The Cat Dancers

49

He arrived back at his house at five o’clock the next morning. The dogs had become restless in the hotel room around 4:00 A.M., and he’d decided that was a good time to get them and himself out of there and home before the morning rush hour started. It was still dark when he pulled into his driveway, and there was a thin mist hovering in the trees. He left the truck in the driveway and put the dogs into the backyard, where he watched to see what they’d do. If there was someone in the house, they’d react just as soon as they cut strange scent crossing the backyard. They didn’t do anything but their normal yard patrol, so he let himself in through the front door. The alarm system beeped at him when the door opened, but he hadn’t set the intrusion alarm before bailing out the night before last.

He went through to the kitchen and turned on some lights, threw his overnight pack into a chair, and cranked up the coffeemaker. He pulled one of his army mugs out of the cupboard and was just turning to take it to the table, when a voice in the doorway asked him to make it two.

It was Kenny Cox, standing in the entrance to the kitchen. He was dressed in civilian camo hunting clothes, but he had his police utility belt and sidearm. His face and clothes looked like he had spent the night asleep in one of Cam’s living room recliners. Cam straightened up and tried not to show his surprise.

“How long you been here?” he asked.

“Since about two-thirty,” Kenny replied.

“And the object of the social call is?” he asked.

“Talk. We need to talk to you.”

“We.’ So it’s true, then.”

Kenny came into the kitchen, pulled a chair away from the kitchen table with his foot, and sat down heavily. His. 45 thumped against the back of the chair. He was so big that the chair creaked audibly when he put his weight on it.

“Depends on what you mean,” Kenny said. “We didn’t do the bomb. I want to get that right out on the table. That wasn’t us.”

Cam just stared at him. He was still absorbing the fact that Kenny Cox really was one of them. That it was all true. Kenny saw the disappointment on Cam’s face, shrugged, and rubbed the back of his head with one massive hand. “I know,” he said.

“You know what, exactly?” Cam asked, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He wondered if Kenny was alone in the house. The damned shotgun was still in the truck, the shepherds were outside, and his gun belt was upstairs.

“I know what you’re thinking. Relax. There’s no one else here, and I’m just here to talk.”

Cam crossed his arms over his chest. “So talk.”

“We knew it was only a matter of time, once that bomb went off,” Kenny said. “We were comfortable that you’d finger Marlor for the minimart creeps, but once the attacks on Bellamy started, we couldn’t be sure.”

The coffeepot maker quit making its noises and Cam got another mug out of the cupboard. “You helped Marlor find them?”

“Hell yes. Got him the blanks, even ran covert backup for him when he snatched up Flash. Talk about funny.”

“Not for Flash,” Cam said.

“And not for Marlor’s wife and kid,” Kenny shot back, showing some teeth. “Those pricks got precisely what they deserved.”

Cam poured out coffee for both of them. “We’re meeting this morning. This thing is coming together. We’ve identified fifteen possible victims since you guys got going.”

“Victims’?” Kenny said in a nasty voice. “The real victims came first. Korean shopkeepers murdered for fifteen dollars. The young mother raped in the mall parking lot during a carjacking. The baby thrown out of the car on the interstate during another carjacking. The pizza delivery boy who gets his throat cut-not for the money, but for the fucking pizza. The all-star high school basketball athlete who takes a round in the throat from some asshole doing a drive-by, just because he was standing at the wrong bus stop at the wrong time, or because some young dick needed to make his bones to join the Crips. The foreign tourists who get the shit beat out of them and their rent-a-car stolen just because they turned down the wrong street. Those are your victims.”

“And how are you guys any different?”

“We’re the guys who square the accounts, Cam. The old gods who used to handle retribution are in a nursing home in Florida. Don’t you dare call these assholes victims. They were professional slimeballs. All we did was help them run smack into that big sword Madam Justice carries, because the scales don’t work so good anymore. And there’ve been eighteen, not fifteen.”

“Kenny,” Cam began, but Kenny wasn’t done.

“Don’t lecture me, man,” he said. “You’re still part of the problem. I worked out the right and wrong of it a long time ago. We have, and we’re comfortable with the equation, okay? Every one of those assholes was a stone-cold doer, and every one of them had been let off by some prissy police work or some weak-assed judge, and they’d bragged about it. It’s the brag that brings the dancers, Cam.”

Cam sat down at the table. “Well, it’s over now.”

“What, you’re gonna tell me you got a list of names?”

“You guys used phone booths to communicate, right? Remember Ms. Jaspreet Kaur Bawa?”

“The princess?” Kenny said. “Absolutely.”

“Well, the princess sicced those two mainframes of hers on you personally, Kenny. Bobby Lee’s talking to his counterparts in every county in the state, asking for a list of cowboys. He’s gonna get a statewide list of candidates, and she’s correlating phone booth locations with the call history of your other cell phone. The one in your former name?”

Kenny blinked. He sipped some coffee, eyeing Cam over the rim of the mug.

“They’re all cops, right?” Cam said. “Either active or former cops?”

Kenny nodded.

“And James Marlor? Brother? Cousin? What?”

Kenny smiled. “You’re doing pretty good so far; you tell me,” he said.

“Don’t know. But we will.”

“Okay,” Kenny said. “But you’ll never understand it. Not you. Not Mr. Straight Arrow.”

