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.'
CHAPTER 23
Sales bundled up his things and offered to carry Casey to the car, but she refused. She stepped gingerly on the rough ground, though, and found herself wishing she'd accepted his offer. The cuts on the bottom of her feet opened up again, and as they descended a gently sloping face of bare rock, Casey became aware of how easy it must have been for Sales to follow her trail through the woods.
Sales turned back toward her, looking weary and depressed. 'It's not far,' he said.
When they reached Casey's car, Sales got behind the wheel.
'I need you to take me somewhere,' he explained. 'I'll drive. Then you can go.'
The long, twisting dirt road seemed to go forever. At its end, it emptied into a decrepit blacktop road that Casey didn't recognize. Their next turn, however, brought them to familiar ground, and Casey realized that they were now less than two miles from where she lived. But instead of heading back that way, Sales turned west.
Casey's stomach dropped, and she blurted out, 'You said I could go home.'
'You can. You will,' Sales told her, taking his eyes from the road. 'I need some way to get around, and I've got an uncle out near Lake Buchanan who'll help me. I need a car.'
Sales said no more, and despite her uncertainty, Casey fell asleep with her head resting against the window. When the car eventually came to a stop and the engine was shut off, she bolted upright and wiped a line of drool from her cheek. They were parked in front of a dusty, run-down service station at a barren crossroads. As the fine cloud of grit that marked their arrival settled back to the ground, an old man with a cowboy hat bearing a dead horned toad on its band hobbled out through the open doorway. The wiry old man had long gray braids, and his wrinkled hatchet face told Casey he was a full-blooded Native American.
The old man stared accusingly at them through the settling dust, squinting until Sales got out of the car. Then the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he turned and walked back into the station. Sales smiled wanly at Casey.
'Come with me if you like,' he said. 'I'll introduce you to my uncle Ben and you can get a drink.'
Casey looked up past a faded Phillips 66 sign at the flaming yellow sun and shrugged. Inside, it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the cool, dim interior. There were shelves in the back crowded with an eclectic array of food items. A glass cooler labored noisily against the back wall, sweating in an effort to keep its milk, beer, and soda cold. Sales went to the back and took out two Diet Cokes.
Uncle Ben had planted himself back behind the counter where he could keep an eye on his pumps through a dirty picture window. An old fan blew enough hot air to tug at the ends of his braids. His mouth worked methodically on a bag of sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out into a plastic cup. On the shelf behind him, Rush Limbaugh droned on over the AM static from a little transistor radio with a twisted coat hanger for its antenna.
Sales took two bills from his pocket and slid them across the counter. The old man silently rang up the soda and went right back to his seeds, waiting patiently for Sales to speak.
'This is my friend Casey Jordan, Uncle Ben,' Sales said when the transaction was complete.
Uncle Ben looked up sharply at Casey, then inquisitively at Sales. Casey was certain that the old man knew about the trial and her role in it. She briefly averted her eyes in shame. It wasn't just her and Sales anymore. This old man was real, an average person, the kind of person who lived in the place where she was raised. And the way he looked at her was biting. Looking back on it now, seeing it through the eyes of an average person, what she had done to Donald Sales during the trial was so heinous that the ordeal Sales had just put her through barely seemed an appropriate payback. The guilt of actually accusing Sales of an incestuous relationship with his dead daughter and then suggesting that he was the one who killed her shook Casey's convictions to their foundation. Everything she'd always believed in, winning, success, and notoriety, all of that, when she looked into this old man's face, now seemed a sham.
'She's my friend now,' Sales told the uncle firmly. 'She brought me here.'
The old man nodded as if that was good enough for him.
It was true anyway. Casey was his friend. She would be his friend. She wanted to help him. She felt that with sudden certainty. She just had to figure out how far she could go without committing a crime herself. That she wouldn't do.
'The police are after me, Uncle Ben.'
The old man snorted quietly, chastising his nephew for thinking that he didn't already know what was afoot.
'I knew you'd be coming,' he said in his haggard voice.
