The Cat Dancers

35

Cam cleaned frick up and removed the Hollywood spiked collar, making sure she hadn’t been injured in the melee. Then he’d put both dogs out back to patrol the yard. He’d had to use some steel wool to get the Suburban’s paint smears off the left front bumper. His cleanup wouldn’t withstand examination by a good forensics team, but a casual look would show no damage or marks. The rear bumper showed nothing except a slight deformation in the standoff bar, and he couldn’t do anything about that. He’d cleaned the. 45 and reloaded it, and he’d washed his hands in paint thinner and then orange sand soap to get powder residues off. Then he carefully vacuumed the pickup truck to get the dog hair out of it. Thinking defense, he slipped a big three-ball trailer hitch, angled high, into the receiver at the back of the truck, and then called the sheriff.

As usual, the sheriff was in uniform when he arrived at Cam’s house. Cam handed him a cup of coffee and then they sat down at the kitchen table while Cam told him what had happened earlier. The sheriff nodded at the end of Cam’s recitation.

“We had a disturbance call at that warehouse area just after twenty-two-thirty,” he said. “By the time the responding units got there, both vehicles involved were gone. The gate guard verified the part about their snatching him up at the gate.”

“He wasn’t hurt?”

“No. Shook up, scared, but not hurt. They pushed him down in the backseat and told him to close his eyes and be still. That’s what he did. Said the two guys on the left side got swatted pretty hard when you hit the doors. He was fixing to climb out over the guy in back when you shot the glass out of the windshield. Thought that was a good time to get back down and stay down. They stopped about a block away from the scene and rolled him out on the street and then took off.”

“Minus the doors on the right side.”

“Presumably, although they were not found at the scene.”

“Anyone see me?”

“Not really. All the truckers could talk about was that dog.”

“She evens the odds right out,” Cam said.

The sheriff grinned then. He loved dogs, especially police dogs. “I don’t understand how they got past the two responding units,” he said. “Suburban missing its doors, no windshield. And our people were on-scene within five minutes.”

“If they were the two I saw, they were faster than that,” Cam said. “But look: I was summoned there via a text pager. How did that happen?”

The sheriff sipped some coffee. “I don’t know. I got my pagers from the evidence locker. Throwaways. Got four of them.” He looked over at Cam. “I still have all four.”

“So someone in evidence control must have run his mouth,” Cam said.

“People talk about me and what I’m doing all the time,” the sheriff said. “But you’re sure these weren’t Manceford County people?”

“They weren’t Manceford County cops, I know that,” Cam said. “But, I don’t know that they were cops at all.”

The sheriff nodded. “There’s the rub. You didn’t take the first warning, now we get this shit. Guys with baseball bats and guns? People who’ve obviously operated as a team before?”

“I’ve got more,” Cam said. He then told him about catching up with Marlor, their little talk on the front porch, and what Marlor had said he was going to do. The sheriff listened in silence, an expression of growing disbelief on his face.

“And you just let him do it?”

“He told me he was going to kill himself, but not when or how.”

“Why didn’t you just arrest him? Bring him in? Get him a shrink or something?”

“Per your instructions, Sheriff, I can’t arrest anybody. Besides, I didn’t necessarily disagree with his plans.”

The sheriff gave him an exasperated look but then nodded slowly. “And he admitted to doing the two shitheads but denied the bombing?”

“And I believed him. If I were on the stand right now, I could say that it was a dying man’s testimony. He had no reason to lie.”

“And he thought cops were the ones who gave him the lead to those guys?”

“Yes, sir, but he wouldn’t reveal where the e-mail came from. Said he didn’t know and didn’t care.” He told the sheriff about Marlor’s comment regarding the cat dancers.

“What in the hell is that all about?”

“I have no idea, but I think that’s my next step. Get out of Dodge for a while and go see what I can find. You’ll have to decide what to do about Marlor.”

The sheriff sighed, finished his coffee, and got up to put the cup in the sink. “Man,” he said.

“I also told Jay-Kay Bawa, that computer consultant,” Cam said. “She may or may not feed back to the feds.”

