The Cat Dancers

28

A week after Annie’s funeral, Cam met with her estate lawyer, a Mr. J. Oliver Strong, who confirmed that she had indeed left all her assets to him, minus a few bequests to charity, her church, and her housekeeper. Cam asked how the process worked. Strong told him that as her executor, he would liquidate all the assets and eventually send Cam a check, less legal expenses and the taxes. It would take awhile-perhaps several months-to repair and then sell the real estate, but she had made a lot of money and had turned it all over to professional money managers, so the real estate wasn’t actually the biggest piece of the pie.

He asked if Cam wanted to get involved in the liquidation process, or if Cam wanted him to handle it. Cam said he did not want to get involved. He had only one question: When had this will been executed? Strong had apparently anticipated to his question, and the answer surprised Cam: The will had been executed a year after their divorce. The only changes since then had been the charitable bequests and the bequest to the housekeeper, and those codicils had been added three years ago. Otherwise, she’d never changed the will she’d made when she was first married to Cam. Strong said she’d also made a provision that when Cam retired from police work, he would get an income stream from her holdings. She had told Strong once that this was the alimony she should have paid a long time ago. Strong felt this provision was still operative even though she was dead.

As Cam drove back to headquarters, he wondered if he ought to tell the feds about the time line relative to the will. Screw, he decided; they probably already knew. But it sure as hell wasn’t as if he and Annie had gotten back together and then she’d changed her will to benefit him. Maybe this had all been Annie’s way of making up for her original infidelity. He tried to put that history out of his mind. One day, he’d get a check in the mail and that would be that. He suspected taxes would take a lot of the heft out of his windfall, but either way, he still would rather have had Annie back than any sum of money. The depth of that sentiment still surprised him. Past-due alimony. That was rich.

He stopped in a men’s room on the way up to his office and walked into a stall. He was getting ready to come out when two men came into the bathroom to use the urinal. They were talking as they walked in-about him. He recognized one voice as that of Lt. Frank Myers. He didn’t recognize the other man’s voice.

“Ten million fucking dollars?” the other man said.

“That’s the number I heard,” Myers said. “That Communist witch left him everything. Just like that. House alone is worth a couple mil, even with the new air-conditioning arrangements for the garage.”

“I thought she hated all of us, big and tall, fat and small.”

“Not Richter, apparently. You know they’d been married a long time ago, right? Story is, she’d played around a bit when she started making real lawyer money; he found out and dumped her.”

“Least he could do, I guess. She pay him alimony?”

“Who knows. She has now, though.”

There were sounds of flushing and then water running in the sinks. Paper-towel dispensers clattered.

“He ought to just pack it in, you know?” Myers said. “I was there that night. Whatever her public face was in court, she meant a lot to him, and now she’s in the ground. Fucked him up, I think. Maybe more than he knows.”

“Yeah, I hear some of the guys in MCAT are saying the same thing. Walking wounded. Goddamned women can do that. But he’d lose his pension, he resigned now.”

“And why would he give a shit about a Sheriff’s Office pension? He’s got real money coming. The annual interest alone on ten mil would be-what, seven, eight times his pension? And from what I’m hearing, MCAT is adrift anyway.”

“MCAT ought to get taken apart,” the other man said. Cam finally recognized the voice. It was Sergeant McMichael, of SWAT and Miranda fame. “Buncha fuckin’ cowboys, going around in civvies all the time, driving hot cars, soaking up all that overtime money. Pisses people off. All that flash, and usually just one perp in the crosshairs. What the fuck good is that?”

Cam didn’t get to hear Myers’s answer as they banged out the bathroom door. He sat there for a moment. The idea of quitting had never crossed his mind. He’d just assumed he’d go back to work, back to being the boss of MCAT, back to chasing bad guys. He was a cop. That’s what he did. What else would he do? But Myers was right about the money of course. Financially, he could walk out of here tomorrow and never look back.

He came out of the stall and washed up. He stared at his face in the mirror. He’d lost a little weight over the past two weeks and his face was still haggard. He needed a haircut. His uniform wasn’t as crisp as it should be. He’d been doing a lot of sitting around and staring into space, and he knew his people had been tiptoeing around him. Even Kenny had been keeping his distance, which was like losing a second friend. Cops weren’t supposed to have friends, but they did, in the sense that they came to depend on one another and to meld their minds and reactions, especially in dangerous situations. If friendship was trust, then cops had friends. But he still thought there might have been cops involved in what had happened. Not Kenny, of course, and certainly not in the bombing. But in the executions of those two robbers? He finished drying his hands, pulled out his cell phone, and put in a call to the estate lawyer.

“Is this thing really going to be worth ten million dollars?” he asked.

“More than that, I think, depending on how we come out with the real estate,” the lawyer said. “You weren’t married, so the IRS and the state are going to claw back a pretty big chunk. Still… we’ll see four and half, five mil net, probably, or maybe more, depending on where the market is.”

