The Cat Dancers

32

Two days later, Cam was walking steadily up a ragged trail on the north side of Blackberry Mountain. The Sinclair Reservoir glinted across its two thousand acres to the northwest, casting the trees behind him into black silhouettes in the morning’s hazy glare. His two shepherds ranged ahead of him, crossing and recrossing the winding trail, noses down and tails wagging enthusiastically. There was a mist lingering across the tops of the ridges, and the heavy air made his footsteps seem unusually loud. A light breeze flowing down from the heights couldn’t make up its mind as to whether it wanted to be warm or cold. Since it was officially bow-hunting season, he wore a bright orange nylon vest over his lumber man’s jacket. He carried a six-foot-long yew walking stick, and he had the big Colt in one jacket pocket and a thin can of pepper spray in the other. He was toting a small backpack on his upper back. He didn’t plan to stay out overnight, but he never went into the woods without a pack continuing a minimal amount of survival gear, especially in the fall. The western Carolina mountain weather could change seasons on a hiker dramatically in just a few hours, and there were dark clouds gathering over the Blue Ridge to the west.

Cam was no stranger to mountain trails. He went up into the hills and mountains just about every weekend, usually taking his dogs, and had been doing so for many years. Today, the shepherds were wearing their bark collars. He wasn’t exactly trying to sneak up on Marlor’s cabin, but he didn’t want the dogs to give Marlor a half hour’s warning that someone was coming, either. Sound carried on these wooded slopes. He climbed steadily, although not in any great hurry. This was probably also a trail used to gather ginseng root, based on some occasional digs he’d seen. More than a few impoverished mountain people supplemented their welfare checks by gathering roots up in these hills.

He’d followed the same route as the Surry County deputy had taken to the abandoned farm on the north side of the mountain. After a half hour’s search, he’d discovered what he believed to be Marlor’s pickup truck hidden in a ramshackle tractor barn. The doors had been locked, so he hadn’t been able to get in to make sure, but he’d cast the dogs out to find a trail, and they’d promptly discovered a small footpath leading up and across the northern slope. He consulted a handheld GPS unit from time to time to make sure he was headed in the right direction. He was watchful as he climbed, aware that sometimes there might be other beings watching him. There were some folks up here who enjoyed startling the flatlanders by standing motionless next to a big tree right off the trail and not moving or saying anything until the hikers were within five feet of them. That was one reason he’d brought the dogs-they would spot any human and most game animals long before he ever would. Otherwise, he’d feel obliged to do his hiking Indian-style: move, stop, look, and listen. It was interesting to do it that way, but not if you were trying to get somewhere and back before full dark descended.

He’d gone to a phone booth and talked to Jay-Kay via a landline to find out how she’d sniffed out the cell phone. With the phone company’s help, she’d located the single tower that would serve any cell phone that was activated within five miles of the cabin’s GPS coordinates on the south side of Blackberry Mountain. Then she’d located two other towers within line of sight of the cabin, but much farther away, one to the east and one to the west. Atmospherics aside, there was a higher probability that a signal from a cell phone activated up at or near the cabin would hit the first tower, while being rejected by the other two. But if all three towers recorded a hit, even a rejected hit, the topography of the south slope made it likely that the signal was originating on the mountain. Then she had her tigers initiate a continuous scan of the towers’ servers for a Lexington-area phone meeting these criteria. There had been only one hit like that, and she’d called him immediately. There was always the chance that it had been an itinerant hiker from Lexington, but it was better than the nothing they’d had for days.

By one o’clock, he’d followed the trail to the edge of the woods behind Marlor’s cabin. He’d called the dogs to heel a half hour ago, and now they flopped obligingly down on the pine needles while he studied the cabin for signs of life. He thought he could smell stale wood smoke in the air, which told him that he might be in luck this time. He fished in his backpack for a couple of sandwich bags filled with dry kibble and fed this to the two dogs. He fished again and pulled out a mushy PB amp;J sandwich for himself, which he ate while studying the cabin and its surroundings. The woods were now perfectly still and he could just barely hear the brook that ran down the front side of the cabin. The temperature was beginning to drop and the breeze had made its decision after backing fully around to the north. He looked up and confirmed that the sunlight was fading, all of which meant he might be walking back through some snow. The good news was that the trail had been clear and had brought him right to the cabin. The bad news was that his GPS wouldn’t be worth much in snow, but unless there was a whiteout, he should be all right getting back.

