P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Who you gonna call, Sheriff?” Cam asked. “Hate to have the wrong guy show up as part of my protective detail.”

“You think Sergeant Cox is one of them, don’t you?” Bobby Lee said.

Cam had to think for a moment before replying. “Who would you offer up,” he said finally, “if that question came around about cops who operate on the edge?”

The sheriff nodded slowly. “He’s gone over the line more than once. That’s why Bellamy hammered him in the first place. Except…”

“Except the MCAT was the perfect place for him,” said Cam, finishing the sentence for him. “Nobody ran ’em down like Kenny Cox.”

“Should I move him out?”

“How?”

“A temporary assignment? A special project, say, with the Bureau down in Charlotte?”

“Wouldn’t that be interesting,” Cam said. He heard his phone ringing inside but ignored it. “If my theory is correct, they don’t let any of the cell members do anything on their own home ground. The out-of-towners come, like that guy who showed up to calibrate me. No, I’d say we find a way to know where he is at all times and then see what happens.”

“Hmmh,” the sheriff said. “Come in early tomorrow morning. You’re awfully isolated out here.”

Cam snapped his fingers and both shepherds were at the door in a heartbeat, ears up and looking for a job. “Not entirely,” Cam said.

After the sheriff left, he retrieved the phone message. It was from Jay-Kay. “Can you come down here to Charlotte? No phone calls. Just come as soon as possible.” Reluctantly he went to make some coffee.

If Jay-Kay was surprised to see him at 3:30 in the morning, she gave no sign of it. From her appearance, Cam guessed that she had already been up. He’d known many computer types who worked at night as much as they did by day. He sat in her ultramodern kitchen and filled her in on his trip west. She was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and her hair was wrapped in a tight bun. She took a look at his weary face and made coffee, which she did with the same clean, quick efficiency she exhibited in her professional work. The kitchen didn’t really look lived in. She winced when he described what had happened to White Eye Mitchell. She wrote down Mary Ellen’s name and office number.

“My parents used to tell stories of man-eating tigers taking villagers from their beds at night,” she said. “Gave me bad dreams for years.”

“I don’t think that cat knew what it was doing-or to whom,” Cam said. “It was reflexive, and amazingly quick.”

She set down a cup of coffee for him and a mug of tea for herself. “You, sir, have a problem,” she announced.

“Just one?”

“One is enough,” she replied. “I was in the FBI building today, on a nonrelated issue. Two of the agents with whom I worked previously were chatting me up about cars. Naturally, western Carolina came up, and I mentioned that you were out there working on something to do with the Bellamy bombing. One of them revealed that the ATF and the Bureau are split on which way to go with that case.”

“Split how?”

“The Bureau has a ‘distinctive theory of the case,’ as this young man put it. He would not elaborate, but he did say that the ATF thinks you may have had a hand in the bombing because you knew about the great wealth that would come your way if she died.”

Cam shook his head. “I’m a cop,” he said. “I’d have to have known that I’d be the first guy everyone looked at. And I would also have known that if I were implicated in her death, I’d never see a dime. What’s the Bureau’s read?”

“Only that they do not agree and are waiting for a line of inquiry to produce some results before they’ll go forward.”

“I’d forgotten they talk like that. And that’s the extent of ATF’s theory? I’m the heir and thus guilty of murder?”

“They have ruled out terrorism on the basis of the bomb’s physical characteristics, which apparently was extremely crude and entirely too big for the job at hand. Plus the fact that you would have been in perfect position to feed James Marlor locating data on the two chair victims, and that you were the only one who witnessed, as it were, Marlor’s demise.

“And now this business in Carrigan County,” Cam said. “Marlor points me at this cat dancer club; I come up with the man who trained them to hunt the mountain lions, and he dies in my presence.”

She nodded. “The prime suspect in the execution videos was Marlor,” she said. “And he died right after you interviewed him to find out how much he knew. Then, as you just said the central player in this cat-dancing scheme dies, in your presence. And there’s only your word as to what happened in both instances. And you requested the leave of absence after the Bellamy bombing.”

“The sheriff suggested that, for Chrissakes!”

“Did he?” she asked. “I thought you requested it.”

So I did, Cam thought. Shit.

“The agents focus on paper trails. You applied for it in writing. Why? To take care of loose ends. Which are duly taken care of.”

He stared at her and she gave him an impassive look. “You believe all this?” he asked finally.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “But as they said, it hangs together.”

Cam got up to stretch his legs. “You said earlier you’d found out something about Kenny Cox,” he said. “That we’d talk later?”

She stirred her tea for a moment. “Yes, I did. You asked me to run his cell phone calls. I did, both his personal cell as well as his operational phone.”

“And?”

“The official cell phone was used only for official calls. There were almost no calls made on his personal phone. Admittedly, he’s got a minimal calling plan, the payments autodeducted from his checking account.”

“Sounds like mine.”

“But you use yours, Just Cam. This one mostly just sits there, and that made me curious. I mean, if all he wanted was a nine-one-one phone, those are dirt cheap. So I went at it in reverse.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I then did a scan to see what other bills are being autodeducted from that checking account.”

“How in the world could you do that?” he asked. “Banks don’t hand that information out to just anybody.”

She smiled. “I emulate. Or rather, the tigers do. In this case, we emulated an IRS audit contractor’s query. It’s a routine question during one of their so-called reality audits. Because of budget cuts, the IRS uses contractors to do scut work like account scans. I can’t emulate the IRS, but I can emulate some of their contractors. I do it for the Bureau all the time when they don’t want to tip their hand in an investigation.”

“And a bank just lets you in? Without a warrant?”

“Who tells the IRS to go away? Besides, big banks get dozens of queries every day from credit bureaus, mortgage companies, debt collection agencies, other banks. It’s not like they want money, and any IRS query is answered immediately.”

“Damn. And what did the IRS find out?”

“That he has another phone account-in a different name. And this is going to interest you a lot, I think. The name is Carl Marlor. Ring any bells?”

“Marlor!” Cam said softly. He sat down again. “Holy shit.” Then the first name hit him, too. Carl.

The original cat dancer? He thought for a moment, trying to recall White Eye’s description of the man who called himself Carl. Big guy. Had a look about him that would keep other men from getting mouthy in a bar. Had he described him? Fair-haired or dark? He couldn’t remember.

“And the cell company doesn’t check people out to see if they’re using a bogus name?”

“Only if the customer wants credit of some kind. The competition in that business is so cutthroat these days, they’d sign up Mickey Mouse. Think of all those eager young men waving cell phones at you in the mall.”