The Cat Dancers (40 page)

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Authors: P.T. Deutermann

BOOK: The Cat Dancers
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THEY WAITED FOR ANOTHER hour, but there were no calls. Cam finally called his own voice mail at home. One message, and not the one he had left. He listened carefully, played it again, and then saved it. “Sounded like a tape,” he reported. “A trucking terminal on the south side of I-Forty, off the airport road. We’re apparently looking for a trailer. They said for me to go alone, or they’d fire the chair.”
“No,” Bobby Lee said. “No way.”
“I got her into this mess, Sheriff,” Cam protested. “Least I can do is get her out.”
“What you’d do is get yourself killed. No, I’m sorry, but there’s a hostage. I’m always sorry there’s a hostage. But we go in force.”
“How about that
Owl
thing?” Pierce asked. “Send it overhead with some thermal-imaging gear, see if they can find a trailer that’s different from all the others?”
“How long will that take?” the sheriff asked. Pierce didn’t know, but he went to find out.
Thirty minutes later, they had a plan. The
Owl
would make its sweep and report any targets of interest. The SWAT team would deploy in the rail yards behind the trucking terminal. Cam would drive through the terminal in a lone cruiser, wearing full combat gear, and pretend to scan the trailers with a handheld thermal-imaging device. He’d drive around long enough to allow the SWAT team to get in position behind the trailer, and then they’d pounce. If the
Owl
didn’t find anything, they’d regroup and try something else.
It took another hour to get the aircraft in position above the terminal. Cam rode out with his MCAT guys in a Suburban to a location three blocks away from the terminal. Then he
shifted over to a cruiser while the guys went to join the SWAT team at the command post. The sheriff and Mike Pierce went directly to the command post in the sheriff’s personal cruiser.
Cam reached the terminal in five minutes and drove in past the security gates. The place was a medium-size terminal by Triboro standards—ten warehouses equipped with mechanized truck-loading docks. Some of the warehouses were inactive, but half had trucks and trailers backed up and forklifts operating in lighted doorways. The sergeant at the command and control vehicle announced over the secure tactical frequency that the aircraft was overhead, scanning the empty trailers parked at the back of the terminal. He said there were sixty or seventy trailers out there.
Cam drove around with his window open. The dock workers didn’t seem to pay any attention to the lone cruiser prowling the area. Cam could communicate with the war wagon but not with the SWAT team. The aircraft reported that the roofs of the warehouses appeared to be clean, no lurking shooters. Ten minutes later, it reported one trailer had a different thermal signature from the trailers around it. They pinpointed its location along the back fence of the terminal, and the SWAT team went into motion.
Cam continued his prowl, occasionally sticking the thermal-imager gun out the window as he waited for word that the team was in position behind the target. Finally, he was told to drive to the very back and begin a slow sweep of the trailers parked against the back fence. He started using his spotlight now, shining it under the parked trailers, which was the one place the
Owl
could not see.
He drove the full length of the line, hoping like hell that there were no long-gun shooters in the trees, then switched off the spot and turned around. He started back along the line, imaging each trailer carefully as the tactical controller counted down the time on top. He pretended to be interested in one trailer until the war wagon announced that the team was in position in a line of trees behind the trailer park area and that the fence had been cut.
Cam kept driving until he arrived at the trailer designated
by the aircraft. He pointed the imager at it, but nothing came up in the viewfinder. The aircraft confirmed he was pointing at the right trailer. Now it was time to get out of the car. He wanted to do another spotlight sweep under the trailer, but that might illuminate the SWAT people on the other side. The trailer, like all the others, was parked with its foot stand facing the road and the cargo doors facing the fence at the back.
He used his own headlights instead, parking at an oblique angle in order to throw some light under the trailer. He wished he had his shepherds with him—they’d have been able to find anything and anybody lurking out there.
“In position,” he announced quietly to his shoulder mike.
