The Letter Of The Law

by Tim Green

  "I gotta speak to her," Lipton persisted in his disguised voice. "It's an emergency. I'm a client. At least she told me I was. I just met her through her husband. She'll know me."

  At the words "client" and "emergency," Gina's protective toughness melted away. She became conciliatory and even apologetic when, after several minutes on hold, she got back on the line and explained that she had tried every means she knew of getting hold of Casey.

  "I've left messages everywhere, Mr. Lamb," Gina said. "I'm sure she'll be checking in, and I'll make sure she gets right back to you. Where can you be reached?"

  "No," Lipton said with an evil grin. "I can't do that. I'll have to get back in touch with her myself. When do you think would be a good time to call? Do you have any idea when I can reach her?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Lamb," Gina said. "The office is closing now, but I've left word at her home as well to call me. I wish you'd give me a number."

  "No," Lipton said. "I'll just call her at home tonight. Don't worry about it."

  "All right," Gina said with concern. It wasn't like Casey to just disappear during the day without even checking in. "If you don't get her for any reason, she usually gets in around eight in the morning and you can reach her first thing."

  "Fine," Lipton said, punctuating the end of the call by snapping the phone shut. He sat in the front seat of his van with the air-conditioning blasting. A double layer of clothes, while essential to a perfectly clean crime scene, was an inconvenience in the heat. The fact that someone might see him going into Patti Dunleavy's apartment was of no consequence. The police were looking for him anyway. The thought of being so bold actually pleased him.

  It wasn't long before the girl arrived home at the upscale apartment complex. Lipton knew her car, and when she pulled into a shady spot only a stone's throw from his own van, he slid out of his seat and slithered into the bowels of the van, where he could watch her safely from the shadows. Around him were the tools of his trade: roles of tape, a ladder, coils of rope, sharp knives, and tools ranging from James bars that could open back doors to fine wire cutters and soldering irons that enabled him to tamper with phone and electric systems. A metal desk was built into one wall. The same van had served him well over the years and had seen a lot of miles. Even when his aunt was alive, Lipton had kept it at her lake house, out of the way, unnoticed by anyone.

  When Patti had disappeared up the decorative white stairway, he sat down on the swivel chair that was bolted to the floor in front of the desk and flipped on his computer. With glee, he pulled up his special files and went directly to Patti Dunleavy. He had only recently composed her story, and now he reread it with satisfaction, taking the time to add a few particularly titillating lines to her imagined sexual proclivities. Twice again, he read her story, immersing himself in a trancelike state in which his whole universe stopped and focused its entire energy on the destiny that awaited the haughty young girl who begged to be subjugated.

  If she knew, if any of them really knew the way in which their sexual essence was contributing to the enhancement of his genius and the virility of his power, he believed they might willingly go to their death. But that wasn't their nature. He shook his head no. It wasn't their nature. They were too stubborn and self-consumed to stop and think. So he had to take it from them. It was his due.

  Stirred from within, Lipton picked up his phone off the front seat and dialed Patti's private number.

  "Hello?" she said. She sounded fresh to Lipton, as if she'd just come out of a long, cool shower. He imagined her wrapped in a towel, her hair draped about her shoulders in dark, wet strands.

  "Patti," he said urgently, "this is Professor Lipton. I'm in serious trouble. Everything's all right, but Casey told me I should call you. She said she'd meet me at your apartment."

  "My… she didn't say anything to me," Patti said. She was flustered and uncomfortable. "I haven't heard from her. What's wrong?"

  "I'm on a cell phone right now," he told her. "Casey told me not to talk on the phone. She just said to meet her at your place. I'm on my way. I just wanted to let you know. I didn't want to shock you."

  "You… I…"

  "Don't worry," he said hurriedly. "Casey said to tell you that everything will be fine. I'm sure she's going to call you any minute."

  He didn't want her to panic, to bolt from her apartment or make any rash calls. If she believed him, she would wait by the phone.

