The Cat Dancers

22

Cam met with Bobby Lee Baggett at 7:30 the next morning.

“Our ballistics lab identified the bullet,” the sheriff said. “Would you believe point-four-six-five-caliber? Basically, a big-game rifle. Maybe an H and H,” he added.

“If it’s an H and H, it’s a very expensive rifle,” Cam added. He’d seen one of the Holland amp; Holland Company’s express rifles get appraised for sixty thousand dollars on the Antiques Roadshow, and it hadn’t been in mint condition.

“That’s right,” the sheriff said.” So we’re probably not talking some local asshole just out of the joint with a grudge against the judge, not if he’s using a big-game rifle.”

“Unless he stole it,” Cam pointed out.

“Well, that gives us a starting point, then, doesn’t it?” the sheriff said, looking at Cam, who guessed the MCAT was going to own this one, too. “Dealers, people who sell that caliber ammo, and, of course, anyone who’s reported one stolen in the past five years.”

“And we should talk to the ATF,” Cam said, making some notes.

They kicked it around for another ten minutes and then gave it up. While the sheriff took a phone call, Cam determined from Bobby Lee’s desk calendar that he was free for lunch. When the sheriff saw Cam standing behind his desk, he looked pointedly at his watch and raised his eyebrows. Cam peeled off the Post-it he’d written on and handed it to him. The note said “Meet me in the Marriott Hotel parking garage at 12:30.” The sheriff started to say something, but Cam pointed to the ceiling and shook his head. The sheriff blinked, frowned, but then nodded.

They met on the top deck of the parking garage, the sheriff in his personal cruiser, which was parked next to Cam’s antique Merc. Cam got out and climbed into the cruiser.

“WTF, Lieutenant?” Bobby Lee asked without preamble.

“I have reasons to believe three things,” Cam said. “First, that this electric chair thing is real; second, that it’s not James Marlor doing it; and, third, I think it’s possible that we have us a vigilante squad going right here in the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office.”

“Great God!” the sheriff said, visibly shocked.

Cam took him through it. He told him about his meeting with Jaspreet and her take on the difficulty of getting access to the judicial network from outside the system. He mentioned how odd it was that someone would go down into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Triboro at midnight with a submachine gun full of blanks, which, by the way, were pretty hard to come by except in a police or military organization, which used them all the time for training. Cam told him even Judge Bellamy was wondering how someone would know precisely where she would be at that time of night-which room, where her desk was-especially since the drapes were drawn. He said there was a bunch of cops pissed off at her about those two mopes walking away like that. Then he explained how Jaspreet had alluded to suspicions at the Charlotte field office that Manceford County cops might be the real faces behind the chair. Finally, he said he thought it unlikely that Marlor had been able to enlist an accomplice to go shoot at the judge’s house if he was indeed in deep hiding.

The sheriff closed his eyes and hung his head when Cam had finished. A big shiny SUV came grinding up the ramp. They were both in uniform, and the driver gave them a curious glance as he went past.

“Evidence?” the sheriff asked finally.

“Very damned little,” Cam said. “We might get some evidence if we try to track the network intrusion from the inside instead of from the outside.”

“But we’d have to use cops to do it,” he said. “Our cops.”

“Then let’s get some federal help. Just say that our people have drawn a blank, and let the outsiders look from the inside.”

“If there is a vigilante group, they’d rumble that in a heartbeat.”

“Then they might back the hell off and quit. Maybe we can’t do anything about the first two, but I’d sure like to prevent a third.”

Bobby Lee looked Cam right in the eye. “Whom do you suspect?”

Cam shook his head. He had some thoughts, but he wasn’t willing to name them yet.

Bobby Lee swore. “I’ve worked for nearly ten years to build the most professional, the most competent sheriff’s office in the state. We were the first in the state to be accredited. We’ve won every major award in law enforcement. We have the best toys, the best lab, the best command and control systems. And now you want me to believe we’ve got cops killing suspects?”

His voice never rose, which meant that he was truly furious. Bobby Lee had never been a screamer. The angrier he was about something, the quieter he usually got. “You don’t believe it,” Cam said.

“No, I do not,” he said. “I don’t want to, and I don’t anyway. There has to be another explanation. And I have to tell you, Lieutenant, that at this point, my instincts are to get someone else to handle this case. Except that you are, or ought to be, the best guy I’ve got for this.” He paused to take a deep breath and exhale. “You never heard me say this, but for once in my career as sheriff of Manceford County, I don’t know what the hell to do.”

Back-off time, Cam thought. “We’ll keep working it, then,” he said. “We’ll keep looking for Marlor and the two stooges. We’ll keep a guard on the judge until I don’t know when.”

The sheriff stared out the window and started to drum his fingers on the window frame.

“I think you should call McLain,” Cam said. “I want to get straight with him about what Jaspreet was saying. I want to hear it from him if he thinks we’re involved.”

“If the Feebs really think that, they’d never tell one of us.”

“Then it’s worth asking the question. A stone wall would be a pretty good indicator.”

More finger drumming. “And maybe you should go down there to the Charlotte field office. Meet face-to-face,” Cam told him.

“You mean no phones,” Bobby Lee said.

Cam exhaled. “It’s new territory for me, too, Sheriff,” he said. “But, yes, that’s why we’re meeting up here in this parking deck.” His beeper went off and he pulled it out. There was a text message: “Marlor on the grid.” Cam told the sheriff, whose relief was visible.

“I’ll go see what this is about,” Cam said. “But I still think you should contact McLain. Ask for a meet.”

Bobby Lee pointed at Cam’s beeper with his chin. “Go work that,” he said. “Then come see me. I’ll decide then.”

