It was actually McLain who led off, telling them that the Bureau had opened a case on the Internet execution video and that they wanted to collaborate with the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office, since it appeared that the case had started there. He said he would appreciate any information they could give the Bureau. To Cam’s vast relief, McLain projected none of the traditional “We’re the G, step aside, small people” posturing. He was polite, professional, and willing to listen as Cam walked them through it, starting with the disastrous minimart heist. McLain had set up a laptop and used it to take notes, although Cam got the impression that whatever went into Thomas McLain’s brain was being stored there in neatly bulleted outline fashion.
Cam then described the abduction incident of the previous night and said that in his opinion, K-Dog Simmonds had been the killer-diller at the minimart, while Flash Butts had been along for the ride, both mentally and physically. He noticed that Ms. Bawa curled her lip when he mentioned the killers. She was obviously still very angry about it.
“He saw the execution video and didn’t want protection?” McLain asked.
“He saw it, freaked, but would not entertain the notion of jail as protection. He’s a crackhead. Brain’s gone.”
“And we have no idea of where James Marlor could be?”
Cam noted the corporate “we” and saw that Bobby Lee probably didn’t feel that way, based on his body language. The sheriff had always been fiercely protective of the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office’s prerogatives when it came to sharing cases. He suspected that the sheriff, like Kenny Cox, lived for the hunt.
“It looks like his departure was orderly,” Cam said. “We found out that Marlor took out thirty-five thousand in cash money a week after the judge let the bastards go.”
“Walking-around money, with no electronic consequences,” McLain said.
Cam nodded. “We think so,” he said. “And he’s the guy with the best motive.” Then he glanced over at the Bureau’s consultant as if to say, and she’s the one with the second-best motive. She stared right back at him, as if daring him to say it out loud.
“Ms. Bawa,” Cam said, “I’m concerned that you’re involved in this case.”
McLain answered before she could speak. “Jay-Kay here is an expert consultant on the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the World Wide Web,” he said. “And since she’s based in Charlotte, Washington authorized the Charlotte field office to engage her services.”
“I would have thought the Bureau had its own assets for that,” the sheriff said.
McLain nodded. “We do, but they’re otherwise engaged these days. Mostly by the Department of Homeland Security.
“Also,” she said, “I’m pro bono when I work for the Bureau. No cost to the government.”
Cam gave McLain a look. Having the victim of a crime involved in the investigation was not kosher at either the federal or the local level. McLain understood. “She gets her tasking from us,” he said. “And it’s specifically related to Web stuff. She doesn’t go along on any rides, and she won’t have access to everything we generate about the case.”
Then she shouldn’t be here at this meeting, Cam thought, but he didn’t want to piss McLain off. The Bureau was being polite, and that counted for a lot in his book. “Right,” the sheriff said, “Your consultant, your call. How do you propose to work this?”
“I’ve been instructed to put the technical assets of the Bureau at your disposal and to offer professional advice on the course of the investigation whenever I see an opportunity to be helpful. It’s your case, and it will remain so until and unless certain exigencies arise that trigger a wider national security interest.”
That little speech sounded rehearsed to Cam, but the sheriff thanked McLain for the Bureau’s offer of help, then suggested to Cam that the three of them adjourn to the MCAT office. Once there, Cam saw that Kenny was back. He called him over and asked him to get Ms. Bawa set up with a computer terminal. He took McLain into his personal office, took off his gun belt, and invited McLain to make himself comfortable.
“You have been bending over backward to be nice,” Cam said without preamble. “I appreciate the hell out of it, but how come?”
McLain smiled. “First of all, we really do have a full plate these days with this antiterrorism mission. And second, now that Butts has been abducted, we think it’s just about guaranteed we’ll see a second execution.”
“The first one was a grisly novelty,” Cam said.
“Yes, but a second one is going to nudge the liberal establishment into high dudgeon. Inquiring minds are gonna want to know: Hey, you guys on this, or what?”
Cam laughed. “And that’s what you meant by ‘certain exigencies’? If the political shit storm reaches a critical mass, you guys will step up?”
“Something like that,” he said with a smile. “Assuming it’s real.”
“Yeah, that’s one of our problems,” Cam said. “It could be a damn hoax.”
“What’s MCAT?” McLain asked.
Cam told him. “Interesting approach,” McLain said. “You okay with us being here like this?” he asked.
“Hell yes,” Cam said. “I was just telling the sheriff that we ought to hand this sick puppy off to the Bureau right now.”
“He good with that?”
“Not entirely,” Cam said. “He feels that since we-and that means a guy in my shop-actually lit the fuse on this thing with a screwup, we should be the ones to ‘unscrew’ it, as he quaintly puts it.”
“I can understand that,” McLain said.
Cam told him what the sheriff had said about a possible division of labor. McLain agreed immediately. “What’s first?” he asked.
“We like James Marlor as the possible doer, and we’ve been looking. But of course now our urgent priority is to retrieve Deleon Butts. We have very little to go on, other than it was a hooded guy in a pickup truck, using an automatic rifle but shooting blanks.”
“Yeah, blanks. We heard about that. Any leads?”
Cam shrugged. “The city cops have a full-court press going in certain neighborhoods, but you know how that goes.”
“And you’ve found no trace of the other guy, Simmonds?”
“Only on the Web. And that’s a problem, of course, because we don’t habeas a corpus.”
McLain frowned but didn’t say anything. Cam switched to his problem with having Ms. Bawa involved. He told him of her sentiments on what should have happened in the courthouse square.
“She told me the same thing,” he said. “Refreshing, isn’t it?”
It was Cam’s turn to smile.
“She’s a piece of work,” he said, “both technically and personally. She’s worked for the Bureau before, with our counterterrorism folks. Technically, she’s beyond good. She keeps a brace of mainframe IBM computers in her home office and connects to the Web with her own T-one line.”
“English?” Cam said. “T-one?”
“That means a huge data pipe. The word broadband doesn’t adequately describe it. She says she never deals directly with the Web. She interfaces with her mainframes-she calls them her ‘tigers’-and they go out on the Web.”
“Sounds a little scary. This is in Charlotte?”
“Right. She’s a professional consultant. Adheres to Bureau guidelines and does what she’s told. My boss is okay with this, despite the personal angle.”
“As long as you and I can meet like this,” Cam said. “I don’t like civilians listening in on everything we do.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “But she’ll need a liaison here.”
“I put her with Sergeant Cox-he’s the big guy you met out there. He’ll handle Ms. Bawa’s needs.”
“Jay-Kay. Everyone calls her that,” McLain said.
They sorted all the logistics out in about five minutes, then rejoined the gaggle of MCAT cops and agents back in the office. Jay-Kay, who looked positively sleek in a rose-colored business suit, was sitting at Kenny’s computer and showing him something. Kenny looked at Cam over the monitor as he came back into the outer office. The sergeant rolled his eyes, as if to say she had long ago left him in the digital dust. Cam introduced the rest of the MCAT crew to McLain and then suggested they all go to lunch at a nearby cop bar, to be followed by a joint planning session to see where the hell they’d go from here.