P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Can’t say,” Kenny replied. Cam raised his eyebrows.

“Sheriff told me you were on LOA,” Kenny explained. “One of the conditions of my taking over was that I wasn’t to tell you anything about anything.”

“What else did Bobby Lee tell you?”

“That if I did talk to you, it probably wouldn’t be a big problem, on account of the fact you’d be leaving town directly.”

“He say that?” Cam asked, trying not to show his surprise.

“What’s that you got in your jacket pocket there?” Kenny asked.

“Peacemaker,” Cam replied. “Replica.”

Kenny snorted. “Why bother?” he asked. “Single-action revolver-that’s useless.”

Cam shrugged, and in the process he palmed the revolver into his right hand and brought it up. Kenny stiffened when the gun appeared. Cam pretended to admire the heavy weapon. “Bobby Lee said I had to hand over all of my Sheriff’s Office gear,” he said. “But then he made sure I owned some personal weapons. I took that as a hint. So this is what I carry these days. I can still group pretty good at fifty feet.” He turned the gun over, half-cocked it, and spun the cylinder. He was careful not to point it at Kenny, whose empty hand was no longer visible, he noticed. Cop instincts. He let down the hammer on the one empty cylinder and slid the gun back into his jacket pocket. By then, both of Kenny’s hands were back on the table, and they sipped some more whiskey.

“So what are you going to do?” Kenny asked.

Cam shrugged again. “Don’t know yet,” he said. “Part of me wants to go digging around in this bombing case, but I know that would just piss everybody off.”

“Feds would grab your ass up for interfering,” Kenny said. “Especially the ATF broomhilda they have on this case.”

“Yeah, I do know that. I may just take that trip everyone keeps talking about.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Kenny said. “Remove yourself from temptation.”

“It’s hard, though,” Cam said. “So much unfinished business.”

“That’s our problem now,” Kenny said, finishing his scotch. “I think all we have to do is find Marlor, and then this whole mess-that chair, the bombing-will unwind for us.”

Cam nodded. “About that other theory,” he began. Kenny didn’t shut him off this time.

“One guy couldn’t pull all this off,” Cam said. “So it would have to be a small cell, people who trusted one another implicitly. I’m talking experienced people. Veteran cops.”

“Someone like me?” Kenny asked.

Cam didn’t reply.

“Or someone like you?” Kenny said with a grin.

Cam stared at him, wondering if this was perhaps an oblique invitation.

“I mean, hell,” Kenny said, “don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”

“In the heat of the moment, maybe,” Cam said, remembering one street fight he’d been in as a young cop, where the situation would have justified his just blasting one meth-eyed suspect to hell and gone. Instead, he’d shouted the kid into submission. “But if someone had proposed organizing a squad, no. For one thing, it would be very hard to do.”

“Would it?” Kenny asked.

“Hell yes,” Cam said. “They’d have to have some kind of initiation process. A new recruit would have to do something way out there that would give the rest of the cell a lock on him.”

Kenny nodded thoughtfully.

“And they would need a secure comms system,” Cam continued, watching Kenny carefully, looking for some sign of acknowledgment. “A system within a system, maybe,” he said. “Some sort of code that could be overlaid on the existing secure comms. And a way to get around without calling attention to themselves.”

“I suppose it’s possible,” Kenny said, his face revealing nothing. “Although what we would see as simple justice, the law would call murder, straight up, every time.”

“Damned right, but being cops, they might think they were invulnerable, that being inside the system was such an advantage, they’d never be caught.”

“I don’t know, Cam,” Kenny said. “You know everybody in the Sheriff’s Office. We all talk trash about doing bad guys, but no one I know would jeopardize his job and his pension, not to mention his personal freedom, for a moment of satisfaction.”

“Business before pleasure, huh?” Cam said.

“Yeah, exactly. I mean, who wouldn’t like to pop some lowlife right in front of his mother? But, hell, Cam, get real. Ain’t a cop in the world who wants to go inside for that.”

“The only thing that could really threaten a cell like that would be another cop who got curious,” Cam said carefully. “He or she would have to be dealt with.”

“Yeah, and?” Kenny said, listening intently now.

“And maybe that’s the initiation fee,” Cam said. “A warning maybe, and then some direct action.”

“A warning like that would go a long way to proving that the cell exists,” Kenny said. “They wouldn’t be that dumb.”

“Unless they’d already made the decision to solve their problem.”

“But we haven’t lost any cops that way,” Kenny pointed out. “Every line-of-duty casualty we’ve ever had was thoroughly investigated. No mysteries. Not one.”

Cam nodded, no longer looking at Kenny. He was almost afraid to because of what he might read from Kenny’s eyes. They went way back. Plus, he’d been expecting Kenny to dismiss the whole notion, to call it all total bullshit. But that was not what was happening here. He decided to change tack.

“I can see one guy being able to take out the two minimart robbers,” he said. “But the incidents at Annie’s house-that would have to have been organized. Not one guy carrying a grudge, acting on sudden impulse.”

“Not one cop carrying a grudge,” Kenny said carefully. “She was universally despised in the Sheriff’s Office. You were probably the only cop in town who felt something besides contempt for her.”

Cam stared at his scotch. He knew that Kenny was a lot more complicated than his skirt-chasing, cop-as-cowboy public persona indicated. “It wasn’t love,” he said. “I think it was more like comfortable companionship.”

Kenny sniffed and made a face. “Well,” he said, “you know my history with her. She went after other cops, too. Don’t know who appointed her God, but that’s how she acted.”

Cam felt a surge of anger, but he hadn’t come here to fight, he reminded himself. He wanted to leave Kenny at least neutralized, so he didn’t point out that it was Kenny’s own actions that had brought the court’s sanctions. “Our relationship was a lot of things,” he continued. “Some old, some new, some just spur of the moment. You should also know that she wasn’t exactly happy the way the minimart case came out. But that was business, and, if you remember, more our fuckup than hers.”

Kenny grunted. “SWAT’s fuckup, you mean, and there was a lot more history between her and us than just that case. But either way, this has to be James Marlor. I’m sure of it. Occam’s razor: The simplest solution is usually the solution. Cop vigilantes don’t make sense, especially when there’s a perfectly good suspect right there. All we have to do is find his ass. Then it’s over.”

“I suppose,” Cam said. He wanted to leave it on an agreeable note. A disarming note, just in case. “I guess I do need to just get on with the rest of my life.”

“And your coming inheritance,” Kenny pointed out. “Assuming the feds let go of that.”

Cam wondered if that remark was a subtle threat, a little hint that the tables could still be turned. He smiled as he stood up. “Don’t have it yet,” he said.

“The taxman won’t take it all.”

“They’ll try,” Cam said. “Remember what you get when you put the words the and IRS together.”