  "Okay," she said tentatively.

  "I'll be right there," he said, then hung up.

  Lipton took a small, dark duffel bag and began to carefully load it with the supplies he needed. He was in no great hurry. He knew Casey was unavailable and she was the only person Patti would call. After all, he was a client, and confidentiality was sacrosanct. He liked the idea of taking his time, of savoring every moment in anticipation of what he was about to do. He fussed over each item that went into the bag and dwelled affectionately on the role each would play in his scheme. The last thing to go in was a Tech-9 the ultimate handheld firepower. It was for the emergency he'd never had, but to Lipton, thoroughness was its own reward.

  Fully prepared, he shouldered the small bag and slipped back into the front seat to look around the complex. There was a young man in a short-sleeve white shirt and tie getting out of an aqua green Mustang. Lipton followed his progress across the lot and into his apartment. When the door closed, he got out of his van and crossed the steaming blacktop. After one final glance around, he slowly began to scale the outside staircase two steps at a time toward the young lawyer's apartment on the third floor.

  CHAPTER 33

  Casey sat at Sales's kitchen table, unable to focus on the work in front of her. Papers spilled importantly from her briefcase, but she found herself rereading the same passages of a brief Patti had prepared for an upcoming hearing. It was much easier for her mind to wander over the mounted animal head trophies staring down at her from the high log walls, or to consider the rich history behind the different Native American artifacts. There was something strangely familiar about the rustic austerity of Sales's cabin that made Casey uneasy. This was the setting, after all, in which she'd been raised. Her father and older brother had been hunters and she'd grown up on venison.

  She had time to be introspective now because her concern over Lipton's appearance had waned nearly an hour ago. Each minute that ticked off the clock seemed to mock their plan. Would Lipton really try to abduct her again after what had happened last night? And, if he did, was he desperate enough to strike at the first possible opportunity? Apparently not.

  Casey got up and searched the refrigerator for a diet soda. All she found was orange juice and beer, so she went to the tap and filled a glass, holding it up against the light from the window and looking at the cloudy well water with disgust. It wasn't unlike what she'd had to drink as a girl in Odessa, the same rural setting, the same brackish water. The sight of it was repulsive. She longed for a cold bottle of crystal-clear Evian.

  Casey was suddenly and clearly gripped by panic. What if she was kidding herself? Did she really think she could just unravel the life it had taken her so long to weave? Wasn't she actually part of the upper crust now? Wasn't it possible that she needed Taylor as much or more than he needed her? Could she really do without his money, his manners, his good looks, and his connections? Could she really just leave him? Casey felt panic tighten its grip, as if she had suddenly found herself in a hopeless dream. She had never been confused before. All her life she had known exactly what she'd wanted.

  Now she felt that she knew nothing. Her heart told her a better life was out there for her. But her mind was spinning, all because of a cloudy glass of water and the familiar feel of a spartan cabin in the sticks. She didn't know if she had the courage to really change her life. Her confidence had been shaken. Her brazen certainty that every move she made in life was the right one had been crippled by the Lipton case. She had been hunted and terrorized. Her husband had betrayed her. All those things, thing
s she never imagined could happen to her, had happened within a few short days.

  She held her nose and gulped down a few mouthfuls of the water. It tasted as bad to her as she remembered. Scared and confused, she sat back down and exhaled a long, trembling breath. Then she heard something at the back of the cabin that brought her back to the immediate present, a door slowly opening. She jumped to her feet and tiptoed across the wood-planked floor. The hall leading to the back of the cabin was dark. At the sight of a figure moving toward her, Casey's chest tightened.

  "It's me," Sales said quietly. He moved down the hall, gimping slightly from sitting for so long in the same position. "He's not coming."

  "I know," she said in an unnecessary whisper. "If he was going to, he would have by now. There's no way he'd think I'd have any reason to stay here this long. I figured after the first half hour that he wasn't coming."