He heard sounds from the other side of the cabin, and the dogs’ ears came up. He saw James Marlor appear at the corner of the cabin briefly and then trudge down out of sight, having headed in the direction of the privy. Cam smiled, pleased that his hunch had worked out. Perfect timing, too, he thought. When Marlor emerged from the privy, buttoning up his clothes, Cam was sitting on the front porch of the cabin with the two shepherds, his backpack on the floor in front of him. Frick lay down on the floorboards and casually eyed Marlor as he walked back to the cabin. Frack sat up, as usual, doing his wolf imitation, staring at the approaching man with those close-set amber eyes, but Marlor didn’t seem impressed by the dogs. He trudged back up the slope, ignored the two dogs, nodded at Cam as if he’d been expecting him, and stepped inside the cabin, leaving the door open. Cam stayed in his chair but put a hand on his revolver. He heard water being poured into a basin, the sounds of washing, and then Marlor came back out with a bottle of Booker Noe’s small-batch bourbon tucked under his arm and two tin cups in his left hand. In his right hand was an old government-issue. 45-caliber semiautomatic.

He kicked the other rocking chair around so that he could face Cam and then sat down. He put the big gun in his lap and then poured himself some whiskey.

“Drink?” he asked.

Cam looked pointedly at the. 45 in Marlor’s lap. Marlor just looked back at him patiently. “No thank you, sir,” Cam said finally.

“I’m going to be dead tonight,” Marlor announced in a totally matter-of-fact voice. “You can have a drink with me.”

Cam tried not to blink. “Put it that way, I guess I will,” he said.

Marlor poured him a splash and passed him the cup. He leaned back in the rocker, tipped his cup in Cam’s direction, and they both drank. A tendril of damp, cold wind came searching for them around the corner of the cabin, confirming Cam’s suspicions of approaching snow. The Booker, at 126 proof, cleaned his sinuses right out.

“Nice dogs,” Marlor said. “I had a shepherd once, but she was nuts. Hyper all the time. Chased cars. Caught one.”

“They get that way sometimes,” Cam said. “Usually, it’s the human’s fault. They feel it’s their duty to be with you, herding you, full-time. If you go away to work all day, they can’t do their duty. Drives some of them nuts.”

Marlor nodded, and Cam decided just to be quiet. He wanted to see what Marlor would do. For some reason, he wasn’t too worried about the gun anymore. It had taken a few minutes, though. Frick was dozing; Frack had his eyes on a squirrel that was tempting fate out in the yard.

Marlor’s face was gaunt, indicating he hadn’t eaten in awhile. He had aged since the meeting, and his eyes were more intense as he stared at nothing down the front slope, probably thinking that he was going to be dead tonight. He had an unkempt black beard and he needed a haircut. Cam could smell the wood smoke in his clothes. He looked like that portrait of Robert E. Lee painted after the War, with those haunted, defiant eyes.

“Why are you here?” Marlor asked him finally.

“Wanted to talk to you.”

“Which way’d you come?”

“I came by helicopter the first time,” Cam said. “Nobody home. This time, I hiked in from the north side.”

“What brought you back?” Marlor asked.

“I believe you used a cell phone from up here,” Cam said. Marlor sighed and nodded. “I wondered. You guys must be pretty good.”

“I wish we’d been better when we arrested those two bastards who destroyed your family.”

“Your people screw that up?”

Cam shook his head. “Not mine, directly, but our Sheriff’s Office. I remain very sorry for that.”

“You come alone?”

Cam smiled. “Here’s where I’m supposed to say I have lots of backup out there in the woods. Snipers in the trees. Helicopters on call. SWAT guys suiting up.”

Marlor grunted. “I’d have heard all that, I think,” he said.

“You never heard me,” Cam said.

“True,” Marlor admitted. “You’re comfortable in the woods, then.”

