The Cat Dancers

by P. T. Deutermann

  Kenny tried to suppress a grin as Klein walked away. “Took all that personal, you think?” he asked.

  “Must have,” Cam said, remembering what Annie had said about judicial vacancies. “But we’ll keep looking for both of them anyway.”

  “Shame to waste the hooded guy, like Steven was saying.”

  “He was just venting,” Cam said. “I mean, here’s my real problem: What do we do if the next time he does the Mongolian barbecue, say with Brother Flash there, and then at the end he goes, ‘That’s two’?”

  “Don’t understand,” Kenny said.

  “What if he wants to make it a hat trick? Do the judge. Are we really up for that?”

  “You’ll have to speak for yourself on that one, boss,” Kenny said with a rueful smile.

  14

  CAM HAD BEEN DREAMING something truly lascivious when his phone went off at 2:15 in the morning. “Richter,” he growled while fumbling for the bedside light. “And it better be dead, bleeding, or burning.” He was getting much too old for this middle-of-the-night shit.

  It was the Major Crimes desk sergeant. There’d been an incident. “I just had me a hysterical mother on the phone, as in the mother of one Deleon Butts.”

  “And why do I care, exactly?” Cam asked, and then the name penetrated and it occurred to him why he might indeed care. But he was wrong.

  “Lady reports her darling baby boy, Deleon, was crashing at her place for the night after a tough day with the ‘po-lice.’ According to her, Deleon came out on the front stoop at around midnight to commune with the local gentry and maybe score a rock. Said gentry report a pickup truck came around the corner an hour later, about zero one hundred. Truck stops suddenly in front of the house, guy drops the curbside window, sticks some kind of machine gun out the window, and goes to town.”

  Cam was fully awake now. Machine gun? Someone wanting to assassinate Flash? “They get his ass?” he asked.

  “Seems all the homeys didn’t stay around to find out, seeing as there was a sudden general interest in finding a direct route to China. Anyways, when the smoke cleared, brother Flash was MIA.”

  “MIA. But not dead on the sidewalk?”

  “Just plain gone.”

  “Any blood on the steps?”

  “No, but other leakages aplenty, if you catch my drift,” the sergeant said with a chuckle. “But interestingly, no blood. And no Flash. One extremely drunk citizen claims he saw a hooded MFer jump out of the truck, snatch Flash off the sidewalk, coldcock him, physically throw his ass into the back of the pickup truck, and then boogie the hell out of there.”

  “And of course we have a full description of the truck, license plates, et cetera?”

  “The consensus in that particular neighborhood is that all pickup trucks look alike to a black man, especially when there’s a machine gun working.”

  Cam sighed. A hooded dude had abducted Flash. Here we go again, Cam thought.

  “Lieutenant? You want me to roust the on-call detectives? Right now, the city cops have the scene.”

  “No, not yet,” Cam said. “Abduction isn’t homicide.” Yet, he thought. “Have patrol collect what they can from the Triboro cops. I’ll be down in a little bit. Then I’ll make the call on whether we take it or leave it with the city.”

  “Should I call the sheriff?”

  “Negative,” Cam said. “I’ll do that when I know more.”

  Cam arrived at the Sheriff’s Office complex forty minutes later. The watch commander was Bud Winters, the lieutenant who ran the community policing program. He filled Cam in on what few hard details they’d been able to retrieve from the city cops. Most interesting was that, in addition to there being no blood, there were no bullet holes in any of the buildings or nearby cars.

  “He shot the place up with blanks?”

  “Those who were willing to talk all said the same thing—machine gun, looked military, spitting fire. Lotsa noise, big, kinda sideways muzzle flash. That’s consistent with blanks. They have casings. Our ballistics guys will be able to tell.”

  “Son of a bitch. And Flash would have been paralyzed with fear.”

  “Paralyzed and incontinent. One among many, apparently.”

  “Can we believe this guy about seeing Flash getting tossed into the back of the pickup truck?”

  The lieutenant consulted the patrol reports. “I quote: ‘MFer done throwed the nigger in the MFing truck, turned that MFing gun on the whole MFing street one more time, and then peeled that MFer the F out of there.’ Unquote. You interpret that as you will.”