We, Cam thought. Our money now, is it?

“You thinking of resigning?” the lawyer asked.

Jesus, Cam thought. Everybody’s talking again. He began to feel a little ridiculous, standing in an empty men’s room, talking on a cell phone. But at least it was private. Or was it?

“Well…” he said.

“I would,” the lawyer said. “Let me tell you something, Lieutenant. Lawyers have a grapevine, too, you know? We gossip just as much as cops do.”

No shit, Cam thought. “And?”

“And, well, I’ve heard some rumors that maybe police officers were involved in those executions that showed up on the Internet-that electric chair stuff.”

“You’re a lawyer,” Cam said. “Surely you don’t put much stock in rumors, do you?”

The lawyer laughed. “Of course we do, just not in court. But I have to wonder. Smoke and fire stuff… That chair thing was new and sensational, but there’ve been stories about Sheriff’s Office cops taking care of business before this.”

Cam had heard the stories, but he had always dismissed them as perp chatter: “I’m totally innocent, Your Honor. These cops framed me.” But now he wasn’t so sure.

“And you think that would extend to what happened to Judge Bellamy?” he asked Strong.

“She was not exactly beloved by the law-enforcement community, and I can also include more than a few lawyers in that community.”

“That’s total bullshit,” Cam said reflexively.

“About Bellamy and her hate-hate relationship with law enforcement?”

“No-o, I’ll spot you that one. She didn’t have a lot of respect for cops.” Or for criminal defense lawyers, either, Cam thought. Called them shit-eaters.

“To say the least,” the lawyer said. “We’ve got three partners here in this firm who do criminal defense work. Now, they loved her. We had another lawyer here who went to work in the DA’s office. He did not love her. But that’s not what I was getting at.”

Cam was getting tired of this, especially since what he felt required to say to this guy didn’t exactly square with what he’d been thinking. “Which was?” he asked.

“Don’t get pissed off, Lieutenant-I’m trying to help you. Consider this: If cops are doing this shit, and they had enough hair on their ass to blow up a sitting judge, who’s the next logical target, assuming there is one?”

“I give up,” Cam said.

“That would be you, Lieutenant, wouldn’t it?”

Cam blinked in surprise.

“Because if cops are involved,” the lawyer continued, “they’d have to expect you, of all people, to come after them. They killed someone who was close enough to you to leave you her fortune. That makes it extremely personal.”

“The money didn’t make this personal,” Cam said.

“That’s not what I meant,” the lawyer responded.

“We don’t pursue any personal agendas here in the Sheriff’s Office,” Cam said. “Bobby Lee would have our asses on a pig grill for that. Besides, we’re too busy.”

“C’mon, Lieutenant,” Strong said. “I know you’re required to say that, but we’re both southern boys here. You’ve never seen cops get personal? I find that really hard to believe. My wife mouthed off to a state trooper a year ago, racked up five tickets over the next three months-all from other state troopers. It was like they had a list or something. If there are cops behind those executions, they’d have to be worried about you right now.”

“Unless, of course, I’m part of this hypothetical vigilante outfit,” Cam said, determined to shut this off now.

“Jesus H. Christ, Lieutenant-I don’t even want to hear that.”

“Precisely,” Cam said. “Because it’s all bullshit. This is a rumor started by the feds, because they’re getting nowhere in finding the prime suspect. Look, any cop knows that killing a judge brings a federal posse. Those guys are pretty good when they want to be, so the chances of getting caught are also pretty good. Premeditated murder carries a death sentence in this state. Or, at the very least, life without parole. And jail for a cop? The needle would be preferable. It doesn’t compute. It just doesn’t. They may hate her, but no cop I know would take that chance.”

“Okay, Lieutenant, I hear you. But if I were you, I’d think about a yearlong trip around the world. Hell, take a leave of absence if you don’t want to resign. But get your ass out of town for a while. That’s what I would do, I were you.”

“You’re not me,” Cam said as pleasantly as he could. “But thanks for your concern.”

He snapped the phone closed. Another lieutenant came into the men’s room, nodded to Cam, and mumbled the standard formula about being sorry about Cam’s loss. Cam thanked him and headed for the MCAT office. He asked Sue to get him on Bobby Lee’s calendar. He’d said what he had to say to that lawyer, that the whole story was crap. He had some reservations about that, but he’d keep those to himself right now. And the lawyer had come up with one good idea Cam had not thought of: a leave of absence. There were miles to go before Annie’s estate would be settled, and a whole herd of government leeches who would be trying to latch onto her estate. A leave of absence might cover all his bets.

Sue called and said the sheriff could see him in fifteen minutes.

“We’ve got a prelim report in on the bombing,” the sheriff said grimly as Cam sat down. “BFB.”

“We knew that, I think,” Cam said, remembering the scope of destruction.

