P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Maybe,” Kenny said. “But you’re going to need evidence, and evidence is going to be hard to come by. That system you’re so hot to defend is going to make it really hard to take us down.”

“And that’s what your life’s all about these days? A bigger rush? Hunting down dumb-ass criminals and executing them? And how many cops have you taken out, Kenny? Guys who got a sniff of what you were doing and maybe asked questions?”

“None,” Kenny said. “Never.”

“Really? Your bunch tried for me twice. What’d they have in mind, tea and crumpets?”

Kenny frowned. “You were warned. What White Eye was supposed to do was scare you, and I admit that went off the tracks. But that was it. You say twice?”

Cam enumerated the warehouse attack and the roadside stop. Kenny shook his head. “White Eye was acting for us. That other shit? Not us.”

“Or your group is coming apart,” Cam said. “Someone’s scared and acting on his own.”

Kenny shook his head again. “Negative,” he muttered. “Negative.”

It was Cam’s turn to look away. Either Kenny was lying or he really didn’t know what was going on within his little group of assassins. Cam knew he hadn’t imagined these incidents. “And you didn’t put the elephant-gun round through Annie’s house?” he asked.

“Negative. We didn’t plant that bomb, either. In fact-”

“In fact what?”

“Like I said, that’s when we knew. I got that same feeling when Jimmie killed himself. We always knew that it couldn’t go on forever. And after what happened on Catlett Bald, we agreed to go deep. Everyone agreed.”

“All seven of you?”

“Six, after Jimmie. I-we-really didn’t expect that. I could understand it, sort of, after the fact. But it still came as a shock.”

“Jimmie-He was your brother, then?”

“Yeah. Shit. Jimmie was my older brother. He was the one who started the thing with the big cats. He was up there in the western mountains all the time, working for Duke. You have to understand, now-Jimmie was always a little far-out. That’s why I had to leave the army. He and I did some crazy shit and they found out about it.”

“But the vigilante bit-that was your idea, wasn’t it?” Cam said. “Especially once you realized you had a pretty much foolproof way to prove candidates for your hit squad. If they could face the cat, then they were men enough to whack bad guys and never reveal it.”

Kenny nodded. “You called us cowboys. We’re not.”

“You know what I mean. Guys in law enforcement who ride the edge all the time. The cops who want to draw their weapons. Who live to draw their weapons. The cops who hate the bad guys. Who substitute passion for professionalism.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Kenny said.

“Got that right. Like I told you, we’re meeting this morning. You coming in?”

“I will if there’s a warrant, although I don’t think you’ll get one. You have no evidence.”

“I have what we’ve just been talking about.”

“You’re tainted. You’re the guy who became a millionaire when Bellamy went up. The only thing keeping you from suspension is that the Bureau doesn’t believe it.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Cam said. “I know I didn’t do the bombing or anything else like that. You, on the other hand, know what you’ve been doing.”

“We didn’t do that bombing or the shooting into her house, partner. So who did that? Got any clues for that?”

“My guess is it was your cell, if not you personally. We can probably make that stick, too, once we tie you people to the killings.”

“Never happen, Cam, because we didn’t do that. Just like you didn’t do it. So there’s a mystery for you: Who did?”

“I give up. Who?”

Kenny stood and zipped up his jacket. “I have a theory, but no incentive to share it with you.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking some impromptu leave,” Kenny said. “I feel the need to do some dancing. Maybe one last time, especially if you guys do get lucky. You want me in the next two weeks, come on out to the Chop.”

“What the hell is the Chop?”

“The park rangers know where it is. Ask that pretty one, Mary something.”

“Was her boyfriend one of the club? Joel Hatch?”

“Who told you that?”

“Mary Ellen. She admitted to knowing what cat dancing was.”

Kenny scoffed. “Hatch was a fucking jock-sniffer. White Eye blew him off. Bangs on the door of a boiler room at midnight and says, ‘Open up in the name of the law!’ Shit. No wonder they offed him. Adios, partner.”

Cam thought about trying to stop him, but he realized that was pointless and probably not even possible. Even if he pointed a gun at Kenny and told him he was under arrest, Kenny would laugh at him. They both knew neither one of them could ever pull that trigger.

Dawn was beginning to break outside. Cam finished his coffee and went upstairs to get ready for the day’s coming festivities. He thought about what Kenny had said. What if the vigilante cell had not done the bombing? If not them, then who the hell had done that? And why?

Three days later, Cam was back in Carrigan County, headed for a 5:00 P.M. meeting with the park rangers. His letters had formally initiated the opening of a case-action file by the SBI, which had set up shop in Manceford County to lead the investigation with the full cooperation of the Sheriff’s Office and the concurrence of the FBI. Bobby Lee had made his calls to the sheriffs of all the counties in North Carolina, achieving mixed results, as he had expected. Some of the sheriffs had said go away, others had said they didn’t have any cowboys, and still others had surfaced a total of nine names. These had been turned over to Jaspreet for her pattern analysis of phone records, phone booths, dead criminals, and the locations and service histories of the nine named officers.

Cam had briefed the sheriff privately on his discussion with Kenny Cox, which, as far as he was concerned, confirmed the existence of the cell, even though they had no substantive evidence yet. Kenny had dropped leave papers down in the personnel office the night before he’d come to see Cam, with the leave address blank. Neither Cam nor the sheriff informed the SBI that Kenny had as much as confessed, deciding instead to wait and see if Jay-Kay’s pattern analysis would fold Kenny into the mix. They did make sure that his name was on the analysis target list.

By the end of the second day, Jaspreet was ready to report. She had identified a statistically significant pattern of phone calls that tied two of the target names, as well as that of Sergeant Cox, to the phone booths in the locations where some of the criminals had been killed. She had then gone back and sifted through James Marlor’s phone records and found more ties to the same general network of phone booths. One of the two names was that of an active-duty officer, and a search of the relevant Sheriff’s Office records found congruent absences over the past five years. The second name was that of senior sergeant who’d been forced into retirement after a suspicious shooting incident. It would have been interesting to be able to tie in White Eye Mitchell’s records to the pattern analysis, but, as the sheriff in Carrigan County reported, they’d found no records or even bank accounts. Apparently, White Eye had not believed in paperwork, and his mattress had been his bank. Interestingly, Indian guide White Eye Mitchell had been a police officer in Detroit-his real name was Junious Mitchell Smith-before becoming an “Indian” guide in the Great Smokies. Smith’s contract had not been renewed, due to what was termed “temperamental unsuitability.” They’d searched his property but had found no evidence of big cats.