The Cat Dancers

4

The major Criminal Apprehension Team was a unique organization for a metropolitan Sheriff’s Office. It consisted of four senior detectives, a sergeant, and a lieutenant who ran it. Their job was simple: Once one of the local criminals rose to a position of real prominence in the county’s outlaw society, whether as a major drug dealer, an enforcer, or a gang chieftain, the captain who headed Major Crimes would hand MCAT his name. They would then spend all of their time and effort busting the guy’s chops until they either provoked him into making a major mistake, one that could lead to real prison time, or made him so radioactive among the rest of the rat pack that they would take care of the problem. MCAT had essentially unlimited access to all of the resources of the Sheriff’s Office, which were considerable. The sheriff was intimately familiar with the federal criminal asset forfeiture and seizure program, giving the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office every modern law-enforcement toy out there.

What MCAT did was to direct all of those bells and whistles against one badass at a time. The team worked off the clock and around the clock if necessary. They followed the subject, wiretapped him, pulled in any and all of his close associates again and again, searched his crib and haunts, came up to him in public restaurants and bars to thank him noisily for his cooperation, planted false leads in the papers implicating the guy in the successful prosecution of someone else, and generally made his life miserable. All of this was done with appropriate court orders and warrants, of course. Most of the judges, if only in chambers, positively licked their judicial chops.

Cam’s job was to provide adult supervision. With a license to run outside the normal checks and balances of the field operations forces, the MCAT cops were under constant scrutiny to ensure they didn’t become the modern-day version of the Untouchables of the 1920s. Cam made sure they had court papers backing up everything they did, and the sheriff interviewed the entire squad frequently, both to keep up to speed on what they were doing as well as to assess their level of professionalism. He once told Cam that they were his armored cavalry, substituting speed, surprise, and aggression for the more plodding nature of criminal investigation.

Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett was on the phone, his back to the door, when Cam knocked and went into his office. The room was spacious, and the walls were covered with memorabilia of famous people or famous arrests made during Bobby Lee’s nine-year reign as sheriff of Manceford County. Parked against the back wall were three silhouette targets from the gun range. The sheriff took great pride in the fact that he, too, qualified once a month, just like the rest of them had to. Cam dropped into one of the two enormous leather chairs stationed directly in front of the sheriff’s desk and waited for him to finish up.

The sheriff, at forty-nine, was five years older than Cam. He was in his third term as an elected official, having come to Manceford County from the governor’s personal staff in Raleigh, the capital of the Old North State. Once upon a time, he’d been a Marine Corps aviator, and he’d apparently never gotten over it. He was six one, hatchet-faced, leanjawed, buzz-cut, extremely fit, and all business all the time. He addressed everyone under his command by their rank, and sometimes they all wondered if he knew anyone’s first name. In turn, everyone on his staff was cordially invited to address him as Sheriff. Cam couldn’t say that he liked the man, but he did respect him. He’d whipped the outfit into becoming the foremost Sheriff’s Office in the state any way you wanted to measure it.

The sheriff hung up the phone and swiveled around in his chair. “So WTF, Lieutenant?” he asked in his gravelly voice. “They just walk ?”

“What happened was that those two went to the minimart to rob the place,” Cam replied. “It went wrong somehow, and now three people are dead and, yes, the do-er’s are free to go.”

He gave Cam his commanding officer look. “Your detective failed to Mirandize these suspects?”

Cam wanted to say that Will was hardly his detective, but he knew that Bobby Lee would simply look at the organization board, and there would be Will’s name, most definitely parked in the MCAT block. “Detective Guthridge went in behind the SWAT front line,” Cam said. “They did their usual monster mash. A Sergeant McMichael from District Three went eyeball-to-eyeball with the white kid, Simmonds, asked him if he did the minimart. Mutt said yes.”

“While dangling from his dick, no doubt.”

“SWAT, what can I say?” Cam replied. “We don’t ask them to be nice. We do ask them to be professional.”

“And where was Detective Guthridge during this interrogation?”

“It was hardly an interrogation,” Cam told him. “They had the perps on the floor, and McMichael literally got down in Simmonds’s face, popped the question. By the time Guthridge came through the doorway, it was all done.”

