The Cat Dancers (37 page)

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Authors: P.T. Deutermann

BOOK: The Cat Dancers
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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.
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 of 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.
“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.
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.
“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 table.
“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.”

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