  Sales moved through the kitchen and pushed aside a dusty curtain to peer out at the dirt road that led to his place. He let the curtain drop and then went into the great room to his gun cabinet. From the bottom drawer he withdrew a nickel-plated snub-nose.38 along with a calf holster, then returned to the kitchen.

  Casey tried to bury her inner doubts for the time being. She watched Sales critically from across the breakfast bar and asked, "What's that for? You already have a gun."

  "It's always good to have backup," Sales said. His boot was up on a chair now and his loose pant leg was pulled up to his knee as he strapped the holster to his leg.

  "So…" Casey said as he spun the cylinder, snapped it shut, and placed it in the holster, "what's next?"

  "We just keep setting you up," he said, turning his attention back to her. "Sooner or later, he's going to make a move."

  "Sooner or later, as in two weeks from now? Two months?" Casey said incredulously. "I can't live like this. I've got a life…"

  "Look, I don't know how long," Sales said patiently. "I don't know what to tell you. I'm as frustrated as you are. At least you had the chance to get something done in here."

  Casey followed his eyes to the table where her papers were splayed and said morosely, "I wish I could say it did me some good."

  Recalled to her duty, she took her cell phone from the briefcase and looked at it for the first time. It was unusual for her not to have gotten any calls.

  "You'll have to use my phone," Sales told her, pointing to the countertop, where an old chocolate brown phone sat on top of the yellow pages. "Cell phones don't work out here… there's no towers."

  "I was just wondering why I didn't get any calls," she said, picking up his phone. She dialed the office, looking at her watch. It was just after five, but sometimes Gina stayed late. She hung up on the answering service and dialed her voice mail. Crossing the kitchen with the phone in hand, she sat down with a pen and her yellow legal pad. The dejection of their failed attempt at trapping Lipton left her feeling foolish and slightly guilty for neglecting the clients who were counting on her. With them, at least, she knew just what to do.

  Sales took out a bottle of beer from the fridge and sat down at the table to think while Casey patiently listened to and transcribed nearly two dozen messages.

  "Bob Bolinger called," she said, looking up. "He says he needs to talk."

  She wrote down his cell phone number but continued to listen. There were only two more messages on the machine, and she wanted to get through them before she rang up the detective. The next message was a strangely urgent plea from Gina to call someone called Kurt Lamb, who claimed to be a client but whom Casey had never heard of. When the next message came, she forgot everything that she'd heard before.

  "Casey, this is Patti," came the sound of the young woman's voice over the phone. "I… I need to know what's going on. It's Professor Lipton. He's… he just called, and he's on his way over. He said you wanted him to come. I… I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't mean to overreact, but I wanted to make sure you really talked to him. Can you call me? He's coming and I don't know what to do…"

  "Oh my God!" Casey exclaimed. Instantly she hung up and dialed Patti's home number. After twelve hopeless rings, she began stuffing her papers haphazardly into the briefcase.

  "What happened?" Sales asked with concern. He had risen from his seat and set the beer down half empty on the table.

  "We've got to go," she said in a panic. "We've got to stop him."

  "Stop who?" Sales asked, grasping Casey firmly by the shoulders. "What are you talking about?"

  "Lipton!" she screamed at him. "It's not me he's going after, it's Patti!"

  "Your assistant?" Sales said, hurrying now with her toward the front door.

  "Yes," Casey said, leaping from the porch and sprinting for her Mercedes.

  Sales got in beside her and braced himself as she spun up a cloud of dust and stones backing around in the driveway. "How do you know?" he asked. "What happened?"

  "She left me a message," Casey told him, her hands on the wheel in a death grip. "She said Lipton called her-that I told him to-that I'd meet him there. I called her back, but I didn't get an answer."

  Sales didn't say a word. He stared grimly at the road. Casey pointed at her briefcase and instructed him to take out her cell phone.

  "Bolinger left me his cell phone number and I wrote it down on that legal pad. Get it and call him."

  "I can't," Sales said, "remember? There's no towers."

