The Cat Dancers

by P. T. Deutermann

  Cam saw that the sheriff was giving him a studiously appraising look, as if to say, You’ve got someone in mind right here in Manceford County, don’t you? “You’d have to do that sheriff to sheriff,” he said to Bobby Lee.

  “And then what?” Steven asked. “Say you get a list?”

  “Sweat ’em,” Cam said. “Use whatever IA channels we have to find out where they were and what they were doing when Flash was abducted in a hail of blank bullets. Or when Annie Bellamy went into low-earth orbit.”

  “That’s such a shotgun approach,” Steven said. “Maybe not even legal.”

  “Any better ideas?” Cam asked. No one said anything. “Of course, we wouldn’t get ’em all, but we might get lucky,” he continued. “Nail one, turn him, get the rest. Grind through them. Turn one of the Bureau’s interrogation teams loose on them. Tie them physically to Carrigan County. Sweat the wives and girlfriends: Does he go out west a lot? Go hunting a lot? Take a lot of leave?”

  The sheriff wasn’t convinced. “If they’re veteran cops, and they’ve shared this initiation with mountain lions, you won’t get a word out of them. Then what?”

  “Invoke the Patriot Act,” Cam said. “Send them down to Guantánamo Bay and let some of those retired CIA sweepers go to town. That bombing would be sufficient justification.”

  “Okay, I agree,” Steven said. “If Lieutenant Richter is willing, I think the idea of trolling that deathbed confession within Sheriff’s Office circles is the best course of action. If they’ve hit a judge, they won’t balk at taking another cop out.”

  “Then I’d want some federal help in protecting him,” the sheriff said.

  “Right,” Steven agreed. “We need to work up a plan. They’ll need time to organize, make their decision, and then get set up. I need to get with McLain down in Charlotte. Sheriff, let’s you and me meet in my office tomorrow morning.”

  Bobby Lee agreed. Steven said he had to go. Bobby Lee stayed behind after Klein left. “You okay with this?” he asked as they stood out on Cam’s front porch.

  Cam shrugged. “As long as we move pretty quick,” he said. “I don’t know how these guys move around or communicate, but it might not take them all that long to come calling.”

  “You want some people here tonight?”

  “Who you gonna call, Sheriff?” Cam asked. “Hate to have the wrong guy show up as part of my protective detail.”

  “You think Sergeant Cox is one of them, don’t you?” Bobby Lee said.

  Cam had to think for a moment before replying. “Who would you offer up,” he said finally, “if that question came around about cops who operate on the edge?”

  The sheriff nodded slowly. “He’s gone over the line more than once. That’s why Bellamy hammered him in the first place. Except …”

  “Except the MCAT was the perfect place for him,” said Cam, finishing the sentence for him. “Nobody ran ’em down like Kenny Cox.”

  “Should I move him out?”

  “How?”

  “A temporary assignment? A special project, say, with the Bureau down in Charlotte?”

  “Wouldn’t that be interesting,” Cam said. He heard his phone ringing inside but ignored it. “If my theory is correct, they don’t let any of the cell members do anything on their own home ground. The out-of-towners come, like that guy who showed up to calibrate me. No, I’d say we find a way to know where he is at all times and then see what happens.”

  “Hmmh,” the sheriff said. “Come in early tomorrow morning. You’re awfully isolated out here.”

  Cam snapped his fingers and both shepherds were at the door in a heartbeat, ears up and looking for a job. “Not entirely,” Cam said.

  After the sheriff left, he retrieved the phone message. It was from Jay-Kay. “Can you come down here to Charlotte? No phone calls. Just come as soon as possible.” Reluctantly he went to make some coffee.

