The Letter Of The Law

CHAPTER 22

Sales threw the knife toward the back of the cave and then threw himself down beside her on the stone floor.

Casey watched him shake. After several minutes he began to tire, and soon he rose to his hands and knees, with his face turned away from her. Sales stood and then wiped his face on his sleeve and retrieved the knife from where it had landed. When he returned, he carefully cut through the tape at her ankles, then her hands. Finally, slowly, he unwrapped the band around her mouth, gently pressing down on her scalp to remove the sticky tape from her hair as painlessly as possible.

Casey rubbed her wrists and blinked at him in the dim light of the cave. Sales sat back against the far wall and hugged his knees to his chest.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, looking down at the floor between them. Then he looked up at her defiantly and said, "But I wanted you to know what she felt like. I wanted you to know what they all felt like, what the next girl will feel like and the girl after that and the one after that… Unless you help me, it won't ever stop."

"What"-Casey cleared her throat and whispered-"what are you talking about?"

Sales looked at her. The passionate fire in his eyes was quenched. They were tired now, dull, almost lifeless.

"I'm talking about Lipton," he said. "I didn't kill Marcia. I didn't kill Frank Castle or the other girl. He killed them all. And he's going to kill you."

Casey wrinkled her face in doubt. She was still trembling. Sales got up and removed a big flannel shirt from his pile of things. He crossed the floor of the cave and put it around her shoulders. The kindness of the act was magnified a hundredfold. The relief she felt was overwhelming. She railed against the inexplicable sudden feeling of gratitude she had toward Sales. After all, he had kidnapped her and terrorized her. Casey remembered reading that victims of torture experienced similar emotions, and she suspected this was the same thing. Whatever was causing it, she couldn't help the way she felt, almost giddy.

"I'm not crazy," he said, sitting back down and leaning back against the wall. With profound sadness he continued, "And if I was a killer, I would have killed you for what you did."

Casey looked at Sales, and the memory of her tearing him apart on the witness stand was painfully fresh. Tony Cronic's warning about accusing an innocent man of having sex with his daughter came to her mind. Despite the complexity of emotions she was feeling, shame jumped to the forefront.

"Why do you say he's going to kill me?" Casey heard herself say, the lawyer's part of her mind automatically probing for information.

Sales shrugged. "Because he's watching you. He has a white van that he drives. I don't know how he gets in your neighborhood past the security gates, but I saw him."

Casey thought of the white van she'd seen and the shadowy figure in the parking garage at work.

"He disappeared after the trial, you know," Sales said. "He probably knew I was going to kill him…"

"You said you weren't a killer," Casey said, unable to keep a hint of panic from seeping back into her voice.

Sales considered her in the gloom of the cave. He looked down as if contemplating his words, then looked up at her again. "Yeah, well that's different… You don't have any kids. You can't really understand…"

His eyes were alight again. Casey said nothing. She didn't want to think about it.

"You can't love anything like you love a little girl. You can't imagine it," he said emotionally. "Having your child die, having her killed, having her tortured, cut up… that's too much for anyone to think about. But I didn't have a choice, Casey Jordan. Lipton did those things to my little girl…

"Someone who did that," he said bitterly, his voice rising, "you kill someone who did that, you rip the life from their body. It's not murder… It's justice."

"Why am I here?" Casey asked after an uncomfortable silence.

"I told you," Sales said, looking so deeply into her eyes that she felt exposed. "I want your help."

"How would I help you?" Casey asked.

"I want you to tell me how to find him. What he does, how he does it. I know there was another girl. I want to know where. Where was he then, where else has he gone. You're his lawyer. There are things you know about him that no one else knows. I want to know. That's how you can help find him."

"But there's more," Casey said.

"Yes, there is more," Sales told her. "I know he wants you. If I can stay close to you, I'll get a chance at him. Sooner or later, I'll get a chance at him… you're the perfect person to help. You're the one who got him off."

Casey looked at him for a long time before saying quietly, "I still don't know that he killed anyone."

"Hah!" Sales snorted. "You don't know? You don't know? Think about it! You know goddamn well he did it."

"Either he did it or you did it," Casey said angrily. "I don't really know. You didn't have an alibi. You could have killed the girl in Atlanta."

"Could I?" Sales said disdainfully.

