P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Good or bad?”

“I was thinking about your legs, actually,” he said, smiling into his scotch in the darkness. An owl called somewhere down along the creek. Another one answered. Frick woofed some criticism from a corner of the porch. “How they make that swishing sound when you wear tight skirts.”

“Tight skirts are declasse just now,” she said, “especially at my age.” But he could tell she was flattered.

“You ever sit on the bench with just your underwear on under those big black robes?” he asked. She had given up lawyering to become a judge about five years ago, although after two divorces and one agreeable probate, she was wealthy enough not to have to work anymore.

“Is there book on that across the street, Lieutenant?”

“Entirely possible, Your Honor.”

“Well, you let me know when the odds are right and you’re on the long side, and maybe I’ll see what I can do,” she said, laughing. Cam loved her laugh. It was throaty, bordering on a belly laugh tinged with the experiences of being an attractive woman for all of her adult life.

“But hopefully you didn’t call to talk about my gambling jones,” he said.

“No,” said Annie. “I’ve heard some stuff around the halls of justice.”

“Stuff?”

“Like detectives getting suspended and thrown off the MCAT, and a whole lot of political heat radiating from Raleigh, headed in our fair city’s direction.”

Now that surprised him. What she was supposed to have said was that she wanted him to come over. No talking shop. “You heard correctly,” he said reluctantly. “Although that wasn’t really an MCAT deal.”

“Guthridge was your guy, wasn’t he?”

Cam didn’t say anything for a moment, taking a sip of scotch instead. Damn it, he thought. We had a deal. Plus, he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to her about this mess, in which she had a starring role.

“Technically, yes,” he said finally, and then explained what had happened.

“I heard another rumor-that MCAT might be gathering a posse to revisit the minimart case.”

Whoops, he thought. We definitely should have stuck to the rules. He wondered who her sources were. “Take the Fifth, Your Honor,” he said, trying to keep it light. “I’ve seen no evidence of said posse. You remember evidence, right?”

“All right, all right, don’t get picky.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” he said. “So back to the rules?”

“Yeah, okay. Back to the rules.”

“So why’d you call, really?”

He heard her take a breath and release it. She always did that when she thought she was going to say something significant. Women.

“A girl’s got needs,” she said.

He couldn’t help himself; he laughed.

“It’s not funny,” she said, but he knew she was smiling, too. They amused each other these days, which was almost as good as the sex. Almost.

“You gotta say the words. I’m a cop. Cops love their rules. Besides, you know what a busy social life I have.”

She groaned, but then said the magic words. “Can you come over tonight?”

“Now we’re talking,” he said.

“Talking’s not what I had in mind.”

Three months after the minimart case went off the tracks, Cam returned to his office from an interminable budget meeting and sent his notebook skidding across his desk and onto the floor, scattering papers like duckpins. Horace, recognizing the symptoms of bureaucratic overload, pretended to stare hard at his computer monitor, even though it wasn’t on. Cam swore out loud as he dropped into his chair. Kenny came in from next door, pulled up a straight-backed chair, and sat down in it backward, ready to hear Cam’s tale of fiscal woe.

“We lose?” he asked.

“We lost,” Cam said. “Narco-Vice got the augmentation money.” His phone rang. He picked it up and identified himself, listened for a moment, wrote down a string of letters and numbers on his blotter, and then hung up.

“That was Eddie Marsden over in Computer Crime,” he said to Kenny. “Says there’s something we need to see on some Web site. Here’s the Web address.” He turned his blotter around so Kenny could read it. Then Cam got up out of his chair so Kenny could get on Cam’s machine and find the Web site. Every time Cam tried to surf the Web, his machine would bring up a string of porn sites, which Kenny said meant somebody had been screwing around with his computer. Kenny rattled the keyboard and made the screen dance through several images before stopping at a totally black screen.

“Oh, great,” Cam said. “I recognize that. That’s what I usually get. This is a joke, right?”

“Don’t think so,” Kenny said. “Says it’s buffering a video.”

The screen remained totally blank. “Speak English,” Cam suggested. As far as he was concerned, buffering was what the cleaning crew did to the linoleum.

“Means it’s downloading a video stream from a Web site. Like a movie, or a TV clip.”

The screen remained black, but then Cam thought he could hear something coming from the computer’s speakers: a hissing sound, with a deep bass note underlying the hiss.

“Still buffering,” Kenny said, watching the screen. “It’s big, whatever it is. Eddie say where he got it?”

“He said it was an attachment on an e-mail from the Bureau’s Charlotte field office, but the Feebs say they didn’t send it. Whoa-what the hell is that?”

A picture was forming on the screen. The video camera was obviously sitting on a table, pointing across a long, narrow, darkened room. Perhaps ten feet away, a crudely hooded figure was sitting in what looked like a barber’s chair, or maybe it was a dentist’s chair. Whatever it was, it seemed to be made of shiny metal, with footrests, armrests, and a barely visible metal pedestal. There appeared to be metal clamps binding the figure’s forearms and bare feet to the structure of the chair, and there was a wide leather belt cinched around his middle. The deep humming sound grew louder, reminding Cam of one of those big pipes on a church organ. As the sound rose, another hooded figure appeared behind the one in the chair. Horace got up and came in to stand behind Cam’s desk when he heard that deep humming sound. The second figure had the physique of a man, and he was wearing a dark windbreaker and a hood that had vertical eye slits. His clothes revealed absolutely nothing about the face under the hood or the man’s size. Cam realized he was just assuming it was a man. Then an electronically distorted voice boomed out of the computer’s speakers, startling all three of them. Cam hadn’t been aware that his speakers were even capable of transmitting such a noise.

“All rise,” the voice commanded, the sound loud enough to be heard around the office. A detective from Major Crimes stuck his head in the door and asked, “What the hell was that?”

The standing figure reached over the figure in the chair and lifted the hood, which Cam recognized was probably just a pillowcase. The video was a little jerky, but it was clear enough to see who was in the chair, and Cam grunted in surprise. It was Kyle Simmonds, aka K-Dog, of minimart fame.

“Well, looky here,” Kenny murmured. “K-Dog, my man. What you doin’ there, dude?”

K-Dog’s tongue came out as he licked his lips for an instant and tried to look around. Then Cam saw the neck brace and realized that K-Dog’s head was also immobilized.

“Watch carefully, Officers,” the computer’s speakers intoned in sepulchral tones. “This man slaughtered three innocent people. You let him get away with it. I’m going to rectify that problem. I’m going to send him to hell until the end of time.”

K-Dog’s eyes got very wide and he appeared to be trying to speak, but then they saw that there was something in his mouth, some soft, wet, bulky object that appeared to be held in place by two shiny metal clamps on either side of his mouth. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, but no shoes or socks. Beads of perspiration stood on his forehead. They couldn’t see his teeth when he opened his mouth and began making increasingly frantic mewing sounds while his hands turned red as he fought against the steel restraints on his wrists. The hooded figure standing behind the chair withdrew from sight, and for a moment nothing happened.