The Cat Dancers

7

That night, Cam took a wee dram of a boggy single malt out to his back deck to watch night fall over the Carolina Piedmont. He lived alone with his two German shepherds in the northern part of Manceford County. His home was in a leafy subdivision called Lakeview, which backed up to the Lake Brandeman reservoir watershed area. The house was a one-story rambler with a large walk-out basement facing the backyard, which, in turn, led down a fairly steep hill to a small creek. The hillside rising up behind his property was an abandoned farm. In summer, he could hear the creek but not see it because of all the trees. He’d picked this area many years ago, after his divorce, and bought three adjacent lots on a cul-de-sac at the back of the subdivision while the bulldozers were still moonscaping. He’d built on the middle one and planted groves of Leyland cypress on either side for privacy.

Cam would not have said that he lived alone, for the two shepherds offered amiable company. Frick was an Americanbred sable bitch who would happily amputate the extremities of any intruder. Frack, the larger of the two, was an all-black East German model. He was something of a blockhead, and he had a disconcerting habit of sitting down and staring at strangers, instead of running around and barking his fool head off. He had wolflike amber eyes, and lots of people were more than willing to believe Cam when he told them that Frack really was a wolf. As any dog owner knew, deterrence was 80 percent of the battle.

With the notable exception of Kenny Cox and Tony Martinelli, the other MCAT detectives were married and apparently serious about it. Kenny was, by reputation, seriously devoted to the pursuit of any female who looked in his direction, much less smiled at him. Cam no longer pursued women, if, in fact, he ever had. He’d long ago discovered that pursuit could actually lead to catching one, and then life always got a whole lot more complicated-like when he had been married to the woman who was now the poster child for everything wrong with the criminal justice system, and the woman most hated by the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office, SWAT teams, and MCAT: Judge Annie Bellamy.

His memories of marriage seemed more like a movie he’d watched as a teenager than as a sustaining personal memory. They’d both been young, on the make, and definitely on the move. Annie Bellamy had been an up-and-coming trial lawyer, and Cam a brand-new police sergeant with a college degree, a man who was going places in the Sheriff’s Office. All anyone had to do was ask him. Fortunately, as it turned out, they’d agreed to forgo having children in favor of lots of flashy catalog toys, ample credit-card bills, and a studiously energetic sex life. Any married couple who’d been together for a while would have known they couldn’t keep that deal going forever.

Cam had broken out of the street-patrol force in record time. That was the good news. The bad news was that his quick advancement to detective just about guaranteed a long stint in his new sergeant’s rank, as older hands in the Sheriff’s Office exerted their influence to make sure the brash young college boy didn’t go too fast for his own, or their, good. And that had become the problem, or at least the casus belli, because his darling bride, all swishing legs, flashy smile, and that lightning quick litigator’s brain, went very fast indeed. He was still a detective sergeant earning his bureaucratic bones in a district office by the time she had stepped up to a partner’s office, and by then she had begun to move in very different economic and social circles. His boss at the time had been Connie Harding, a crusty captain of the old school, who was in charge of the district. He’d taken seven years to pin on sergeant stripes, and another five to make lieutenant. He’d pulled Cam aside one day and finally let him in on a secret, which apparently was no secret to anyone else-namely, that his wife was stepping out on him.

“You’re the hotshot detective,” Connie had said somewhat sadly, Cam now realized. “Go check it out, Cam.”

So of course he did and she was, and that ended that. They parted stiffly. With her six-figure income, she took over their joint financial obligations and even offered to pay him alimony. Being a good southern boy, and not too bright in the bargain, he had considered his pride and said no. She then made the mistake of marrying her current boyfriend, another lawyer, who was also married at the time of their little affair. In a parting gesture of disaffection, Cam had generously made the observation that if the guy had cheated on his first wife, he would surely cheat on his second. Within four years, the lawyer proved Cam right. A few years after that, she’d married again, this time to a money manager, who was substantially older and even richer than she was. Then one morning, the moneyman was found floating in his swimming pool, the body discovered by a twenty-five-year-old “executive assistant” who had supposedly just come over from the office to see why he hadn’t shown up for work. Except, of course, as things turned out, she’d been there all night-an apparently routine arrangement whenever Annie went on a business trip. Annie had been single ever since.

