The Cat Dancers (39 page)

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Authors: P.T. Deutermann

BOOK: The Cat Dancers
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“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.
AN HOUR AND A half later, he was back downtown in the sheriff’s executive office. The precious cell phone lay on the sheriff’s desk. Cam’s watch lay next to it, its timer counting down the minutes.
The only outsider there when Cam got in was Mike Pierce of the SBI. Cam had described his little tryst with Jay-Kay. The sheriff wanted to get a line on her immediately, but Cam talked him out of it. “Let’s do the drill, get the ranger back, and then we can chase the bad guys,” he said. Mike Pierce had the scan report Jay-Kay had given them. He highlighted the numbers for the pay phones and went to get some help to access Cam’s phone records to see if it was true that Jay-Kay had implicated him.
Cam stared down at the cell phone after Mike left. “I have one big problem with all this cell phone shit,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“She said all three speed buttons would turn the chair on until I make that other call.” He looked over at the sheriff. “What if that’s still true after I make that call? Or
when
I make the ‘yes’ call? What if this is all bullshit and I end up sending the signal that kills Mary Ellen?”
The sheriff frowned, and Cam realized that he looked older and grayer than when this mess had begun. “I’ll do it, if you’d like,” the sheriff said. “You’ll have to say the words, but I’ll punch the buttons. I’ve got the SWAT team standing by, and the ops center is ready to trace the numbers that come up in the window.”
Cam sighed and slumped in his chair. “She’s got me boxed, Sheriff,” he said. “With your support, I can probably
avoid a federal prosecution, but if I don’t testify, I’m finished in law enforcement.”
The sheriff didn’t say anything. He did check the watch, which was ticking away on his desk.
“Where’s McLain and his tactical team?” Cam asked.
“Don’t know,” the sheriff said.
Mike Pierce came back into the room, clutching the report. He closed the door and sat down. “Please confirm your home phone number, Lieutenant,” he said. Cam gave it to him. Mike scanned the report and nodded.
“You guys didn’t go through all the data, right? You read her executive summary and conclusions?”
They nodded.
“Well, she wasn’t kidding. She already had your phone number in here as one of the recurring contact numbers in the pay-phone network. She just didn’t call it out in the conclusions paragraph.”
“Son of a bitch,” Cam said. “There it is. How the hell did she
do
that?”
“I asked the tech control people at the phone company that question,” Pierce said. “And they said that the call logs are tied to the billing system. They don’t keep records on their customers on the off chance the cops might call, but they do keep records for bill generation. You know when you call into customer service and bitch about a bill?”
They nodded again.
“Well, you know how sometimes they make nice and remove a specific charge? The way they do that is by expunging the record of the call. The billing system then does the math. My point is, it’s not a secure system. Even a customer service rep in Bombay can do that.”
“And she’s coming at them with a couple of mainframes,” Cam said. “Shit!”
“How much time do we have?” Pierce asked.
The sheriff looked at the watch. “Twenty-seven minutes,” he said, and then explained Cam’s concern with the speed-dial business. Pierce shook his head in frustration. “What
choice do we have?” he asked. “They fry her, you’re still on the hook, especially with this shit.”
“But she faked all that,” Cam protested.
“And we have whose word for that?” Pierce asked gently.
Cam wanted to hit someone.
“There’s more,” Pierce said. “We called that woman’s number in Charlotte, got an answering service. The woman who returned the call said she was Ms. Bawa’s executive assistant. She doesn’t know where Ms. Bawa is, but that’s apparently not unusual. Just for the hell of it, I asked if you had been to that office. The officer with the dogs? she asked.”
“I can explain that,” Cam said wearily. “I did—”
Pierce had his hand up, indicating that Cam should stop talking. “I’ve been going to law school at night,” he said. “I think that right now you should follow the lady’s advice and say absolutely nothing. The sheriff here vouches for you, and that’s good enough for me. But the best option for the feds to solve their vigilante problem is to hang you out to dry, declare a public, if partial, victory, and then take their own manhunt underground. Image is everything to those guys.”
“You do understand that this whole damned thing is a setup, right?” Cam said. He realized he was almost shouting.
“You should have taken along some backup,” Pierce replied, unperturbed.
“Who?” Cam said angrily. “Sergeant Cox?”
“Enough,” Bobby Lee ordered. “Let’s focus on getting the ranger back alive, shall we?”
The designated lieutenant for the SWAT team called, asking for an update, and the sheriff told him they’d be making the calls in about twenty minutes. “Hopefully, someone will call into the ops center with the location of the hostage after we do our phone drill.”
They all looked at the cell phone and waited as the minutes ticked by. The more Cam thought about it, though, the less he believed there would be any calls, at least not immediately. He wanted to run out of the building and scream at the moon. All of this because some asshole had failed to read two scumbags their Miranda rights? He thought about Mary
Ellen, strapped up in that horrific chair, waiting for someone to do something. How long had she been there? Was she still alive? Had that video been done the night she was taken hostage? Or were all those images fakes, the product of some other mad digital wizard. He visualized the oil-soaked corpse of the one robber lying out on the ground next to that diesel tank. Was that where Mary Ellen was now? “We’d never harm another cop,” Kenny had said, but now Kenny was a pile of picked-over frozen bones somewhere up in the western Carolina mountains.
“Okay, we’re two minutes away,” the sheriff said. “This thing has a signal. You going to do it, or shall I?”
“I’ll do it,” Cam said, getting up and going over to the sheriff’s big desk.
They waited as the watch clicked down, and then jumped when the tiny little beep went off. Cam picked up the phone and hit zero three. He flinched when someone slammed the front door to the executive offices. Zero two killed the chair. Right?
His hands were sweating as the phone rang and rang. C’mon, he thought. C’mon.
Then it was answered by voice mail. To his astonishment, Cam heard his own voice mail greeting playing. He snatched the phone away from his ear and looked at the number he’d speed-dialed. It was his own home phone.
“Well?” the sheriff said. “Aren’t you supposed to say something?”
To my own fucking phone? Cam thought, but then he said the magic word and hung up.
He reset the watch timer for five minutes and they waited some more. Then he took a deep breath and hit zero two. The phone rang once, twice, and then what sounded like a fax machine picked up and stopped. Silence followed and Cam hung up again.
“You’re not going to believe this shit,” he announced. “The first number I called was mine.”
“Figures,” said Mike Pierce. “She’s got that, too.”

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