“Exit the vehicle and go around to the back of the trailer,” the voice in his earphone said. “
Owl
reports no sign of ambush.”
Cam swallowed, put the cruiser in park, and got out. The terminal lights did a fair job of illuminating the line back here, but there were lots of shadows. He just hoped that aircraft could see everything for a good five hundred yards around, because any competent sniper could take him out from that distance, body armor or no body armor. He walked carefully around the back of the trailer, shining his flashlight everwhere but back at the fence. He listened for any sounds of the
Owl,
but he heard only a soft wind in the tree line. He could see that the trailer was a refrigeration model, with a squat generator up top and heavy insulated sides. There was maybe twenty feet of space between the fence and the back of the trailer.
The doors on the trailer were locked when he reached the back, so he made another circuit of the trailer while trying to suppress the creeping tingle he felt on his back. Were they here? Had they tumbled to the SWAT team? Was the guy in the
Owl
one of them?
He came back around again to the rear doors. Nothing happened. “Clear,” he said to his shoulder mike.
“Team go,” announced the controller, and then the whole area lit up as the SWAT guys, looking like storm troopers from a
Star Wars
movie, came swarming through the fence, followed by some portable spots, which soon had the entire
area ablaze in blue-white light. More vehicles poured through the front gates of the terminal area and set up a perimeter. The sheriff drove up in his cruiser, followed by the command and control van.
They walked back to the rear of the trailer. “I’m scared to death of what we’re going to find here,” Cam said.
The sheriff didn’t say anything. Cam figured Bobby Lee had already framed Mary Ellen in his mind as being dead, which realistically was the way most cops visualized hostages. That way, when they got them back alive, it was a pleasant surprise. Mike Pierce didn’t say anything, either.
The access crew brought over a large bolt cutter to open the doors of the trailer. Cam and the sheriff peered in as the noise suddenly subsided. Two portable spots were rolled up to the fence and their generators started up. The doors were swung open.
Front and center was the electric chair from the Web videos. There was a flat table in front of that, and behind it a one-man tent had been erected in one corner. A brand-new welding machine was set up to one side of the chair, and heavy wires led to the back of the trailer and up the inside front wall toward the refrigeration unit’s generator at the top of the trailer. There were empty water jugs, a portable camp toilet, and a pile of army MRE ration containers piled in a trash heap. The generator switched on once the doors were opened.
There was no Mary Ellen Goode.
Cam swore silently.
Two members of the team went in, being careful not to disturb any of the items lying around the floor. They checked the tent, where they found a mummy-style sleeping bag, an old duffel bag, and several scraps of duct tape. After a quick initial exploration, they backed out to wait for the CSI people. Cam could only shake his head in total frustration. Where the hell was Mary Ellen?
“From all appearances,” the team leader said, “there was someone being held hostage in this thing. But not now.”
“Any signs of violence?” the sheriff asked.
“No visible bloodstains,” the lieutenant replied. “CSI will have to confirm that. That chair doesn’t smell so good, though.”
“Did you see a cell phone in there?” Cam asked. The lieutenant was about to answer when a chirping noise started up inside the tent.
On the third ring, they all heard the trailer’s generator ramp up. Red and green lights blinked on across the control panel of the welding machine. Cam and the sheriff exchanged glances and then the sheriff yelled for everyone to back out. The SWAT guys jumped down out of the trailer and joined the general exodus. The generator suddenly went to very high rpm as they swarmed back through the big hole in the chain-link fence. Cam and the sheriff were the last to get through the hole, and as they turned to watch, the chair turned into one massive arc as current flowed through wires attached to the the welding machine. With no one in the chair, its metal arms and legs dissolved in a blazing ball of directcurrent lightning, blinding all the cops as they stared in fascination. Then there was a deep red glare at the deep end of the trailer and then it blew up in one enormous fireball, blasting bits of metal, tires, and decking all over the parking lot. The two trailers on either side caught fire from the blast, and half the SWAT cops found themselves sitting on the ground, their ears ringing despite their helmets. Cam had turned away from the searing light and was thus standing partially behind the sheriff when the trailer went up. When he regained his balance and turned back around, the sheriff was sitting on the grass, looking curiously at a foot-long wooden shard that was sticking into his upper chest.
