The Cat Dancers

59

The next day was taken up with meetings and more meetings as Cam attended to the administrative consequences of a deputy’s death under extraordinary circumstances. McLain did not call with his plan of action, and the sheriff said that DA Klein had told him to wait for the feds to take the lead. Cam talked to Mary Ellen once at midday to make sure she was okay, and he found out that she had been spending some time with Jay-Kay as that wizard pried the lids off of several supposedly secure state data systems.

At the end of the day, Cam stationed himself outside Bobby Lee’s office and waited. The sheriff finally called him in at 6:30.

“Where are we?” Cam asked without ceremony.

“Have you had a nice day, Lieutenant?” Bobby Lee asked. “Because I’ve just had a wonderful day. Want to hear about my wonderful day?”

Cam sat down. “Show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” he said.

The sheriff actually cracked a smile. “JFC,” he said, which was about as close to real swearing as Bobby Lee ever came. “It’s been alphabet soup, by the hour: FBI, SBI, ATF, ADA, ME, IA, and so on. By my count, the only one missing was the CIA. How’d you do?”

“About the same,” Cam told him. “Spent a lot of time on rumor control. McLain never did call?”

“He did not. Some anally oriented individuals from the Hoover Building in Washington did call, however. I think I’m ready to start my own vigilante cell.” He paused and then became more serious. “How’re people taking all this?”

“Inquiring minds want to know WTF,” Cam said. “And I’m getting some cold shoulders. As in ‘You were there at the end. Where’s our guy?’”

The sheriff got up and went to the single window in his office. The lights out in the parking lot were on, and yet there were still many personal vehicles parked there.

“I can tell you that you did the right thing,” he said. “But that’ll be small comfort the next time you go into Frank’s Place. Kenny Cox drew some serious water around here. Despite what he’d been doing.”

“Maybe because of what he was doing,” Cam said. “I really may not be able to stay on after this.”

Bobby Lee gave him a strange look. “You may be right about that, Lieutenant. You came back. Kenny Cox didn’t. People’re gonna remember that.”

They were interrupted by a call. The sheriff picked up the phone and identified himself. He listened for a long minute, wrote something down, said, “Okay,” and then hung up.

“That was the ops center,” he announced. “Apparently nine-one-one got a call advising me to check my E-mail. Said if we liked the fry-baby videos, we’d love this one.”

Cam felt a chill as the sheriff went over to his computer, opened his E-mail, looked at it for a moment, and then initiated a download. Cam came around behind him to watch. It was a video, and the sequence was the same as before: a black screen, followed by the chair materializing out of the darkness.

“Oh shit,” Cam said softly.

The figure in the chair wore a hood, as before. The humming sound came rumbling over the computer’s speakers, making one of them buzz. Then came the electronically distorted voice.

“All rise,” it began, repeating the mocking introduction to a court session. The humming got louder, then diminished slightly. “Tell the lieutenant he has something of ours, and we want it back.”

“What the hell?” Bobby Lee said. “Is he talking about you?”

Sure sounded like it, Cam thought. And the voice was saying “We” now, instead of “I,” he noticed.

“The lieutenant has a face that belongs to us. He didn’t earn it. We want it back. We’ll trade. This face for our face.”

With that, a robed and gloved hand descended over the back of the chair and lifted the hood from the face of a clearly terrified Mary Ellen Goode.

Cam felt his gut tighten. This was definitely not supposed to have happened. “This face for our face. And Richter’s the designated mule. We’ll tell him where and when. Play ball, or she fries and dies.”

The screen faded out to black and both of them stood there in shock.

Cam somberly explained to Bobby Lee what the term face meant to the cat dancers. And then he remembered something: He had brought back Kenny’s camera. He had no idea if the film was still good after repeated dunkings, but the camera was physically intact and it was upstairs in his office. He told Bobby Lee.

The sheriff stared at him. He cleared his throat carefully, as if trying to get his voice back, and sent Cam to retrieve the camera so their forensics people could try to salvage any pictures. Cam did that, gave the camera to a tech, and went back to the sheriff’s office.

Bobby Lee called McLain’s office. He put it on the speakerphone. Special Agent McLain was not available.