  Cam grinned despite himself. “So, no description of the vehicle or the shooter?”

  “Nothing that doesn’t involve further and copious sexual interactions with various mothers,” the lieutenant said wearily, closing the report folder. “This incident is related to your Internet Fry Baby hair ball, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “I got it,” Cam said reluctantly, taking the folder. “City still have the scene secured?”

  “Yep,” he said. “There’s already book on whether or not this is number two, in case you’re wondering.”

  Cam rolled his eyes. “I hate the crime, too, Bud, but in this case, if Simmonds was the teeth on that rabid dog, Flash here was the tail.”

  Bud was unimpressed. “He was there,” he said. “And I’ll bet he spent some of the money they took. This whole hotseat idea works just fine for me.”

  He gave Cam a wry two-finger salute and went back to the watch commander’s office. Cam drove himself down to the scene, talked to the street unit people, and then returned to the Washington Street complex. He went to his own office and cranked up the coffeemaker. Then he sat down and tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do next. The phone rang; it was Bobby Lee.

  “What are you doing about this mess down in the projects?” he asked without preamble. “I understand you went down there yourself?”

  “There really wasn’t a scene when I got there,” Cam told him. “Lots of yellow tape and two city patrol units, but by then the word was out that the gunfire was all bogus, and all the regulars had done their usual fade. I didn’t bother with CSI.”

  “Was that wise?” Bobby Lee asked. “You did have an abduction. There could have been evidence on the street, something from the truck or the abductor.”

  “The scene was hopeless. The city cops bagged what they think is Flash’s ball cap and what is presumably one of his shoes, plus some shell casings they want our lab to work.”

  “How do they know it’s his shoe?”

  “The shoe was full of urine, and it smelled a lot like the ball cap. The few people they did interview at the scene still had their shoes.”

  The sheriff hesitated for a moment. “If this is what I think it is,” he said, “he won’t be needing shoes.”

  Cam nodded to himself. He could still visualize Simmonds’s bony feet being welded to the frame of the footrest. He wondered idly if the executioner would clean the chair up before doing Flash.

  “Why screw around any more?” Cam asked. “Let’s call in the Bureau, or the ATF, or both. This was a public abduction, a kidnapping, with a machine gun, even if it was shooting blanks. They’ll get a twofer.”

  “You want to be sidelined on this one?”

  “To be honest, Sheriff,” Cam said. “I don’t share the popular notion that MCAT caused this mess, so I feel no personal affiliation with this chair thing.”

  “Lieutenant, it was your—”

  “It was Judge Bellamy who released them and dismissed the charges,” Cam said, surprising himself by interrupting Bobby Lee, something deputies rarely did.

  The sheriff went silent, and then surprised him. “Reasons to turn it over to the Bureau?” he asked.

  Relieved that they weren’t going to spend the morning squaring off like two male dogs, Cam laid it out. “We don’t have the assets to track the Internet video. Kenny Cox is the best Webhead we have in MCAT, and he says this would take some heavy-duty computer ex
pertise. The feds are all over that. They have that program that watches everyone on-line, so they can probably find the source. Plus, we now have a terrorist-style street abduction of a subject related to the guy who supposedly got fried. The Bureau does kidnapping cases. And finally, the Internet is, by definition, interstate. Crimes across lines also means the Bureau.”

  “They come in, they’ll push you and your guys aside like so many annoying insects.”

  “I’m ready to be pushed aside,” Cam said. “We’re not getting anywhere.”

  Another silence. “Okay,” Bobby Lee said. “I’ll call ’em. Let’s just hope we don’t get act two in the meantime.”

  “For what it’s worth, Sheriff, you might be all alone in that sentiment.”

  15

  JUST BEFORE NOON, THE sheriff’s secretary called to report that the FBI had arrived and that Bobby Lee wanted Cam down there. The unreasonably young-looking agent introduced himself as Supervisory Special Agent Thomas McLain. He shook Cam’s hand with a hard, if restrained, grip. He looked to be in his late thirties, tall and rangy, with short black hair and piercing gray-green eyes. If he’s a supervisory special agent, he has to be older than he looks, Cam thought. Or I am getting old. To his surprise, Jaspreet Kaur Bawa accompanied McLain. She nodded at him.

