The Cat Dancers by P.T. Deutermann Page B

speakers subsided into that original deep bass note. Just as Cam was clearing his throat, the spectral voice boomed out again.
    “That’s one,” it announced.
    Then the screen went gray and the humming sound stopped.
    Kenny whistled softly and then started banging away on the keyboard again.
    “Mother fuck !” said the detective standing behind Cam, who hadn’t realized that all the noise had attracted an audience from the office next door. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
    “What are you doing?” Cam asked Kenny.
    “Trying to get a fix on the real source of that attachment,” he said, tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on the screen. The screen had turned blue, with white text and computer hieroglyphics scrolling down.

    “Was that real or Memorex?” Horace asked.
    “Looked real to me,” Kenny said, still typing. “Hope so anyway.”
    The phone rang on Cam’s desk. He picked it up, the execution images still vivid in his mind. “MCAT, Lieutenant Richter.”
    It was the sheriff, trumpeting on his speakerphone. “Lieutenant, I have Carol Hawes with me. Her office has been getting calls about a Web site that’s purportedly showing an electrocution of one those guys who did the minimart fire. You know anything about that?”
    Carol Hawes was the Sheriff’s Office’s public relations officer. “We just saw it,” Cam said. “Puke city. Computer Crimes alerted us. I take it this is out there for the whole world to see?”
    “I think that’s why they call it the World Wide Web, Lieutenant,” the sheriff said dryly. Cam’s reputation for being something of a Luddite when it came to computers was widespread. “What are we doing about it?”
    “Watching it?” Cam said, rolling his eyes. Like what in the hell could they do about it? And why was the sheriff calling MCAT? This was definitely one for Major Crimes. “Sergeant Cox is trying to do an Internet trace on the attachment, see what he can find out about it. We need Computer Crimes to do the same, I guess.”
    Cam heard a buzzer going off in the sheriff’s office. There was a moment of quiet mumbling as the he took a call. Then he was back on the speakerphone. “Meeting. My office in thirty,” he announced, and hung up.
    Kenny swore as a black screen came up. He hit one final key with a dramatic flourish, which signaled he’d signed off for Cam, and got up from Cam’s chair. “Nada,” he said. “It was posted on one of those floating chat rooms. Kind of like a blog. Current events and shit. I Googled the name string from the attachment, found the site again, but on yet another floating box.”
    “Oka-a-y,” Cam said. “I’m punching the ‘I believe’ button here. And?”

    “No luck. I’d recommend getting the Bureau into this. Eddie’s going to agree, I think. Goddamn, boss. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
    It took Cam a moment. “Marlor?” he said.
    As Kenny nodded, Cam suddenly realized he needed some coffee. Actually, he needed a drink, but he didn’t keep booze in the office.
    They had gone to see James Marlor a week after the media dust began to settle on the minimart case. His home was down in Lexington. His job required him to be on the road most of the time, so the company didn’t care where he parked his family, and he’d chosen Lexington over the much larger and more crowded city of Charlotte.
    Marlor had been reserved, attentive, and not terribly surprised when Cam finally broached the real purpose of their visit. Marlor had told them simply that he was not going to introduce more tragedy into his life by hunting down those two. He said they’d probably die in prison, as Cam had suggested, and that that was a better fate than a bullet through the eye. Cam remembered that particular image now as he mixed sugar into his coffee. Marlor would have to be a very cool customer indeed to have done this, if it was indeed real. And that was the larger problem: This could well be just some more digital fraud zinging