The Cat Dancers

34

As soon as Cam reentered Manceford County, he picked up a tail. From what he could see in the rearview mirror, it was a Sheriff’s Office cruiser, not Highway Patrol. He checked his speed, which was about ten miles over the limit, but other vehicles had been passing him until the cruiser showed up. He could see a crowd of cars beginning to bunch up behind the police car. Finally, after about three minutes, as he approached an exit ramp, the cruiser closed in and flashed its headlights. Cam dutifully put on his own turn signal and pulled off on the exit ramp. There was a BP gas station immediately to the right and he pulled the pickup truck into the station and then drove around back. The fact that the deputy had not used his light bar should mean that he just wanted to talk.

The cruiser pulled up alongside, nose-to-tail, and Cam ran the window down. He recognized the deputy as one of the sergeants from the High Point field office. The officer said good morning and passed a pager over to Cam.

“How’d you make the truck?” Cam asked. “I just bought it.”

“Yeah, I know. One of our new guys moonlights down at that dealership. Said you’d come in and gotten you a new truck. Red one-fifty with dealer tags. Sheriff’s secretary said you’d be coming back from Charlotte right about now and to give you that pager. Have a great day, Lieutenant.”

Cam grinned as the cruiser pulled off and headed back to raise hell with interstate traffic. It was still a small town. And Jay-Kay had been entirely correct. He set the pager for vibrate instead of ring and put it in his pocket. Then he followed the cruiser back down onto the interstate. So all of his efforts to pretend he’d left town had been for nothing. And how had the sheriff’s secretary known he’d be northbound on I-85, headed toward Triboro? Because Jay-Kay had probably called the sheriff and requested some access, that’s how. But if a lowly probationer knew he was still driving around the county, then whoever was working with that night visitor from another county could also know that. Hell with it, he thought. I’ll head home, get some stuff, and then head west to the reservation. Then I won’t have to pretend that I’ve left town.

As he turned onto the westbound ramp of interstate 40, the pager vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out. The little window read “Tilly’s 10.” Cam was surprised. Tilly’s was a biker bar at the edge of the truck warehouse district on the outskirts of Triboro. It had a rough reputation and had been the scene of many public disturbance calls and even a few knifings and shootings. The only reason the sheriff let it stay open was that it was a great place to pick up parole violators. Bobby Lee’s theory was to give the pond scum a place to congregate, and then the cops would know where they were. But Tilly’s was no place for a discreet meeting, as the sheriff was known there on sight, and Cam himself would be spotted pretty quickly. On the other hand, it was not a place that cops hung around unless they went in force looking for a specific bad guy. So, Tilly’s?

He was tempted to call in and suggest someplace else, but the sheriff had been specific about no phones and no e-mail. Okay, he’d go down there tonight and then try to talk Bobby Lee into going somewhere else. In the meantime, he’d spend the day packing up for his trip to western Carolina.

At 9:45, Cam drove past the biker dive. It was an ugly windowless steel building with a single red neon sign announcing the name of the owner. Tilly Hogg weighed 285 and sported a greasy black ponytail and beard, a massive paunch, and forearms like tattooed hams. He’d adopted the name Tilly because it provoked insults and then fights, and he liked to fight. His real name was Raymond, and he’d fight over that, too. There was a dirt parking lot on three sides of the building and a Dumpster row out back. The lot was treeless and surrounded by ten-foot-high chain-link fencing with angled-out barbed wire on top. The only way in or out was through two chain-link gates manned by a couple of shavedhead mammoths decked out in the obligatory studs, chains, and black leather. There was a herd of Harley hogs parked nose-out around the building, while the rest of the lot contained some muscle cars, pickup trucks, and even two heavily chromed semitractors. White spotlights shone out from the roof over the parking lot, making it almost impossible to see much of anything in the compound from the street. A forceful stream of bar smoke rose out of single ventilator cowl up on the roof, and Cam could hear the thump of a heavy-metal bass as he drove past. The two gate goons didn’t even look in his direction. To them, he looked like any other truck driver headed down into the warehouse area to pick up his next over-the-road gig.

When the local cops wanted to sift through the garbage at Tilly’s, they’d bring a SWAT team or two, surround the compound, roust the gate guards, and put chains through all the Harleys’ wheels. Then one team would loose a pack of K-9 shepherds through the back door, while another would mace whatever came spilling out the front door. Cam had brought Frick along for his meeting tonight, and she sat attentively in the backseat, looking hard at the bar as they drove past. He’d put her spiked collar on, mostly for effect. Frack had gone ballistic when he realized he was getting left behind. Cam had had to crate him up just to get out of the house, but when it came down to it, Frick was the fighter.

Cam was wearing jeans, his steel-tipped SWAT boots, and a sweatshirt under an unzipped windbreaker. The Peacemaker hung down from a left-hand shoulder holster with six in the holes instead of the usual five. He had a double-barreled over and under. 38-caliber Derringer in his right sock and a twelve-inch-long shiny black canister of pepper spray canister sitting on the seat by his right thigh. From five feet away, it looked like a Maglite.

