'He's representing Lipton in his tort action against the county for when he got shot,' she told him. 'The weekend before the trial ended, he asked me to have the computer delivered to Huff's office. I told Patti to do it, but she forgot. So Huff called me this morning and made some nasty accusations.'
'What's on the computer anyway?' Tony asked, sitting up and forward in his chair.
'I have no idea,' she said. 'He said there were some embarrassing things on there, some hidden files with sexually explicit things or something like that.'
'What were you doing with it?'
'First Michael Dove had it, and Lipton asked me to get it from him. He didn't want it to get into Hopewood's hands, and as we all know, the safest place for something like that is with your attorney. I didn't get into it with him, really. It was the last thing on my mind.'
'Where is it?'
'The computer? It's right here,' she said, reaching into a drawer and setting an IBM notebook on top of her desk.
Tony eyed it silently for a few moments.
'What?' Casey asked. 'What are you thinking?'
'Nothing,' he said. 'I was just wondering what's in there.'
'Whatever it is,' she said coolly, 'it's privileged information.'
'I know,' Tony said. 'I know that. That doesn't mean we can't look at it. We're attorneys. It's not unethical to look…'
Casey stared at him for a moment, then looked down at the flat black rectangular machine.
'It's just that it might be something we'd regret letting go of,' Tony said in a low, gentle tone.
Casey heard him, but she wondered if Tony wasn't simply looking for an edge the way he did with everything else, stocking away something that could later help him in his drive for fame and fortune. Her phone buzzed. She stabbed at a button and shut it off. Tony raised his eyebrows inquisitively.
'You're a character, Tony. You're a model of inconsistency. One minute you're for defending the rights of the accused, the next you're ready to violate a client's privacy.'
'That's why you love me,' he said, grinning as impishly as a man of his girth could. 'Look, I just want to do the right thing.'
'The right thing?' Casey asked dubiously. She stared intently at the computer.
After a while Tony said, 'There was an attorney in upstate New York I read about in law school who represented a guy accused of killing several young girls. They pegged him for one particular murder and put him on trial even though they hadn't found the body. Everyone was pretty sure he did it…'
He looked at Casey's passive expression.
'Of course the guy was a defense lawyer, so he took the case. But during the trial the defendant told him the body was lying under a pile of leaves in some woods behind a cemetery. The lawyer went there and found the body. Now of course he never told anyone that he'd found the body, because the information was privileged.'
Casey nodded that she understood.
'Wait,' Tony said, raising his thick hand. 'I'm not finished. A few days later there was an anonymous call to the police. They found the body, and the guy was convicted.'
'Anonymous,' Casey said, knowing the truth.
'Anonymous,' he said with a shrug. 'I'm not suggesting that you're going to turn what's on this computer over to the police. But you're done representing Lipton, and once it's gone, it's gone. You know, Casey, sometimes… sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.'
Tony pressed his hands between his knees and said, 'I could just, uh… just take a CD and do a disk image of the whole hard drive… so we have it if we ever need it. We don't even have to look at it.'
'I don't know,' she said with a sour look on her face. She got up and looked at her watch, effectively ending the conversation.
Then, with a duplicitous look on her face, she said, 'I've got a meeting with a woman who wants us to support her run for the assembly. I'll be back in an hour or so, and then I'm going to take the computer over to Huff's office.'
'Okay,' Tony said, but he remained seated as Casey reached for the door. 'I'll see you later.'
When Casey was gone, Tony took the computer from her desk, and whistling quietly, he headed for his own office.
CHAPTER 16
Two days after Dean Wentworth made the call to the Atlanta offices of the FBI, James Unger landed in Austin. Bolinger was waiting for him outside airport security. Bolinger had described himself over the phone as a short, middle-aged guy with a gray crew cut, then added that he also had a fairly athletic build. He stood there in his tweed jacket, scanning the passengers as they flowed past. When a dumpy-looking man with steel-rimmed glasses and longish hair approached him, Bolinger was sure it was for directions to the john. He was wrong.
'I'm Agent Unger,' the man mumbled. 'You must be Detective Bolinger.'
Bolinger could see now that Unger's greasy dark hair was shot through with long gray strands. He was about thirty pounds overweight. At five feet ten, that was just enough to look bad without having anyone call him fat. His suit was a charcoal pinstripe, and he wore a black-and-gold herringbone tie. But as nice as the suit material was, it couldn't make up for the poor fit. Unger wore the sour look of a man who'd been mostly disappointed by life, and while he was only thirty-nine, he looked to be in his mid-forties.