“Very,” Cam said. “Look, I’m not here to arrest you.”

“Got that right,” Marlor said, patting the gun in his lap.

“I really just want to talk.”

“Okay,” Marlor said, reaching for the bottle again. “So talk.” He poured and drank with his left hand; his right hand stayed casually in his lap.

“We found Simmonds,” Cam said.

Marlor nodded. “Okay.”

“We haven’t found Butts, though.”

“Probably won’t,” Marlor said. “Unless you do have a cast of thousands out there. Then you might.”

“I’m curious. What kind of gun did you use when you grabbed up Butts?”

“M-sixteen-A-three, with a plugged barrel.”

“Plugged?”

“Not enough recoil from blank rounds to cycle the action on an M-sixteen unless you plug the barrel.”

“That’s a pretty tough neighborhood for a white guy to go into with a load of blanks.”

“They didn’t look very tough to me,” Marlor said. “Of course, all I saw were assholes and elbows.”

Cam grinned. “Yeah, we heard.”

“I believe some of those tough guys leak a bit when they get motivated,” Marlor said. The sunlight was almost gone, the remaining light more a metallic glare than real sunlight. What could be seen of the sun had a ring around it in honor of the approaching front.

“You were a Ranger?” Cam asked.

Marlor eyed him over the tin cup. “Still am.”

Cam believed it. “I was army, too, way back when. Worked for an engineer battalion.”

“What was your MOS?”

Cam gave him the military occupational specialty code for sniper scout. Marlor, apparently recognizing it, grunted. “What’d you shoot?” he asked.

“Barrett fifty.”

“Fine weapon. Army school or marines?”

“The Corps.”

The wind picked up enough steam to start the pines moaning. “What was it you wanted to know?” Marlor asked.

Cam decided to go right to it. “We’re all curious-how’d you put those executions up on the Internet without being traceable?”

“Went down to an Internet cafe in Charlotte. Signed on to AOL, took out a free trial membership. Used a fake name, fake everything-they don’t care until it’s billing time, and you get a couple hundred free hours to start with. Then I created a second screen name, sent the video clip out to a blogger as an e-mail attachment. I just assumed he would put it out there for general entertainment. Then I walked away from the AOL account.”

Cam remembered seeing the ubiquitous AOL discs. “We never found any blogger.”

“You wouldn’t. He could clip the video attachment, post it out there anonymously on the hot-chat site du jour. First guy who saw it would forward it. Something really interesting gets out on the Web, it can spread like wildfire. Think geometric progression. Did the same thing with the second one. You can be anybody with one of those free discs, for a little while anyway.”

“Still, I’d think the feds could have traced it back.”

“I’ve heard they’re pretty good at that,” Marlor said. “Maybe they did but just didn’t share. Either way, the best they could do was Charlotte. All I know is that it was out and running in about two hours.”

“To mixed reviews, of course.”

“Not from anyone who knew what those bastards did,” Marlor said. He eyed Cam curiously. “What’d you cops think of it?”

“I’m in law enforcement, Mr. Marlor. We frown on citizens taking matters into their own hands.”

“I asked what you thought of it. Say, in terms of justice.”

“That’s a separate question,” Cam said.

Marlor grunted again, but he didn’t say anything.

“What did you do with Flash?” Cam asked.

“Fed him to the turbines at a hydro plant,” Marlor said.

Cam was silent for a minute. Then he had another question. “You said, ‘That’s two’ at the end of the second execution. Like there was going to be a third.”

Marlor sniffed and shook his head. “Thought about the judge,” he said. “It’s one thing to snatch up street trash. But a judge? With police protection?”

“How’d you know she had protection?”

Marlor smiled but didn’t answer. Cam considered pursuing that question. Either Marlor had done a drive-by or someone had told him that there were cops on Annie’s door. Someone inside the Sheriff’s Office?

“Besides,” Marlor continued, “I concluded she was just doing what she thought was her job. Unlike the two shooters, who didn’t think twice about slaughtering my family.”

“She did have other options,” Cam said.

“So you said at that meeting,” Marlor replied. “So what the hell was she doing?”

