The Letter Of The Law

by Tim Green

  "Thank you," he said, stepping across the threshold and closing the door behind him. With a small laugh he added, "I was really just around the corner, you know."

  Patti nodded and turned to lead him into the living room without noticing that he paused to throw the bolt on the door.

  "Would you like something to drink?" she asked. "A soda?"

  "Nothing at all," he told her, assessing the layout as he slowly followed her in. The kitchen was on the left. Beyond it was a combination dining area and living room that ended at a set of sliding glass doors leading out to a covered terrace. There was a door opposite the kitchen that led to a half bathroom. The door to the bedroom itself was toward the back of the living room on the right.

  "Please, sit down," Patti said, positioning herself in front of the bedroom door with a coffee table between them. There was something unnerving about the professor, the way he was dressed and the way he looked at her. Patti knew something was wrong, but she didn't want to admit to herself that she'd done a foolish thing by letting him in. She told herself over and over that everything was fine.

  "Do you mind if I use the bathroom?" he asked suddenly.

  "No, please," Patti said, pointing, glad to have him out of her presence even for a moment. "It's right there behind you."

  "Thank you," he said urbanely. Inside the bathroom, Lipton shed his small canvas bag and removed a pair of thick wool dress socks as well as some black leather driving gloves and a small cloth object. The other things could wait. He set the bag on the floor in the corner.

  After pulling the socks over his shoes and the gloves over his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror. He, too, saw the glaze in his eyes. He was beaming, strong and virile. Nothing could stop him. It was the flush of destiny. With great satisfaction he took the cloth object and stretched it over his head. Besides the two holes for his eyes, there was only one other opening in the black mask, a small slit he could breathe through. He was death.

  "Patti?" he said softly with his gloved hand on the doorknob. "Patti?"

  He heard her crossing the room.

  "Is everything all right?" she said, standing back from the door, still insisting to herself that everything was perfectly fine.

  Lipton emitted a nervous chuckle and said, "The door, it's stuck. I can't get out. Is there a trick to this?"

  Patti stood where she was.

  "Patti?" he said. "Help me, will you?"

  "All right."

  Lipton held the doorknob tight until he could sense her pressing against the door, putting all her strength into it. With one swift motion, he twisted the knob, yanked it open, and caught her by the throat as she fell toward him.

  For almost two seconds, the shock was too much for Patti to overcome. In that time he'd thrown her down to the floor and mounted her with all his weight bearing down on her chest. Then she began to fight, and in that area she didn't disappoint him. Wildly she clawed and kicked, her nails falling harmlessly on his nylon suit and her feet striking nothing but air. Then she began to punch, tight little fists thrown with remarkable ferocity, but waning by the second.

  Lipton bore down with all his strength, cutting off the blood to her brain, but at the same time keeping his thumbs on either side of her larynx to maximize the pressure on her carotid arteries. Soon her limbs did nothing more than twitch, and he felt a thrill run through him as her eyes rolled back in her head. Immediately, he let go of her neck and scrambled into the bathroom for his kit. Within seconds, he had stripped her naked and bound her wrists, ankles, and mouth tightly with his tape. Once she was secured, he took the time to neatly fold her clothes and set them on the back of the couch, saving the underwear for himself. Those he would use to clean his knife and save as a trophy of his conquest.

  After all, she was his now. Her essence belonged to him. It was waiting there for him. But he wanted her awake. He wanted her to know just how much power he had. All the whispering between her and Casey during the trial, he'd seen that. He knew they talked about him. He knew they made jokes between themselves about his impotence. Strong women loved to emasculate a man, especially a man of his great intellect. They paled next to his mental brilliance and they were bitter about it. Now she would know. She would know that he was a sexual beast and that he would use her own sexual essence as a fuel for his latent passions.

