by Tim Green
"Shelly?" she said at the sound of the familiar voice.
"Casey? Is that you, girl?" came the response in a backcountry drawl that made Casey involuntarily wince. It had taken her years to eradicate the same accent from her own speech.
"How are you?" Casey asked tentatively.
"Me? Oh, I'm just the same as ever," her sister said, talking as if they'd spoken only yesterday. "The kids are growing like weeds, and Gabe's losing his hair faster than you could think of, but I'm just the same. How are you, though? I seen you on the news during that trial. That's all everyone talked about 'round here my famous sister God dawg you should of seen Momma and Daddy. They were ready to bust at church, everyone crowding around them and asking about you…"
"What did they say?" Casey asked, with the sudden realization that she hadn't spoken with her parents in a good long while, either.
"Well, you know Daddy, he don't say nothing, and Momma, she just chattered on like a jay bird about Casey this and Casey that, telling stories about when you was young. You know, stuff you did that let all us know you was gonna be something special…" Shelly's words were completely ingenuous. She was one of the rare few who go through life without a hint of jealousy, and the goodness of her sister and the life she led gave Casey a sharp pang of dismay.
"I'm not the special one," she said seriously. "You are, Shelly. Look at you, a husband and three kids…"
"Oh, that ain't nothing," her sister said bashfully. "I didn't even get a four-year degree, and you got a husband, too.
"A handsome one with hair," she added with a giggle.
"No, I don't have a husband," Casey said.
There was a painful silence, and then Shelly said sadly, "I'm sorry, Casey. I didn't know. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," she said, falling back lamely on her habit of indefatigable optimism. "I'm really okay."
"Once means you are, twice means you aren't," Shelly said quietly. It was an adage of their father's, and Casey had never known it not to be true.
"Well, I'll be fine," Casey said.
"How about you come for a visit?" Shelly suggested pleasantly. "It'd be good to see you. I'll get Gabe to watch the kids, and you and I can go out and have a dinner and go to a movie like we did last time you come home. You remember that? Lord, how the men followed you around town."
"They were following you," Casey said kindly.
Shelly laughed out loud at the thought until her mirth was mixed with the wail of a baby.
"Oh, honey, I gotta feed this baby," Shelly said apologetically. "Can I call you back?"
"No, I've got to go anyway," Casey said.
"You come see me," her sister said gently. "I love you, honey."
"I love you, too," Casey said, choking on her words. She hung up the phone and burst into tears.
After a good cry and a deep breath, it was Sales's words that suddenly filled her head. He was right. There was nothing she could do about what already was, only what would be, and her life wasn't going to go on the way it was. She was going to change it. It would take time, but she would change. She would go see her sister. She'd go for a good long visit.
There was a place in life where she knew she belonged. It was somewhere between where she was now and where Shelly was. She could never live on a farm outside Odessa, but maybe she could have a family and children. She knew if nothing else she could do good things with her life instead of striving for empty aspirations of money and fame.
And she was going to start now. She was going to do something that heretofore had been unthinkable, to use privileged information against a client. Strictly speaking, it was wrong. But Casey wasn't going to run her life by strictly interpreted legal codes anymore. She was going to listen to her heart. She was going to find out what was on Lipton's computer disk, and if it could help bring him to justice she would use it. She would somehow get it to the police. She picked up the phone.
Tony was at home.
"I'll meet you at the office," he told her somberly after hearing the bulk of her bizarre story.
As Casey drove to the city, she paid little attention to the traffic around her. She was exhilarated at the thought of turning her life around, of purging everything she'd been and thinking of what she would be. Things weren't all bad. She'd done good work for people, pro bono work, work for free. She could do more. She could stop seeking celebrity and begin to seek justice. She could stop running around the country at the beck and call of the rich and famous and use the gifts she had to protect the innocent. She could represent the unjustly accused who didn't have the money or the power to defend themselves against the awful machine that, once set against you, could grind your life to dust.
Casey realized she was almost there. Remembering Lipton, she looked nervously in her rearview mirror. The traffic of people heading downtown for a night of music and drinking on Sixth Street even on a Sunday night was enough to make it impractical for her to pick out anyone who might be following her.
She certainly wasn't going into the parking garage. It would be dark and abandoned on a Sunday night. Instead, she found a spot on the street. The night was warm, and the damp breeze promised rain. Casey looked up at the churning gray clouds, then cast her eyes suspiciously up and down the street. The only other person in sight was a tall bum whose grocery cart rattled and squeaked stridently as he pushed his way up the street. Casey hurried across the sidewalk and up the steps of the midrise office building where she worked.
A night security man was sitting wearily at his desk by the door. With a smile and a nod, Casey stepped into a vacant elevator. Tony was waiting in her office, looking out of place in a triple X pink short-sleeve polo shirt. He was sitting on the small conference table in the corner, and he waved a pudgy hand to her from behind his own portable PC.
"Thanks for coming, Tony," Casey said, sitting down beside him. "Did I keep you waiting?"
