The Cat Dancers

6

A depressing and busy week later, Cam was going through the overtime logs when Tony Martinelli, one of the four MCAT detectives, stuck his head in and told him to come see who was on television. It was a Monday morning, and the whole MCAT squad was in the office for a change. The guys kept a small television going next to the coffeepot, and Cam found everyone watching newly famous K-Dog Simmonds, outfitted now in pseudo- Matrix black T-shirt, black pants, and a rumpled, draping black linen jacket, telling the hostess of the local sleazoid television talk show what it was like to be victimized by the “po-lice.” The hostess was a big-haired blonde, with round, eternally surprised blue eyes and a mouthful of artfully capped teeth. She was hanging breathlessly on this shitheel’s every word, and she was “shocked- shocked -” by how badly this heavily tattooed prison punk had been treated, so shocked that she could barely keep her shiny little knees together, to the point where Simmonds kept sliding his eyes sideways to look up her skirt. Their boy was fully on the strut, tossing off belligerent denials about any involvement in the minimart robbery but letting the smirk on his face declare that just the opposite was true and wasn’t he a really badass dude to have gotten away with it.

“Hiawatha had it right,” said Horace Stackpole, the oldest detective on the team. “Hang him by his nuts and cut his fucking head right off.”

“She’s an Indian princess, Stack,” Kenny said. “Not a Native American.”

“Give a shit,” said Stackpole. “Hedge clippers would be the way to go. Dull hedge clippers. The manual kind.” He made the motion. “Lotsa fucking chops. You could sell tickets even, dollar a chop.”

“You’d need to sell rubber aprons, too,” Tony offered. Tony was just a little bit weird.

“I hope to God the families don’t see this obscenity,” Cam said, going back to his desk. “They haven’t sued us yet, but this would inspire even me to talk to a lawyer.”

“Look at that little prick,” Kenny said, “Right out of a trailer park’s septic field and proud of it. Knows he’s bulletproof, too.”

“Thank you, Judge ‘Let ’Em All Skate’ Bellamy,” Pardee Bell growled. He was one of two black detectives in the MCAT, the other being Billy Mays. Pardee was almost as big as Kenny, but not as tall, and he just loved to get in criminals’ faces, especially black criminals, and severely “punk ’em out,” as he was fond of saying. Everyone thought Pardee was on the team to provide some in-house muscle, but Pardee had a degree in computer science from NC State and could do some real damage with a desktop. Billy was called “Too Tall,” for obvious reasons; he was six eight, the team’s signals intelligence specialist and also a master at B and E. He had once shown up at a downtown gangsta-rap nightclub, decked out as a Masai warrior, complete with the appropriate edged weapons and pretending to be on a seriously bad ganja trip. He’d cleared the place out in one minute.

Earlier in the week, the state attorney general had told Klein to cease and desist with all his bitching and moaning, pointing out that if the perp had thought he was in custody, then he was in custody, and the Miranda would have had to precede any allowable confessions. Since the SWAT sergeant had asked Simmonds flat out if he did it, with two or more armed gorillas sitting on his chest, the AG thought the thing was open and shut. Mostly shut. Word in the hallways was that the sheriff was trying to figure out how to step hard on McMichael’s neck without setting up the whole Sheriff’s Office for a lawsuit.

Cam’s plan to send the guys out to beat the bushes on the two robbers hadn’t fared any better than Klein’s protestations. The sheriff had shot it down as soon as he got wind of it. Trying to avert even more serious consequences, Bobby Lee had already taken disciplinary action against Will Guthridge, suspending him without pay for two weeks and demoting him off the MCAT. Will was home, feeling both guilty and picked on, and the rest of the guys were pissed off at Bobby Lee and talking about the bad things that were going to happen to a certain sergeant. Cam knew that the sheriff had really been trying to preempt public opinion. Everyone was feeling the heat.

Kenny stopped by Cam’s desk. “I sent you an e-mail report on James Marlor, the husband?” he said. “Turns out he’s a little bit more than just some timber cruiser.”

“Couldn’t you just print it out and let me read it?” Cam asked. He was not fond of computers and all their works.

