P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“We may yet turn up K-Dog or Flash,” he said. “Or even Marlor.”

“Let’s hope you do,” she said, looking at her watch. “I must go. I have to lead a technical seminar in the morning.” She fished out a business card. “Call me, Lieutenant Cam. I think you need me right now.”

Annie Bellamy was not adjusting to the idea of house arrest very well. She wasn’t technically under any kind of arrest, of course, but, come evening, the easiest place to protect her was at her home, which meant that she’d lost most of her privacy. Her great big silver Mercedes stayed in the garage until daybreak or further notice. Cam had called her before coming over, and also the operations shift supervisor. Matters to discuss with the judge, he’d said. The supervisor said he’d have to allow him that. All of this was in order to keep any visits or contact Cam had with Annie strictly professional. He wasn’t willing yet to have everyone in the Sheriff’s Office know they were actually seeing each other socially or otherwise.

She handed Cam a scotch and they went into her study and closed the door. The detail consisted of one deputy in the house, one on the grounds, and a cruiser coming by at random intervals for a street pass through the neighborhood. They also had some electronic helpers stationed around the eight or so acres of manicured grounds. Marriage, however emotionally deficient, had been kind to Annie from a real estate perspective.

She was wearing a knee-length skirt and a sleeveless blouse, and she looked good. Tired, but definitely good. “Enjoying your captivity?” Cam asked.

“Not a lot,” she said. “I’d gotten used to the idea that divorce meant you didn’t have a man hanging around the house all the time.”

“We could detail more female officers,” Cam said, sitting down in one of the big leather chairs.

“No, don’t. They always want to talk.” She went over to the sound system and turned on some classical music, maybe two notches higher than absolutely necessary. Then she came over to the chair, sat down in Cam’s lap, unbuttoned and peeled off her blouse, and then lifted one long leg over so that she was straddling his knees.

“Tell me you don’t want to just talk,” she said, reaching back and undoing her bra.

As usual, she was right, Cam thought later. Judges are like that, he decided.

They put themselves back together, and then he confessed that he had come over to talk after all. She gave him a faintly disappointed look, but not that disappointed. Fortunately, there was more scotch in the study, so over drinks he told her about his meeting with Jaspreet, the Web wizard, and what she had suggested about a death squad.

“Has a pretty high opinion of herself, doesn’t she?” Annie said. She was sitting sideways at her desk, her bare feet on an open drawer.

“If they’re paying her two large a day, she must be worth it,” Cam replied.

“What’s she look like?”

“Indian. Exotic is the word I keep coming back to. Midthirties, nice figure, eyes so bright, they bounce around inside your head.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t a very pretty smile just then. “Would you like to sleep with her?” she asked.

Cam was ready for that one. Annie was nothing if not direct. “Let’s see,” he said. “She’s female, has a pulse-yup, vital criteria met. Absolutely.”

“I’ve got friends in Immigration,” she said, and then made the sound of a cat hissing and spitting.

“I’ve got to pass this one to Bobby Lee,” he said, getting back to business. “I’m thinking of a letter, preferably mailed from Greece or somewhere equally far away.”

“Greece is good,” she replied. “Ordinarily, that should go to the Bureau, but from what you’re telling me, the feds are at arm’s length and want to stay that way.”

Cam shrugged. “He asks formally, they have to come back in. The Internet’s involved-plus computer crime and intrusion.”

“They’ll leak it.”

“Then the killers will go to ground,” Cam said. “If it’s even true. I keep coming back to that. We have no physical evidence except absence. And cops are very adept at sniffing the wind. If there is a death squad of some kind, the cops involved would feel the police web tremble and submerge.”

“And then where are you?”

“Two bad guys who confessed to the crime are possibly dead. And nobody really cares.”

“People would care if cops did it.”

Cam wondered about that. J. Q. Public’s reaction to the chair had been the usual mixture of titillation and media twittering, but he hadn’t heard a whole lot of “It’s imperative that we catch the bastards who did this outrageous thing,” not even from the usual liberal wets who seemed to have infested the Old North State over the past ten years. He told her what Jaspreet had said about death squads getting a taste for it.

The inside deputy knocked quietly on the study door. “Another visitor, Your Honor,” he announced.

She said, “Okay,” and then, sotto voce, added, “And one with impeccable timing, I do believe.”

Cam got up, finished his drink, and patted his clothes to make sure everything had been put back together. She watched him with some amusement. “Should I open the windows?” she asked. She was actually blushing just a little bit.

“Might meet him at the front door,” Cam suggested, which is what they did. The inside cop went back to the kitchen. They stood in the open doorway as a car drove up. Cam recognized it as a Sheriff’s Office vehicle. He felt a little nervous to be standing silhouetted like that in a lighted doorway, until he saw that the driver was Kenny Cox.

Annie checked to make sure the deputy couldn’t hear them, and then she said, “If I was looking for a candidate to run a vigilante group-”

He shushed her as Kenny got out and nodded to the deputy in charge of surveying the grounds. He had materialized at the corner of the house when Kenny arrived.

“Your Honor,” he said to Annie as we came up the steps. “Boss.” He was in full uniform, complete with hat. “Thought I’d just check by, see if everything was okay.”

“Great minds think alike,” Cam said.

“Found any evidence that any of this is necessary?” Annie asked.

“No, ma’am,” Kenny said, glancing from her face to Cam’s and back to hers again. Cam found himself wondering what the sergeant knew. Kenny was one sharp investigator, and his ability to read body language was better than Cam’s. “Still no signs of Marlor or the two movie stars,” he said. “Everyone’s in mourning.”

“And we’re looking really hard, are we?” Annie asked.

“Yes, we are,” Cam said before Kenny could answer. “Finding either one of those guys is still the best way to call off your house arrest.”

Kenny gave him a look. “Or we could pull our people off right now, Lieutenant,” he said. “If Her Honor here doesn’t believe there’s a threat.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Lieutenant Richter, thanks for the update. I’ve got briefs to read. She nodded frostily at Kenny. “Sergeant.”

She went back into the house and Cam closed the front door. “Let’s take a walk,” he said to Kenny.

They went out into the grounds surrounding the redbrick Federal-style house, which fell short of being a mansion, but not by much. There were eight beautifully groomed acres of lawns, gardens, and mature trees, and a big swimming pool with a pool house directly behind the main house. The rest of the property was surrounded by a brick wall on three sides and a ten-foot-high chain-link fence across the back, the latter hidden by a dense stand of cedars. There was a service alley running behind the property for garbage trucks. The front drive was rolled gravel, and it continued around one side of the house to a three-car detached garage that was perpendicular to the pool house. The front gates were ornate, wroughtiron panels that were electrically operated from inside the main house or via a dashboard scanner, which was now in the hands of the deputies on duty.