The Sheriff normally drove one of those half pickup truck, half SUV hybrids. Cam had tried to spot one of these in the parking lot, but the floodlights effectively blinded him. He drove down two blocks and then began a surveillance circle of the area, looking for stakeout vehicles or any other indication that other cops might be in the vicinity. He looked at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. He doused his headlights and drove back up the street until he was half a block from the gate into Tilly’s. He pulled over and left his vehicle running, waiting to see who or what might show up. He checked the pager in his pocket to make sure it was on and that he hadn’t missed a message, but it was blank.

After ten minutes, a lone Dodge muscle car came rumbling down the street from the opposite direction and nosed up to the gates. One goon lifted the latch and stepped out to talk to the driver, while the other one came out and went around to the other side of the car, his right hand held inside his jacket pocket. Cam could just make out a white face on the driver’s side, and then there was a mass of bleach-blond hair sticking out the window as a female lifted her head from the driver’s lap. There was much guffawing at the gate and then the first goon waved at the other one to open the gate. The Dodge burned rubber as it leapt forward into the lot. The gate muscle closed the gate again, both of the goons still laughing.

Cam looked at his watch again: 10:00 P.M. There was no way Bobby Lee Baggett could have gotten through that gate by himself, and Cam wasn’t willing to try it without substantial backup. “Tilly’s 10” had been the message. Tilly’s at ten o’clock. Clear as a bell. He decided to wait and watch for another thirty minutes and then get the hell out of there before he attracted some unwanted attention. The patrons of this particular bar would be popping crystal and chasing it with whiskey. They wouldn’t think twice about beating a cop to death, putting his body in one of those Dumpsters, and then setting fire to the Dumpster.

Thirty minutes came and went. He’d watched as a brace of obnoxiously loud Harleys had been admitted, each one sporting a pair of protohumans of uncertain gender. But there was no sign of Bobby Lee or any of his troops anywhere on the street. He checked the pager again, but it remained blank. He checked his cell phone to see if there were messages but found none. At that moment, a fight broke through the front door of the bar, with two bruisers beating on each other with what looked like pieces of furniture. The gate guards watched as more bikers spilled out into the parking lot. Cam saw his opportunity and ordered the dog to lie down. Then he started up his truck and swung it out into the street in a lazy U-turn away from Tilly’s. He left the lights off until he was pointed away from the commotion behind him, then drove down the block and made a right toward the trucking warehouses. He had to wait at a stop sign at the next corner for three big rigs to cross, which is when he became aware that there was now a vehicle behind him. From the height of the headlights, he thought it might be a semi, but the shape was wrong.

As the last truck cleared the intersection, Cam drove straight across, going deeper into the warehouse complex. The headlights followed without so much as a pretense of halting at the stop sign. He gave Frick another down command, not wanting whoever was behind him to see her distinctive head in the backseat of his truck. He turned left at the next corner and drove down the full length of a warehouse that had two dozen trucks backed up to articulating ramps. He could see forklifts working the freight at one end as he drove by. The vehicle stayed with him, and now he thought he recognized the shape of a Suburban in his mirror when it turned to follow him.

Okay, so who is this? he wondered. No signals were being made, and the pager in his pocket should have been buzzing if Bobby Lee was back there. The Sheriff’s Office had some Suburbans, although they tended to favor Ford products. The feds liked Suburbans, he remembered as he made another turn-to the right this time-and sped up to drive down along the back of the warehouse. To his left was a line of trees, and beyond that was the stagnant ditch that had once been Cross Creek. The Suburban stayed with him, going right through the stop sign, just as Cam had done. He knew that the main drag out of this complex would take him back past Tilly’s, and that was a direction he didn’t want to go. He wondered if there was a way to page the sheriff, but he didn’t know any of the numbers. Now that he thought of it, that was odd-the Sheriff had said he wanted the pagers to be a two-way channel. So maybe this page had come from someone else.

He drove down past two more blocks of warehouses and then he had to turn right because the creek and the perimeter road made a dogleg turn to the right. The warehouse parking lots were well lighted and filled with trailers awaiting their trucks. They were also surrounded by high chain-link fences, so he couldn’t duck into one of the parking lots. He turned right again, which pointed him back toward Terminal Avenue. The Suburban stayed behind him, neither closing in nor falling back. At the next corner, he saw a semi rig pulling out of the gates beyond a warehouse’s loading-dock apron. He turned right and went through the gate as the semi pulled clear, ignoring the angry yell from the elderly gate guard. The Suburban had had to stop to let the semi get through the intersection, but it then turned right and came up to the gate as the guard was trying to slide it closed. Cam drove over to one of the empty loading docks, turned his pickup truck around as if he were going to back up to the dock, and then stopped.

There were trailers on either side of him, but he’d left enough room to drive out if he had to. He left his lights on and the engine running. A forklift driver up on the dock backed out of a nearby trailer with a load, but if he saw Cam he paid no attention. Cam saw the gate guard arguing with someone sitting on the driver’s side of the Suburban, and then, to his surprise, a very large man dressed all in black appeared around the back of the Suburban, grabbed the gate guard, and shoved him into the backseat of the Suburban. He then slid the gate fully open and got into the backseat himself, slamming the door shut behind him.

