P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Dogs will get me back,” Cam said. “Should I try to talk you out of what you’re going to do?”

Marlor shook his head. “I killed those two bastards,” he declared. “Not your precious judge. I lost my first wife to a drunk driver, who got off with two years of probation because, as the judge observed, it was his first offense. That made it okay, I guess. Justice for my second wife and only child was given away by the so-called justice system. Now that I’ve squared accounts, it’s time for me to wrap it up.”

“I guess I could try to stop you,” Cam said. “For your own protection.”

Marlor snorted. “You didn’t come here to arrest or protect me. And I am not going to any damn prison.”

Cam nodded. Actually, what Marlor intended to do seemed pretty reasonable to him. He’d probably do the same thing. “Anything I can do for you?” he asked. “Anybody to see later?”

“My sister will never understand it,” Marlor said. “Tell her something nice, if you want to.” He looked out across the slope, frowning. “Where is all your backup?” he asked, looking over at Cam. “You guys don’t work alone, but I don’t sense anyone else out there in the woods.” He eyed Cam. “You’re a lone ranger on this, aren’t you?”

“Meaning what, exactly?” Cam said, trying to deflect him.

“Meaning you’re here on your own. You’re not in uniform. Those are your dogs, not police dogs.”

Amazing, Cam thought. Maybe the approach of death was sharpening Marlor’s intuition. What the hell, he thought. Tell him. He explained his situation, and why he was on leave of absence. He also described what he suspected was going on in the Sheriff’s Office.

“You and that judge were in a relationship?” Marlor asked.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “It was complicated.”

Marlor didn’t say anything for a minute. “When is it not complicated,” he said finally.

“I actually thought you’d just gone away,” Cam said. “That maybe some vigilante cops had done the executions. Except for the fact that you absolutely disappeared. Nobody just does that.”

“That took some planning and doing,” Marlor admitted. “But, no, I did those two bastards. The judge, now, you may be right. About cops, I mean.”

“That’s why I need to know about that E-mail,” Cam said. “The one locating Flash and K-Dog for you.”

“Can’t help you there,” Marlor said. “First, I really don’t remember, and frankly, I don’t care. In my book, cops taking care of business aren’t necessarily bad cops.”

“Yeah, they are,” Cam said. “Because once that starts, it only gets worse. Especially once they get a taste for it. Then they become like any man-eater.”

“Still don’t care,” Marlor said, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Did you cash a five-hundred-dollar check recently?”

Marlor shook his head. Then he looked over at Cam. “You ever married?”

“Briefly,” Cam said. “Didn’t work out.” Until recently, he thought.

“Any particular reason why you didn’t try again?”

“The job seemed enough,” he replied, although even as he said it, it sounded lame.

“Then you have no idea of what I’ve just lost,” Marlor said.

“Tell me.”

Marlor blinked, poured himself some more of the whiskey, and then started talking. Starting slowly but building in passion, he described every one of the good and valuable things that had been ripped from his life by the holdup. Cam listened to a rushing litany of the individually mundane but collectively seamless and even glowing elements of a good marriage and a solid, loving family: dependent, striving, caring, forward-looking, optimistic about the future, fully participating in the stream of life-rocks, shoals, and all. Cam saw tears on Marlor’s face when he finally ran out of steam and words. Marlor was right: He had had no idea.

Marlor finished his whiskey. “Obliterating those two was the least I could do,” he concluded.

All Cam could do was nod. This man had abducted those two petty thugs and then broiled them alive in their own juices. And after what he’d just heard, it all seemed perfectly justifiable. He knew this was all wrong, legally, but he was damned if he could marshal any good arguments just now.

“You seem pretty reasonable, for a cop,” Marlor said. He paused, as if trying to make up his mind. “I spent a lot of time up in the western Carolina mountains,” he continued. “My company gets blamed for a lot of tree damage from its coal plants. My job was to prove that plants in Tennessee and Kentucky were doing the damage, not Duke. The evidence for that is in the Smokies.”

“I’ve been there,” Cam said.

“You ever hear of the cat dancers?”

“The what?” Cam asked.

“The cat dancers.”

“Nope.”

“You should probably check that out. Start up in Haywood County, around the Cherokee reservation.”

“What’s a cat dancer?”

Marlor ignored the question. “Ask around for a man called White Eye Mitchell. Haywood County. Swain County. Out there on the eastern edge of the park.”

“What’s a cat dancer?” Cam asked again.

“The answer to some of your questions, I think,” Marlor said.

“That’s not an answer,” Cam replied.

“That’s your problem, Lieutenant,” Marlor said, looking pointedly at his watch. “Right now, I’m all out of time.”

It was obvious Marlor wasn’t going to tell him any more, and it was equally obvious that Cam had no real leverage on this man. “We going to find you?” Cam asked.

The sky was starting to get seriously dark. Cam could barely see Marlor’s eyes in the shadows of the porch. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “But, hell, I’ve been wrong before.”

“Haven’t we all,” Cam replied, standing up and retrieving his pack. The dogs got up immediately and bounded off the porch. “I still feel like I should try to talk you out of this.”

Marlor shook his head. “I want to go find my wife and daughter,” he said. “Have to make the big crossing to do that. If it works, good. If it doesn’t, what’s it matter? Keep this wind to your left as you head back.”

“Any critters I should watch out for?” Cam asked.

Marlor shook his head. “Bears and snakes are all denned up by now. Around here, anything else will be more scared of you than you are of them.”

Cam smiled in the gloom. “Funny how they know, isn’t it,” he said. And then he summoned his dogs and headed for the woods behind the cabin. The first snowflakes began drifting down as he reached the tree line. He looked back, but the cabin was already disappearing in a white curtain, along with James Marlor.

Halfway down the mountain, he heard the boom of a. 45. He stopped for a moment. Nightfall had come early to the cabin.

It was 4:30 in the morning when Cam got back to his house. What had been snow in the foothills had been freezing rain down in Triboro, and he’d been lucky to get home, given the mess out on the highways. He turned the dogs loose to run around the backyard and then went into the house. The alarm system was still on, and there were no signs of intrusion that he could see. He checked the Mercedes in the garage, but the small markers he’d left to detect intrusion were all in place. They’d told him to get out of town, so he had. Now that he was back, he wondered how long it would take for someone to know that. He retrieved the dogs and put them in the mudroom to dry off. Then he went into the kitchen and checked the phone. The dial tone was stuttering.

Think, he told himself. If, as a cop, you wanted to know whether or not a subject was at home, you’d have three choices: to go there and see, to maintain constant surveillance, or to tap his home phone. An actual phone tap took a court order, but if all they wanted to know was whether or not the phone was being used, the phone company might be willing to tell them that without the paper work. So don’t use the phone. He used his personal cell phone to retrieve the message. It was from Jaspreet, asking him to call her. He deleted the message, and then he had an idea. He accessed the menu for the mailbox and changed his greeting to indicate that he’d be away for the next month. Callers were invited to leave a message, which he could retrieve from the road.