Kenny was talking to Horace and Purdy when Cam got back to the office. “Where’d he surface?” Cam asked.

Kenny brought over an e-mail from the manager at Marlor’s bank. James Marlor had cashed a check for five hundred dollars at a drive-up window in downtown Winston. The teller there had called to confirm with Marlor’s branch that the account could cover the check, and then she had given him the five hundred.

“I went over there and reviewed the security video of the drive-up. White Ford pickup truck, the right vintage, and the guy inside was big enough to be Marlor.”

“No face shot?”

Kenny shrugged. “You know how that goes. Fuzzy blackand-white shot shows a white guy, ball cap, aviator sunglasses. The right kind of truck. Plus, he put two IDs-his driver’s license and his Duke Energy ID card-in the tray for them.”

Cam sat down at his desk. “When did all this happen?”

“Eight-fifteen this morning,” Kenny said. “They called Marlor’s bank to clear it. The teller who cleared it made a computer entry, and that sent an alert to the manager. She didn’t get in until eight-thirty, and she sent that e-mail ten minutes later. I rolled on it right away.”

“So he’s alive, then,” Purdy said.

“So it would appear,” Cam said, although he wasn’t entirely convinced.

Kenny caught the hesitation. “What?” he said.

“This guy pulls out thirty-five K in cash money just before he disappears,” Cam said. “What the hell’s he need an additional five hundred bucks for?”

That provoked a thoughtful silence.

“Maybe he paid a pro-you know, to take out the two mopes and the judge,” Purdy said finally.

“How many hitters you heard of who use an electric chair?” Horace said. “And if a pro used an elephant gun, he’d have had a target in view, not a house.”

“Okay,” Cam said. “We have to follow this up. Refresh the BOLO system. Tell field ops to highlight the vehicle description, get it back up in priority with the state guys, too. Let’s focus on that pickup truck if he’s driving around town. Purdy, anything on the crispy critters?”

“Not a whiff, boss,” Purdy said. “And you’d think-”

Cam just looked at him.

“Okay, anyways, I pulled Simmonds’s prison records, talked to some of the jerkoffs he hung with in the joint, see if they could put a face on him. No joy. The CO’s up there who knew him said K-Dog was not exactly a memorable guy.”

“And Flash? Any south Triboro intel?”

“His mother admits he was a stone jitterhead,” Purdy said. “Those are a dime a dozen down there. I’ve checked with the morgue a coupla times. No well-done John Does listed, here or anywhere in the state system.”

“Okay, Kenny? What’s the fallout from last night?”

Kenny retrieved a copy of the patrol report. Definitely two vehicles, neither one of them visually identified. Guy in the alley tied a clothesline to a trash can and dragged it a hundred feet down the alley, then cut the line. Garden-variety clothesline, available at any Wal-Mart. The guy out front parked long enough to leave a puddle of AC water, but no brass from the cannon, which fit with a bolt-action heavy-caliber rifle. No wits to anything. By the time patrol set up the sector sweep, no suspicious vehicles noted in that neighborhood.

“Which is not exactly a closed-off area,” Cam said, remembering the posh neighborhood. There were lots of woods and small parks among the mansions, along with streams, trees, grassy median strips, and not many streetlights. Very private big houses set in a very accessible neighborhood. It occurred to him that if cops were doing this, they could have used cruisers, which the patrol screen would have ignored totally.

“We’re exploring the rifle angle,” Kenny said. “I know guys in the sporting-arms business here in the Triad, so I’ll run that down myself.” Cam nodded. Like many cops, Kenny had an extensive gun collection. It was mostly handguns, but included some deer-hunting rifles.

“Marlor had a carry permit,” Horace pointed out. “Maybe he has a collection?”

“We didn’t see a gun safe or anything like that in his house, but, yeah, that’s worth checking, too,” Cam said. “Check shooting clubs, local gun ranges in his area.”

They were taking notes, but Cam didn’t exactly detect enthusiasm. This team was used to doing one case at a time and executing a complex campaign plan when they went after a single individual. Searching for three MIAs was not their usual line of work. They’d turned on all the state and local find-the-subject machinery, and usually what happened next was a long wait. They looked expectantly at Cam.

“Yeah, well, I wish I had some brilliant ideas,” Cam said. “The toasts could be buried in a farmyard somewhere, or puffing out plastic bags at some landfill. And as to Marlor, he could have done those guys and the shooting and then driven to Mexico.”

“He’d need money,” Horace said, and then frowned when he remembered the thirty-five thousand.

“He might have all he needs for right now,” Cam said, “And the rest he can get at electronically anytime he wants.”

“Let’s freeze it, then,” Purdy said. “He tries for his cash stash, we nab his ass.”

Kenny said it before Cam did. “He hasn’t committed any crimes. We can’t do anything to him until we can prove he’s done something. No judge would freeze his accounts. His only ‘crime’ right now is that he’s gone off the grid.”

“Well,” Horace said indignantly, and they all laughed. Horace had a certain fondness for the idea of a police state, which was why it was probably a good thing he was retiring. They all knew that a police state was no longer entirely out of the realm of possibility.

“The fact is,” Cam said, “we’re stuck on this chair thing. We don’t even know if it was real or Memorex. So let’s concentrate on the shooting incident last night. Forget any connection to the chair, and make it a straight shooting incident. Redo the neighborhood canvass. That’s a unique rifle-pull that string hard. Somebody check Marlor’s credit cards going back for a couple of years for the gun.”

“That’ll take a warrant,” Kenny said.

“Go ask Bellamy,” Purdy said. “She’ll probably say yes for a fucking change.”