“Medic!” Cam shouted as he knelt down beside the sheriff. His ears were ringing from the blast and he couldn’t be sure he’d made himself heard. The sheriff was bleeding, although not very much. He had been wearing his protective vest, but the piece of wood had gone right through him. The part of it sticking out of his back was blackly slick in the harsh light of the portable spots. Bobby Lee coughed weakly and Cam had to hold him upright as he swayed dangerously.
The team’s medic came on the run, saw the shard, and
called for an ALS ambulance. Cam backed away as a second medic knelt down and helped keep the sheriff upright. Cam could see that there were other SWAT team members down, but they were all in full body armor and none of them looked to be seriously injured. Most were being tended by other members of the team. The ambulance came through the perimeter, its lights flashing. A heavy pall of bomb smoke lay over the parking lot, and Cam was pulled back to the sights and sounds of Annie Bellamy’s yard. It even smelled the same. C-4 again, he thought. So these bastards never hurt other cops, huh?
Mike Pierce came over and watched with Cam as the medics loaded Bobby Lee onto a gurney and then pulled it through the fence to the meat wagon. While some of the cops were spraying the burning tires of the nearby trailers with fire extinguishers, other SWAT team members were standing around the back of the ambulance, saying encouraging things to the sheriff, which meant that he was still conscious.
“That looked bad,” Pierce said.
“It was high up,” Cam said. “Maybe clipped a lung, but there wasn’t much bleeding.”
“Not outside anyway,” Pierce said, confirming what Cam had been thinking.
“This changes the equation,” Cam said.
“We sure that ranger wasn’t in there?”
Cam nodded. “It was empty, but somehow they knew the trailer had been opened up. Either they had someone here or it was electronic.”
“They told you to come alone. This wasn’t aimed at the SWAT guys.”
“They had to have known we’d bring a crowd eventually,” Cam said. “They might have expected I’d open the trailer, but they must have figured there’d be backup.”
“Sheriff’s Office bad guys would know,” Pierce said. “Federal bad guys might not.”
“And where’s Mary Ellen Goode?”
Several of the SWAT guys were looking up at something. Cam did the same and saw a small airplane with an oversized
Perspex bubble cockpit and ridiculously long wings swoop low overhead.
“
Owl
says something blew up,” the controller announced in a dry tone.
“Go,
Owl,
” Cam said glumly.
CAM DROVE DOWN HIS street at 2:30 A.M. He slowed as he drove under the lone streetlight in the cul-de-sac. He was bone-tired, still sore from his adventures in the river, and hugely disappointed at not finding Mary Ellen Goode. He’d been on the phone with Ranger Marshall after getting back to Sheriff’s Office headquarters, and it had not been a pleasant conversation. Apparently everyone up in Carrigan County would be calling for his head.
Me, too, he thought as he pulled up into his driveway. His ears were still ringing. The house was dark, and the Leyland cypress trees were swaying gently in the wind. The word from the hospital in Triboro was “satisfactory.” The sheriff had been the only serious casualty. The shard hadn’t severed any major arteries but it had not been a clean wound, and infection was a major concern now. He scanned the front of the house but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He hit the remote for the garage door, but nothing happened. He hit it again. Nothing.
He parked in the driveway and turned off the engine. The streetlight was on, so there should be power in the house. And where were the dogs? They would ordinarily have heard the car, come through the dog door, and run around to the fence in the side yard. No dogs. He was tempted to blow the horn to see what would happen. He hit the remote again, but the door continued to ignore its signals. He checked the little red LED to see if it came on when he pressed the button. It did, so the remote was working.