“Make him goddamn available,” Bobby Lee demanded, to Cam’s surprise. “That’s not a request. And now would be really nice.”

They went on hold for five minutes, during which time Cam called Jay-Kay. No answer. Then McLain finally came on the line. Bobby Lee told him what had happened. McLain swore and said he’d dispatch some people to Jay-Kay’s building.

“You know what this is really about, don’t you?” the sheriff asked.

“They want Lieutenant Richter, not the pictures,” McLain said.

“Got that shit right. And we’re not going to play that game.”

Cam, thinking of Mary Ellen’s white face, started to say something, but Bobby Lee waved him off.

“I think I need to bring a team to Triboro,” McLain said.

“We don’t deal with hostage takers here in Manceford County, Special Agent,” Bobby Lee said. “We talk to them-once-let them know how things stand, and if they don’t play ball, we kill them. All of them.”

“We need to come up there, Sheriff,” McLain said again.

“I think you need to find your consultant. These bastards have the ranger, but where’s your wizard?”

“On it,” McLain said. “But I still think we need to come up there.”

“Come quick, then,” Bobby Lee said. Then he hung up and called the operations people back and told them to round up a SWAT team. Cam decided this would be a good time to go out into the parking lot and get some fresh air. As he was standing out there, the lab tech came across the parking lot from the Walker Forensics Building with an envelope. He saw Cam and veered over to give the envelope to him.

“The pictures survived,” he said. “Those disposables are water-resistant, to start with. That thing was shrink-wrapped, and the film cartridge was sealed against light.” He looked around hesitantly. “Had to be a brave scooter taking those pix,” he added.

“You have no idea,” Cam told him.

“Is this what happened to Sergeant Cox?”

“No comment,” Cam replied, although he was nodding.

“Damn,” the tech said with a shudder.

Cam thanked him and opened the envelope. He was surprised that there were about two dozen eight-by-ten pictures in the stack.

Some of them were panoramic scenes in the Smokies, then some close-ups of paw prints in sand and river mud, more shots looking up into rocky ravines, and several of the rock face in the Chop, showing the cave entrance. Then the dramatic ones: the cat coming out onto the ledge, bathed in the flash, already gathering itself as Kenny swung in; a coveted face shot, which had to have been taken when Kenny was no more than eight feet away; a second shot, this one very blurred, as Kenny swung back out; and then one where the cat filled the entire frame as it made the leap out toward Kenny. After those came the ones showing Cam’s efforts to blind the cat, which were mostly out of focus, except for one beauty where the furious animal was in perfect focus. He could just see part of a shepherd in the background. There were some badly overexposed panels, and then a final picture of a campfire scene.

Cam studied this one carefully. The light wasn’t very good, and the people around the campfire were all wearing balaclavas over their faces, except for one individual: White Eye Mitchell.

The cat dancers?

He looked hard at the eyes, trying to recognize any identifiable features. He thought one might be Kenny, but then he remembered that Kenny had probably taken the picture. Still, those eyes were familiar. They were all dressed in coldweather field gear, so he couldn’t tell much about sizes and shapes. He studied the bulky coats and hats, looking for anything familiar, such as standard-issue police gear or an insignia. In addition to White Eye, there were four people around the fire. The picture taker would make five, so two had been missing from the party. He couldn’t tell when the pictures had been taken.

He hurried back inside the building, where he showed the pictures to the sheriff.

“The Bureau will be desperate to contain this,” the sheriff said. “At least until they catch their bastards. Which probably explains why McLain wants us to do nothing until they get up here.”

“I need to go check my messages,” Cam said, “see if they’ve started the game.”

“You do understand what I was saying earlier, don’t you?” the sheriff asked. “They don’t want the pictures. They want you. They take you out, there’s no one else who can attest to the fact that either cell ever existed. And if they succeed in doing that, your ranger friend becomes entirely expendable.”

“The feds might not be disappointed in that outcome,” Cam said.

The sheriff shook his head. “No, I can’t believe that. They’ll want to control this, but not cover it up.”

“These guys have made contact. We need to move, not wait for any more meetings. Mary Ellen is in deep shit. I can’t sit still for that.”

