P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

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 press 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.

Cam’s heart sank when he saw that there was a message from Computer Crimes when they got back. All it said was that they should go to a particular Web address. He showed it to McLain, who groaned. Lunch was about to be spoiled.

If anything, this one was worse than the first time. They all knew what was coming, and Butts was totally terrified, because he also knew what was coming. The MCAT cops reacted differently to this one, too. There had been shock and horror when they watched K-Dog die, but there had also been an element of satisfaction: That punk had gotten what he deserved. This time, there was no crowing, nor any sentiments of just desserts. They all waited in suspense for the important bit-the final voice-over-and, sure enough, here it came. “That’s two,” the electronic voice intoned.

The comradely buzz they’d developed over lunch evaporated. Jay-Kay took a small handheld computing unit out of her briefcase, connected it to her cell phone, sat down at Kenny’s desk, and went to work on that Web address. Cam called the sheriff and gave him the bad news. McLain called his office in Charlotte and did the same. The people there apparently already knew about it, and they told him to stand by for additional instructions. Computer Crimes delivered a videotape of the second execution a few minutes later, and they watched it again, amid much speculation about whether or not it was real.

“I’ve seen an official electrocution,” McLain commented. “Except for some details, this is pretty close.”

“Details?” Cam asked.

“Yeah. I watched one at Marion, the big-lock pen in Illinois. The prison chair there is actually made of wood, which is nonconducting. The current path is into the skull and out through an electrode on the guy’s leg. They use five cycles of current, not two. The current comes in through a metal skullcap, under which they put a vinegar-soaked sponge to ensure conductivity. The current comes out via a leg iron to ground.” He pointed with his chin at the video. “This guy has put the top electrodes in the victim’s mouth and is bringing it out through the entire chair, wherever his skin touches metal.”

Cam flinched just thinking about it. “An academic distinction once the juice comes on,” he said, but he still felt a little creepy talking about it.

“But symbolically important,” McLain said. “Whoever’s doing this hates the people he’s doing this to, putting the electrode in the guy’s mouth like that. In my book, that strengthens your theory that this is Marlor. This is absolutely personal.”

“I’m wondering where he’s getting high voltage. Doesn’t the state version of this use a couple thousand volts?”

McLain nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, two thousand, I think. That’s not available to a house. He’d need a generator and a sizable power transformer. Those are things we need to look for.”

Kenny joined them and heard McLain’s comment. “After Hurricane Hugo, half the people in this state have generators,” he said. “Transformers, now-that’s probably worth running down.”

“Fifty milliamps of AC power can kill you,” Pardee Bell said. “It doesn’t take being connected to the Hoover Dam to do that.”

The voice on the video made its pronouncement about Flash being number two.

So: Who was number three?

McLain had the same question. “Surely not the judge?” he asked quietly.

Kenny reached forward and turned off the VCR. “Either the judge or Will Guthridge,” he said. “If there’s going to be a three, that is. He’s done the two shooters. The only choice left now is between the cop who supposedly screwed it up and the judge who let ’em go.”

“That’s easy,” Horace said.

McLain grunted and went to see what Jay-Kay was accomplishing. Cam pulled Kenny aside. “Things are going to get crazy here in the next few hours,” he told him. “I think the sheriff wants a division of labor that keeps us in the game: The Bureau chases the executioner around the Web, and we find Marlor by using our superior local knowledge.”

Kenny rolled his eyes at Cam’s mention of superior knowledge.