P.T. Deutermann - The cat dancers
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- Year:2011
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The cat dancers: summary, description and annotation
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An ingenious thriller of murder, revenge, and mystery in remote wilderness, by the acclaimed author of The Firefly and Hunting SeasonWhen two lowlifes rob a gas station, murder the attendant, and then incinerate bystanders who are filling up their minivan, the Manceford County, North Carolina, police quickly arrest the killers at a nearby motel. But a stubborn judge throws out the case because the suspects were not read their rights, leaving Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett and Lieutenant Cam Richter to face the anger of the victims families. Soon thereafter, a mysterious e-mail arrives in the department: a link to a video of one of the murderers being executed in a homemade electric chair, ending with a voice announcing, Thats one. The shocking video spreads throughout the Internet, drawing the attention of local, state, and federal authorities and national media, and putting intense pressure on Bobby Lee and Cam to find the vigilante before he claims his second victim.Assigned to head the search, Cam finds himself resented by some of his fellow officers and subtly threatened by others. His job is further complicated by the fact that the offending judge is also his ex-wife and now---after years apart, and an uneasy reconciliation---his sometime lover. Cams questions lead him to a remote mountain area in western North Carolina and a group of daredevils who call themselves the cat dancers---so named because they have tracked the last wild mountain lions in the region to their dens, where they have photographed the animals face-to-face, or died trying. Cam must hunt this group and the cats they seek, or become their next target.
P.T. Deutermann: author's other books
Who wrote The cat dancers? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
P.T. Deutermann
J. Jance
Mark Jones
Kimberly A. Kenney
Jeannie Mobley
Parker R. J.
P. T. Deutermann
John Gilstrap
J.A. Jance
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Table of Contents
I WANT TO THANK the Sheriff of Guilford County, North Carolina, for his insights on the inner workings of a modern and highly successful urban Sheriffs Office. That said, Ive taken extensive liberties in conjuring up characters, methods, and even localities for this story. I also want to thank the United States Park Service for their technical help on the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, although there, too, Ive made up a lot of the material on locations within the park and, most important, the existence of feral mountain lions. There is simply no concrete evidence of big cats roaming the Smokies. If on the other hand, you are a proponent of the rule that says the absence of evidence isnt the same as evidence of absence, then you might want to watch where, and when, you walk in the backcountry. Almost needless to say, no one would be foolhardy enough to try cat dancing with a mountain lion, not even the real (and very brave) Kenny Cox, who so graciously allowed the use of his name in this book in connection with an American (Carriage) Driving Society fund-raiser. This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance in this book to actual persons, places, or events is absolutely coincidental.
The Firefly
Darkside
Hunting Season
Train Man
Zero Option
Sweepers
Official Privilege
The Edge of Honor
Scorpion in the Sea
Darkside
Hunting Season
Train Man
Zero Option
Sweepers
Official Privilege
The Edge of Honor
Scorpion in the Sea
INCH BY METICULOUS INCH, he slides down the 10.5-mm rope, twisting and releasing the figure-eight descender in tiny, silent increments. He is sitting on a trapeze bar, which, in turn, is suspended from the rappelling device. Every time he twists the ring, the bar descends a few inches. He wears a webbed climbing harness around his chest, which allows him to lean back from the rope as he goes down. His face is now only a foot away from the granite overhang. He reaches out to touch the rock, but gently, so as not to induce a spin on the rope. The mountain air is clear and cold, with only a hint of a dawn breeze, enough to mask small sounds but not enough to disturb his body as he slips down the rope.
Hes already come down sixty feet from the anchor point up above the overhanging bulge, and hes now at the closest point to the rock face. Ten more feet down and the cliff curves back in to become a sheer wall that descends into the morning mists above the river. It is just past morning twilight, that time of suspended animation when darkness retreats but then seems to make a comeback even as the stars begin to lose their definition. He cant be certain, but the cat should be back in its lair by now.
Two hours ago, hed heard her shrieking attack on some desperately scrambling prey animal, whose ensuing death squeals punctured the mountain darkness like a hot knife, followed by a momentary silencing of all other forest sounds. If she held to pattern, shed quickly consume the soft parts, hide the carcass, and take a part of it back to the den for her cubs. He felt like he knew her, her habits, all her mysterious moves. He should; hed been tracking and watching her for ten days and nights.
