Free The Cat Dancers by P.T. Deutermann Page B

he’d said, “but you can’t say it out loud.”
    The problem was what to do about it. The Web site showing the execution scene had made the local TV evening news and would surely go national pretty soon. The putative candidate for executioner, James Marlor, was not to be found. The voice had clearly said, “That’s one,” which meant that Flash was possibly in some danger. Everyone at all the meetings had had the same unvoiced philosophical problem: So what. The sheriff had finally come up with a reason to care. “Someone’s eventually going to start throwing shit at the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office,” he’d said. “They’ll point out that we screwed up the arrest and these shitheads got away with it, so now one of us has decided to take justice into his own hands. So keep your secret vigilante decoder rings in your lockers and go find out who’s doing this shit.” There’d been much rolling of eyes behind the sheriff’s back, but Cam thought he had a valid point. The only thing saving them from a media rumble right now was the fact that no one knew for sure if the execution was real or staged.
    The next question was whether they should pick up Flash and hold him in protective custody. Klein had agreed to go talk to Judge Bellamy in chambers. He’d called back while the team was going over their search plan for Marlor and tearing up a pizza. Bellamy, as expected, had said no. They were to pick him up, get him sober enough to show him the video, make sure he understood what he was looking at, and then turn him loose. If he then came back in on his own volition and asked for protection, then and only then they could place him in protective custody. But he had to ask, and do so a second time in front of her. They’d sent a deputy out to pick him up, but it was dark by the time they got there and he was no longer at the squat, nor was the lady of the manor. This was duly reported back to Klein, who said he’d tell the judge in the morning.
    Cam clicked the little x on the top right of his screen and
the execution scene disappeared. He smiled; making sites disappear was at the top end of his computer abilities. He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. His fingers smelled of pizza sauce. We’re going through the motions here, he thought. There isn’t anyone in this office who gives a shit that K-Dog rode the third rail. James Marlor had lost one wife to a drunk driver and now another one, plus his stepdaughter, to blind bad luck and the depredations of two walking, talking sewer rats. Marlor’s professional career was complete, if not over, his immediate family had been erased, and he was of an age where he might well have decided that he didn’t care what happened as long as he took these two pustules off the streets forever. Cam could even see himself pulling the switch on a mutt like K-Dog. The only good news was that, once the story went truly national, the Bureau would be into it, and then maybe the Manceford County cops could sit back and let the Übermenschen from the Justice Department sort it all out.
    His phone rang. He looked at his watch. Almost nine o’clock. He wasn’t on duty. Did he really want to answer this? Had he learned nothing in twenty-some years about answering office telephones after normal working hours? He picked it up, and it was the desk sergeant, reporting they had Flash in the drunk tank.
    “Great. How bad is he?”
    “Fustier than most,” the sergeant said. “Looks like the back side of a crack high, irrigated by some demon rum.”
    “Is he coherent?”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Okay, look. I need him mostly sober and reasonably presentable by around ten tomorrow morning. I’ll need him breathalyzed before he comes upstairs, so we can prove later on he wasn’t totally drunk when we interviewed him.”
    “It’ll be close,” the sergeant said. “Jumpsuit okay? Because the clothes he came in had a lapful of breakfast. If you want him clean,