your data.”
“Uh, okay, I guess. May I ask why?”
“Because I discovered something while I was showing Ranger Goode some of the Bureau’s case files on this vigilante matter.” She brought up a file-management program. “I found out that the next time you go on-line, there’s a federal computer waiting to suck every piece of data right off your hard drive,” she said, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’ve made some other discoveries, Just Cam, and they’re not good ones. I think I’ve been used, as well.”
She backed up all his data files onto the CDs and then put one of her own into the machine. Within ten seconds, the monitor went black.
“There,” she said. “I killed everything but your on-line service and the underlying OS. It’ll go on-line in a minute, and when they trap it, there’s a truly nasty little program that’s going to be swept up along with not very much from your computer. Then, wipe disc.”
Cam wasn’t too sure what “wipe disc” meant, but it sounded dramatic.
“Now,” Jay-Kay, said, getting up from his computer chair. “That coffee?”
They sat down in Cam’s kitchen and Jay-Kay explained that she’d detected an attempted intrusion into her mainframes when she went to AFIS to see if Marlor’s fingerprints we
re on file. “I have the fire wall from hell,” she said. “My machines are set up to detect an intrusion and swallow it whole, making the intruder think he’s in, when in fact my tigers are going into his machine and wiping out the hardwired machine-language programming. You know, the firmware stuff that starts the boot sequence. They order up a restart on the way out, and the intruding computer goes dark.”
Cam nodded, pretending to understand what she was talking about. “And what happened this time?”
“This time, in the process of blocking the intrusion, the tigers were thrown out. Two IBM mainframes in parallel operation can usually overwhelm most other computers, so this had to be a big federal machine, probably running some NSA code.”
“So what’s the deal?” he asked.
She sighed. “I’m a federal consultant. I have clearance and access. And yet someone within federal LE ordered up an intrusion. I checked with the sys op at the Charlotte field office. I happen to know her and I’ve helped her with some security issues. I made a joke of it: ‘What, you guys bored? Nothing to do on the graveyard shift? You want to mess with my tigers?’”
“And?”
“Well, she told me that Thomas McLain wanted to find a pattern analysis-report file in my machines and see if they could steal it. To test my security, he said. And they got it.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, because that means they went in looking for a specific file-by its file name. I delivered that file to the Manceford County system, which is probably how they got the file name.” She sipped some of her coffee and then smiled. “Luckily, it’s encrypted.”
“Can’t they break it?”
She shook her head. “This one’s based on an optical code with a physical onetime pad. They need to get their hands on the other half of a specific piece of heat-tempered plastic to break it.”
Cam got up and started to pace around his kitchen. “McLain’s been on the fence the whole time with this mess,” he said. “Let’s assume there is a second vigilante cell, made up of federal people, operating here in North Carolina. Or that there are feds involved with the cat dancers. Let’s assume McLain thinks this is true. What would the Bureau do?”
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