The Cat Dancers

61

“You’re here for the pictures, aren’t you?” he asked.

She smiled again. “Full marks, Lieutenant.” He started to get up, but she raised the cell phone and told him to sit back down. He remembered the video, the cell phone in Mary Ellen’s lap. He sat back down. She extracted a silenced semiautomatic from her briefcase.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“This is just to keep our meeting polite-you know, more for my protection than to harm you.”

Cam looked over at the dogs, wondering if he could spin them into action. But she had a gun and could shoot both of them before he could get something productive going. He looked back at her.

“You’ve been part of this little gang all along?”

“For some time,” she said. “I’m their eyes and ears.”

“How? And why, for crying out loud?”

“How? I danced with a big cat, just like the others, of course. That’s the only way in. I even have a face.”

He remembered the eyes he’d thought he’d recognized. Hers. “And the ‘why’?”

“One, because the people they kill richly deserve it. You heard the real me in the hallway that day. Heads on stakes and all that. And because it’s a dangerous, fast, and incredibly exciting game, Lieutenant. I think I told you that once-excitement is what I live for.”

“Oh right, you’re the thrill junkie. But you people have to know we have copies of those pictures, and the Sheriff’s Office definitely does not consider this shit a game. We’ve already lost one cop, and if we lose another one, all you guys are going to get dead.”

“First, you’d have to find us.”

“We already know-”

She leaned forward. “What you know is nothing, except what I’ve revealed to you. Do you suppose I just might have pointed you at the wrong people? Besides, we didn’t cause Sergeant Cox’s death. He did that. He already had two faces. That’s more than anyone else. He got greedy, and the cat finally won. That happens.”

“He did that because your little game was starting to come apart,” Cam said. “You could do that shit with impunity as long as no one suspected cops were making hits. Now that we know, ‘your game,’ as you call it, is over. And we will find each one of you. You taught us how, remember?”

“In your dreams, Lieutenant. Remember, what I did was pattern analysis of real data, which may or may not exist anymore. Wherever I can intrude, I can alter, remember? All we have to do now is nothing.”

“ You were the one who lit this vigilante fuse-back at the hotel when we had dinner. Why’d you do that?”

“The challenge, of course. Plus, if you let me into your investigation, I could control it.”

“And it was you who gave me Kenny Cox? Why? He was one of you.”

“Because you were already onto him, weren’t you? Our theory was that if I gave you Cox, we might still hide the other layer.”

“But now we know.”

She smiled. “That’s just a new game, Lieutenant. My tigers and I are ready if you are. And we don’t have to be in Charlotte, North Carolina, to play. Those aren’t my only assets. In the meantime, listen to me. Do you want Mary Ellen Goode back alive?”

“Of course.”

“Then you need to suffer some important memory lapses. It’s as simple as that. We don’t want you dead. We don’t kill police. First, you must promise to forget everything you know, and then we will tell you where to find her.”

He stared at her. Was Mary Ellen already dead? Were the Computer Crimes guys right? And besides, did this woman really believe that he’d promise to do that, get Mary Ellen back, and then hold to the promise? She’d been working around law enforcement long enough to know that cops would say anything to get a hostage out. He shrugged. “Okay, deal,” he said. “So where is she?”

She laughed. “Not so fast. Do you know that the Bureau has requested a warrant for your arrest?”

He shook his head. “Based on what?”

“Based on a chain of circumstantial evidence, Lieutenant, evidence that stains both the Manceford County Sheriffs Office and you. It was one of your people who botched the arrest that precipitated this whole thing. And then you personally become a black hole.”

“What’s that mean?”

“James Marlor died after you visited him. White Eye Mitchell died while you watched. Sergeant Cox died while you watched. All three explanations of how they died have come from you, essentially uncorroborated. You visited the grounds and house of Judge Bellamy when she was under police protection. You were there when someone fired a bigbore rifle into her house. You are the sole beneficiary of her estate, which is more than substantial. Everywhere they turn, there you are, sucking their interest in.”

“And I can explain each of those-” Cam began, but she cut him off.

“You can try, Lieutenant, but the Bureau has built a case based on everything I’ve already mentioned, plus the ‘clincher,’ as they term it.”

“What’s that?”

“Some very interesting and directly incriminating data from your own phone records.”

“Not possible.”

“The pay phones. You’ve been calling them, too.”

“But that’s bullshit-never have.”

“Telephone company records say that you have. At least now they do. Would you like to verify that?”

She put the cell phone down and shifted the gun to her other hand. “Look,” she said. “The government is convinced that there really is a death squad of sheriff’s officers in this state. Right now, they think that you’re part of it. After all, you are perfectly positioned to help such an effort.”

He just stared at her.

“I’m sorry to tell you that I have helped them form that impression and, and, I can enrich that impression. Plus, I can do that from wherever I want to.”