"No, just long enough for me to get the layout of Lipton's hard drive." Tony spoke without looking up at her. He didn't want to reveal the range of emotions he was feeling, and he knew better than to try to console her. That would be the last thing she would want. The next-to-last thing would be advice, so he kept to the business at hand.
"The files I've found aren't what we're looking for," he said.
"But most likely, anything he didn't want people to find is in some hidden files somewhere. I just need to find them."
"Can you do that?"
"That's what this is for," he said. He held up a gray box with some wires hanging from it. "It's called a Norton Utility."
Tony began connecting the box to the back of his computer. He typed frantically for a minute or two to set the program in motion. When he'd finished, he looked up at Casey and really saw her for the first time.
"You want to talk?" he said.
She looked at him. "No. I'm fine."
"Okay," he said. "I don't know if I totally believe you, but okay."
"Why don't you believe me?"
"You were kidnapped and estranged from your husband all in the same weekend," he said calmly. "Most people wouldn't be completely fine…"
With a smile he said, "I don't want to pry and I don't want to drag it out. I wasn't going to say anything, but I just want you to know I care…"
"I know you do, Tony," she said with her beautiful smile. "I appreciate it. But I really am fine. What happened with Sales… Well, I almost feel like I deserved it," she said. "I know that sounds strange but that's how I feel. After what I did… I don't know. It doesn't bother me. That's all. And what happened with Taylor was a good thing… It made me realize what's important and what isn't. What I don't feel good about is Lipton and getting him off."
"There was a jury-" Tony began to protest.
"No," she said, holding up her hand. "Don't, Tony. Don't rationalize it. I know what I did and so do you. I know the line. It was my duty as a lawyer to do everything within the law to protect my client. Yeah, I can justify it to myself and you and every other l
awyer in the world, but in the big picture I was still wrong. Now if I can help to make it right, then that's what I'll do."
Before Tony could say anything more, the computer emitted a high-pitched two-toned beep, and he looked automatically at its screen.
"I found them," he said.
Casey leaned toward him. "Can you get in?"
"Let's find out," he said, rapidly pounding away.
Several minutes went by, then Tony said, "Got it! Hang on. Let me transfer them to some regular files…"
Casey watched and waited while he hammered away.
Tony said, "Good."
Casey looked with anticipation at the screen. A full-color graphic of some beige fluted columns surrounding the scales of justice filled the screen with a crimson backdrop. The bold title THE LETTER OF THE LAW jumped out at them. Tony moved the mouse down to the menu across the bottom of the screen. Listed was everything from outlines and contacts to schedules and expenses. Apparently, everything to do with Lipton's seminar business was there.
"What's this?" Casey said, pointing to an icon labeled SWANK.
Tony selected the icon, and the computer whirred away until a page came up that was lined with school photos of women from law school yearbooks. Casey's heart raced as Tony scrolled down through page after page. Next to each photo was a vita on the girl that included a physical description, where she lived, and a lewd account of her personality that linked each characteristic to a graphic depiction of a specific sexual act that she was most fond of performing. Much of it was sadomasochistic.
"This stuff can't be true," Casey said, looking at Tony with disbelief.
"I don't know," he said as he typed in a command, "you tell me."
Casey followed his eyes to the screen. There was her picture. At least it was a youthful resemblance of her. There were apparently hundreds of women in the file, but Tony had stopped scrolling and gone right to the letter W for Woodgate, her maiden name. Casey read what it said. It disgusted and horrified her at the same time. More than anything, it made her feel terribly unsafe.
"But he never did anything to me," Casey heard herself saying weakly.
Tony searched to the letter S. Marcia Sales's picture appeared before them.
"But he did something to her," Tony said solemnly. He went to the menu again and chose to search through the women by location. Atlanta, Georgia, produced four. Casey recognized one of the names as belonging to the girl who had been killed there only a few months before Marcia Sales's death.
"And her," Casey said.
"The question is," Tony added, "how many others?"
"My God," Casey said. The horror of the whole thing was almost too much. "My God."
"He's a sick son of a bitch," Tony said disgustedly. "He's everything the DA said he was, worse even."
"I know that, Tony," Casey snapped. "But it was a big case, remember?"
Tony shot her a nasty look.
"We lost the rock star so we took the law professor," she said in a voice laced with sarcasm. "We were going to get a lot of media coverage for this one, so we jumped all over it."
Tony continued to stare at her.
"Go easy," he said.
"No, Tony," she snapped. "I'm not going easy. It's wrong. The whole thing is wrong."
Calmly he said, "You were a kid out of law school doing minor-league rape cases for the DA before you met me. Now you get six-figure retainers for people in the news, and they call you to do interviews on CNN. That's what you wanted and that's what I got you. So don't get nasty with me. You wanted this kind of practice as much as I did."
"Well, maybe I don't want it anymore."
Tony glared at her, then stood up and started for the door.
Casey sat there alone for a long time. The small noises of the empty building were amplified in the silence of the Sunday night. Her mind spun this way and that like a broken kite in a stiff wind, going back and forth on what she had been and what she would now be. She wondered if Tony would even want to be a part of the new Casey… Woodgate. She thought about all the things she could have done differently until she could bear it no longer. She had to do something now. She ejected the disk from the Norton Utility and flicked off the computer before turning for the door.