“You’re right about that, Kenny.” Cam heard the shepherds moving around out on the back deck. But of course Kenny’s scent wouldn’t have put them on the alert. Kenny was a buddy. “And this cat-dancing shit-going face-to-face with a mountain lion? What the fuck’s with that?”

“You wouldn’t understand that, either,” Kenny said.

“Try me.”

Kenny looked away for a moment. “We needed a certain kind of guy, someone who was emotionally worn-out from playing by the rules. You said you’re looking for cowboys, but we’re not cowboys. We’ve been through our cowboy phase. This is another level all together.”

“Judges, juries, and executioners?”

“Something like that. We needed serious anger at the system and the capacity to face certain death and laugh at it. To fully and truly not give a shit. And when you face one of the wild ones? That is an acid test, by God. And the biggest rush I’ve ever experienced.”

Cam shook his head in wonderment. “I guess it’s a good thing you don’t give a shit, because the system is going to grind you up.”

“Maybe,” Kenny said. “But you’re going to need evidence, and evidence is going to be hard to come by. That system you’re so hot to defend is going to make it really hard to take us down.”

“And that’s what your life’s all about these days? A bigger rush? Hunting down dumb-ass criminals and executing them? And how many cops have you taken out, Kenny? Guys who got a sniff of what you were doing and maybe asked questions?”

“None,” Kenny said. “Never.”

“Really? Your bunch tried for me twice. What’d they have in mind, tea and crumpets?”

Kenny frowned. “You were warned. What White Eye was supposed to do was scare you, and I admit that went off the tracks. But that was it. You say twice?”

Cam enumerated the warehouse attack and the roadside stop. Kenny shook his head. “White Eye was acting for us. That other shit? Not us.”

“Or your group is coming apart,” Cam said. “Someone’s scared and acting on his own.”

Kenny shook his head again. “Negative,” he muttered. “Negative.”

It was Cam’s turn to look away. Either Kenny was lying or he really didn’t know what was going on within his little group of assassins. Cam knew he hadn’t imagined these incidents. “And you didn’t put the elephant-gun round through Annie’s house?” he asked.

“Negative. We didn’t plant that bomb, either. In fact-”

“In fact what?”

“Like I said, that’s when we knew. I got that same feeling when Jimmie killed himself. We always knew that it couldn’t go on forever. And after what happened on Catlett Bald, we agreed to go deep. Everyone agreed.”

“All seven of you?”

“Six, after Jimmie. I-we-really didn’t expect that. I could understand it, sort of, after the fact. But it still came as a shock.”

“Jimmie-He was your brother, then?”

“Yeah. Shit. Jimmie was my older brother. He was the one who started the thing with the big cats. He was up there in the western mountains all the time, working for Duke. You have to understand, now-Jimmie was always a little far-out. That’s why I had to leave the army. He and I did some crazy shit and they found out about it.”

“But the vigilante bit-that was your idea, wasn’t it?” Cam said. “Especially once you realized you had a pretty much foolproof way to prove candidates for your hit squad. If they could face the cat, then they were men enough to whack bad guys and never reveal it.”

Kenny nodded. “You called us cowboys. We’re not.”

“You know what I mean. Guys in law enforcement who ride the edge all the time. The cops who want to draw their weapons. Who live to draw their weapons. The cops who hate the bad guys. Who substitute passion for professionalism.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Kenny said.

“Got that right. Like I told you, we’re meeting this morning. You coming in?”

“I will if there’s a warrant, although I don’t think you’ll get one. You have no evidence.”

“I have what we’ve just been talking about.”

“You’re tainted. You’re the guy who became a millionaire when Bellamy went up. The only thing keeping you from suspension is that the Bureau doesn’t believe it.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Cam said. “I know I didn’t do the bombing or anything else like that. You, on the other hand, know what you’ve been doing.”

“We didn’t do that bombing or the shooting into her house, partner. So who did that? Got any clues for that?”

“My guess is it was your cell, if not you personally. We can probably make that stick, too, once we tie you people to the killings.”

“Never happen, Cam, because we didn’t do that. Just like you didn’t do it. So there’s a mystery for you: Who did?”

“I give up. Who?”

Kenny stood and zipped up his jacket. “I have a theory, but no incentive to share it with you.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking some impromptu leave,” Kenny said. “I feel the need to do some dancing. Maybe one last time, especially if you guys do get lucky. You want me in the next two weeks, come on out to the Chop.”

“What the hell is the Chop?”

“The park rangers know where it is. Ask that pretty one, Mary something.”

“Was her boyfriend one of the club? Joel Hatch?”

“Who told you that?”

“Mary Ellen. She admitted to knowing what cat dancing was.”

Kenny scoffed. “Hatch was a fucking jock-sniffer. White Eye blew him off. Bangs on the door of a boiler room at midnight and says, ‘Open up in the name of the law!’ Shit. No wonder they offed him. Adios, partner.”

Cam thought about trying to stop him, but he realized that was pointless and probably not even possible. Even if he pointed a gun at Kenny and told him he was under arrest, Kenny would laugh at him. They both knew neither one of them could ever pull that trigger.

Dawn was beginning to break outside. Cam finished his coffee and went upstairs to get ready for the day’s coming festivities. He thought about what Kenny had said. What if the vigilante cell had not done the bombing? If not them, then who the hell had done that? And why?