"Yes."

Sales jumped to his feet, and with his flashlight in one hand blinding her, he brandished the knife with the other. "If I was going to kill anyone, I'd kill you. How come I didn't kill you just now? Explain that away, Casey Jordan. If that's what I do, I'd kill you!" His words resonated through the cave before the darkness could swallow the sound.

Casey wasn't scared all over again. She knew Sales was angry, but there was no malice in his words. He was speaking out of frustration, and what he said was true. She had expected him to kill her. If he had killed everyone else, why wouldn't he have done it? Unless…

"Unless you want me to get to Professor Lipton," she said, shielding her eyes from his light with her hand. "You hate him."

"I would," Sales said. "But if that were true, why would I kill Frank Castle?"

"To make it look like Professor Lipton," she said.

"Now you're not even thinking," he retorted. "If all I wanted was to kill Lipton, why would I bother trying to frame him for another murder?"

"Because of what Frank Castle did to you at the trial," Casey said. It was surreal to be sitting there talking about life and death as if they were poker chips.

"Now we're back to you," Sales said calmly, taking his light off her and shining it on the rock floor that lay between them. "If I was going to kill someone over what happened at the trial, you'd have been first on my list. Believe me, you would have been the only one on my list… And if Lipton wasn't the killer, he wouldn't be stalking you. And if he wasn't the killer, stalking you, then there wouldn't be any reason to keep you alive to help me find him."

Casey was used to thinking quickly on her feet, and she knew that everything Sales said was perfectly logical. "You said you wanted me to tell you how to find him."

"I do," Sales said. "But if that's all I wanted, I could have gotten it out of you. Believe me, I could have gotten it out of you and then killed you."

"But we have the disk," she responded.

"What disk?"

"A copy of his computer hard drive. It might have information on it."

"I never knew about a computer disk," Sales said.

Casey rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. Of course he didn't know about that. She sighed wearily. "I'm exhausted. I just don't know anything right now. Why is Bolinger so convinced you killed Frank Castle?"

"When he came to question me after Castle was killed," Sales said, "I got in my truck to follow him down to the police station. While I was driving, I reached under my seat for a little thing of lip balm that I dropped. I felt a sticky rag under there, and I had no idea what it was. When I put on the light, I saw it was a shirt and it was all covered with blood. The blood was all over my hands and this knife was wrapped in the middle of the shirt…

"Don't you see?" he said. "Lipton put it there. The police would've found it and I would've gone to jail for the rest of my life, if they didn't give me the death penalty. That's what he wants. He's afraid of me. I'm the only thing he is afraid of, because he knows he can't kill me. I'll crush him like a bug. He kills women, girls he can overpower, Frank Castle. He's big and he's strong and he's smart, but he still knows that I'll kill him if I get my hands on him. That's why he wants me in jail. Without me he can do what he wants, kill anyone he wants…"

"Meaning me?"

"You and others, too. He'll keep killing," Sales said simply. "He won't stop."

"Why are you so sure he wants to kill me?" Casey asked.

"Because I know. I thought so before I saw him going past your house. I saw the way he looked at you all during the trial. I know. It's a sense, but I know."

"How did you know it was him that drove past?"

"I watched your house for two days. I know him," Sales said.

"Why didn't you just follow him then?"

"I didn't have a car," Sales explained.

"What are you going to do with me now?" Casey asked quietly.

"I'm not going to do anything with you," he said. "I'm not going to force you to help me. At best, you'd slow me down. At worst, you'd trip me up. You do what you want. I'll take you to your car. But if you don't help me, you're making a mistake, a big mistake…"

Casey sat still, thinking. Sales got up and opened a can of beans. He handed them to her with a spoon. "You must be hungry."

Casey wolfed them down without a second thought. They tasted as good as anything she'd ever eaten.

"I'll hunt him until I die," Sales said vaguely as Casey wiped the last bit of sauce from the inside of the can with her fingers and licked them clean. "The police won't catch me, and I'll hunt him till I get him. But the longer it takes me, the more women he's going to kill."

"Even if I wanted to help you," Casey said wearily, "there's nothing I can do. The police are looking for you."

"They won't get me. I told you that," he said.

"But I can't help you by crawling around in the woods."