Cam hesitated. “We think her decision was aimed at us. She didn’t exactly hold most cops in high esteem.”

Marlor raised his eyebrows. “‘Didn’t hold’? Past tense?”

“Somebody put a bomb in her car the other night,” Cam said. “She’s dead.”

Marlor frowned and pursed his lips for a moment. “I didn’t do that,” he said finally.

Something in Marlor’s overall demeanor made Cam believe him. Here was a man who’d as much as said he was going to commit suicide tonight. He was calm, relaxed, even peaceful about it. Cam believed that if Marlor had planted that bomb, he’d admit it. “How’d you find Simmonds and Butts in the first place?” he asked.

“Got an E-mail,” Marlor said. “I assumed it was from somebody inside law enforcement. Didn’t much care as long as the information was reliable. It was.”

“And that M-sixteen?”

“Mine from a prior life.”

“And the blanks?”

“In the mail.”

“You mail-ordered blank ammo for an M-sixteen?” Cam asked incredulously.

“No.” Marlor said, giving him a look that said he wasn’t going to elaborate. Cam waited. “I guess you could call it a gift,” Marlor said finally.

“From the same people who sent you the E-mail?

“Maybe. Don’t remember.”

Cam nodded. Didn’t remember, or wouldn’t. He wondered if they could find Marlor’s computer. “That electric chair still out there somewhere?”

Marlor nodded. “I left the welding machine there, too,” he said. “Should anybody want to use it again.”

“Welding machine,” Cam said. “We didn’t think of that. We kept looking for power transformers. Or a generator.”

“You were assuming two-forty AC. I used direct current. Much simpler. Takes a little longer, though.” He made a sarcastic clucking sound of faux regret.

And longer was what you were after, wasn’t it? Cam thought. The wind puffed up again and he wondered if he’d brought a heavy-enough coat. The dogs noticed it, too, and were sniffing the air. Marlor finished his whiskey and put the tin cup down on the floor. He leaned back in the chair and grimaced, as if an old injury was bothering him. “Are we finished here?” he asked. “I’ve got places to go, things to do.”

“How about the location of that electric chair?” Cam asked.

“I sent a reply to that anonymous E-mail-the one that told me where I could find those two killers? Whoever that is, he knows where the chair is.” He gestured at the sky with his chin. “You’d best be getting back. That trail won’t be visible if this gets thick.”

“Dogs will get me back,” Cam said. “Should I try to talk you out of what you’re going to do?”

Marlor shook his head. “I killed those two bastards,” he declared. “Not your precious judge. I lost my first wife to a drunk driver, who got off with two years of probation because, as the judge observed, it was his first offense. That made it okay, I guess. Justice for my second wife and only child was given away by the so-called justice system. Now that I’ve squared accounts, it’s time for me to wrap it up.”

“I guess I could try to stop you,” Cam said. “For your own protection.”

Marlor snorted. “You didn’t come here to arrest or protect me. And I am not going to any damn prison.”

Cam nodded. Actually, what Marlor intended to do seemed pretty reasonable to him. He’d probably do the same thing. “Anything I can do for you?” he asked. “Anybody to see later?”

“My sister will never understand it,” Marlor said. “Tell her something nice, if you want to.” He looked out across the slope, frowning. “Where is all your backup?” he asked, looking over at Cam. “You guys don’t work alone, but I don’t sense anyone else out there in the woods.” He eyed Cam. “You’re a lone ranger on this, aren’t you?”

“Meaning what, exactly?” Cam said, trying to deflect him.

“Meaning you’re here on your own. You’re not in uniform. Those are your dogs, not police dogs.”

Amazing, Cam thought. Maybe the approach of death was sharpening Marlor’s intuition. What the hell, he thought. Tell him. He explained his situation, and why he was on leave of absence. He also described what he suspected was going on in the Sheriff’s Office.

“You and that judge were in a relationship?” Marlor asked.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “It was complicated.”

Marlor didn’t say anything for a minute. “When is it not complicated,” he said finally.

“I actually thought you’d just gone away,” Cam said. “That maybe some vigilante cops had done the executions. Except for the fact that you absolutely disappeared. Nobody just does that.”

