P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“You’re saying Kenny has established an identity for this Carl Marlor? He’s committing identity fraud?”

“The reverse. He’s not stealing someone else’s identity for money. He’s done precisely what you need to do to have an identity-opened some consumer accounts, paid them through autodeductions so they’re always up-to-date. He has an address, which is real. He has no landline phone, only a cell phone-but that’s all the rage these days. Plus, the number is real.”

“What about a Social Security number?”

“He’s using his own. His real one.”

“And that doesn’t trip up some computer-check program?”

She nodded. “The credit bureaus have Carl Marlor listed, with an interesting notation in the comments section-two names coming up with the same Social Security number. But the explanation appears to be real. He changed his name almost fifteen years ago.”

“Legally changed his name?”

“Apparently. There’s even a court order on file.”

“And that just solves it?”

“There are no fraud implications to paying a consumer bill,” she said. “Applying for a loan or credit? That’s different, and he’d have to explain it, although a credit check reveals the answer. An IRS audit would catch it immediately, of course, which is exactly what happened when I queried.”

“Except he’s not stealing or defrauding anyone. It is legal to change your name.”

“Yes. And it allows him to create phone records in another name, and thereby make calls with impunity if he is doing something illegal. As in many, many calls around the state to numbers that all turned out to be for telephone booths. Especially one in the town of Pineville.”

“Recently?”

“Very.”

He rubbed his face with both hands. The image of a cop car parked next to a phone booth rose in his mind. He’d seen it all the time. “Tell me,” he said. “You said your computers are expert at doing pattern analysis. Could they search the phone records of the phone booths he called and then determine if calls were made from those phone booths to any others on a regular basis?”

“Of course.”

He eyed her. “Just like that?”

She smiled. “No, not just like that. But what you’re looking for is a geographical area of probability, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “My theory is that these seven guys are cops. Either active duty, retired, or even fired cops. I think they’re all over the state, and get together to do vigilante business once in awhile. A very secret society, with the price of admission being a picture of a mountain lion taken at eight paces.”

“Your cat dancers.”

“Not mine, but yes. And I’ve asked the sheriff to make some inquiries, this time for what we call ‘cowboys’ in the sheriff’s offices throughout the state. If we can get the locale of the phone booths and some names to coincide, we have a shot.”

“Is your sheriff on your side in this?” she asked.

“I think so, yes. I’ve kept him in the loop, and he’s a straight arrow. If there’s a bad apple in his office, he’ll crush it.”

“Can you get him to task me for those two pattern analyses? I want some top cover.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “You think these guys will get onto you when you go poking around?”

She shrugged. “It would depend on where the data is stored and how much attention they’re paying to their on-line accounts. I’ve got the tigers watching for James Marlor’s computer, in case Sergeant Cox has it.”

Cam stifled a yawn. “I know there’s something else I need to do, but damned if I can surface it right now.”

“Look,” she said. “You’re exhausted. There’s a guest suite down that hall. Go get a hot shower and some sleep. Clear your brain. I have work to do in the lab. Go sleep for a few hours.”

Cam found himself nodding. She was making perfect sense. Then he remembered the dogs were down in the truck. He explained the problem.

“Take them across the street. There is a ten-acre building site there. Then you can bring them up here.”

“They shed,” he warned her.

“Don’t we all, Just Cam,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “Go.”

He awoke to the sound of scratching at his door and looked at his watch. It was 2:30. He blinked. Two-thirty in the afternoon? He got up, found a robe in the bathroom, and opened the door. Both dogs were sitting outside his door, ready to go outside, and their look said, Now would be nice. He groaned and went to find his clothes.

When he got back, he found that Jay-Kay had left him a note in the kitchen. She had fed the dogs. She’d be gone all day, and he was to help himself to whatever he needed. He walked through the living quarters and was struck again by the feeling that no one really lived here. But she had actually gone out and bought a can of dog food, and there was even a water bowl put down. He wondered when she slept, but he felt 100 percent better. He made himself some toast and coffee and then called Bobby Lee.

“You’re in Charlotte?” the sheriff asked. Cam thought he heard voices in the background.

“Consulting with our consultant,” Cam said, wondering who else might be in the room with the sheriff. “We need to meet. Privately.”

The sheriff started to say something, but Cam cut him off, suggesting the bar at the Marriott at 7:30.

He then sat down at the kitchen table with a pad of legal paper and began writing a report, starting with the execution videos. He made it as factual as he could, offering no theories or suppositions. It came to some twenty pages when he was all finished.

Then he wrote another one, this time outlining his theories about what was going on with respect to a vigilante cell in North Carolina. He asserted, in writing this time, that he’d known nothing about Annie’s bequest, pointing out that the will had been written back when they were already divorced and no longer living together. He stated that Oliver Strong had been her personal lawyer for many years and that Strong could testify that he had never met Cam before summoning him after she had been killed. He denied as forcefully as he could do in a letter that he had had anything to do with her death.

Then he wrote up a third paper, this one laying out what he would like the sheriff, or, for that matter, the federal authorities, to authorize Jay-Kay to do-pursuant to formal warrants this time-to investigate the personal background of Sgt. Kenny Cox of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office. He suggested that military authorities be contacted to get some sense of Cox’s military service and how that had ended. He pointed out that if Kenny and James Marlor were related, then the execution videos probably indicated police collusion in the murder of the two robbers, and that since Marlor had told “them” where the chair was-probably right there in Triboro-there might be further executions. He then wrote out the pattern analysis he and Jay-Kay had discussed during the night, and he recommended that this be pursued as a matter of urgency.

When he was finished, it was almost dark. He went downstairs to the receptionist’s area. She was still there, and she helped him to make three copies of what he had written. He addressed one copy to Thomas McLain at the FBI’s Charlotte field office. He sent a second copy to Mike Pierce at the SBI. The third one, he packaged up to take to Bobby Lee.

When he finally got near Triboro, he took a shortcut off the interstate, a route leading to the downtown area. Being back in Manceford County, he gunned it, forgetting that he was no longer in a vehicle that would be recognized by local law as being driven by a fellow cop. Five minutes down the road, he saw blue strobes in his mirror. He swore and began braking. The cruiser came right up behind him and the strobes dimmed, which meant that they were grille lights. He looked again in the mirror as he started to pull over, confirming there was no light rack on the vehicle behind him. That made him wonder. The state cops used slickbacks on interstates, but the Sheriff’s Office traffic detail did not. And this was not a road the state troopers would be working at rush hour.