“Wrong pronoun, Lieutenant, but I don’t disagree. The professional thing for me to do right now is sideline you and get someone else to run this-precisely because of who the hostage is.”

Cam nodded, then thought of something. “Okay, suspend me. Tell me to go home and stay there. Then I might just disobey an order or two. If it all goes south, you can say I was suspended but went out of control.”

“Listen to you,” Bobby Lee said with a wry grin. “Look, this is the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. We’ve got us a problem. We’re gonna take care of it, as always. Go check your messages, gather up your team, then get your ass back down here.”

“We’re not waiting for the feds?”

“What’s that Manceford County Sheriff’s Office motto-the one I’m not supposed to know anything about?”

“Mess with the Best and Die Like the Rest?”

“That’s the one.”

Cam asked the sheriff to forward the E-mail with the embedded video to him, then went upstairs and checked his voice mail. Nothing. To his surprise, he found the entire team waiting up in the MCAT offices. Word had somehow gotten out that something big was shaking, and his guys’ antennas were apparently as sharp as ever. Cam flipped on his computer and then went to sit at the head of the conference table.

“Okay,” he said. “Kenny Cox.” Everyone waited. He took them through the whole story, finishing with a detailed description of what had happened up in the mountains. At the end, he passed around the photographs of Kenny’s final encounter with a mountain lion. Rolling a chair over to his computer, he opened the most recent video and let them all watch it.

“They’ll give her back in return for these?” Tony asked, pointing at the pictures. “I mean, they have to know we’ll keep copies.”

“Only if I deliver them,” Cam said, and everyone understood immediately.

The phone rang. “Building security says a messenger just brought in what looks like a letter bomb for you, Lieutenant,” the duty officer announced brightly.

“Say again?”

“Well, it’s a FedEx letterpack-size package, all wrapped in brown mailing tape. Address is hand-lettered; return address has the name I. M. Jones, and we recognized the street address-it’s the Triboro city jail.”

“All right, do the drill,” Cam told him.

An hour later, after the obligatory, if officially confined, commotion, the chief of the explosives-disposal unit appeared in Cam’s office and handed him a clear plastic evidence pouch containing a plain white envelope. “Your bomb, sir,” he said with a grin.

“Better safe than sorry,” Cam replied, taking the pouch.

“You bet,” the lieutenant said, and left.

A picture and a hand-printed note were inside the envelope. The picture was of Mary Ellen Goode, without the hood this time, sitting in the electric chair. Her hands, arms, and legs were immobilized. There was a cell phone sitting in her lap, from which a white wire trailed beyond the frame. The note said “Your place. Tonight. Late. Face for a face. We see backup, the cell phone starts the fun.”

“If we moved right now,” Tony said, “we could get guys in position before it gets too late.”

“This is a cell, Tony,” Cam said. “More than one guy. They have to be watching. That’s why they made this thing look like a letter bomb. As soon as they saw the bomb-squad robot carry the letter out of the building, they’d knew I’d get their message.”

“You can’t go out there alone, boss,” said Horace.

“How about a Trojan horse?” Pardee said. “You go home alone in a big ole Suburban. ’Cept there’re three guys hidden under some stuff in the back of the truck. Pull it into the garage, shut the garage door, get out, and go inside. Three SWAT shooters already in the house-better odds.”

“Or,” said Billy Mays, “we leak some shit to the media wipes, get ’em out front, bring you out in cuffs for a highly visible perp walk, then haul you off in a cruiser. Get it on the TV for the eleven o’clock follies. Then send out a three-pack and pretend to toss your house. Except we send in a dozen guys, bring out nine. Then the next day, we turn you loose, restart the game.”

“Nice try, guys,” Cam said, smiling. “But we’re forgetting something: These are cops, and probably federal agents. Think of what they can do in terms of listening to our comms, knowing when we’re BSing. Hell, for all we know, one of those three SWAT shooters you want in my house could be in the cell.”

“You can’t go out there alone, boss,” Horace said again.

Cam sighed. “This time, I think I have to. I got that woman into this. I need to get her out. I’ve already lost Kenny.”

He searched their faces, watched them sort it out. They understood exactly what he was talking about.