  “Ms. Bawa,” Cam said, turning to shake her hand. “We meet again. Are you in the FBI now?”

  “No, Lieutenant, I am a consultant to the Bureau in their investigation into the execution video.”

  “Oka-a-y,” Cam said, unaware until now that the FBI even had an investigation going on the chair video. Bobby Lee gave him a discreet “Thought so” look.

  “Anybody need coffee?” the sheriff asked. “No? Okay. We were just talking about getting you guys into this mess, so let’s hit the conference room and I’ll let Lieutenant Richter tell you what we know and what we don’t know. Mostly the latter.”

  It was actually McLain who led off, telling them that the Bureau had opened a case on the Internet execution video and that they wanted to collaborate with the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office, since it appeared that the case had started there. He said he would appreciate any information they could give the Bureau. To Cam’s vast relief, McLain projected none of the traditional “We’re the G, step aside, small people” posturing. He was polite, professional, and willing to listen as Cam walked them through it, starting with the disastrous minimart heist. McLain had set up a laptop and used it to take notes, although Cam got the impression that whatever went into Thomas McLain’s brain was being stored there in neatly bulleted outline fashion.

  Cam then described the abduction incident of the previous night and said that in his opinion, K-Dog Simmonds had been the killer-diller at the minimart, while Flash Butts had been along for the ride, both mentally and physically. He noticed that Ms. Bawa curled her lip when he mentioned the killers. She was obviously still very angry about it.

  “He saw the execution video and didn’t want protection?” McLain asked.

  “He saw it, freaked, but would not entertain the notion of jail as protection. He’s a crackhead. Brain’s gone.”

  “And we have no idea of where James Marlor could be?”

  Cam noted the corporate “we” and saw that Bobby Lee probably didn’t feel that way, based on his body language. The sheriff had always been fiercely protective of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office’s prerogatives when it came to sharing cases. He suspected that the sheriff, like Kenny Cox, lived for the hunt.

  “It looks like his departure was orderly,” Cam said. “We found out that Marlor took out thirty-five thousand in cash money a week after the judge let the bastards go.”

  “Walking-around money, with no electronic consequences,” McLain said.

  Cam nodded. “We think so,” he said. “And he’s the guy with the best motive.” Then he glanced over at the Bureau’s consultant as if to say, and she’s the one with the second-best motive. She stared right back at him, as if daring him to say it out loud.

  “Ms. Bawa,” Cam said, “I’m concerned that you’re involved in this case.”

  McLain answered before she could speak. “Jay-Kay here is an expert consultant on the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the World Wide Web,” he said. “And since she’s based in Charlotte, Washington authorized the Charlotte field office to engage her services.”

  “I would have thought the Bureau had its own assets for that,” the sheriff said.

  McLain nodded. “We do, but they’re otherwise engaged these days. Mostly by the Department of Homeland Security.

  “Also,” she said, “I’m pro bono when I work for the Bureau. No cost to the government.”

  Cam gave McLain a look. Having the victim of a crime involved in the investigation was not kosher at either the federal or the local level. McLain understood. “She gets her tasking from us,” he said. “And it’s specifically related to Web stuff. She doesn’t go along on any rides, and she won’t have access to everything we generate about the case.”

  Then she shouldn’t be here at this meeting, Cam thought, but he didn’t want to piss McLain off. The Bureau was being polite, and that counted for a lot in his book. “Right,” the sheriff said, “Your consultant, your call. How do you propose to work this?”

  “I’ve been instructed to put the technical assets of the Bureau at your disposal and to offer professional advice on the course of the investigation whenever I see an opportunity to be helpful. It’s your case, and it will remain so until and unless certain exigencies arise that trigger a wider national security interest.”

