The Letter Of The Law

CHAPTER 29

Casey opened her eyes and smelled coffee. By the time she was out of the shower, there was a bacon smell in the air as well. In the kitchen, Sales met her with a broad if somewhat embarrassed grin. She glanced into the living room to see that the pillows on the couch looked undisturbed. Had she not seen him drop down on his back and fall instantly asleep, she would have doubted that he'd even slept.

"I used the shower down the hall," Sales said, "and I found a razor under the sink. I hope you don't mind."

"No," she said absently. She had insisted that he come inside the house last night rather than sleep in the cab of the pickup truck. The concern she had about Taylor showing up and creating a scene was outweighed by her fear of staying in the big house alone.

"Sit down," he told her. "Do you like to eat?"

"Not usually like this in the morning," she said, adding, "not lately anyway. But when I was a girl, it was an every-morning thing in my family.

"We lived on a farm," she added, unsure of why she was telling him a fact that she normally concealed.

"Good," Sales said, giving her a funny look. In the midst of finishing his preparations, he poured her a hot mug of the strong coffee.

As they began to eat, Casey found that in fact she was quite hungry. When they were finished, she said she would clean up and she liked the way he let her.

"I'm going to give Detective Bolinger that disk," she said as she shut the dishwasher door.

Sales stiffened in his seat. "You're not going to say anything about me?"

"No," she said. "I'm not going to talk to him at all. If I gave it to the police directly, Lipton could have every bit of that information suppressed from a jury, and I want them to see everything that I saw on that disk."

"That's presuming there's a trial."

"I have to presume that," Casey said. "He's not going to stop. But sooner or later, he'll get caught."

"Maybe," Sales said.

"Maybe?"

He looked at her with incandescent eyes. "He's as slippery as anything I've ever seen. He's smart and he's ruthless, but he's also crazy, so he'll do the unexpected… that's what's going to make him hard to get."

"Donald, we should be working with Bolinger," Casey urged. "If we turn you in to the police, you could be out on bail and we could help each other. Why should we be trying to find him and they be trying to find him and neither of us sharing the information we have?"

Sales laughed bitterly. Without rancor he said, "For such a smart woman, you make me wonder… I told you, I'm not turning myself in. You say I'll get bail. How long could that take? You say a day? What if the day I'm sitting in the public safety building is the day Lipton gets you alone? What if there are complications and I don't get bail? You know about complications, right?"

"I do, but-"

"I'm not doing it, Casey," Sales said sternly. "That's final. Let's just figure out how we can do this my way. You want to give Bolinger the disk? Fine, let him have it. If the police get him before we do, fine. I just want someone to get him. I don't care who."

"What are we going to do?"

"Lipton wants to get you alone. He's been watching you, and even though I chased him off last night, I think he'll pick up the trail again and keep following you. I don't know when, but he will. He thinks he's smarter than you and me and the rest of the world together. He won't be put off by last night. What we have to do is give him the chance to get to you without making it look too easy. It has to be an isolated place and you have to be by yourself, but it has to make sense that you're alone there or else he'll know it's a trap."

"If you're not there?" she asked with alarm.

"I'll be there," he told her. "But it won't look that way. The police staked out my cabin after I ran, but they should be gone by now. I don't think they'll do much more than stop by from time to time to see if I came back. So that's our place."

"But even if he's following me," Casey pointed out, "I don't think he'd follow me to your place, do you?"

Sales shrugged. "He might not, but he wants to get you, and way out there, if he sees you by yourself, well, he just might try it. It's the best place for me to trap him if he does follow you, so I think we should at least try it."

"What if you're wrong about the police and they're still watching your cabin? Lipton won't try anything if they're there, and they'll want to know what I'm doing."

"This is where that disk will come in perfectly," he said. "I was thinking about it. When Bolinger gets his hands on the disk, he's going to take every man he's got and start chasing down leads. I don't think he's going to waste a couple guys out in the hills watching my place. And if they are there, then we'll just have to find some other out-of-the-way places for you to go to that make sense until he makes his move."

"And where will you be? You can't follow me in your truck," Casey said. "He'll see that."

"Don't worry about me. He can't follow us both. When you leave here, I'll follow you to the police station. After that, I'll go out to the hills, park the truck on a back road, and get to the cabin before you do. You just go inside and wait. You can use the phone or whatever and I'll be right outside. If Lipton comes for you, I'll get him."

"When you say 'get him,' you mean you'll capture him?" Casey asked.

"That's my intent," he said. "I told you I would."

"But last night, you shot at him," she reminded him.

Sales flashed an angry look at Casey, but it quickly melted away. "Marcia liked to talk about what she was learning in law school. She used to talk all the time about mens rea…"

"A guilty mind," Casey said.

"Yeah, a guilty mind," Sales continued. "She used to say that to be guilty of a crime you have to have intent. I'm not planning on killing Lipton in cold blood. If I have to use this to stop him, I will. Last night, I simply reacted to the situation. I can't guarantee his safety. That's not what you want, is it?"

After a pause, she replied softly, "No. I appreciate what you did for me last night. Thank you. I'm glad you were there, and I certainly understand why you used your gun." She shrugged and said hesitantly, "It's different when you're in it. All the theories go out the window… I feel like I'm caught in a spider web or something. I can't see him, but I know that he's out there, hidden away, watching me struggle and just waiting to run out into the open and wrap me up like a fly."

"When you went into the building last night," Sales said, "I stayed in my car out on the street. After I saw your partner's car come out of the garage, I figured you'd be right behind him. When you didn't come out, I decided to go into the building through the garage. It was just chance that I stumbled onto Lipton. He almost had you. When he heard me coming, he didn't stick around. He took off like a flash, and I took some wild shots, hoping to get lucky. But what I'm saying is… this time I'll be ready, and he won't get away."