'There's a blue pickup in the back for you,' he said. His dark eyes were locked on Sales, and Casey had the feeling that the two of them were saying much more than she could understand without the use of spoken words. 'It's got a full tank of gas. You need money, too?'
'No, Uncle Ben. Maybe a credit card.'
The old man nodded and split a seed with his front teeth before expertly shucking it with his tongue and spitting out the shells. From a drawer he took out a shiny new Mastercard and laid it on the countertop. Sales took it and put it in his pocket.
Uncle Ben narrowed his eyes as a compact car buzzed by and continued on down the road.
'You gonna eat with us?' he said to Sales.
Sales turned to Casey. 'Would you like to come to the house and clean up and then eat?'
'No,' she said quietly. 'No thank you. I have to go.'
Sales nodded and led her out of the station into the heat. He handed her the keys.
'I want to help you,' she told him quietly. 'I just have to figure out how. I can't break the law. I know you see things differently from me, but everything I've done has always been within the law. I'm not proud of what I did in that trial and I'm sorry. But for me to just do things that are wrong to try and make up for it… I don't think I can do that. But I do mean it when I tell you I'm sorry…'
She stared up into his eyes. They were deep wells of emotion, churning with so many conflicting thoughts and feelings that she didn't know whether her words had evoked gratitude or more hatred. Then Sales put his large, rough hand on her shoulder. She could feel its horny calluses through the flannel shirt.
With a gentle squeeze he said softly, 'I know you are. I see it. There's nothing we can do about what already happened. What's done is done. But you can help what will be. If you help me find Lipton, it'll make things as right as they can be…'
Casey felt sick. She wanted to help, but she had to think. She took the keys and turned away.
'I don't even know how to get home,' she said softly, opening the car door.
Sales pointed east and said, 'The easiest way is if you stay straight on that road there. It runs right into one eighty-three. You know how to go from there?'
'Yes.'
'I think it'd be better if we stayed together,' he told her, 'but I have to go to the house. If I didn't, it would insult them and I can't do that. Are you sure you won't stay?'
'Call me in my office tomorrow morning,' Casey said. 'I need to figure things out and I'll be fine until then…'
Casey wanted a shower. She wanted to put something on her bare injured feet. She wanted to rest. Most of all, she wanted to gather her wits. The bizarre events of the last day had left her feeling as though she were caught in a disturbing dream.
As she drove, Casey found that it was strangely easy to forget about what Sales had done to her. Part of her understood it. He wanted her help, but he also wanted her to know how it felt to be a victim, how his own daughter had felt. Only Marcia Sales's killing hadn't been a game.
Lipton. The thought of him made her shudder. He was a sick killer. She believed now that Sales was right about him. When she hit the highway, Casey dialed information on her car phone and asked for Bob Bolinger's home number. She got it and pressed one for an instant connection.
'Hello,' Bolinger said after nearly six rings. It sounded as if she'd just woken him up.
'Detective,' she said, 'this is Casey Jordan.'
There was silence on the other end until Bolinger cleared his throat.
'It's Sunday,' he said. 'What do you want?'
'I want to know what kind of protection the police can give me,' she said.
'From who?'
'From Professor Lipton,' she said. 'I think he's been following me. I don't know, but I think so.'
Bolinger paused again before saying, 'Ms. Jordan, are you all right?'
'I'm all right,' she said irritably. 'Of course I'm all right. If you mean have I been drinking or something like that, no. But I'm not all right in that I think Professor Lipton has been following me, and I want to know what you can do.'
'I can't do much, Ms. Jordan,' Bolinger said after a long moment of silence. 'I can see if someone from the sheriff's department will go by your house a couple times at night.'
'I mean something substantial, Detective.'
'We don't do that,' Bolinger patiently explained.
'What do you mean, you don't do that?' Casey said incredulously. 'You told me yourself you were looking for him. Now I'm telling you he's following me. That should be enough.'
'Do you see him right now, Ms. Jordan?' Bolinger inquired.
Casey looked in her rearview mirror, even though she knew Lipton wouldn't be there.