"You can help me by staying with me," Sales said. "I don't mean in a cave. You have a car. You have credit cards and money. You can show me that disk you were talking about. Maybe there's something on it that will tell us where he is or where he'll go next. You can help me track him down."

"No. I can't do that," she said. "I can't help someone who's running from the police. That's aiding and abetting a fugitive. That's a crime. In fact, I should tell you to turn yourself in. I'm not saying it just because of legal ethics, either. It's the smartest thing you could do. The police will get you. Sooner or later, they almost always do. If you turn yourself in, there isn't a judge in Austin who wouldn't give you a reasonable bail. I can help you that way if you want. I can help you turn yourself in…"

Sales shook his head. "No. That's not happening. I'm not turning myself in and taking that chance. I don't care what you say. The police won't get me."

"The police will be looking for me, though," she said. "That makes it even more likely that they'll find you."

"No," Sales said. "They won't be looking for you. I don't think they will anyway. Does the alarm company have the keys to your house?"

"No."

"So you must have had the alarm go off before," Sales said. "Think about what happens. First, they call the house. When there's no answer, they call the police. When the police get there, they look around the outside of the house. If there's no sign of anyone breaking in and the alarm company doesn't have a key to the house, they think it's a false alarm. They file a report and go away. Unless your husband came home yesterday, which from the size of his suitcase it didn't look like, then there probably isn't even anyone who knows you're gone."

"That's how you planned it," Casey said bitterly.

"That's how I planned it," Sales admitted. "I'm not going to beg you, you know. But if you don't help, there's going to be a lot more killing…"

"I can't just help you hunt someone down to kill them," Casey said, shaking her head. "That goes against everything I believe in."

Sales shrugged. "You believe he should go on killing?"

After a long pause, Casey said, "If I helped you in any way-if I helped you-then it would be to bring Professor Lipton to the police, not to hunt him down to kill him. I can't do that and I can't help you do that. I never would."

"Even if more innocent women are going to die?" Sales said sharply. "Even if he's going to try to kill you?"

"Yes, even if that," Casey said. "I believe in the system despite its shortcomings. We can't just go out and execute people. That's lawlessness."

Sales scoffed at that with a derisive snort. "Look what your system has done. It's nothing to be so proud of."

"That's your opinion," Casey retorted, defending her vocation out of habit, but aware deep down of her own new doubts. "Nothing's perfect, but it's what I believe in. Whatever help I can be, I have to be to the police."

"That's just what Lipton would want you to do," Sales said in disgust.

"Why is that?" Casey asked dubiously.

"Lipton knows how to stay ahead of the police," Sales cried. "They can't catch him any more than they can catch me. What do they do? Stake out his house, the way they did mine? That's a joke. He knows the rules of the game too well. The police can't get to him the way I can. I'm a hunter and I don't have anything holding me back. You should know that better than anyone. The police can't just bust into a hotel room or break into his van, but I can. He can't hide behind the law from me. But he'll beat the police. He beat them before and he's learned from it. He's always learning. He's a piece of shit, but he's smart.

"Listen," Sales continued. "I want him stopped, period. If you help me get him, I won't kill him."

Casey looked at him skeptically.

"If you help me in a way that'll guarantee he goes to jail," Sales added, "then I won't kill him."

"You're lying," Casey said.

"When Lipton told you he didn't kill that girl in Atlanta," Sales said, "did you believe him?"

"Yes," she said, after a pause.

"Why? Because that's what he said, right?"

"Yes," Casey replied. "That's what he said."

"So, I'm saying I won't kill him and I want you to believe me. I won't kill him. If it means you'll help me, then I won't. If that's what it takes, then I'm saying I'll bring him to justice, to the police. Just give me the same deal you gave him. Help me, Casey. I need your help."

"I want you to take me to my car," Casey said after a few silent minutes of contemplation. "I need to go home. I need to sleep. I need to think."

Sales nodded and rose. The mouth of the cave was beginning to fill up with the pale light of dawn.

"I'll take you to your car, Casey Jordan," Sales said. "But will you help me?"

"Maybe," Casey said, rising stiffly, anxious to get away. She was thinking of the computer disk Tony had. Part of her said it would be wrong to use it. Lipton had given her the computer in confidence as a client. But he was a killer. Didn't she have a higher duty to help stop him if she could?

"Maybe I will."