  Lipton whipped off his mask and stuffed it into the bag with his other things. He stood over her, waiting and staring hungrily at her naked figure until he felt a remote stirring within his groin. Part of him wanted her badly, but he would not risk that. He needed his powder, and he needed a woman who would not only succumb to him, but beg him for it. He conjured up the image of his little whore downtown and turned that over in his mind until Patti began to stir. Soon her eyelids would flutter to life and she would see him there, standing over her in complete control.

  Lipton bent down and took the long, cruel-looking knife from his bag. Lovingly, he unsheathed it. When her eyes finally opened, they were wide with horror. Lipton began to talk and as he explained to her what he was going to do and why, he also chortled quietly but uncontrollably at the pitifully smothered shrieks and moans that escaped her injured throat.

  "Are you crying now?" he asked, mimicking concern. Then with venom he added, "You should have thought of that when you were mocking me! When you were laughing at me and looking like a little slut and thinking that there was nothing I could do about it. But there is something I can do! I can do this!"

  Lipton bent down over her thrashing body and pinned her with his knees. Expertly, he inserted the point of his knife just below her rib cage and slipped it down toward her belly, opening a hideous bloody gash in her torso. Her terrified strangled screams mingled with Lipton's laughter, filling the room with inhuman noise.

  CHAPTER 35

  Casey raced into the parking lot. Over the scream of tires, Sales asked her which unit belonged to Patti.

  "Three-C," Casey said, remembering the first week Patti moved in and proudly invited her for a spaghetti dinner. "The top corner at the far end of the building!"

  Sales pointed toward a white van at the other end of the lot and said, "He's here!"

  Casey slammed on her brakes, sending the car in a sideways skid. Sales leapt from the vehicle before it had even stopped. Casey slammed the car into park and chased Sales up the stairs as fast as she could. When Sales got to 3-C, he tried the door's handle once before kicking it. The door shuddered from the blow but stood strong. Spinning around, Sales leaned forward and kicked back like a mule, bursting the door from its frame in a cascade of splintered wood.

  With Casey now just behind him, Sales sprang into the hallway in a crouched position. Lipton, warned by the first kick at the door, welcomed him with a deafening hail of bullets from his Tech-9 sending Sales back out the doorway as quickly as he'd come. When the gunfire stopped, Sales waved a hand up high and came in low again. This time there was no gunfire. He edged into the apartment, knees bent, his Glock extended with both hands in a shooting position.

  After a moment of silence, Casey peeked in after Sales. He had reached the living room now, and as he ducked into the bedroom gun first, Casey rushed toward Patti's inert body. A dreadful shriek escaped her lips at the sight of the gore. Blood was everywhere. She rushed for the phone and dialed 911. Her mind barely registered Sales as he burst from the bedroom and out onto the terrace. Gunfire cut through her shock, and she realized that Sales was firing over the edge of the railing.

  Lipton had climbed down the outside of the building, hanging and jumping from terrace to terrace until he reached the ground. Sales caught only a glimpse of him as he raced across the grass and rounded the corner of the building. After two wild shots, he dashed back into the apartment and past Casey to the outside stairway without a glance. From there, he couldn't see Lipton's van. He took the steps three at a time, cursing loudly when he saw the van shoot across the lot and out into the street. Seconds later, Sales was at the wheel of the Mercede
s and, with tires shrieking, fast on Lipton's trail.

  A squad car was next to arrive. Having come from the opposite direction, the patrolmen had no idea that they'd missed Sales's wild chase of Lipton by thirty seconds. Bolinger wasn't far behind the cruiser. He knew from his radio that a 911 call had been made from the girl's apartment and that an ambulance was on its way. When he and Unger pushed through the crowd of onlookers and walked through the apartment's shattered doorway, they were struck by the scene of Casey, bloody to the elbows, bent over Patti's body. She was sobbing hysterically, with the two officers on either side of her not knowing what to do.

  "Seal this place off," Bolinger told them. "Get all those people the hell out of here."

  Relieved to have some direction, the patrolmen exited the apartment. As Bolinger got closer, he gasped at what he saw. The girl had been opened in exactly the same manner as Frank Castle and Marcia Sales before him.

