The Cat Dancers

50

Three days later, Cam was back in Carrigan County, headed for a 5:00 P.M. meeting with the park rangers. His letters had formally initiated the opening of a case-action file by the SBI, which had set up shop in Manceford County to lead the investigation with the full cooperation of the Sheriff’s Office and the concurrence of the FBI. Bobby Lee had made his calls to the sheriffs of all the counties in North Carolina, achieving mixed results, as he had expected. Some of the sheriffs had said go away, others had said they didn’t have any cowboys, and still others had surfaced a total of nine names. These had been turned over to Jaspreet for her pattern analysis of phone records, phone booths, dead criminals, and the locations and service histories of the nine named officers.

Cam had briefed the sheriff privately on his discussion with Kenny Cox, which, as far as he was concerned, confirmed the existence of the cell, even though they had no substantive evidence yet. Kenny had dropped leave papers down in the personnel office the night before he’d come to see Cam, with the leave address blank. Neither Cam nor the sheriff informed the SBI that Kenny had as much as confessed, deciding instead to wait and see if Jay-Kay’s pattern analysis would fold Kenny into the mix. They did make sure that his name was on the analysis target list.

By the end of the second day, Jaspreet was ready to report. She had identified a statistically significant pattern of phone calls that tied two of the target names, as well as that of Sergeant Cox, to the phone booths in the locations where some of the criminals had been killed. She had then gone back and sifted through James Marlor’s phone records and found more ties to the same general network of phone booths. One of the two names was that of an active-duty officer, and a search of the relevant Sheriff’s Office records found congruent absences over the past five years. The second name was that of senior sergeant who’d been forced into retirement after a suspicious shooting incident. It would have been interesting to be able to tie in White Eye Mitchell’s records to the pattern analysis, but, as the sheriff in Carrigan County reported, they’d found no records or even bank accounts. Apparently, White Eye had not believed in paperwork, and his mattress had been his bank. Interestingly, Indian guide White Eye Mitchell had been a police officer in Detroit-his real name was Junious Mitchell Smith-before becoming an “Indian” guide in the Great Smokies. Smith’s contract had not been renewed, due to what was termed “temperamental unsuitability.” They’d searched his property but had found no evidence of big cats.

The SBI had sent for Kenny Cox’s army records, but it was going to take at least two weeks to retrieve them from the federal depository in St. Louis. They would need those records to help them determine why he’d changed his name from Marlor to Cox. None of the MCAT guys, including Cam, could shed any light on Kenny’s back story. When they did kick it around, it became clear that none of them knew very much at all about where Kenny went on his free time, and they concluded that perhaps all the stories about him being the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office premier assbandit may have been cover and deception. Bobby Lee had decided the final strategy: Cam was dispatched to go find Kenny Cox and convince him to come in. If they could break Kenny, then they’d go after the two other known names and try to break up the entire cell. If Kenny wouldn’t come in, or they couldn’t find him, they’d let the Bureau handle it.

Two of Twenty Mile’s three rangers were waiting for Cam when he arrived at the station. It was fully dark outside and the station had been shut down for the day. One of them was Mary Ellen, and the other, who appeared to be older than she was, introduced himself as Ranger Marshall. He said he was the station chief. After getting some coffee, they repaired to the conference room, where Cam explained why he was there.

“We need to find one of our deputies,” he began. “He’s become the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation ongoing in Manceford County.”

“What kind of investigation, exactly?” Marshall asked.

Cam danced around the true nature of the problem, which provoked another question: Did this have something to do with White Eye Mitchell’s demise during Cam’s previous visit. Cam said it did. They waited. Mary Ellen pretended total ignorance.

“So what do you want from us?” Marshall asked bluntly.

“I have reason to believe that Sergeant Cox is in an area called the Chop? Does that name ring a bell?”

They nodded. “The Chop is a geological formation in the northwestern part of the park,” Mary Ellen said. “It’s partly in North Carolina and partly in Tennessee.”

“What’s the name mean?”

“Think of God picking up a hatchet and making one spectacular ten- to twelve-mile-long chop through the backbone of the mountains. It’s a place where a large mountain split down the middle a million years ago. A fast river goes through it, and it’s about as remote as you can get in the park.”

“How would I get to it this time of year?”

“Helo,” Marshall said. “But not for very much longer.”

“Weather?” Cam asked.

They nodded. “There’s a front predicted to arrive in about seventy-two hours, which will make it impossible to get there.”

“Even by helicopter?”