  "When will we be in range, do you know?" she demanded.

  "About five more miles, I think," he said. "When we get to the bridge."

  Casey stepped on the gas even harder.

  "Easy," he said. "It won't do anyone any good if you kill us."

  Casey didn't hear. "He's going to kill her," she heard herself saying.

  "Maybe not," he said. "Maybe we can get there, or the police, maybe Bolinger can get there."

  When they got to the bridge, Sales dialed the detective's number and handed the phone to Casey. They came to the top of a hill and the Mercedes lifted nearly off the ground. Bolinger answered tiredly on the third ring. In a panicked voice, Casey explained the situation. It took several minutes to communicate through the static of the bad connection, but finally Bolinger understood. He said he'd get there as fast as he could.

  "I'll get a patrol car there, too. If anyone's close, they may get there sooner than either of us," the detective said before hanging up.

  Casey clapped the phone shut and tossed it over to Sales. A salty drop tickled her upper lip and she realized that tears were streaming down her face. The image of being helpless and abducted herself was fresh in her own mind. While part of her was grateful to have Sales beside her, at the same time another part of her was filled with loathing and fear that anyone could do that to another person. But more than anything, the image of Patti being harmed by Lipton at that very moment pushed her to the edge of sanity.

  "How far away are we?" Sales said. He had no idea where Patti lived.

  "Not far from here. She's on this side of town in Sunset Valley. Fifteen minutes, maybe ten," Casey said grimly. "We should have known…"

  "How could we know?" Sales argued. Inside, he was awash with his own guilt. Lipton hadn't really been in the garage the night before. Sales had commandeered the elevator himself to scare Casey into helping him. The shots he'd fired were wasted rounds that he knew no one else would hear three levels below the ground in a garage abandoned for the weekend. While he'd never tell Casey, it was he who should have at least suspected that Lipton might be up to something else. He hadn't seen a sign of him in two days.

  "But how could we have known he was going to go after Patti?" he said aloud. "She wasn't on the disk."

  "But she fit his profile perfectly," Casey said bitterly. "I should have suspected it… The way he, the way he turned it on whenever he was around her at the trial, stroking her for the littlest insight. Even the tone of his voice when he spoke to her was…"

  She shook her head and said, "I should have seen it. But I was too worried abou
t myself and I never even thought about her."

  Sales took the pistol from his belt and carefully examined it, unloading it, sliding the action smoothly back and forth, and reloading it with a metallic snap.

  "We'll make it," he said.

  Casey unclamped her teeth only long enough to say, "We have to make it. My God, we have to."

  CHAPTER 34

  Patti was startled by the loud knock. It had come so much sooner than she'd expected. Besides the professor, she couldn't think of anyone else it could be. She hurried to the door and peered through the peephole. It was Lipton. Patti felt a strange mixture of dread and excitement. She couldn't imagine why Casey would send him to her apartment. Of course, that same enigma made it exciting.

  Patti glanced quickly back into her apartment. It was tastefully decorated with dark green overstuffed furniture and white walls adorned with silver-framed posters of van Gogh's most famous paintings. Still, she felt self-conscious. She knew instinctively that it was inadequate for someone of Professor Lipton's taste and experience. He knocked again and, with a helpless sigh and a painful smile, she opened the door, letting in a hellish wave of heat from the outside.

  Lipton greeted her with the same warm, handsome smile that he had when they'd first met. The gleam in his eyes would have made her think he was on drugs if she didn't know better. He also looked somewhat heavier to her, and then she realized that it was because of his clothes. Strange that he should be clad from head to toe in a dark sweat suit that he'd zipped to the top of his throat. Even his short walk from the parking lot had left his bronze forehead bathed in sweat. There was also something on his back, a duffel bag maybe, whose strap was wrapped around one shoulder and across his chest.

  "Come in," she said, smiling and flipping her hair nervously behind one ear. "I wasn't expecting you this soon."