  47

  IF JAY-KAY WAS SURPRISED to see him at 3:30 in the morning, she gave no sign of it. From her appearance, Cam guessed that she had already been up. He’d known many computer types who worked at night as much as they did by day. He sat in her ultramodern kitchen and filled her in on his trip west. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and her hair was wrapped in a tight bun. She took a look at his weary face and made coffee, which she did with the same clean, quick efficiency she exhibited in her professional work. The kitchen didn’t really look lived in. She winced when he described what had happened to White Eye Mitchell. She wrote down Mary Ellen’s name and office number.

  “My parents used to tell stories of man-eating tigers taking villagers from their beds at night,” she said. “Gave me bad dreams for years.”

  “I don’t think that cat knew what it was doing—or to whom,” Cam said. “It was reflexive, and amazingly quick.”

  She set down a cup of coffee for him and a mug of tea for herself. “You, sir, have a problem,” she announced.

  “Just one?”

  “One is enough,” she replied. “I was in the FBI building today, on a nonrelated issue. Two of the agents with whom I worked previously were chatting me up about cars. Naturally, western Carolina came up, and I mentioned that you were out there working on something to do with the Bellamy bombing. One of them revealed that the ATF and the Bureau are split on which way to go with that case.”

  “Split how?”

  “The Bureau has a ‘distinctive theory of the case,’ as this young man put it. He would not elaborate, but he did say that the ATF thinks you may have had a hand in the bombing because you knew about the great wealth that would come your way if she died.”

  Cam shook his head. “I’m a cop,” he said. “I’d have to have known that I’d be the first guy everyone looked at. And I would also have known that if I were implicated in her death, I’d never see a dime. What’s the Bureau’s read?”

  “Only that they do not agree and are waiting for a line of inquiry to produce some results before they’ll go forward.”

  “I’d forgotten they talk like that. And that’s the extent of ATF’s theory? I’m the heir and thus guilty of murder?”

  “They have ruled out terrorism on the basis of the bomb’s physical characteristics, which apparently was extremely crude and entirely too big for the job at hand. Plus the fact that you would have been in perfect position to feed James Marlor locating data on the two chair victims, and that you were the only one who witnessed, as it were, Marlor’s demise.

  “And now this business in Carrigan County,” Cam said. “Marlor points me at this cat dancer club; I come up with the man who trained them to hunt the mountain lions, and he dies in my presence.”

  She nodded. “The prime suspect in the execution videos was Marlor,” she said. “And he died right after you interviewed him to find out how much he knew. Then, as you just said the central player in this cat-dancing scheme dies, in your presence. And there’s only your word as to what happened in both instances. And you requested the leave of absence after the Bellamy bombing.”

  “The sheriff suggested that, for Chrissakes!”

  “Did he?” she asked. “I thought you requested it.”

  So I did, Cam thought. Shit.

  “The agents focus on paper trails. You applied for it in writing. Why? To take care of loose ends. Which are duly taken care of.”

  He stared at her and she gave him an impassive look. “You believe all this?” he asked finally.

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “But as they said, it hangs together.”

  Cam got up to stretch his legs. “You said earlier you’d found out something about Kenny Cox,” he said. “That we’d talk later?”

  She stirred her tea for a moment. “Yes, I did. You asked me to run his cell phone calls. I did, both his personal cell as well as his operational phone.”

  “And?”

  “The official cell phone was used only for official calls. There were almost no calls made on his personal phone. Admittedly, he’s got a minimal calling pla
n, the payments autodeducted from his checking account.”

  “Sounds like mine.”

  “But you use yours, Just Cam. This one mostly just sits there, and that made me curious. I mean, if all he wanted was a nine-one-one phone, those are dirt cheap. So I went at it in reverse.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I then did a scan to see what other bills are being autodeducted from that checking account.”

  “How in the world could you do that?” he asked. “Banks don’t hand that information out to just anybody.”

  She smiled. “I emulate. Or rather, the tigers do. In this case, we emulated an IRS audit contractor’s query. It’s a routine question during one of their so-called reality audits. Because of budget cuts, the IRS uses contractors to do scut work like account scans. I can’t emulate the IRS, but I can emulate some of their contractors. I do it for the Bureau all the time when they don’t want to tip their hand in an investigation.”