The rock face is definitely withdrawing from his line of drop now, getting two, then three, then six feet distant, the striations of the ancient rock no longer visible as the forest remained still in anticipation of dawn. He concentrates on the oval of dark shadow below that is her cave and resists the urge to touch the Max 800 to make sure its ready to shoot. He knows it is; of course it is. But the urge is strong after days of spoor casting and stalking, using binoculars by day, night-vision goggles by dark, and now that hes within thirty vertical feet of his objective, he wants to make sure hes ready.
He stops the descent and regulates his breathing. He thinks he can hear the tiny creaks of the harness and the sounds of his own heartbeat echoing off the rock wall, even though the granite is now a good ten feet away. The whole expanse of sheer gray rock is a blur in his peripheral vision. The loss of perspective isnt helped by the effort of having his whole body hanging, with his left arm locked rigidly in tension against the rope, but its the only way to let his body weight do all the work and to keep his right hand, the critical trigger hand, free at all times.
Twist and release, inch by inch now. He detects a barely discernible sway in the rope and extends his free arm ever so slightly, trying to dampen the swing so that he and the rig dont turn into a pendulum. He imagines he can hear the rope rubbing up top, its synthetic fibers heating under the strain. He cant hear it, of course, but, with her supersensitive hearing, the cat might. Natures sounds are random. Rhythmic sounds in the forest are a trip wire to an alerted mountain lion. The soft, regular breathing of sleeping prey, the steady footfall and puffing breath of a hiker climbing blissfully into a furious ambush, the whimpering mews of a fawn searching for its mother, the crunch of hiking shoes across pine needles, the repeated click of a walking stick on a rocky paththese are the sounds that bring those delicate tufted ears up and the cats sharp senses to hunting pitch. He now looks up, half-expecting the cat to be up there, peering over the rim of the overhang, a tentative paw reaching for the rope, waitingfor him to come back up. Now that, he thinks, would be truly interesting.
Squeeze and release, inch by inch, the concave rock face now a good twenty feet away and beginning to curve back toward the vertical again. The dark blur of the caves mouth is coming into focus, its top edges more defined, the hollow darkness of the opening contrasting with the bright white bones littering the ledge in front. Its a surprisingly big cave, maybe ten feet across. He wonders how many and what wonderful kinds of beasts have sought haven there over the millennia.
He descends in tiny halting jerks, ignoring the pain in his thighs and the constriction of the harness as he controls his breathing, mouth open to make no sound, taking in small irregular puffs of pristine pine-scented air. He thinks the breeze, such as it is, is working for him, blowing across the face of the sheer rock and masking the steely smell of his own adrenaline, which makes his eardrums thump with each heartbeat. The rigs swivel keeps him from spinning away from his target. Hes still desperate to put his hand on the Max 800, just to make very damned sure.
Trust your instinct, he reminds himself. Youve made your preps. Focus. Twist and release; twist and release. Then hes finally in position, ten feet below the lip of the caves front ledge. He locks the ring. For a moment, he just hangs there and listens to his own heartbeat, willing it to slow down, trying for biofeedback and not succeeding worth a damn. The Max is attached to his camo jumpsuit by a tiny tungsten wire so that he cant drop it, even if he should want to, because sometimes that happens if the fear becomes sufficiently intense. Hes dying for a drink of water, but theres no time for that, not now, not here. He concentrates on that ledge and what he can see of the top half of the caves mouth.
Shes in there; I know shes in there.
So: Lets go. Lets do it.
Time to dance.
He drops below the ledge because now he has to get closer, and the only way to do that is to swing in toward therock face. The swing will begin with him at the bottom of an arc. He has to get within eight feet of the ledge, which will happen at the top of the arc, because the Max is worthless beyond eight feet, and its short range is the whole point.
Keeping his eyes on the ledge, he reels up the Max and takes it in both hands. With his fingers, he tests the firing mechanism for resistance, assuring himself that its cocked and ready to fire.
He takes a deep breath, lets most of it out, and then, barely inclining his body, initiates the swing. It takes surprisingly little effort, with almost eighty feet of rope rising into the gloom above him. His body is stiff with tension and resists the swinging impulse. He has to bend his neck and then his shoulders to get it going, moving back and forth, not in a circle, but straight at the rock face, slowly but steadily gathering speed and reach as he swings in toward the rock and up toward the ledge, then away, down, and out over the seemingly bottomless gorge. An uneasy thrill lights up in his belly as he senses the great height and all that empty air. The river courses invisibly below him, making a distant rushing sound.
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