'Thanks for coming,' Bolinger said, shaking his hand and trying not to sound disappointed. 'Luggage is this way.'
'Thanks for picking me up like this,' Unger said, but the words were without enthusiasm. He presumed his trip to Austin was nothing more than an opportunity to visit with an old college roommate who now owned a small car dealership. He hadn't been sent out on an important assignment in over ten years.
Unger's career had somehow drifted into a stagnant pool along the normal stream of advancement in the bureau. By his age, an agent expected at the very least to be in a nominal supervisory role. But Unger had never had that chance. He fancied a good part of his career's stagnation was due to his not kissing anyone's ass. But while that may have been true in part, the main reason he'd been passed over was that he had really never done anything to distinguish himself. And he knew he'd been labeled early on as a guy who really couldn't get the job done if it was a hot case. So it was only natural for him to presume that Bolinger's supposed serial killer case was shabby at best.
'I just thought I'd try to get this thing off on the right foot,' Bolinger explained. 'Dean Wentworth told me the bureau has an extra car for you at the office, so I knew someone had to come get you, that or take a cab. I really appreciate your coming out and opening this case.'
'Doesn't sound like there's much of a case to open,' he said sullenly. Bolinger looked at the agent with concern. Despite his appearance and his morose attitude, Bolinger tried to take comfort from the fact that Unger's cobalt eyes were alive with intelligence.
After the agent's big leather valise and his golf clubs were tucked snugly in the trunk of Bolinger's cruiser, they set off toward the city.
Unger turned the air-conditioning vents his way. 'I've got an old college roommate who lives here,' he said complacently. 'He owns a Dodge dealership. He's getting us on at the West Lake Hills Country Club. You ever played there?'
'No,' Bolinger said. 'Can't say I have. Hey, Jim, you mind if I smoke? I'll open the window.'
Unger glared at him indignantly and said, 'Listen, Bob, I might as well get this out right up front. I can't stand smoke. It makes me sick, so I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do it.'
'Okay, no problem,' Bolinger said, trying not to sound defensive. He stuffed the pack back into his coat pocket. 'That's why I asked.'
'And I might as well tell you right now that I don't like the name Jim,' Unger continued. 'My name is James. That's the name my mom gave me and she didn't like people calling me Jim or Jimmy, so I can't stand it myself.'
Bolinger felt his face burning with an unusual blend of embarrassment and annoyance. He was about ready to turn the car around and ship this guy right back to Atlanta. But he needed an FBI agent to work with. Alone, he had no jurisdiction whatsoever to go poking around the country chasing down possible leads on a possible serial killer.
Which was what Bolinger thought Lipton was. The more he had thought about the Marcia Sales case, the more he was convinced that she was killed by someone who'd done that kind of thing before. No one, not even a guy as smart as Lipton, could go out and knock someone off that neatly, disemboweling the girl while at the same time not leaving any kind of clues on the scene. You couldn't do that the first time out. A crime scene like that was the result of years of practice. It also made sense that Lipton had never killed someone so close to home before.
The murder in Atlanta, for example, was something relatively safe. Lipton had had very limited contact with that girl, then two months later had returned to commit the crime. Looking back now, it made sense, but for the cops investigating her death, there would have been no logical connection to Lipton. Bolinger felt confident that as he worked his way backward through Lipton's travel schedule, he would find more bodies. But to do that he needed James Unger.
In an attempt to light some kind of fire under the agent, Bolinger spent the rest of his afternoon in the federal building going through the entire case with Unger. There were moments when he thought there was something in the agent's eyes that indicated at least a minimal level of interest. But that was only until he realized that Unger was spending more time looking longingly at the pre-crime photos of Marcia Sales than he was paying attention to what Bolinger was saying.
'Wasn't the lawyer in this case that woman I've seen on CNN? Wasn't it Casey Jordan?' Unger asked with a yawn along about four o'clock.
'Yeah, she represented Lipton,' Bolinger told him.
'I remember seeing her on CNN a while ago during that state senator's trial. Remember? The guy who they said killed his mistress? Does she look as good in person as she does on TV?' Unger asked with a leering grin. 'I wouldn't mind running into her while I'm in on this case. Is there any reason we might have to run into her?'
Bolinger looked away from the agent in an attempt to hide his disgust. 'Maybe you'll run into her out on the golf course,' he said. 'She lives out at West Lake Hills.'
Unger fingered the picture of Marcia Sales once more before saying, 'Yeah, that makes sense. I guess that's where a bigshot attorney would live. She's kind of big time, huh?'
Unger spoke with the transparent bitterness that the disappointed typically show when referring to someone rich or famous.
