The Letter Of The Law

CHAPTER 9

"I need a favor."

Tony looked at Casey across the room with a wry smile and said, "I'm supposed to be the one who asks for favors."

"I know, but I need you to do some digging for me," she said. She had spent the entire weekend with the Lipton files, coming out of her office only for a dinner with her husband and some friends. "I know how I can win, but I need some serious background information."

"On who?" Tony said.

"Donald Sales," she said.

"The dead girl's father? Why?" He was incredulous. He knew one of her favorite strategies was to suggest to the jury a viable alternative to who committed the crime. "You're not going to try to pin it on him, are you?"

"He very well could be the killer," she said. She didn't mention that the idea had originated with Lipton.

"Oh, give me a break!" Tony scoffed. "Come on, Casey, if that's the best you've got, you might as well start asking the DA for a plea."

"Look," she said, "I don't tell you how to get the TV cameras to a press conference. I want you to look into him for me, and I want you to do it now. I know already that he's not mentally stable."

"In what way?" Tony asked, stroking his beard.

"He's a Vietnam vet who was treated for PTSD."

Tony nodded. He knew that included a wide range of possibilities.

"And he has a history of violence."

"Violence? Like what?"

"Assault. Disorderly conduct," she replied.

Tony twisted his lips doubtfully.

"I want you to find out about his relationship with the daughter," she said. "The DA is going to put him on the stand to implicate Lipton. He claims that the girl told him she was afraid of Lipton. I'll have a chance to impeach him in the cross, and I not only want to tear him apart, I want that jury wondering if it wasn't really him that killed her and he's trying to pin it on Lipton."

"That's what you think?" Tony asked.

"I don't know what I think," Casey replied. "It's possible, yes. What I want is for you to get me everything you can on him. Call every PI you know and start digging. I want to know everything about Sales and the relationship he had with his daughter, especially if he ever hit her or hit one of her boyfriends or something like that. Lipton thinks Sales was the one who shot him."

"Probably was," Tony said, thinking of his own daughter, a teenager who lived with her mother in Kansas City. "I'd want to kill him, too, if he did that to my daughter."

"Lipton thinks it's because he was jealous. He was the girl's lover, you know."

Tony let out a low whistle. "I didn't read anything about that. Don't you think that's something we would have heard about?"

Casey shrugged. "Let's forget about what might have been or what's been written in the paper. This is my theory, and if I'm going to run with it I need some ammunition. I want you to get it."

Tony looked past Casey, staring blankly out the window.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"Just about fathers and kids and a custody case I did for a guy once," he said, still in his trance.

"What's that got to do with this?"

"Just that this guy's wife had the little girl saying the dad touched her in her private areas. He said he didn't do anything any father didn't do when he's giving his kids a bath. I didn't know what really happened, but I'll tell you, I couldn't help looking at the guy differently. I still did my best, but inside me, I don't know. I just looked at him differently. Well, the wife and her lawyer made a big stink about it, and the judge choked this guy's visitation off to almost nothing… Shit, they got him investigated by the social services people."

Tony refocused his eyes on Casey's face and said, "I saw the lawyer a couple of years later at a conference, and over drinks he told me that after the case, the mother told him that it was all bullshit. She made it up to screw her husband. My God, Casey."

"What?"

"I don't know," Tony said. He shook his head and looked past her again, out the window, unwilling to meet her eyes. "Just think, if Lipton really did kill that girl and you tear the father apart on the witness stand. It's not good."

"Goddamn it, Tony!" she said, boiling over. "Whose side are you on? I say black, you start talking about white. I say I don't want to represent someone, you say we should. I say okay, you go back the other way. My job is to exonerate Professor Lipton. I'm not worried about Donald Sales or his feelings. My God, leave me alone already! If he's not the killer, he'll get over it."

"He'll get over it?" Tony looked at Casey with an expression she had never seen before, and it cut her to the quick. "Listen to yourself. Get over it? The man's daughter was brutally murdered. You're going to put him up on that stand and suggest he was the killer. You think he'll get over that?"

"Are you going to help me or not?" Casey snapped. "Because if you're not, I have to find someone who will."

Tony sat silently for a minute, contemplating his tie. After a heavy sigh he rose from his seat and said, "No, I'll do it. If you're going to do it, I might as well be the one to help you."

"I mean really help," she said curtly. "I don't want you to pull back because you don't like what I'm doing."

Tony stopped on his way out the door and glared at her. "Excuse me?"

Casey kept her mouth closed and dabbed at the sweat that was rolling down her face. She waited.

"Have I ever not done a job all out?" Tony asked.

"I just want to make sure, Tony," she told him. "I don't have any time. I'm in this thing. I'm not looking back and I wish you wouldn't, either."

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. It's a bad habit of mine, always looking at the other side of things. I'll get what you need or it can't be gotten."

"Thank you, Tony," she said.

A few minutes later, as the shower's cold water pounded down on her, Casey purged her mind of all the extraneous considerations in the Lipton case, the father, the dead daughter, all of it. It didn't matter to her. It couldn't. Her job was to win the case.