  "My God," he said. "Lipton."

  Unger saw it, too, and suddenly bolted for the kitchen sink, where he began to vomit what was left of his lunch.

  Bolinger knelt down next to Casey, but like her, he had no idea what to do. The grisly wound was so extensive that he couldn't imagine how he could stop the bleeding. With Patti's insides exposed, he was afraid to apply pressure to anything. With the tips of his fingers, he felt for a pulse in her neck.

  "She's alive," he said in wonderment.

  Casey looked down at him in disbelief.

  "Get some towels," he told her. "Look in the bathroom."

  The towels were clean and white and Bolinger laid them gently over the girl's gaping wound and pressed gently down on them to try to stem the flow of blood as much as possible without damaging her internal organs.

  "Get a knife in here, James," he said over his shoulder. "Come cut this tape off."

  Unger did as he was told, also glad for something more to do than rinse out the inside of his mouth at the kitchen faucet.

  "What happened?" Bolinger asked Casey. "Can you tell me?"

  Casey shook her head. "When we got here, Donald kicked in the door and Lipton started shooting. When he stopped, we waited before we went back in. By the time we did, Lipton was gone. Donald went after him…"

  "Sales?" Bolinger asked incredulously. "Donald Sales?"

  "Yes," Casey said blankly.

  Bolinger didn't get to ask his next question because the paramedics arrived. Casey tried to go with Patti to the hospital but the paramedics refused to transport a non-family member.

  As the ambulance roared away with its sirens blaring, Bolinger, who had supervised the total containment of the area, put his hand on Casey's shoulder. The two of them stood inside the yellow tape under a low-hanging birch tree on the sidewalk that led from the parking lot to the building.

  "How did you end up here with Don Sales?" he asked, looking at her over the top of the flame he was using to light up a Winston.

  Casey's face went blank with the practiced poker visage of a lawyer who knew better than to give information away. Then, with a sigh, she dropped her facade and simply said, "He saved my life. Lipton was after me, and Donald stopped him. We were trying to draw him out when I got a message from Patti that he was on his way to her place. I called you and we got here as fast as we could. When Lipton took off, Donald went after him. I left my car in the lot out here when we went in, and he must have taken it to follow Lipton. Where they are now, I have no idea…"

  "But I do."

  Both Casey and Bolinger turned their heads. It was James Unger. The frumpy FBI agent stood there in his best suit, his hair slicked back, with a pair of clip-on sunglasses presiding over his crooked grin.

  "I wanted to make sure," he lamely explained to Bolinger. "I had to check out a couple of leads I had this afternoon, but it paid off. I know where Lipton is."

  "How?" Bolinger said.

  "It's a long story. I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, but it's something I've been working on. He's been staying in a lake house up at Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir. The place belongs to a trust in the name of Sarah Lipton," Unger said importantly. "His aunt. Lipton is the trustee. He's using the house and her credit cards and checks, too. They all belong to the trust."

  With just a hint of condescension he added, "That's why you haven't been able to track him down. Everything he's done over the last few months, he's done in her name."

  "Where's the aunt?" Bolinger asked without acknowledging Unger's slight.

  Unger shrugged. "I don't know. She could be anywhere. She could be dead."

  "Let's go," Bolinger said.

  "You think that's where he's headed?" Casey asked them.

  "I don't know," Bolinger told her, tossing his cigarette to the sidewalk and grinding it out with his toe, "but it's the only thing we've got."

  Casey rode with them in the back of Bolinger's cruiser. Bolinger drove fast. Unger sat beside him in silent thought.

  From time to time, the agent's fingertips would flicker to his glasses, readjusting them nervously on his nose before fading down to his lap, where he would caress the wallet in the front pocket of his pants. In it were all his points of contact written on a carefully folded sheet of paper. He'd spent the afternoon feeling his way through the media, making sure he had access to the right people and titillating them with promises of a diabolical serial killer about to be taken down by the FBI. His diligence had paid off. He now had the home and cell phone numbers for news producers at each of the three major networks as well as the Today show, Nightline, and Larry King. The minute the arrest was made he'd start dialing, and it was him they'd come to interview.