The sheriff came back to the kitchen table and sat down. “They haven’t said a word since ATF took over the bombing investigation,” the sheriff said. “Not even the random evidentiary question.”

“If I go out to the western counties, shouldn’t I be back in full status?” Cam asked. “I could end up needing local backup.”

“If those guys were cops, and from out of the county, who could you trust out there?” the sheriff asked. “Plus, if I put you back in full status, everyone here would know as soon as the first little old lady in payroll said something.”

“Do the paperwork. Put it in your safe. Give me back my creds and my tin. If someone calls in, say the right thing. I’ve got my own weapons.”

The sheriff smiled. “Feeling naked, aren’t you?” he said. “Been a cop your whole working life. You let Marlor kill himself because you weren’t sure of what you were without the badge and the ID.”

“Maybe,” Cam said somewhat defensively. “But I also thought that what he said he was going to do made sense. It seemed like… justice.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Justice is what the system metes out,” he said. “Marlor admitted to kidnap and murder. It’s not up to us to say how that plays out. It’s up to us to bring him in and let him face trial.” He frowned. “In a way, your letting him do that is not a whole lot different from the cop-if it was a cop-who told Marlor where those mopes were.”

Cam felt his face flushing. “Well then, Sheriff,” he said, “if that’s how you feel, good luck with your problems-all of them. I think I’ll go take that world cruise now.”

The sheriff waved his hand. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot,” he said. “You know that technically, legally, I’m right. Morally, personally, well… I don’t know what I would have done with that poor bastard under the same circumstances. I know what I’d preach about it. But…”

Cam waited. The sheriff was well and truly stuck. Normally, he would have been running to the feds or at least to the SBI with this problem. The feds weren’t an option, not as long as they were keeping him at arm’s length until they were satisfied that the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office was squeaky-clean. But in the meantime, he was probably the only asset the sheriff could put in play, especially outside the county.

“All right,” the sheriff said. “You hit the road for points west. I’ll get Surry County to retrieve Marlor’s body. See what you can find out about the dancing cats or whatever it was Marlor was babbling about. Call me at home, tell me where you land, I’ll FedEx your stuff. I’ll do the paperwork myself tomorrow morning.”

Cam nodded. “And I’ll use Jay-Kay Bawa as a conduit if I need information from the various LE databases,” he said. He hesitated. “I still think you should go see McLain, tell him what you’re doing.”

“He won’t return my calls,” the sheriff said.

“Call him again. Say you want a meet-on your turf-or he can watch the evening news and get your message that way. The feds hate that.”

The sheriff gave him an appraising look. “Damn, Lieutenant, you’re getting slippery in your old age. Tell me this: You still trust Kenny Cox?”

Cam was surprised, but he nodded. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure he isn’t part of this. He’s too smart to get into vigilante work.”

“Ninety-nine?”

Cam thought about it. He couldn’t quite define what his reservation was. “Kenny screwed up, got burned by Judge Bellamy, hated her, and made no bones about it. Everybody knows that. Plus, he thought that electric chair was positively wonderful. Plus…”

“Yeah?”

“Kenny’s one of those cops who live for the edge. He likes being a cop and he likes chasing the bad guys. It’s his whole life. That’s why I don’t think he’d jeopardize any of that by doing vigilante stuff.”

“Unless he was getting a little jaded, maybe?”

Cam shrugged. “I don’t know. We all get bored occasionally. Kenny could get that way. I just don’t believe he’d act on it. Probably why he spends all his off-duty time chasing women. He can get as much or as little excitement as he wants.”

“Okay, because I think I need an inside man as well as an outside man. I want to fold him into what you’re doing. I’ll also talk to McLain. If he has anything on any of my people, he’ll have to show me.”

“You want me to go through Kenny?”

“No, I want you to come to me, exclusively. But if I need to move assets in your direction, I’ll use Kenny. In the meantime, write me up a statement on what happened tonight. Mail it to me at my home address. You taking those dogs with you?”

“Absolutely,” Cam said.

“Great idea,” the sheriff said. “No question about whose side they’re on.”