P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

Cam shook his head. “Not mine, directly, but our Sheriff’s Office. I remain very sorry for that.”

“You come alone?”

Cam smiled. “Here’s where I’m supposed to say I have lots of backup out there in the woods. Snipers in the trees. Helicopters on call. SWAT guys suiting up.”

Marlor grunted. “I’d have heard all that, I think,” he said.

“You never heard me,” Cam said.

“True,” Marlor admitted. “You’re comfortable in the woods, then.”

“Very,” Cam said. “Look, I’m not here to arrest you.”

“Got that right,” Marlor said, patting the gun in his lap.

“I really just want to talk.”

“Okay,” Marlor said, reaching for the bottle again. “So talk.” He poured and drank with his left hand; his right hand stayed casually in his lap.

“We found Simmonds,” Cam said.

Marlor nodded. “Okay.”

“We haven’t found Butts, though.”

“Probably won’t,” Marlor said. “Unless you do have a cast of thousands out there. Then you might.”

“I’m curious. What kind of gun did you use when you grabbed up Butts?”

“M-sixteen-A-three, with a plugged barrel.”

“Plugged?”

“Not enough recoil from blank rounds to cycle the action on an M-sixteen unless you plug the barrel.”

“That’s a pretty tough neighborhood for a white guy to go into with a load of blanks.”

“They didn’t look very tough to me,” Marlor said. “Of course, all I saw were assholes and elbows.”

Cam grinned. “Yeah, we heard.”

“I believe some of those tough guys leak a bit when they get motivated,” Marlor said. The sunlight was almost gone, the remaining light more a metallic glare than real sunlight. What could be seen of the sun had a ring around it in honor of the approaching front.

“You were a Ranger?” Cam asked.

Marlor eyed him over the tin cup. “Still am.”

Cam believed it. “I was army, too, way back when. Worked for an engineer battalion.”

“What was your MOS?”

Cam gave him the military occupational specialty code for sniper scout. Marlor, apparently recognizing it, grunted. “What’d you shoot?” he asked.

“Barrett fifty.”

“Fine weapon. Army school or marines?”

“The Corps.”

The wind picked up enough steam to start the pines moaning. “What was it you wanted to know?” Marlor asked.

Cam decided to go right to it. “We’re all curious-how’d you put those executions up on the Internet without being traceable?”

“Went down to an Internet cafe in Charlotte. Signed on to AOL, took out a free trial membership. Used a fake name, fake everything-they don’t care until it’s billing time, and you get a couple hundred free hours to start with. Then I created a second screen name, sent the video clip out to a blogger as an e-mail attachment. I just assumed he would put it out there for general entertainment. Then I walked away from the AOL account.”

Cam remembered seeing the ubiquitous AOL discs. “We never found any blogger.”

“You wouldn’t. He could clip the video attachment, post it out there anonymously on the hot-chat site du jour. First guy who saw it would forward it. Something really interesting gets out on the Web, it can spread like wildfire. Think geometric progression. Did the same thing with the second one. You can be anybody with one of those free discs, for a little while anyway.”

“Still, I’d think the feds could have traced it back.”

“I’ve heard they’re pretty good at that,” Marlor said. “Maybe they did but just didn’t share. Either way, the best they could do was Charlotte. All I know is that it was out and running in about two hours.”

“To mixed reviews, of course.”

“Not from anyone who knew what those bastards did,” Marlor said. He eyed Cam curiously. “What’d you cops think of it?”

“I’m in law enforcement, Mr. Marlor. We frown on citizens taking matters into their own hands.”

“I asked what you thought of it. Say, in terms of justice.”

“That’s a separate question,” Cam said.

Marlor grunted again, but he didn’t say anything.

“What did you do with Flash?” Cam asked.

“Fed him to the turbines at a hydro plant,” Marlor said.

Cam was silent for a minute. Then he had another question. “You said, ‘That’s two’ at the end of the second execution. Like there was going to be a third.”

Marlor sniffed and shook his head. “Thought about the judge,” he said. “It’s one thing to snatch up street trash. But a judge? With police protection?”

“How’d you know she had protection?”

Marlor smiled but didn’t answer. Cam considered pursuing that question. Either Marlor had done a drive-by or someone had told him that there were cops on Annie’s door. Someone inside the Sheriff’s Office?

“Besides,” Marlor continued, “I concluded she was just doing what she thought was her job. Unlike the two shooters, who didn’t think twice about slaughtering my family.”

“She did have other options,” Cam said.

“So you said at that meeting,” Marlor replied. “So what the hell was she doing?”

Cam hesitated. “We think her decision was aimed at us. She didn’t exactly hold most cops in high esteem.”

Marlor raised his eyebrows. “‘Didn’t hold’? Past tense?”

“Somebody put a bomb in her car the other night,” Cam said. “She’s dead.”

Marlor frowned and pursed his lips for a moment. “I didn’t do that,” he said finally.

Something in Marlor’s overall demeanor made Cam believe him. Here was a man who’d as much as said he was going to commit suicide tonight. He was calm, relaxed, even peaceful about it. Cam believed that if Marlor had planted that bomb, he’d admit it. “How’d you find Simmonds and Butts in the first place?” he asked.

“Got an E-mail,” Marlor said. “I assumed it was from somebody inside law enforcement. Didn’t much care as long as the information was reliable. It was.”

“And that M-sixteen?”

“Mine from a prior life.”

“And the blanks?”

“In the mail.”

“You mail-ordered blank ammo for an M-sixteen?” Cam asked incredulously.

“No.” Marlor said, giving him a look that said he wasn’t going to elaborate. Cam waited. “I guess you could call it a gift,” Marlor said finally.

“From the same people who sent you the E-mail?

“Maybe. Don’t remember.”

Cam nodded. Didn’t remember, or wouldn’t. He wondered if they could find Marlor’s computer. “That electric chair still out there somewhere?”

Marlor nodded. “I left the welding machine there, too,” he said. “Should anybody want to use it again.”

“Welding machine,” Cam said. “We didn’t think of that. We kept looking for power transformers. Or a generator.”

“You were assuming two-forty AC. I used direct current. Much simpler. Takes a little longer, though.” He made a sarcastic clucking sound of faux regret.

And longer was what you were after, wasn’t it? Cam thought. The wind puffed up again and he wondered if he’d brought a heavy-enough coat. The dogs noticed it, too, and were sniffing the air. Marlor finished his whiskey and put the tin cup down on the floor. He leaned back in the chair and grimaced, as if an old injury was bothering him. “Are we finished here?” he asked. “I’ve got places to go, things to do.”

“How about the location of that electric chair?” Cam asked.

“I sent a reply to that anonymous E-mail-the one that told me where I could find those two killers? Whoever that is, he knows where the chair is.” He gestured at the sky with his chin. “You’d best be getting back. That trail won’t be visible if this gets thick.”