He didn’t know what to say. What had she said before? If she could intrude, she could alter? And she’d just erased his own computer, with his acquiescence. Or had she-could she have put something in there, too?

“And what about the federal death squad?”

“What incentive does the government have to pursue that theory?” she scoffed. “None.”

“But Kenny said-”

“That’s what you said Sergeant Cox said, Lieutenant. And even that was ambiguous and spoken in a dying delirium. You said so yourself.”

He sat back in his chair. The room suddenly seemed uncommonly warm.

“So you sent Annie the E-mail?”

“From inside your office, yes. From your computer, actually.”

“And you planted that bomb?”

“No. The man with me planted the bomb; while I was inside with your judge, gaining access to her home computer, and from that, the judicial network.”

“Fuck that- you killed Annie Bellamy.”

“She killed herself, Lieutenant. And didn’t I overhear you tell her to come over once everyone left? Maybe you killed her, Lieutenant.”

He felt a wave of cold rage sweep through him. He could take her. Scream at her like that big cat and leap across the room, bat that pea-shooter out of her hands and then take her lying little head right off. If he attacked her the shepherds would join in. One of them would get her. She read the sudden murderous blaze in his eyes and raised the cell phone.

“If I press send, she dies,” she said calmly. He sank down in his chair. “Back to your part of the deal, Lieutenant. Here it is in a nutshell: You must not testify. That’s the long and the short of it. When we’re convinced that you are honoring your agreement, we will release your pretty little park ranger.”

“How long will that take?”

She didn’t answer him. He recalled what Computer Crimes had said about the video images. “I think you’re lying,” he said. “I think she’s already dead.”

“Shall I hit the ‘send’ button, then?” she asked. “Although it’s not as if there will be a big boom heard halfway across town.”

He hesitated. She lowered the phone. “For our part, the executions will stop. We will even leave the feral cats alone. You simply refuse to testify.”

“McLain won’t buy that,” he said. “The Bureau will pursue this forever.”

“We’ll take our chances with McLain,” she said. “We might know him and what he will do with this better than you do, if their E-mail is any indication. They’ve been arguing with the ATF ever since the bombing as to the true nature of what’s been going on, but even they can’t ignore the fact that everything continues to point back to you. But if you go silent, and we go silent, they have every incentive to quit looking, don’t they, not to mention that’s what Washington wants, too.”

Cam thought she was wrong about that, but this wasn’t the time to argue. “So the real deal is, I take a dive, Mary Ellen goes free, and you guys get away with it?”

“What we did was mete out justice, Lieutenant-justice as propagated by the old gods, not the politically correct ones. And besides, it won’t be that obvious, this ‘dive’ of yours. Remember, you are the evidence. If you don’t talk, everyone’s case goes dim.”

“What about what I’ve already told them?”

“If necessary, you recant. You’re no longer sure. Those were stressful situations-you may have been mistaken.”

He wasn’t sure of what to say. He’d sat right here in this house and debriefed Bobby Lee and the DA, so in a sense, he’d already testified. But she might not know that. Or did she? Had they gone back to their offices and put it all into a computer report? Which she could have read? On the other hand, what was to stop the sheriff from reopening the whole thing once they got Mary Ellen back? They had some candidates. He decided that he needed to play along right now.

“Even if they didn’t come after me,” he said, “I’ll still have to get out. Retire.”

“Yes, you probably will, but that’s better than being shot with a hunting rifle through your kitchen window one night, isn’t it? You were a military sniper scout? You know how easy that would be to do, yes?”

He remembered the case of the abortion clinic doctor and tried to blank out that unpleasant image.

“Think of it this way, Lieutenant: For now, you will have succeeded-You will have put us all out of business.” She looked at her watch. “I have a plane to catch.” She put the cell phone on the coffee table. “This phone has a speed-dial feature. Selection zero one activates the chair. Zero two disables the chair. Don’t get them confused.”

She looked at her watch again. “In two hours, not before, and using this phone, select zero three. You will then get voice mail. Say yes and hang up. Wait five minutes; then select zero two.”

“Why not speed-dial zero two right now?”

“Because you hold half the key, Lieutenant. Until the other half is called in, all keys turn the chair on. So, do it our way, please.”

Still in shock at what she’d laid out for him, he nodded slowly. She went through it one more time.

“When do we get her back?”

She again ignored his question. “I’m going to leave now,” she said. “What I have done to you can be undone. Or made even more interesting, should we feel the need for it. I can do it to the sheriff, too. I can build an incriminating coil of ones and zeros around anyone who has a connection to the computer world, which in America, of course, is anyone of consequence. We are inside the law-enforcement system, Lieutenant, and in case you missed it, that’s a system that is getting stronger by the day. Never forget that.”

He stared straight ahead while she walked out of the room. The dogs watched her go and then looked over at Cam.

“I think I’m fucked, guys,” he said.