“That took some planning and doing,” Marlor admitted. “But, no, I did those two bastards. The judge, now, you may be right. About cops, I mean.”

“That’s why I need to know about that E-mail,” Cam said. “The one locating Flash and K-Dog for you.”

“Can’t help you there,” Marlor said. “First, I really don’t remember, and frankly, I don’t care. In my book, cops taking care of business aren’t necessarily bad cops.”

“Yeah, they are,” Cam said. “Because once that starts, it only gets worse. Especially once they get a taste for it. Then they become like any man-eater.”

“Still don’t care,” Marlor said, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Did you cash a five-hundred-dollar check recently?”

Marlor shook his head. Then he looked over at Cam. “You ever married?”

“Briefly,” Cam said. “Didn’t work out.” Until recently, he thought.

“Any particular reason why you didn’t try again?”

“The job seemed enough,” he replied, although even as he said it, it sounded lame.

“Then you have no idea of what I’ve just lost,” Marlor said.

“Tell me.”

Marlor blinked, poured himself some more of the whiskey, and then started talking. Starting slowly but building in passion, he described every one of the good and valuable things that had been ripped from his life by the holdup. Cam listened to a rushing litany of the individually mundane but collectively seamless and even glowing elements of a good marriage and a solid, loving family: dependent, striving, caring, forward-looking, optimistic about the future, fully participating in the stream of life-rocks, shoals, and all. Cam saw tears on Marlor’s face when he finally ran out of steam and words. Marlor was right: He had had no idea.

Marlor finished his whiskey. “Obliterating those two was the least I could do,” he concluded.

All Cam could do was nod. This man had abducted those two petty thugs and then broiled them alive in their own juices. And after what he’d just heard, it all seemed perfectly justifiable. He knew this was all wrong, legally, but he was damned if he could marshal any good arguments just now.

“You seem pretty reasonable, for a cop,” Marlor said. He paused, as if trying to make up his mind. “I spent a lot of time up in the western Carolina mountains,” he continued. “My company gets blamed for a lot of tree damage from its coal plants. My job was to prove that plants in Tennessee and Kentucky were doing the damage, not Duke. The evidence for that is in the Smokies.”

“I’ve been there,” Cam said.

“You ever hear of the cat dancers?”

“The what?” Cam asked.

“The cat dancers.”

“Nope.”

“You should probably check that out. Start up in Haywood County, around the Cherokee reservation.”

“What’s a cat dancer?”

Marlor ignored the question. “Ask around for a man called White Eye Mitchell. Haywood County. Swain County. Out there on the eastern edge of the park.”

“What’s a cat dancer?” Cam asked again.

“The answer to some of your questions, I think,” Marlor said.

“That’s not an answer,” Cam replied.

“That’s your problem, Lieutenant,” Marlor said, looking pointedly at his watch. “Right now, I’m all out of time.”

It was obvious Marlor wasn’t going to tell him any more, and it was equally obvious that Cam had no real leverage on this man. “We going to find you?” Cam asked.

The sky was starting to get seriously dark. Cam could barely see Marlor’s eyes in the shadows of the porch. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “But, hell, I’ve been wrong before.”

“Haven’t we all,” Cam replied, standing up and retrieving his pack. The dogs got up immediately and bounded off the porch. “I still feel like I should try to talk you out of this.”

Marlor shook his head. “I want to go find my wife and daughter,” he said. “Have to make the big crossing to do that. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, what’s it matter? Keep this wind to your left as you head back.”

“Any critters I should watch out for?” Cam asked.

Marlor shook his head. “Bears and snakes are all denned up by now. Around here, anything else will be more scared of you than you are of them.”

Cam smiled in the gloom. “Funny how they know, isn’t it,” he said. And then he summoned his dogs and headed for the woods behind the cabin. The first snowflakes began drifting down as he reached the tree line. He looked back, but the cabin was already disappearing in a white curtain, along with James Marlor.

Halfway down the mountain, he heard the boom of a. 45. He stopped for a moment. Nightfall had come early to the cabin.