The code of ethics proscribed disclosing the information she had to the police. The privilege between a client and his attorney prevented that. But what if it was to turn up on Bolinger's doorstep anonymously? It was unethical. Then again, what Lipton had done with her had nothing to do with ethics. The way he had manipulated her to represent him, to help set him free, was a despicable misuse of the law, and she had not only been a party to it, she had been the prime mover. She tucked the disk into the pocket of the light coat she'd taken as a hedge against the coming rain and made for the elevator.
It took several minutes for the car to reach the top floor. Only one elevator was operational after hours, and Casey presumed that one had to come all the way up from the basement, where Tony had taken it to get to his own vehicle. When it finally arrived with the familiar ding, Casey peered warily inside before stepping aboard and pushing the lobby button. She wasn't usually skittish, but after the last few days, she wasn't ashamed of being apprehensive.
Anxious to get off, Casey watched the numbers above the door as they hopscotched their way toward the lobby. But when the car reached the second floor, there was none of the typical slowing that preceded a stop. Casey's heart jumped into her throat and her blood began to race. The L button on the panel was no longer lit. She'd pushed it. She was sure she had. She stabbed at it again, but the button only illuminated momentarily before going dark again. She pushed it repeatedly to no avail. The car went right past the lobby. It was as if someone else was in control of the elevator.
P1 was the first level of parking below the street. That floor lighted above the door, but still the elevator continued its descent. It ran past P2 as well, but then began to slow. At P3, the lowest level in the building, the elevator came to a halt. The car was quiet until the doors began to heave themselves open with a mechanical rumble. Casey stabbed at the lobby button once again. The light went on, but as soon as she removed her finger, it went dead dark. She stabbed at it frantically, over and over, while at the same time pounding repeatedly on the Close Door button. Then everything went black.
Casey could hear the dying whine of the elevator motor somewhere below her in the pit of the shaft. Terrified, she pressed herself into the corner of the darkened car and peered out into the yawning gloom of the subterranean garage.
CHAPTER 25
Not far away, in a hip bar on Sixth Street, James Unger was whispering something lewd into a young woman's ear. He took a drink in the face for his efforts. He wasn't angry. He got what he deserved. He was way out of his league, a worn-out government employee, not the slick young law enforcement agent he once was. That was how he'd begun his career, full of hope and grand ideas. Back then he had even fantasized about being the director. But that was then, this was now. He took off his glasses and wiped his face on the sleeve of his golf shirt. After cleaning his glasses, he finished off his vodka tonic. The girl was gone now, and the incredible din of the music made it seem as if the little incident had happened to him in another place and time.
Unger sighed heavily and turned to find his friend. Dean Johnson was standing in front of the band, swaying to the rhythm that wailed from the two massive speakers on either side of the stage. He looked like a fool. A paunch hung down over the front of his belt. The back of his balding head, his thin, sunburned arms, and his big, bulbous nose made Unger look like a catch. In front of the car dealer was the band's lead singer, a raven-headed girl dressed up like a Native American, right down to her beads and moccasins. She had a wicked body that somewhat offset the nastiness of her face, and to the amusement of all the young people watching, she sang her suggestive lyrics right at Dean.
Unger grabbed his friend by the arm and tugged him outside, where the relative quiet of the st
reet rang in their ears.
"What the fuck!" Johnson howled drunkenly. "She wanted me! Did you hear that girl's voice? She wanted me."
Unger only shook his head impatiently. "Let's go home."
His words came out in a long, slow slur.
Johnson looked at his friend in a daze before suddenly grinning and saying, "Not yet. I got a surprise for you."
"What's that?"
"Hookers," Johnson told him, his eyes agleam.
"You're kidding," Unger said. That wasn't his style, but he knew from the last few days that his friend liked to spend every cent of the money he made at his dealership on living well. That meant champagne at dinner, cigars with expensive brandy, and now women. Unger wasn't opposed to it on ethical grounds; it was just something he'd never indulged in before.
"I'm not kidding," Johnson mumbled and began staggering up a side street that intersected Sixth.
"I don't do that stuff," Unger said, trailing him.
"My treat," Johnson muttered. Even though he was from Cleveland, he had adopted a southern drawl, and Unger was suddenly aware of it as acutely as if he were hearing it for the first time. "You ain't gonna go back home without experiencing some of the finest trim Texas has to offer. I'm not talking about a twenty-dollar blow job. I'm talking around the world, my friend. Around the big blue world with a pro in a first-rate establishment."
Unger grabbed his friend gently by the arm and said, "Aw, come on, Dean, you don't really want to go to a whorehouse…"
Johnson's face lit up with a smile. He leaned close to his old friend, and with the alcohol riding hard on his breath, he whispered, "This ain't a whorehouse, my friend. This is the Roman Empire…"
Unger gave him a puzzled look as his brain did a fast rewind. That was a name that he'd just heard, and it had something to do with something important.