Show time, Cam thought, and there are at least three of them. A driver, someone in the backseat to hold the gate guard, the big guy, and maybe even a fourth in the right front seat. He put his foot on the brake, dropped the truck into drive, and waited as the Suburban came over to where he was parked, stopping about fifteen feet in front of him. All four doors came open at the same time, and as soon as he saw figures in the doors with what looked like baseball bats, he floored it, his truck leaping forward and hitting first the door on the driver’s side and then the left rear door, slamming them into them before the men had gotten clear. He swerved left, stomped on the brake, hit reverse, and this time backed up at full speed along the other side of the Suburban, aiming for the doors on the right sides, although by now the men who’d been getting out were diving out of the way of the roaring pickup truck as his rear bumper stripped the doors right off the vehicle. He slammed on the brakes again, put it in park, opened the front passenger door, and sent Frick out the door with a “Get ’em” command. Then he piled out the other door and rolled under the adjacent semi, pulling out the. 45 as he went and ending up in the prone position behind the trailer’s jack stand.

The shepherd achieved complete surprise, lunging at the nearest of the men on the right side and knocking him down in a frightening display of teeth and growling. From underneath the trailer, Cam couldn’t see the top half of the fourth man, but he could see that he had a baseball bat in one hand and a gun in the other and that was enough. These boys weren’t here to talk. Aiming at the man’s legs, he fired once with the. 45 from under the trailer and saw the heavy bullet hit him in the right shin, causing him to scream and windmill backward toward the loading dock, gun and baseball bat flying. He swung the gun around to set up on the man wrestling with Frick, but the guy was already down on the concrete, trying to protect his arms and face from the snarling shepherd. His bat was lying on the concrete.

Cam glanced quickly at the Suburban to see if the other two were getting out, but his position and his own pickup truck blocked the view. Just to make sure, he took careful aim and fired two rounds high, one through each side of the Suburban’s windshield. He knew that the trajectory was such that he wouldn’t hit anyone in the vehicle, but the big slugs did a satisfying job of showering safety glass all over the interior. He rolled then, in case someone was setting up on him, emerging at the back of the trailer. Frick was still shaking the man down on the pavement like a terrier with a rat. The man Cam had shot was wadded up in a fetal position against the loading dock, holding his broken leg and moaning. Cam sprinted toward his pickup, kicked the gun lying on the concrete under the Suburban, and then opened the door and yelled for Frick, who released the man, bounded over immediately, and jumped into the truck. He could see faces on the loading dock now, and men pointing at the two men down on the concrete. Cam slammed his door and burned rubber as he headed for the gate, which fortunately was still wide open. He hung a two-wheeled turn to the left and bolted out of the warehouse area onto Terminal Avenue, driving back up toward Tilly’s. The two gate goons stared at him as he flew by. He was tempted to throw a couple of rounds in their direction just on general principles, but he was past them too quickly. He checked his rearview mirror, but there were no headlights visible behind him.

He slowed as he reached the end of Terminal and turned right onto the access road just as two semis came rumbling by, headed into the warehouse complex. He saw some blood on Frick’s muzzle in the glare of their headlights. He’d trained her to run at full speed right at the target, knock the man down, deliver a dozen or so bites to the arms and hands, and then latch onto a coat or a shirt and shake him until he went limp and stopped resisting, all the while making as fierce a racket as she could. Frack didn’t have it in him to go on the offensive like that, although he was fully capable of all that and more if somebody came into the house or attacked Cam. At ninety pounds, Frick did just fine, and the sudden appearance of a German shepherd coming at you full tilt, ears flat, about nine yards of ivory showing and a wolf’s roar in her throat, was usually enough to paralyze any attacker.

“Good girl,” he told her repeatedly as he drove up the access road to the freeway at normal speed, still trying to control the shaking in his arms. “Very good girl.” It had begun to rain, and he switched on his wipers. The good news was that he’d gotten away from four assailants, none of whom would be in the mood to do much of anything for a while. The bad news was that four men had sucked him into an ambush by using the supposedly secret communications channel that he and Bobby Lee had set up. If those guys were cops, they’d probably manage to get out of there before the Sheriff’s Office showed up in response to the warehouse calls. They’d dump the gate guard somewhere and then ditch the battered Suburban, which was probably a throwaway drug seizure, as quickly as they could in some accommodating auto junkyard. The bullet wound would be harder to explain at an ER, but cops occasionally incurred a few self-inflicted wounds when they’d mess around with their own gun collections. All it would take would be one buddy corroborating the “accidental” circumstances, and then it would turn into a line-of-duty paper drill, along with a lot of ribbing from fellow officers. The dog bites might be a tougher proposition to explain, however.

He tried to recall faces, to remember if he’d ever seen any of those guys before, but the only thing he was pretty sure about was that they were not Manceford County cops, as had been the case with the older deputy who’d come calling at his house. The truth was that he still didn’t know anything about his attackers. It might easily have been one cop with some buddies, or just a leg-breaking squad for hire. There’d been no badges flashed or anyone yelling “Police officers. Freeze!” at him. So if they were all cops, then this thing was a whole lot bigger than Manceford County.