The Cat Dancers

10

James Marlor’s house was located in an upscale subdivision outside of Lexington. The house was a Southern Living number, with a wide carport on one end. As they pulled up in an unmarked Crown Vic, Cam noticed that the lawn had been mowed recently and the flower beds along the front of the house were being cared for. It was apparently trash-pickup day, because there were green Herby Kerbys up and down the streets. They parked the car in Marlor’s driveway and got out while the driver of the Davidson County cruiser, which had led them to the house, parked out on the street. Cam lifted the lid of Marlor’s trash can and discovered that it was full of what looked like junk mail. He picked up a couple of items and saw that the postmarks were fairly recent.

Marlor’s sister had been unwilling to talk to them about her brother. Cam had been as polite and as persuasive as he could be, without revealing what was precipitating his call. She would say only that the police had done enough damage to the Marlor family and she wanted nothing more to do with any of them. Good-bye. Kenny had obtained the warrants to search Marlor’s premises and vehicles. Steven had gone to Judge Barstow, which, given what had happened to him in front of Bellamy, made sense. Barstow gave them domicile, vehicle, and financial records, but he held back on their requests for an electronic sweep until a conventional look-see had been attempted. Cam had offered to show him a rerun of the execution scene, but Barstow, pushing seventy, declined. He said he did not object to capital punishment, but he told Cam he believed nothing that he saw on a computer.

Marlor’s front door was locked, and no one answered the bell. But Kenny had seen a couple of teenagers doing some lawn maintenance three doors down, and from them he learned that Marlor’s next-door neighbor had a key. The neighbor turned out to be a retired schoolteacher. She’d been collecting the mail and putting it inside. She gave them the key to the front door once they showed the warrants.

“He’s been gone for some time,” she said. “Going on two months now. He asked me to look after the house, you know, heating and air-conditioning, picking up his mail and getting rid of the junk, paying the kids to do the yard.”

“How are you paying them, ma’ am?” Cam asked. She was in her sixties and seemed unconcerned that she was talking to Sheriff’s Office deputies with Manceford County search warrants. They could hear a television going behind her.

“Believe it or not,” she said, “he left me a checkbook. He said he was going to be gone for some time, that he had to get away from his life here for a while. He said there’d be money coming in direct deposit to the account, and so far, nothing’s bounced.”

“And you’re on the account?” Cam asked.

She nodded. “He signed some of the checks in case anyone balked, but I’m on the card as joint, and, so far, the bank’s putting everything through.”

Kenny asked if he could look through the checkbook, and she produced it. He sat down at her dining room table and began leafing through it.

“He just… left?” Cam asked.

She nodded. “That’s right. It’s a wonder he didn’t harm himself, all that tragedy. I knew her better than him-he was always gone a lot. We went to the bank for me to get a signature on the card, and then he packed up his pickup the next morning and just left.”

“No contact numbers?”

“Nope. He said to write myself a check for two hundred and fifty dollars each month for my troubles. I’m a widow on school-district retirement, so I said yes.”

“What do you do with any personal mail, as in something besides bills?” Kenny asked from the dining room.

She pointed with her chin at the house next door. “There hasn’t been hardly any. I think he shut everything off.”

“Does he have any relatives besides his sister?”

“He mentioned a brother once, but I’ve never seen him. His wife’s relatives are all in California.”

“And no indication of when he plans to come back?”

She shook her head. “I half-expect a realtor to show up any day now with a FOR SALE sign.” She sighed. “It’s a nice house. They were a nice family. And I hear those bastards got away with it.”

Kenny gave Cam a look from the dining room, but he decided not to get into a discussion about just how those bastards got away with it. They thanked her, took the key, and then went next door. For the next hour, they conducted a general walk-through of the house. It wasn’t really a search. They found that his wife and stepdaughter’s clothes were still there, but not many of his. The house was clean and uncluttered, although dusty. The refrigerator was completely empty, but it was clean and running. The dishwasher was empty. Kenny wore rubber gloves, but Cam didn’t bother. It wasn’t a crime scene.

“He didn’t rush out,” Cam said finally. “Picked the place up, got rid of anything that could stink, arranged for someone to set the thermostat, pay the bills, and cull his mail. A totally planned departure.”

Kenny nodded, looking around the living room. “I’m thinking all those memories caved in on him and he just had to get out of here,” he said. “I wonder if he has another home, a cabin in the mountains or something.”

“We’ll have to get with his bank. See if this place is free and clear, and if there’s another mortgage out there.”

“Should we bring in a CSI team?” Kenny asked.

Cam shrugged. “No indication that anything bad happened to the guy,” he said.

“Besides losing his wife and daughter to those slimeballs,” Kenny said.

“Okay, besides, that, yeah. Looks to me like he just wrapped the place up and left. I think we’re going to need that electronic sweep after all, see if he’s on the road somewhere.”

Kenny sat down at the dining room table and began going through the small stack of keeper mail. “Most of this looks like first-class mail,” he said. “But I think it’s just disguised junk mail. And no bank statements.”

“That’s our next stop, I think. Find out which branch from the lady next door, go see how the money’s coming in and going out.”

Kenny looked up at him. “Who else would put K-Dog in an electric chair besides Marlor?”

Cam scratched his head. “What expertise would it take?” he said, ducking Kenny’s question for a moment. “To put a thing like that out on the Internet in such a way that it couldn’t be traced back to you? I mean, I don’t know dick about it, but it seems to me that if you weren’t a computer expert, you’d have to hire somebody to set that up. Otherwise, it would come back all over you. Wouldn’t it?”

“He would have to know a lot,” Kenny said, “ and have access to a pretty damned good computer to do it by himself. Not to mention capturing K-Dog, holding him in some remote place, building an electric chair, getting enough power to run it, then filming it with a digital camera, and then formatting that for Web play.”

Cam walked around the dining room, thinking out loud. “Marlor’s an environmental-science guy. Plus, he’s a doctoral candidate in science, which means he’s done everything for his Ph. D. except his dissertation. So he has to be competent in terms of computers and Web research.”

“I keep looking at motive,” Kenny said. “Nobody else really has the motive.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Cam replied. “Except maybe that bloodthirsty Indian woman. So, okay, let’s work it that way-make the assumption it’s him, then focus on the other two legs: opportunity and means. Unless, of course, Tony and Horace bring us word of a living, breathing K-Dog.”

“I’m not holding my breath,” Kenny said.

“If you’re right, neither is K-Dog.”