P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

Cam nodded. He wanted to go home, get a change of clothes, see what, if anything, had happened to his house, but the sheriff was right.

“When would you want me in tomorrow?” he asked.

“Go home in the morning, get cleaned up, and then come in. We’ll have us a crowd of helpers going by then.”

“I don’t look forward to this,” Cam said.

The sheriff stared of across the lobby for a moment. Cam thought he’d aged in the past week. “We’ll recover,” he said finally. “But probably not before we tar some good people.”

He arrived back at his house at five o’clock the next morning. The dogs had become restless in the hotel room around 4:00 A.M., and he’d decided that was a good time to get them and himself out of there and home before the morning rush hour started. It was still dark when he pulled into his driveway, and there was a thin mist hovering in the trees. He left the truck in the driveway and put the dogs into the backyard, where he watched to see what they’d do. If there was someone in the house, they’d react just as soon as they cut strange scent crossing the backyard. They didn’t do anything but their normal yard patrol, so he let himself in through the front door. The alarm system beeped at him when the door opened, but he hadn’t set the intrusion alarm before bailing out the night before last.

He went through to the kitchen and turned on some lights, threw his overnight pack into a chair, and cranked up the coffeemaker. He pulled one of his army mugs out of the cupboard and was just turning to take it to the table, when a voice in the doorway asked him to make it two.

It was Kenny Cox, standing in the entrance to the kitchen. He was dressed in civilian camo hunting clothes, but he had his police utility belt and sidearm. His face and clothes looked like he had spent the night asleep in one of Cam’s living room recliners. Cam straightened up and tried not to show his surprise.

“How long you been here?” he asked.

“Since about two-thirty,” Kenny replied.

“And the object of the social call is?” he asked.

“Talk. We need to talk to you.”

“We.’ So it’s true, then.”

Kenny came into the kitchen, pulled a chair away from the kitchen table with his foot, and sat down heavily. His. 45 thumped against the back of the chair. He was so big that the chair creaked audibly when he put his weight on it.

“Depends on what you mean,” Kenny said. “We didn’t do the bomb. I want to get that right out on the table. That wasn’t us.”

Cam just stared at him. He was still absorbing the fact that Kenny Cox really was one of them. That it was all true. Kenny saw the disappointment on Cam’s face, shrugged, and rubbed the back of his head with one massive hand. “I know,” he said.

“You know what, exactly?” Cam asked, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. He wondered if Kenny was alone in the house. The damned shotgun was still in the truck, the shepherds were outside, and his gun belt was upstairs.

“I know what you’re thinking. Relax. There’s no one else here, and I’m just here to talk.”

Cam crossed his arms over his chest. “So talk.”

“We knew it was only a matter of time, once that bomb went off,” Kenny said. “We were comfortable that you’d finger Marlor for the minimart creeps, but once the attacks on Bellamy started, we couldn’t be sure.”

The coffeepot maker quit making its noises and Cam got another mug out of the cupboard. “You helped Marlor find them?”

“Hell yes. Got him the blanks, even ran covert backup for him when he snatched up Flash. Talk about funny.”

“Not for Flash,” Cam said.

“And not for Marlor’s wife and kid,” Kenny shot back, showing some teeth. “Those pricks got precisely what they deserved.”

Cam poured out coffee for both of them. “We’re meeting this morning. This thing is coming together. We’ve identified fifteen possible victims since you guys got going.”

“Victims’?” Kenny said in a nasty voice. “The real victims came first. Korean shopkeepers murdered for fifteen dollars. The young mother raped in the mall parking lot during a carjacking. The baby thrown out of the car on the interstate during another carjacking. The pizza delivery boy who gets his throat cut-not for the money, but for the fucking pizza. The all-star high school basketball athlete who takes a round in the throat from some asshole doing a drive-by, just because he was standing at the wrong bus stop at the wrong time, or because some young dick needed to make his bones to join the Crips. The foreign tourists who get the shit beat out of them and their rent-a-car stolen just because they turned down the wrong street. Those are your victims.”

“And how are you guys any different?”

“We’re the guys who square the accounts, Cam. The old gods who used to handle retribution are in a nursing home in Florida. Don’t you dare call these assholes victims. They were professional slimeballs. All we did was help them run smack into that big sword Madam Justice carries, because the scales don’t work so good anymore. And there’ve been eighteen, not fifteen.”

“Kenny,” Cam began, but Kenny wasn’t done.

“Don’t lecture me, man,” he said. “You’re still part of the problem. I worked out the right and wrong of it a long time ago. We have, and we’re comfortable with the equation, okay? Every one of those assholes was a stone-cold doer, and every one of them had been let off by some prissy police work or some weak-assed judge, and they’d bragged about it. It’s the brag that brings the dancers, Cam.”

Cam sat down at the table. “Well, it’s over now.”

“What, you’re gonna tell me you got a list of names?”

“You guys used phone booths to communicate, right? Remember Ms. Jaspreet Kaur Bawa?”

“The princess?” Kenny said. “Absolutely.”

“Well, the princess sicced those two mainframes of hers on you personally, Kenny. Bobby Lee’s talking to his counterparts in every county in the state, asking for a list of cowboys. He’s gonna get a statewide list of candidates, and she’s correlating phone booth locations with the call history of your other cell phone. The one in your former name?”

Kenny blinked. He sipped some coffee, eyeing Cam over the rim of the mug.

“They’re all cops, right?” Cam said. “Either active or former cops?”

Kenny nodded.

“And James Marlor? Brother? Cousin? What?”

Kenny smiled. “You’re doing pretty good so far; you tell me,” he said.

“Don’t know. But we will.”

“Okay,” Kenny said. “But you’ll never understand it. Not you. Not Mr. Straight Arrow.”

“You’re right about that, Kenny.” Cam heard the shepherds moving around out on the back deck. But of course Kenny’s scent wouldn’t have put them on the alert. Kenny was a buddy. “And this cat-dancing shit-going face-to-face with a mountain lion? What the fuck’s with that?”

“You wouldn’t understand that, either,” Kenny said.

“Try me.”

Kenny looked away for a moment. “We needed a certain kind of guy, someone who was emotionally worn-out from playing by the rules. You said you’re looking for cowboys, but we’re not cowboys. We’ve been through our cowboy phase. This is another level all together.”

“Judges, juries, and executioners?”

“Something like that. We needed serious anger at the system and the capacity to face certain death and laugh at it. To fully and truly not give a shit. And when you face one of the wild ones? That is an acid test, by God. And the biggest rush I’ve ever experienced.”

Cam shook his head in wonderment. “I guess it’s a good thing you don’t give a shit, because the system is going to grind you up.”