  “And a bank just lets you in? Without a warrant?”

  “Who tells the IRS to go away? Besides, big banks get dozens of queries every day from credit bureaus, mortgage companies, debt collection agencies, other banks. It’s not like they want money, and any IRS query is answered immediately.”

  “Damn. And what did the IRS find out?”

  “That he has another phone account—in a different name. And this is going to interest you a lot, I think. The name is Carl Marlor. Ring any bells?”

  “Marlor!” Cam said softly. He sat down again. “Holy shit.” Then the first name hit him, too. Carl.

  The original cat dancer? He thought for a moment, trying to recall White Eye’s description of the man who called himself Carl. Big guy. Had a look about him that would keep other men from getting mouthy in a bar. Had he described him? Fair-haired or dark? He couldn’t remember.

  “And the cell company doesn’t check people out to see if they’re using a bogus name?”

  “Only if the customer wants credit of some kind. The competition in that business is so cutthroat these days, they’d sign up Mickey Mouse. Think of all those eager young men waving cell phones at you in the mall.”

  “You’re saying Kenny has established an identity for this Carl Marlor? He’s committing identity fraud?”

  “The reverse. He’s not stealing someone else’s identity for money. He’s done precisely what you need to do to have an identity—opened some consumer accounts, paid them through autodeductions so they’re always up-to-date. He has an address, which is real. He has no landline phone, only a cell phone—but that’s all the rage these days. Plus, the number is real.”

  “What about a Social Security number?”

  “He’s using his own. His real one.”

  “And that doesn’t trip up some computer-check program?”

  She nodded. “The credit bureaus have Carl Marlor listed, with an interesting notation in the comments section—two names coming up with the same Social Security number. But the explanation appears to be real. He changed his name almost fifteen years ago.”

  “Legally changed his name?”

  “Apparently. There’s even a court order on file.”

  “And that just solves it?”

  “There are no fraud implications to paying a consumer bill,” she said. “Applying for a loan or credit? That’s different, and he’d have to explain it, although a credit check reveals the answer. An IRS audit would catch it immediately, of course, which is exactly what happened when I queried.”

  “Except he’s not stealing or defrauding anyone. It is legal to change your name.”

  “Yes. And it allows him to create phone records in another name, and thereby make calls with impunity if he is doing something illegal. As in many, many calls around the state to numbers that all turned out to be for telephone booths. Especially one in the town of Pineville.”

  “Recently?”

  “Very.”

  He rubbed his face with both hands. The image of a cop car parked next to a phone booth rose in his mind. He’d seen it all the time. “Tell me,” he said. “You said your computers are expert at doing pattern analysis. Could they search the phone records of the phone booths he called and then determine if calls were made from those phone booths to any others on a regular basis?”

  “Of course.”

  He eyed her. “Just like that?”

  She smiled. “No, not just like that. But what you’re looking for is a geographical area of probability, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “My theory is that these seven guys are cops. Either active duty, retired, or even fired cops. I think they’re all over the state, and get together to do vigilante business once in awhile. A very secret society, with the price of admission being a picture of a mountain lion taken at eight paces.”

  “Your cat dancers.”

  “Not mine, but yes. And I’ve asked the sheriff to make some inquiries, this time for what we call ‘cowboys’ in the sheriff’s offices throughout the state. If we can get the locale of the phone booths and some names to coincide, we have a shot.”

  “Is your sheriff on your side in this?” she asked.

  “I think so, yes. I’ve kept him in the loop, and he’s a straight arrow. If there’s a bad apple in his office, he’ll crush it.”

  “Can you get him to task me for those two pattern analyses? I want some top cover.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “You think these guys will get onto you when you go poking around?”

  She shrugged. “It would depend on where the data is stored and how much attention they’re paying to their on-line accounts. I’ve got the tigers watching for James Marlor’s computer, in case Sergeant Cox has it.”

