P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

Ten minutes later, they walked silently into the woods, heading toward the river. Once they were down by the rushing water, they could talk without disturbing the sleeping rangers. Cam had his gun in his parka, but he really wished he had the dogs with him. They had not been happy to be left behind, but they were German shepherds, and discipline trumped, as always.

“Our stealth helo didn’t fool you, huh?” Cam said.

Kenny snorted. “Stealth, my ass. I heard that thing coming when you were still over that ridge back there. Who’s with you?”

Cam told him.

“And she’s dying to see a wild one, isn’t she?” Kenny said.

“I don’t think she believes it,” Cam replied. “They all feel that any wild ones up here are all captive escapees. They don’t count.”

“They’re wrong. But that’s not why you’re here.”

“Nope. I’m here to bring you back in. Let me rephrase: to ask you politely to come back in. They know, Kenny.”

“They don’t know shit and they can’t prove shit, either, Cam,” Kenny said. His eyes glittered in the moonlight. An owl flew over their heads, making pulses in the still mountain air, a movement they could feel but not hear. “All we have to do is go radio-silent for a while, and we’re safe. Phone calls and statistics don’t make a case.”

“We’ll do what we always do, Kenny,” Cam said. “We’ll sift and we’ll sift, and eventually we’ll get a guy in a room. Then we’ll convince him that it’s over and that the other guys are all singing, and then we’ll convince him to make it easy on himself-you know, Club Fed instead of gen pop in the state prison.”

“You don’t know us,” Kenny said. “We’ll do what White Eye taught us to do-hunker down, go into statue mode, close our eyes, zone into the woods, make like a tree. We’ll become invisible right before your eyes. You think if you can break one, he’ll break the rest. Won’t happen.”

“Why, because you chase mountain lions?”

Kenny took a deep breath and looked away for a moment. “It’s not the cat dancing, per se,” he said finally. “It’s the frame of mind that got them to go out there and get a face in the first place. Hard-case cops who’ve had it with a corrupted system. Who would happily kill all the lawyers for thirty miles around them if they thought they could. And you know what, Cam? Some of them think that’s a doable little mission.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being that they won’t talk and they won’t break. They’ve all faced something a whole lot scarier than some fucking wimp-ass prosecutor like Steven Klein. You can’t break this unless somebody rolls, and nobody’s gonna roll.”

The river seemed noisier to Cam than it had earlier. He decided to try another tack. “Okay, if that’s the case, come back in with me. Sit in the chair and show us your stuff.”

Kenny laughed. It was an unpleasant sound. “I just might do that,” he said. “But on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You come with me for one last dance. Over there. In the Chop.”

“Been there, did that,” Cam said. “With White Eye, remember? He wanted to give me a little demo on woodcraft, and the next thing I knew, I was up a fucking tree, with a goddamned cat climbing up after me. No thanks, Kenny.”

“This time, you go up the tree first and then watch,” Kenny said. “Just watch. That’s what we can do here in the Chop. This is where we trained. The river cuts the thing one-third, two-thirds. You go on the wide side; I’ll be on the other. I know where the den is. I want you to see this, Cam. I want you to understand why you’ll never break us. Then if you still want, I’ll come back in with you.”

“This is nuts, Kenny,” Cam said.

“Yeah, probably. But let me add a sweetener. You come with me. Right now. Leave those civilians back there. And when we’re done, I’ll tell you who did the bombing.”

“You said-”

“I said it wasn’t us. And it wasn’t. But I know who did. You come with me, I’ll tell you. That’s the price of admission. After that, it’s your call. I go in or I don’t. It’s what you really came up here for, isn’t it? I’m handing it to you.”

“How do I know you don’t have your posse up in that canyon? Your guys have tried for me twice already.”

“No, we haven’t, but what good would that do now anyway?” Kenny said. “SBI knows what you know, right? You’ve briefed Bobby Lee?”

“I have. He sent me here.”

“Well, I have the real answer. I’ll tell you, but no one else. Don’t you really want to know?”

“Let’s get something straight, Kenny,” Cam said. “We’re not friends anymore. We’re not colleagues. You were a cop, a very good cop, but you’ve crossed the line. Maybe we can’t prove that, but you and I know it. You’ve become a man-eater, and you’ve developed a taste for it.”

“You let my brother kill himself and you didn’t lift a finger,” Kenny shot back. “You knew perfectly well what he was going to do, and you just-what, walked away? Don’t lecture me about duty and doing the right thing.”

“Okay, I’ll admit it,” Cam said. “I’ve changed my mind about some things as I’ve gotten older. If a guy wants to end it all, then I think that’s his call.”

“Hold that thought, Lieutenant,” Kenny said, a strange look in his eyes. “And come with me.”

By hopping stones, they crossed the river just below the big bend. The rushing water was black, smooth, and deep between his feet, and Cam kept wondering what the hell he was doing out here. He also didn’t like being in the woods without the shepherds, but Kenny had been adamant: The dogs would screw the whole thing up, and they might get killed in the process. Once across, they entered the narrow canyon, staying on the gravel banks of the river. The entrance was only a couple hundred yards wide and the stone walls of the canyon tossed echoes of the river back and forth. A quarter of a mile in, there was a low waterfall, with a line of boulders forming the top rim. Directly across the mouth of the river, the south wall rose straight up out of the water. Kenny pointed at the line of boulders.

“We’ll cross those,” he said. “We’ll stay on the southside bank for about a half mile, and then cut up into the woods.”

“You do this shit in the dark?” Cam asked.

“Negative,” Kenny said. “First light. But I have to be in position above the den before then. I’ll leave you where you can see the den, but across the river from it.”

“How do you get to the den?”

“On a wire, from above. The rig is already up there. C’mon, we have to move.”

“Is the cat in the den?’

Kenny looked back at him with a patronizing look. “Cats sleep in the daytime, boss. At night, they hunt. She’s out here somewhere, so try to be quiet.”

The stone walls of the canyon reflected some moonlight down into the gorge, but not a lot, so they had to go slowly, climbing over large rocks and deadfall deposited by the rushing stream during higher water. It was close to 4:00 A.M. when they bore left away from the riverbank and up onto a pine-covered hillside. There wasn’t much snow on the ground. The walls of the canyon on the north side were sheer and went up in ragged terraces nearly a thousand feet. The southside slope was less extreme, even though it rose to the same height.

Kenny took Cam up the slope on a loose diagonal until they reached a promontory of rock that cut back over to form a cliff over the river, some three hundred feet below them. Pine trees came down almost to the edge of the overhang of rock, and then subsided, leaving a small gravelly clearing. Perched over the noisy river below, Cam felt like he was on the bow of a ship under way.