Cam had kept track of Annie, however. She’d hurt his feelings, but over time he’d grown beyond that, understanding that a marriage based mostly on lust was never going to be a long-term thing. Now that she had taken marriage off her life’s agenda, too, they’d recently become friends again. Triboro was no longer the small southern town they’d started out in, but for people like Cam, who’d been there for most of his working life, keeping in touch with one’s ex was a routine social phenomenon. In some divorce cases, of course, it was more a matter of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, but it had worked out better for them the second time around. They’d gotten together a few times, and then more frequently over the past two years. Cam figured they both appreciated the fact that there was no longer any element of competitive boy-girl pursuit, implied or otherwise, and certainly no long-term commitments being sought or offered. Plus, there was a store of knowledge about each other that made the context as comfortable as they wanted it to be.

And then one evening-Cam wasn’t sure why, maybe just mutual horniness-they’d tried out the bedroom again. It had been better for both of them than anything in between, or so they told each other, and they laughed about that for a long time. They’d gravely set some conditions: no talking shop, and no fixed routines-his place one night, her place the next, that kind of crap. If one of them felt the urge to see the other, he or she would just call. It would happen or it wouldn’t. They didn’t go out to restaurants or parties where the socially prominent people went, but it wasn’t exactly some deep secret that they were seeing each other. They tried their best to keep it as private as possible, though. They’d solemnly agreed that if either one got bored with the other, they’d simply stop calling. Cam was beginning to think that in their own late-blooming fashion, they might be backing into the relationship they should have had when they were much younger. They both seemed to sense that the trick was not to talk about it, just to enjoy it. She’d even joked about putting Cam in her will, or if not Cam, then certainly Frick and Frack.

The phone rang in the kitchen and he went to retrieve the portable phone. Speak of the devil: It was Annie. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself,” he replied. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Good or bad?”

“I was thinking about your legs, actually,” he said, smiling into his scotch in the darkness. An owl called somewhere down along the creek. Another one answered. Frick woofed some criticism from a corner of the porch. “How they make that swishing sound when you wear tight skirts.”

“Tight skirts are declasse just now,” she said, “especially at my age.” But he could tell she was flattered.

“You ever sit on the bench with just your underwear on under those big black robes?” he asked. She had given up lawyering to become a judge about five years ago, although after two divorces and one agreeable probate, she was wealthy enough not to have to work anymore.

“Is there book on that across the street, Lieutenant?”

“Entirely possible, Your Honor.”

“Well, you let me know when the odds are right and you’re on the long side, and maybe I’ll see what I can do,” she said, laughing. Cam loved her laugh. It was throaty, bordering on a belly laugh tinged with the experiences of being an attractive woman for all of her adult life.

“But hopefully you didn’t call to talk about my gambling jones,” he said.

“No,” said Annie. “I’ve heard some stuff around the halls of justice.”

“Stuff?”

“Like detectives getting suspended and thrown off the MCAT, and a whole lot of political heat radiating from Raleigh, headed in our fair city’s direction.”

Now that surprised him. What she was supposed to have said was that she wanted him to come over. No talking shop. “You heard correctly,” he said reluctantly. “Although that wasn’t really an MCAT deal.”

“Guthridge was your guy, wasn’t he?”

Cam didn’t say anything for a moment, taking a sip of scotch instead. Damn it, he thought. We had a deal. Plus, he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to her about this mess, in which she had a starring role.

“Technically, yes,” he said finally, and then explained what had happened.

“I heard another rumor-that MCAT might be gathering a posse to revisit the minimart case.”

Whoops, he thought. We definitely should have stuck to the rules. He wondered who her sources were. “Take the Fifth, Your Honor,” he said, trying to keep it light. “I’ve seen no evidence of said posse. You remember evidence, right?”

“All right, all right, don’t get picky.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” he said. “So back to the rules?”

“Yeah, okay. Back to the rules.”

“So why’d you call, really?”

He heard her take a breath and release it. She always did that when she thought she was going to say something significant. Women.

“A girl’s got needs,” she said.

He couldn’t help himself; he laughed.

“It’s not funny,” she said, but he knew she was smiling, too. They amused each other these days, which was almost as good as the sex. Almost.

“You gotta say the words. I’m a cop. Cops love their rules. Besides, you know what a busy social life I have.”

She groaned, but then said the magic words. “Can you come over tonight?”

“Now we’re talking,” he said.

“Talking’s not what I had in mind.”