P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Okay, boys and girls,” Cam said, sitting sideways on the edge of his desk. “I’ve just been to a stimulating meeting with Bobby Lee, Hizzoner, and the usual suspects from Next Door, subject: the electric horror show now playing on the Internet. We have orders.”

“Achtung!” croaked Horace.

“Yeah, well, first: The sheriff wants MCAT to run with this one. It’s not exactly what we were formed up to do, but this hairball is going to play across a lot of jurisdictions, legal and otherwise, and we do that every day.”

“Internet is interstate,” Pardee said. “This is a Bureau deal.”

“Agreed,” Cam said. “And the sheriff has already made the call to the Charlotte field office. But in the meantime, we urgently need to put eyes on the dynamic duo of Simmonds and Butts. Kenny, you got something for us on that?”

“Yeah, boss.” He briefed the team on the usual hangouts of both individuals.

“And how do we know that?” Tony Martinelli wanted to know. “I thought Judge Red Banner put their evil asses offlimits.”

“Well…” Kenny said, looking over at Cam.

“I had proposed to the sheriff that we rebuild a case,” Cam explained. “Start from scratch, get a bag of circumstantial evidence, re-ring ’em. Sheriff said no, after checking with sister Klein. So instead, I had Kenny here do a little afterhours bird-dogging, mostly to establish where these guys hang out, known associates, daily routine. Just in case Bobby Lee ever changes his mind, or if we ever need to have a word. Like, for instance, now.”

Tony acknowledged that. Bird-dogging was something Kenny did very well, and better solo than with a partner.

“Horace, you and Tony see if you can produce one K-Dog Simmonds. Billy, you and Pardee go find brother Flash. Don’t apprehend. Just locate and report. If Simmonds is alive and drooling, then the Web show is bullshit and we can terminate this firefly.”

“And if we can’t find his ass?”

“I’m to report that fact to the sheriff, and then he’ll have some more decisions to make. Like whether or not to apprehend and put into protective custody one Mr. Deleon Butts.”

Horace cleared his throat and spat into a trash can. “Why bother?” he said, giving voice to a sentiment that they all felt to different degrees.

“Think of it this way, Horace,” Cam said. “If the vigilantes dispose of all the bad guys, who needs us, right? So ride, cowboys, ride.”

The group broke up and Cam joined Kenny back at his desk. “What else?” Kenny asked.

“We need to figure out who the executioner is. Which means, for starters, you and I are going to go see James Marlor.”

“I already made a call; seems his phone’s disconnected.”

“That’s encouraging. Does Duke Energy say where his retirement checks are going?”

“Direct deposit into a BB and T branch bank in beautiful downtown Lexington, right where his regular paychecks used to go. We’ll need to paper up to find out if he’s cashing them or if they’re just piling up.”

“Okay,” Cam said. “Let’s go see Steven Klein, find out what we’ll need.”

“We might as well get domicile and vehicle search warrants, too,” Kenny said as they left the office to go next door.

“Why?”

“Marlor may not be there anymore.”

Cam stopped in the hallway. “That’s a point, but you know what? Before we go to all this trouble, why not call his sister, see if she knows where he is?”

“That’s no fun,” Kenny said.

James Marlor’s house was located in an upscale subdivision outside of Lexington. The house was a Southern Living number, with a wide carport on one end. As they pulled up in an unmarked Crown Vic, Cam noticed that the lawn had been mowed recently and the flower beds along the front of the house were being cared for. It was apparently trash-pickup day, because there were green Herby Kerbys up and down the streets. They parked the car in Marlor’s driveway and got out while the driver of the Davidson County cruiser, which had led them to the house, parked out on the street. Cam lifted the lid of Marlor’s trash can and discovered that it was full of what looked like junk mail. He picked up a couple of items and saw that the postmarks were fairly recent.

Marlor’s sister had been unwilling to talk to them about her brother. Cam had been as polite and as persuasive as he could be, without revealing what was precipitating his call. She would say only that the police had done enough damage to the Marlor family and she wanted nothing more to do with any of them. Good-bye. Kenny had obtained the warrants to search Marlor’s premises and vehicles. Steven had gone to Judge Barstow, which, given what had happened to him in front of Bellamy, made sense. Barstow gave them domicile, vehicle, and financial records, but he held back on their requests for an electronic sweep until a conventional look-see had been attempted. Cam had offered to show him a rerun of the execution scene, but Barstow, pushing seventy, declined. He said he did not object to capital punishment, but he told Cam he believed nothing that he saw on a computer.

Marlor’s front door was locked, and no one answered the bell. But Kenny had seen a couple of teenagers doing some lawn maintenance three doors down, and from them he learned that Marlor’s next-door neighbor had a key. The neighbor turned out to be a retired schoolteacher. She’d been collecting the mail and putting it inside. She gave them the key to the front door once they showed the warrants.

“He’s been gone for some time,” she said. “Going on two months now. He asked me to look after the house, you know, heating and air-conditioning, picking up his mail and getting rid of the junk, paying the kids to do the yard.”

“How are you paying them, ma’ am?” Cam asked. She was in her sixties and seemed unconcerned that she was talking to Sheriff’s Office deputies with Manceford County search warrants. They could hear a television going behind her.

“Believe it or not,” she said, “he left me a checkbook. He said he was going to be gone for some time, that he had to get away from his life here for a while. He said there’d be money coming in direct deposit to the account, and so far, nothing’s bounced.”

“And you’re on the account?” Cam asked.

She nodded. “He signed some of the checks in case anyone balked, but I’m on the card as joint, and, so far, the bank’s putting everything through.”

Kenny asked if he could look through the checkbook, and she produced it. He sat down at her dining room table and began leafing through it.

“He just… left?” Cam asked.

She nodded. “That’s right. It’s a wonder he didn’t harm himself, all that tragedy. I knew her better than him-he was always gone a lot. We went to the bank for me to get a signature on the card, and then he packed up his pickup the next morning and just left.”

“No contact numbers?”

“Nope. He said to write myself a check for two hundred and fifty dollars each month for my troubles. I’m a widow on school-district retirement, so I said yes.”

“What do you do with any personal mail, as in something besides bills?” Kenny asked from the dining room.

She pointed with her chin at the house next door. “There hasn’t been hardly any. I think he shut everything off.”

“Does he have any relatives besides his sister?”

“He mentioned a brother once, but I’ve never seen him. His wife’s relatives are all in California.”

“And no indication of when he plans to come back?”

She shook her head. “I half-expect a realtor to show up any day now with a FOR SALE sign.” She sighed. “It’s a nice house. They were a nice family. And I hear those bastards got away with it.”