  Cam stifled a yawn. “I know there’s something else I need to do, but damned if I can surface it right now.”

  “Look,” she said. “You’re exhausted. There’s a guest suite down that hall. Go get a hot shower and some sleep. Clear your brain. I have work to do in the lab. Go sleep for a few hours.”

  Cam found himself nodding. She was making perfect sense. Then he remembered the dogs were down in the truck. He explained the problem.

  “Take them across the street. There is a ten-acre building site there. Then you can bring them up here.”

  “They shed,” he warned her.

  “Don’t we all, Just Cam,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “Go.”

  48

  HE AWOKE TO THE sound of scratching at his door and looked at his watch. It was 2:30. He blinked. Two-thirty in the afternoon? He got up, found a robe in the bathroom, and opened the door. Both dogs were sitting outside his door, ready to go outside, and their look said, Now would be nice. He groaned and went to find his clothes.

  When he got back, he found that Jay-Kay had left him a note in the kitchen. She had fed the dogs. She’d be gone all day, and he was to help himself to whatever he needed. He walked through the living quarters and was struck again by the feeling that no one really lived here. But she had actually gone out and bought a can of dog food, and there was even a water bowl put down. He wondered when she slept, but he felt 100 percent better. He made himself some toast and coffee and then called Bobby Lee.

  “You’re in Charlotte?” the sheriff asked. Cam thought he heard voices in the background.

  “Consulting with our consultant,” Cam said, wondering who else might be in the room with the sheriff. “We need to meet. Privately.”

  The sheriff started to say something, but Cam cut him off, suggesting the bar at the Marriott at 7:30.

  He then sat down at the kitchen table with a pad of legal paper and began writing a report, starting with the execution videos. He made it as factual as he could, offering no theories or suppositions. It came to some twenty pages when he was all finished.

  Then he wrote another one, this time outlining his theories about what was going on with respect to a vigilante cell in North Carolina. He asserted, in writing this time, that he’d known nothing about Annie’s bequest, pointing ou
t that the will had been written back when they were already divorced and no longer living together. He stated that Oliver Strong had been her personal lawyer for many years and that Strong could testify that he had never met Cam before summoning him after she had been killed. He denied as forcefully as he could do in a letter that he had had anything to do with her death.

  Then he wrote up a third paper, this one laying out what he would like the sheriff, or, for that matter, the federal authorities, to authorize Jay-Kay to do—pursuant to formal warrants this time—to investigate the personal background of Sgt. Kenny Cox of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. He suggested that military authorities be contacted to get some sense of Cox’s military service and how that had ended. He pointed out that if Kenny and James Marlor were related, then the execution videos probably indicated police collusion in the murder of the two robbers, and that since Marlor had told “them” where the chair was—probably right there in Triboro—there might be further executions. He then wrote out the pattern analysis he and Jay-Kay had discussed during the night, and he recommended that this be pursued as a matter of urgency.

  When he was finished, it was almost dark. He went downstairs to the receptionist’s area. She was still there, and she helped him to make three copies of what he had written. He addressed one copy to Thomas McLain at the FBI’s Charlotte field office. He sent a second copy to Mike Pierce at the SBI. The third one, he packaged up to take to Bobby Lee.

  When he finally got near Triboro, he took a shortcut off the interstate, a route leading to the downtown area. Being back in Manceford County, he gunned it, forgetting that he was no longer in a vehicle that would be recognized by local law as being driven by a fellow cop. Five minutes down the road, he saw blue strobes in his mirror. He swore and began braking. The cruiser came right up behind him and the strobes dimmed, which meant that they were grille lights. He looked again in the mirror as he started to pull over, confirming there was no light rack on the vehicle behind him. That made him wonder. The state cops used slickbacks on interstates, but the Sheriff’s Office traffic detail did not. And this was not a road the state troopers would be working at rush hour.