“So SWAT hooked them up, not Guthridge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And did so without reciting their rights? I find that hard to believe.”

Cam sat back in his chair and tried not to sigh. “I wasn’t there, Sheriff,” he said. “And I find it hard to believe, too. You click the cuffs, you say the magic words. But apparently no one on the SWAT team is willing to swear that he did in fact give the warning.”

“The other thing I can’t believe is that she dismissed,” the sheriff said.

“It’s not like she didn’t give Steven the chance to nolle,” Cam said. “He got all wrapped around the axle.”

“He going to appeal?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Cam said. “I mean, I can see her tossing the confession, but dismissing the charges?”

The sheriff shook his head. “This-this was a big deal. Gas station burned up. Two innocent bystanders burned alive in their car. The store clerk shot and then cremated. I mean, damn, attaboy for finding these pricks, but aw shit for this mess. You know the rule.”

It was another one of the sheriff’s favorites from his days in the Marine Corps: one aw shit erased ten thousand attaboys. Cam thought it was time for him to defend his outfit. “This whole goat grab arrived in slices,” he said. “The incident originally came in as a bad fire. The fire investigators didn’t report bullet holes in the pump island until daylight. They had bodies from the fire, but nobody knew the clerk had been shot until the coroner called in his prelim. The district got the bullet holes repot from the fire department at about the same time as the street witness report filtered in, and then here comes the district, asking for a SWAT takedown. MCAT never officially rolled on it. In my view, Will Guthridge stepped into a Special Operations mess-up. It was Sergeant McMichael who popped the question without a warning, not Will.”

“God help us, we train and we train, and now this,” the sheriff muttered. “But why in the hell dismiss the charges? I mean, I know it was Bellamy, but damn!”

“Those shitheads are factory-programmed to screw up again,” Cam said. “Or maybe Klein can get around it, reconstitute the case-it’s not like we don’t know who did it.”

The sheriff stared down at his desk, probably calculating the degree of damage to his own professional reputation once Bellamy’s decision got some traction in the media. Cam, on the other hand, had two years and some change to go for full retirement eligibility, although he could walk right now if he was willing to accept a little less pension money. He was pretty sure he would survive the gathering shit storm, although one never knew with Bobby Lee. The sheriff defended his people vigorously, but he also could be ruthless when it came to major mistakes.

The sheriff seemed to have made a decision. “You’re right,” he said. “A judge doesn’t have to explain anything. Unfortunately, we do. Next Door is up in arms, as you can appreciate.”

“Next door” meant Triboro’s mayor and the city council, whose offices were in an adjacent building. Bobby Lee was always pointing out that he answered directly to the voters, but nearly two-thirds of those voters lived in Triboro. “The vultures were in the courtroom,” he said.

“Which is why I have the victims’ relatives in my conference room as we speak,” the sheriff said. “I need them calibrated before the media gets to them, if that’s possible.” He gave Cam a meaningful look.

Perfect, Cam thought. Absolutely perfect. “Any suggestion on what to say?” he asked. “Like, we’re going to work it some more? We’re going to appeal? Or should I just say we’re going to roll over, pat ’em on the ass, and just watch ’em go?”

“The charges are dismissed,” the sheriff said evenly. “That’s pretty final, the way I understand it. I assume Steven Klein is conferencing with the AG’s office up in Raleigh right now, but, yeah, I’d say they flat got away with it.”

“He should have nolle’ed,” Cam said, exasperated. He wanted to hit someone as the enormity of the injustice sank in. He wanted to tell the sheriff what Kenny Cox had suggested: trail the two bastards, then tell the victims’ family where they were. That dead woman’s husband-he’d been really quiet after the judge’s rulings. Cam hadn’t been able to tell if it was total shock at the ruling or the ignition of a slow fuse.

“So, what do I tell them?” Cam asked again. “Because otherwise, I’m just going to lay it out for them. Tell the truth.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Your box, Lieutenant. Paint it as you see fit.” He looked pointedly at his watch. “You’re not the only one with unpleasant duty-I’ve got to go Next Door.”