He unholstered the Sig .45 and got out. Then he got back in and called the ops center to request that a cruiser be dispatched to his house. “Ten minutes,” the operator said. Decision
time: He could take a quick look in and around the house, or wait for the cruiser. No-brainer. Wait for the deputies.
Two units showed up in six minutes, and the two deputies and Cam went into the house together. The lights worked normally inside, but the dogs were nowhere to be found. The deputies accompanied Cam into every room and the garage. They looked for signs of explosive or incendiary devices, and they checked the windows and doors for evidence of tampering, but everything appeared to be normal. They made a sweep of the backyard, going all the way down to the creek, and then made a quick, if somewhat creepy, walk through the cypress groves on either side of the house.
Embarrassed, Cam sent them away forty minutes later. He knew he’d done the right thing, but still, the expressions on their faces had told a story. The only thing still very much out of order was the fact that the dogs were gone. They never roamed. The wind was steady now and the moonlight was dimming as the sky filled with low-hanging gray-white clouds. It was unseasonably warm. So where were they? He got one of his big flashlights and went back down to the creek line again, checking for signs that they’d gone under the old fence. And then he found the gate open.
He shone his light across the creek, which at this point was no more than two feet wide, and saw some flattened grass on the other side and what looked like a trail going up the hill. The gate was normally locked with a double-end snap, which was now gone. So someone had let them out. Or had sneaked into his yard, discovered two big dogs, and let himself out in a big hurry. Pursued by the dogs? There was a faint chemical smell hovering down in the grass, despite the wind. Something in the creek? He sniffed hard, but he couldn’t place it. He called for them, but only the wind answered.
He went back to the house, aware that he was clearly silhouetted by the backyard spots as he walked up the lawn. Had the dogs gone on up into the Holcomb property? And if so, why? Looking for him maybe? Frick might do that, but
Frack would stay behind and watch. And they would certainly come when called.
He yawned. He was exhausted. And yet, if his dogs were nearby and in trouble, he knew he’d never sleep. He went back into the house, got his gear, turned out the spots on the back deck, and went down to the creek. One pass, he promised himself. I’ll go up the hill, look around the buildings, then come back. Tomorrow is another day—or rather, today is. I’ve got bigger problems than two missing dogs.
Get some backup, he told himself as he went through the gate, but then he remembered the looks the two deputies had exchanged. Not again, and if they weren’t dog people, they wouldn’t be too happy at traipsing through the underbrush in search of his two runaways. The Holcomb place would be spooky by moonlight, but he and the mutts had been up there a hundred times before. He yawned again, then started out up the hill. He kept going, pretty much in a straight line. The farmhouse loomed up to his right, the barns and a topless silo to his left.
He checked the barns first, sliding a large wooden door to one side and scaring off an owl and some other unidentified nocturnal creatures. The place smelled of musty old hay, ancient grease, and decaying wood. Ghostly mantles of cobwebs swayed in the draft from the open door, but there were no other signs of life in the building. A piece of tin on the roof flapped gently in the wind. But no dogs. He looked into the empty concrete garage briefly, saw signs of a teenage love nest with all the appropriate graffiti, and then turned to the house itself.
There was plywood on the doors and first-floor windows, but it had been put up a long time ago and the local demon spawn had evidently been going inside the house, too, as some of the panels, warped and grayed by weather, were stuffed rather than nailed into the window embrasures. Cam had poked his nose in once several years ago, and said nose had advised him in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to pursue his explorations. He didn’t really intend to go inside now, other than to call for the dogs. Even as he pulled one of
the plywood panels aside, he knew that if the dogs were inside, they’d have been whining at the windows.
Once inside, his search was anticlimactic. An abandoned old house on a windy night should have been at least a little creepy, but with the smell of empty beer cans, rotting Sheetrock, human excrement, fast-food cartons, and mouse droppings, the place was mostly just annoying, even in the dark. He gave up and went home.

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