P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

What else might they check? The mail. He went back out front, holding a newspaper over his head, as the sleet had started up again. The mailbox was fairly full, although in the usual American proportions of one-quarter real mail to threequarters advertising. He sorted through it, returned most of the junk mail to the box, and hurried back into the house. His brain was getting fuzzy with fatigue and he decided to quit for the night. The dogs would tell him if anyone came around the house, and maybe daylight would suggest his next moves. At the very least, he had to tell the sheriff about Marlor. Then he realized he probably shouldn’t do that. Cam didn’t think the sheriff would understand his quasi-complicity in Marlor’s suicide.

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Cam pulled his new truck into the underground parking entrance of Jaspreet Kaur Bawa’s ten-story condominium building near downtown Charlotte. He entered the code she’d given him onto the keypad and the device buzzed, spat out a ticket, and raised the gates. The ticket told him he could park in any space that didn’t have a name and number. He parked, went into the building, found the elevators, and pressed the button for the ninth floor.

The fast elevator popped his ears. When the door opened, he found himself in an ultramodern glass and stainless-steel lobby. The gold lettering on a pair of double glass doors directly in front of him read TIGEREYE ANALYTICS, and a receptionist buzzed him through the glass doors. The doors to the office suites behind her were not glass, and each of them had large keypads in place of door handles, and a glowing redlighted box at eye level on the doorjamb. The receptionist confirmed his identification and then asked him to take a seat next to her desk. She then asked him to put the five fingers of his right hand into a small glove-shaped plastic box. The box beeped and she told him to remove his hand. Then she gave him what looked like a pair of opera glasses that had a wire attached. She asked him to look into them and open his eyes wide. He saw a green pattern materializing in front of his vision, which turned to bright red and then to a comforting golden color. He heard another beep as the retinal scan was recorded. Then she made some entries on her keyboard.

“You going to want some DNA, too?” he asked.

She smiled. “Not today, Lieutenant. Jay-Kay is expecting you upstairs in her living quarters. The stairs are right over there.”

Cam thanked her and headed for the stairs, which were wide and beautifully carpeted. He’d been joking about the DNA. The receptionist had not. At the landing halfway up the stairs, instruments were waiting to sample his fingerprints and retina, and then more doors clicked open. He turned and went up the rest of the way. Jaspreet was waiting for him at the top of the stairs. He was conscious of tiny video cameras tracking his every move as he approached.

Jay-Kay, in a silvery two-piece silk suit whose style was something between Indian and Italian, looked as dazzling as her surroundings. “Good morning, Just Cam,” she said in her delightful singsong voice. “You found it okay?”

“Piece of cake,” he said. He whistled when he took in the view of the city from her living room. It looked like her apartment covered the entire floor. “You own the building?”

“A consortium owns it,” she said. “I lease it. I never own the place where I live. That way, I can walk away at a moment’s notice if it suits me. But I am the only one who works and lives here.”

She took him into the expansive living room and offered coffee. He found the light a bit strong and was thinking about putting his sunglasses back on, when she picked up a remote and changed the tint of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“How many folks work for you?” he asked, savoring the strong coffee.

“The number varies. I don’t have regular employees except for Sharon, the woman downstairs. I form teams when I need to, because each job requires specific expertise. Most of my employees are computers.”

“And where are the tigers?” he asked.

“Downstairs in the lab. I have a terminal up here, of course. The sheriff was a bit vague as to what he wanted me to do.”

“Are you still working with the Bureau?” he asked.

“I have no active contracts going right now,” she said. “If they call, of course I go.”

“And did the ATF take over the bombing investigation?”

“All these questions, Just Cam. What is it we’re doing here, please?”

He got up from the low leather couch, which had begun to make his back ache. “I’m not entirely sure, Jay-Kay,” he said, going over to one of the windows. The traffic down in the city streets was not audible. “I’m officially on a leave of absence, which means no badge, no police powers whatsoever. The sheriff wants me to find out if there’s a vigilante squad in the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office.” He turned to face her. “I told him I’d need computer support of the covert variety-a way into old case files and the county law enforcement’s E-mail system.”

“Looking for?”

“Again not sure,” he admitted. “Evidence, preferably. Indications of past cases that might resemble what happened to the two minimart robbers. E-mail chatter about the bombing. What the cops are saying about the ATF’s investigation. The sheriff has come around to the notion that he might have a problem. He wants to look into it before anyone else does.”

“What will he do if we uncover evidence of such a thing?”

“Bobby Lee? He’ll pull the State Bureau of Investigation in and then hold a press conference.”

“He wouldn’t cover it up?”

Cam didn’t even have to think about his answer. “Negative. Bobby Lee Baggett’s so straight that he can’t cross his eyes.”

She put down her coffee cup and joined him at the window. “It just seems a bit strange to me, having observed the federal agencies, that he would employ a single undercover agent to suss all this out, and not, say, his Internal Affairs, or even the feds themselves.”

He was conscious that they were just about the same height. He thought he could detect a hint of perfume in her jet black hair. “I think it’s more a case of his wanting to know stuff before anyone else does. He has a way of doing that in his outfit. When he asks an embarrassing question, he usually already knows the answer. Plus, cops investigating cops is a delicate business.”

“How so?”

“Well, in a Sheriff’s Office, all the veterans came up together. We’ve protected one another’s backs on many an occasion. Sometimes we owe our lives to another cop, and we all have to act that way when we hit a tactical situation. There’s an assumption of perfect trust. Hard to investigate someone whom you trust absolutely. And afterward, that trust is forever impaired.”

“And why will you be able to do any better job of that?”

He smiled. “Because I have an overriding personal interest in finding out who killed Annie Bellamy.”

“But not who killed the two robbers in that horrible chair?”

He turned to face her. “Actually, I know who did that. Ready to keep some secrets?”

When she said yes, he told her she’d been right about Marlor’s cell phone. He described the discussion in the mountain cabin and what had happened afterward. He also told her about the warning from the mysterious deputy who had paid him a visit. She went back to the couch and sat down when he was finished. “Does anyone else know this? That James Marlor is dead?”

“I don’t think so, unless I was being followed. And I have to admit to making an assumption that he killed himself and didn’t, say, fire a shot into the woods to make me think he had. He could still be alive.”