“Yes, but it was a bigger bomb than it had to be, which means that the guy planting it didn’t know what he was doing. C-four, apparently, and a relatively old batch, probably stolen from some National Guard armory as long as ten years ago.”

“How do they know it’s that old?”

“They’ve been putting trace materials in modern military explosives for the past ten years, so that the residue can be identified as to source. This bomb didn’t have any. The ATF lab said the guy used five times more C-four than was necessary, which makes him an amateur.”

Or a very angry bomber, Cam thought. “A distinction without a difference to the judge,” he said.

The sheriff nodded his acknowledgment. “You called me,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“I’d like to request a leave of absence,” Cam said.

The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “How long?” he asked.

“A year?”

The Sheriff jotted down a note on his ever-ready pad of legal paper. “If it’s a real leave of absence, as opposed to my sending you off to training or some such, it would have to be without pay,” he said. “Plus, I couldn’t guarantee your slot as head of the MCAT would be waiting for you when you come back.”

Cam nodded. He’d anticipated all that. “I’d stay until you pick a successor in MCAT, of course,” he said. “So I can do a proper turnover.”

“That’s probably not necessary,” the sheriff replied. “You’ve had Kenny Cox on the recommended list for lieutenant for some time now. Isn’t he the logical candidate?”

Cam nodded. Of course he was. And his nemesis was no longer present for duty.

“Let me ask you something, Lieutenant,” the sheriff said. “Are you doing this because of all that money coming your way?”

Cam shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “Besides, the lawyer says it’ll take months to settle out. So, no, this isn’t about money.”

“Then I’d recommend you go give this some more thought,” the sheriff said. “And I say that because you’re a cop through and through. A very good one, I might add. I can’t imagine you gardening in the backyard, teaching at the local JC, or selling real estate. You’ve been a cop for a long time, and if you just quit like this, you’re going to wonder who and what the hell you are, and that too often leads to a Smith and Wesson sandwich.”

“I’m not quitting,” Cam said defensively. “I just need some time. And my people deserve a full-time boss, an undistracted lieutenant. That isn’t me right now, and I can’t predict when it will be. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it.”

“That woman hated cops,” the sheriff said. “I’m having a hard time reconciling the depth of your feelings with how she treated us. All of us.”

“Maybe that was her public persona, her lawyer act,” Cam said. “That’s what she’d become famous for, so she stuck with it.”

“I didn’t mean to pry,” the sheriff said hastily, putting up his hands. “It is absolutely none of my business.” He paused. “Except when it affects my officers’ performance of duty.”

Cam nodded. Annie’s sudden death most certainly had affected him, although his initial sense of loss was hardening into a cold anger and an even colder determination to find out who’d done this thing. Bobby Lee seemed to read his mind.

“I also have to tell you that you can’t go out and play Lone Ranger here,” he said. “You go on leave of absence, you and the Sheriff’s Office split the blanket, formally and even informally, until you check back in. Your sidearm and credentials stay with me. That’s how it has to be.”

“Yes, of course,” Cam said, telling his first lie of the morning.

The sheriff studied his pad of paper for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “Then I think I will act on your request now. Put it in writing-something simple, no speeches, just say ‘for personal reasons.’ Get it down to me by close of business today.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sheriff hesitated. “You have your own personal weapons at home, right?”

Cam nodded. What cop didn’t?

“Okay, then,” the sheriff said. “Don’t want you naked out there.”

“You think I’ll need weapons?” Cam asked.

The sheriff seemed to pick his words with great care. “If you’re at all right about there being a vigilante group here in town, you might,” he said. “But I’m going to look into that in my own way and in my own time.”

“In other words,” Cam said, “I should watch my back.”

“And your front, Lieutenant.”

As easy as that, Cam thought as he walked back upstairs. But what had the sheriff meant by that last bit-“in my own way and in my own time”? Suddenly, he thought he knew.

By 7:30 that evening, Cam, dressed now in jeans and a sweatshirt, was sitting out on his deck with a scotch, a free agent. The two shepherds were across the creek in the back chasing rabbits up on the abandoned Holcomb farm behind his place. The sheriff had been right about one thing: He’d felt positively naked walking across the parking lot to his car, still in uniform, but without his sidearm, badge, and credentials case. Technically, he remained a Sheriff’s Office employee, but he was definitely no longer an operational cop.

Now for the interesting part, he thought. The sheriff had told him he couldn’t go poking around into the Internet executions case or the bombing incident. Okay, he wasn’t going to do that. The feds had the lead, and they didn’t like outside interference one bit. What he was going to do was look hard at how a few cops might decide to get together and form a vigilante group. And if that was going on, how long had it been going on? He wasn’t breaking any promises. It was more like an academic inquiry. Right.

He scanned the darkened hillside for the mutts and then heard a board on the porch creak behind him. He turned around to find a large man wearing the uniform of a sheriff’s deputy and oversize sunglasses stepping out onto the porch with an equally oversize. 45 in his hand.