“You gotta read your e-mail once in awhile, boss,” Kenny said with a malicious grin. He had embraced the world of the Internet years ago and was a true adept. Cam promised Kenny he’d look at it. Kenny politely reminded him to turn on his computer first. Then he and the detectives all left for lunch. Cam retrieved his mystery-meat sandwich from the office fridge and then reluctantly booted up his desktop.

It turned out that James Marlor was not a forester, but a senior environmental engineer for Duke Energy. He was technically assigned to Duke’s headquarters near Charlotte, but actually worked out of his home, which was in Lexington, between Charlotte and Triboro. He’d been born and raised in southern Virginia and had a bachelor’s degree in forestry and a master’s in environmental science. He worked in the power conglomerate’s environmental-protection division. His specialty was the effects of coal-burning power plants on forest ecology. He’d done extensive field research, was the author of one book and two monographs on the subject, and also a candidate for a Ph. D. in environmental science at UNC-Chapel Hill. He’d been with the company for twenty-seven years.

The late Vicki Marlor had been his second wife, and the deceased child was hers by a former marriage. His first wife had died in a car crash, the victim of a drunk driver. Whoa, Cam thought. Now he’s lost two spouses. No wonder there’d been no histrionics in the courtroom-brother Marlor had had some direct experience with grief. Prior to college and going to work for Duke Energy, he’d enlisted in the army and had attained the black beret of the Army Rangers. Tramping through the state’s forests must be good for him, Cam thought. He’s fifty-six, but he sure as hell doesn’t look it.

Marlor had no criminal record, no tax problems, and no traffic offenses. And there was another surprise: he had been licensed by the state for fifteen years to carry a concealed weapon-the justification for this being that he had to go into some relatively primitive areas up in the Carolina mountain country. Got that right, Cam thought, mindful of some of his own experiences in them thar hills.

Of interest was the fact that Malor had requested early retirement from Duke Energy two days ago. Cam wondered how the hell Kenny had dug that up. Corporate personnel departments were usually pretty closemouthed unless there was a warrant on the table. He started in on his sandwich, trying not to get too much of it onto the keyboard. So now what? he thought. Here’s a smart guy with a solid career suddenly shutting it all down after his wife and stepchild end up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Okay, he could see that. But what’s he going to do now? Cam wondered. An ex-Ranger, an outdoorsman, and a man who carries a concealed weapon. How would a guy like that react if he happened to stumble on a rerun of that talk show and see that worthless white trash acting out?

Cam jotted down a reminder to talk to Kenny about doing a postincident follow-up with Mr. Marlor. He couldn’t shake the intuition that Marlor might go after those two. There’d been something in his face, something about his demeanor at that meeting after the court decision. Cam also realized that some of his instincts were driven by bureaucratic necessity. If Marlor did go after those two, he wanted the record to show that they’d covered this base at least once.

Then he noticed that Kenny had sent two reports. He clicked on the second e-mail without crashing his computer, and saw that this one was on the “Indian princess,” as Kenny called her-Jaspreet Kaur Bawa, the minimart clerk’s niece. She’d come to the United States as a teenager to live with her aunt and uncle in Charlotte. The uncle was more father to her than her biological father, who had remained in the Punjab. Now a naturalized citizen, Bawa had graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in only three years, with a double major in mathematics and computer science, followed by a three-year doctorate program in computer science from the Steinmetz Institute. Thirty-five, never married. Lived in a condo/office in Charlotte and did expert consulting work in systems engineering for mainly corporate clients, both in the United States and abroad. Her consulting fee was two thousand dollars per day, plus expenses, and there was a waiting list. She also apparently worked for the FBI from time to time.

Not bad for thirty-five, Cam thought. Kenny had added some personal notes. Her hobbies included yoga, whitewater kayaking, and driving expensive cars. DMV records indicated that she drove a $115,000 BMW 760Li and had accumulated not a few speeding tickets. She was rumored to be a regular in the Blue Ridge Parkway night car-rally scene up in Swain County. Officially, the parkway closed at sunset, but the rally crowd would assemble on some secret signal on the segment of the parkway that ran through the Cherokee Indian reservation. They would then race for bragging rights.

That last bit gave him pause. “Rumored to be”? Where the hell was Kenny getting this stuff? He made a second note to ask Kenny that very question.