“Think twenty-five feet of snow, Lieutenant,” Mary Ellen said, keeping it formal. Obviously, she wanted to keep the fact that they had met off-line from her supervisor. “No place to land except near the entrance, where the winds will be fifty to sixty knots, and no way to get down into the Chop, short of a parachute. If you’re going out there, we need to call the park dispatch center in Gatlinburg right now. They have the helos and the pilots under contract who are qualified to do this.”

“Are you qualified to go out into a real wilderness area?” Marshall asked.

Cam said yes, although he told them he would appreciate any advice on winter trekking.

“What the hell is this guy doing way out there?” Marshall asked.

“Cat dancing, I think.”

“Aw, c’mon,” he said with disdain. “I heard about that when you came up here the last time. There aren’t any wild panthers left out there. Even that hair taken from the print the last time you were here was ID’d as that of a western cat.”

Cam shrugged. “The one I shot had been tamed and trained to attack a human,” he said. “I learned that the hard way, if you’ll remember. My guess is that none of us knows what’s living way out there.”

Mary Ellen intervened. “Look,” she said. “That’s true-that we don’t know. It’s highly unlikely, but Mitchell was obviously doing something that involved the big cats. Did this guy tell you he was going to the Chop?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Any idea of how he was going in?”

“It’s been almost four days. He’s been coming out here for years, so he probably had some form of transport prepositioned. Snowmobile? I don’t know. Here’s my other question: Can I get some help with this? I’m comfortable in the backcountry, but I don’t know this ground, and I sure won’t know it if we get twenty-five feet of snow.”

There was a moment of silence around the table, and then Mary Ellen leaned forward. “Did he suggest there’s a wild mountain lion out there in or around the Chop?”

Cam nodded. “In fact, I asked him what the Chop was, and he said to ask you guys-that you’d been there.”

“Yes, I’ve been there. I’ve been all over this park. Most of us have. But I didn’t go there looking for a mountain lion.”

“Is this deputy going to come back in peacefully?” Marshall asked.

Cam hesitated. “The truth is, I don’t know. But this will be between him and me. He wouldn’t hurt another cop.”

“Just how dangerous is this guy? Is he deranged?”

“Do you know what NAFOD means?” Cam asked. He got blank looks.

“Law enforcement these days is all about teamwork. From two-man partners all the way up to full-blown SWAT teams. You rely on the guy who has your back-for your life. The one guy who cannot function in that setting is a guy who has no apparent fear of death. NAFOD is a military aviation term. A guy who’s NAFOD can and probably will get someone on his team killed because he’s fearless. Kenny’s dangerous in that sense.”

“Is this personal, you and him?”

“He was my number two in Manceford County. I’ve known and worked with him for many years. I thought I knew him, but now I’ve found out he goes face-to-face with wild mountain lions for the thrill of it. I’m going to ask him to come in. I’m going to tell him I’ve told the right people where he is. If he says no, we’ll leave, and turn it over to some people who probably won’t just ask.”

“Okay,” Marshall said. “I’ll go along and help you set up a base camp. I’ll show you what the Chop looks like, and how to get into it. But I’m not chasing down any whacked-out cop with a death wish, and I’m not going to pat a mountain lion on the ass, either.”

Cam winced at the description “whacked-out cop,” but then he nodded.

“And we’re leaving before the storm arrives, which means, if we can get out there by, say, noon tomorrow, you’ll have maybe forty-eight hours to surface this guy, and then we’re out of there. Agreed?”

Like I have much choice, Cam thought. “Yes, absolutely, agreed. And for the record, I’m definitely not NAFOD.”

They talked logistics for a few minutes while Mary Ellen went to contact the dispatch center. When Cam was ready to leave, she had a flight laid on for ten o’clock the next morning, staging out of the ranger station’s parking lot. Marshall got one of the local outfitters to open up his store that evening so they could equip their little expedition. Mary Ellen stopped Cam in the hallway as he was leaving.

“Two things,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“Billy Marshall is an ex-Marine Corps recon guy. He’s commissioned as a law-enforcement officer. The only reason he volunteered to go with you is to keep you safe, but he’s taking you at your word that you’ve been in the backcountry before. Have you?”

Cam said yes. “I’ll have my dogs with me, and I’ve brought my own gear. If he wants to back out, I can probably do this on my own.”

She smiled. “He doesn’t want to back out. He just wants to know how much danger you’re going to be putting him in.”

“If he stays at the camp, his biggest problem will be boredom. And the second question?”

“I want to come along.”

He looked at her, then understood. “And you want to see if there really is a wild one out there, right?”

“Right.”

“If there is, will you testify for me when it comes to it?”

“I will.”

“Fine,” he said. “One last thing: When it comes to my bringing Sergeant Cox in, I need to do that by myself.”

“No problem,” she said brightly. “I’m not NAFOD, either.”