  All he needed now was a little more luck. If Sales somehow ran Lipton to ground, much of Unger's thunder would be stolen. If, however, Lipton managed to escape, sooner or later he'd return to the lake house and when he did…

  CHAPTER 36

  Sales jammed on his brakes and dipped back inside the double yellow line. A tractor-trailer hummed past with his sonorous air horn blaring. The next instant, Sales crossed over the line again, this time accelerating past a Volkswagen bug just as it topped a rise in the road. The scream of the little car's horn and its driver's middle finger never registered with Sales. His focus was on the white van that was up ahead weaving smoothly through four lanes of traffic. When the road widened to four lanes at the bottom of the hill, Sales, too, was able to move much faster.

  The height of the van had made it possible for Sales to draw a bead on the professor from the moment he pulled out of the apartment complex. Compared with his own pickup truck, the maneuverability of the Mercedes and the power of its large engine gave him a superhuman feeling. Exhilaration and the car's true capabilities had enabled him to steadily close the gap. But after Sales's first wild pass, Lipton began to drive like a maniac. Then it became a game of chance. There were few risks either of them was unwilling to take, and it seemed only a matter of time before one or the other would end in a fiery heap of crushed metal and glass.

  Sales careened up behind a delivery truck in the left lane. He flashed his lights and leaned on the horn. For a moment, he lost sight of the van. The instant the ponderous truck began to move into the right lane, Sales floored the accelerator. But in that same second, he realized that Lipton had dipped through a small break in the center guardrail and was now racing full speed in the opposite direction. In the fleck of time it took for the two vehicles to pass each other, Sales could clearly make out the professor's contorted grin.

  Sales's mind suddenly slowed and it seemed almost a matter of hours while he considered all the things he could or should have done to stay on the professor's tail. In reality, it was less than twenty seconds before he reached the next intersection, spun in a wild U-turn, and began his chase anew. But those seconds had been too costly. The white van was nowhere to be seen. Sales slowed his progress along the four-lane road, his head on a crazy swivel, scanning the parking lots and driveways of restaurants, strip malls, and gas stations for any sign of t
he hidden van. It was hopeless. He sped five miles in one direction, nearly halfway back to the apartment complex, before turning around and racing back.

  Sales's stomach was in knots and a salty wave of nausea swept over him. The image of Lipton's sneering face as he went the opposite way in the van had burned itself into the forefront of his brain. It was a sight that would haunt him the rest of his living days. He knew that, and his breathing became shallow and strained. A sweat broke out on his upper lip and forehead, despite the cool blast of the big car's air-conditioner. It was that same feeling of panic he'd felt when he'd called his daughter's apartment and gotten no answer. It was that sense that everything had gone wrong and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Lipton was gone, and every instinct Sales possessed as a hunter told him that he wouldn't get that close again. Lipton had experienced too much pressure. He had already proved that his obsession with Casey wasn't insatiable. He'd moved on to Patti. His next victim would be on the other side of the country, perhaps the other side of the world. Sales's head began to throb. A low, pathetic stuttering noise rumbled in his throat, the sound of panic. The fleeting urge to pull over, put the Glock in his own mouth, and pull the trigger was so palpable he could almost taste the tangy metal barrel.

  "Fuck that," Sales said angrily and aloud.

  He had to think like a hunter. Right now, he was hunting an animal. That was what Lipton was. Despite his money, his urbane manner, and his dashing good looks, he was an animal, not a human being, an animal. Sales knew how to think like an animal. When stalking an animal, one had to predict its path of escape and head it off. Lipton was hiding somewhere. He was sure the white van was tucked in behind one of the myriad buildings lining the busy road. When he came out, whenever that was, he would head for his warren. He would seek a path to safety using the quickest, easiest route. Sales considered the area he was in. The closest highway was 290. The question was: east or west?