  That little speech sounded rehearsed to Cam, but the sheriff thanked McLain for the Bureau’s offer of help, then suggested to Cam that the three of them adjourn to the MCAT office. Once there, Cam saw that Kenny was back. He called him over and asked him to get Ms. Bawa set up with a computer terminal. He took McLain into his personal office, took off his gun belt, and invited McLain to make himself comfortable.

  “You have been bending over backward to be nice,” Cam said without preamble. “I appreciate the hell out of it, but how come?”

  McLain smiled. “First of all, we really do have a full plate these days with this antiterrorism mission. And second, now that Butts has been abducted, we think it’s just about guaranteed we’ll see a second execution.”

  “The first one was a grisly novelty,” Cam said.

  “Yes, but a second one is going to nudge the liberal establishment into high dudgeon. Inquiring minds are gonna want to know: Hey, you guys on this, or what?”

  Cam laughed. “And that’s what you meant by ‘certain exigencies’? If the political shit storm reaches a critical mass, you guys will step up?”

  “Something like that,” he said with a smile. “Assuming it’s real.”

  “Yeah, that’s one of our problems,” Cam said. “It could be a damn hoax.”

  “What’s MCAT?” McLain asked.

  Cam told him. “Interesting approach,” McLain said. “You okay with us being here like this?” he asked.

  “Hell yes,” Cam said. “I was just telling the sheriff that we ought to hand this sick puppy off to the Bureau right now.”

  “He good with that?”

  “Not entirely,” Cam said. “He feels that since we—and that means a guy in my shop—actually lit the fuse on this thing with a screwup, we should be the ones to ‘unscrew’ it, as he quaintly puts it.”

  “I can understand that,” McLain said.

  Cam told him what the sheriff had said about a possible division of labor. McLain agreed immediately. “What’s first?” he asked.

  “We like James Marlor as the possible doer, and we’ve been looking. But of course now our urgent priority is to retrieve Deleon Butts. We have very little to go on, other than it was a hooded guy in a pickup truck, using an automatic rifle but shooting blanks.”

  “Yeah, blanks. We heard about that. Any leads?”

  Cam shrugged. “The city cops have a full-court pr
ess going in certain neighborhoods, but you know how that goes.”

  “And you’ve found no trace of the other guy, Simmonds?”

  “Only on the Web. And that’s a problem, of course, because we don’t habeas a corpus.”

  McLain frowned but didn’t say anything. Cam switched to his problem with having Ms. Bawa involved. He told him of her sentiments on what should have happened in the courthouse square.

  “She told me the same thing,” he said. “Refreshing, isn’t it?”

  It was Cam’s turn to smile.

  “She’s a piece of work,” he said, “both technically and personally. She’s worked for the Bureau before, with our counterterrorism folks. Technically, she’s beyond good. She keeps a brace of mainframe IBM computers in her home office and connects to the Web with her own T-one line.”

  “English?” Cam said. “T-one?”

  “That means a huge data pipe. The word broadband doesn’t adequately describe it. She says she never deals directly with the Web. She interfaces with her mainframes—she calls them her ‘tigers’—and they go out on the Web.”

  “Sounds a little scary. This is in Charlotte?”

  “Right. She’s a professional consultant. Adheres to Bureau guidelines and does what she’s told. My boss is okay with this, despite the personal angle.”

  “As long as you and I can meet like this,” Cam said. “I don’t like civilians listening in on everything we do.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “But she’ll need a liaison here.”

  “I put her with Sergeant Cox—he’s the big guy you met out there. He’ll handle Ms. Bawa’s needs.”

  “Jay-Kay. Everyone calls her that,” McLain said.

  They sorted all the logistics out in about five minutes, then rejoined the gaggle of MCAT cops and agents back in the office. Jay-Kay, who looked positively sleek in a rose-colored business suit, was sitting at Kenny’s computer and showing him something. Kenny looked at Cam over the monitor as he came back into the outer office. The sergeant rolled his eyes, as if to say she had long ago left him in the digital dust. Cam introduced the rest of the MCAT crew to McLain and then suggested they all go to lunch at a nearby cop bar, to be followed by a joint planning session to see where the hell they’d go from here.