"Shelly?" she said at the sound of the familiar voice.
"Casey? Is that you, girl?" came the response in a backcountry drawl that made Casey involuntarily wince. It had taken her years to eradicate the same accent from her own speech.
"How are you?" Casey asked tentatively.
"Me? Oh, I'm just the same as ever," her sister said, talking as if they'd spoken only yesterday. "The kids are growing like weeds, and Gabe's losing his hair faster than you could think of, but I'm just the same. How are you, though? I seen you on the news during that trial. That's all everyone talked about 'round here my famous sister God dawg you should of seen Momma and Daddy. They were ready to bust at church, everyone crowding around them and asking about you…"
"What did they say?" Casey asked, with the sudden realization that she hadn't spoken with her parents in a good long while, either.
"Well, you know Daddy, he don't say nothing, and Momma, she just chattered on like a jay bird about Casey this and Casey that, telling stories about when you was young. You know, stuff you did that let all us know you was gonna be something special…" Shelly's words were completely ingenuous. She was one of the rare few who go through life without a hint of jealousy, and the goodness of her sister and the life she led gave Casey a sharp pang of dismay.
"I'm not the special one," she said seriously. "You are, Shelly. Look at you, a husband and three kids…"
"Oh, that ain't nothing," her sister said bashfully. "I didn't even get a four-year degree, and you got a husband, too.
"A handsome one with hair," she added with a giggle.
"No, I don't have a husband," Casey said.
There was a painful silence, and then Shelly said sadly, "I'm sorry, Casey. I didn't know. Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," she said, falling back lamely on her habit of indefatigable optimism. "I'm really okay."
"Once means you are, twice means you aren't," Shelly said quietly. It was an adage of their father's, and Casey had never known it not to be true.
"Well, I'll be fine," Casey said.
"How about you come for a visit?" Shelly suggested pleasantly. "It'd be good to see you. I'll get Gabe to watch the kids, and you and I can go out and have a dinner and go to a movie like we did last time you come home. You remember that? Lord, how the men followed you around town."
"They were following you," Casey said kindly.
Shelly laughed out loud at the thought until her mirth was mixed with the wail of a baby.
"Oh, honey, I gotta feed this baby," Shelly said apologetically. "Can I call you back?"
"No, I've got to go anyway," Casey said.
"You come see me," her sister said gently. "I love you, honey."
"I love you, too," Casey said, choking on her words. She hung up the phone and burst into tears.
After a good cry and a deep breath, it was Sales's words that suddenly filled her head. He was right. There was nothing she could do about what already was, only what would be, and her life wasn't going to go on the way it was. She was going to change it. It would take time, but she would change. She would go see her sister. She'd go for a good long visit.
There was a place in life where she knew she belonged. It was somewhere between where she was now and where Shelly was. She could never live on a farm outside Odessa, but maybe she could have a family and children. She knew if nothing else she could do good things with her life instead of striving for empty aspirations of money and fame.
And she was going to start now. She was going to do something that heretofore had been unthinkable, to use privileged information against a client. Strictly speaking, it was wrong. But Casey wasn't going to run her life by strictly interpreted legal codes anymore. She was going to listen to her heart. She was going to find out what was on Lipton's computer disk, and if it could help bring him to justice she would use it. She would somehow get it to the police. She picked up the phone.
Tony was at home.
"I'll meet you at the office," he told her somberly after hearing the bulk of her bizarre story.
As Casey drove to the city, she paid little attention to the traffic around her. She was exhilarated at the thought of turning her life around, of purging everything she'd been and thinking of what she would be. Things weren't all bad. She'd done good work for people, pro bono work, work for free. She could do more. She could stop seeking celebrity and begin to seek justice. She could stop running around the country at the beck and call of the rich and famous and use the gifts she had to protect the innocent. She could represent the unjustly accused who didn't have the money or the power to defend themselves against the awful machine that, once set against you, could grind your life to dust.
Casey realized she was almost there. Remembering Lipton, she looked nervously in her rearview mirror. The traffic of people heading downtown for a night of music and drinking on Sixth Street even on a Sunday night was enough to make it impractical for her to pick out anyone who might be following her.
She certainly wasn't going into the parking garage. It would be dark and abandoned on a Sunday night. Instead, she found a spot on the street. The night was warm, and the damp breeze promised rain. Casey looked up at the churning gray clouds, then cast her eyes suspiciously up and down the street. The only other person in sight was a tall bum whose grocery cart rattled and squeaked stridently as he pushed his way up the street. Casey hurried across the sidewalk and up the steps of the midrise office building where she worked.
A night security man was sitting wearily at his desk by the door. With a smile and a nod, Casey stepped into a vacant elevator. Tony was waiting in her office, looking out of place in a triple X pink short-sleeve polo shirt. He was sitting on the small conference table in the corner, and he waved a pudgy hand to her from behind his own portable PC.
"Thanks for coming, Tony," Casey said, sitting down beside him. "Did I keep you waiting?"
"No, just long enough for me to get the layout of Lipton's hard drive." Tony spoke without looking up at her. He didn't want to reveal the range of emotions he was feeling, and he knew better than to try to console her. That would be the last thing she would want. The next-to-last thing would be advice, so he kept to the business at hand.
"The files I've found aren't what we're looking for," he said.
"But most likely, anything he didn't want people to find is in some hidden files somewhere. I just need to find them."
"Can you do that?"
"That's what this is for," he said. He held up a gray box with some wires hanging from it. "It's called a Norton Utility."
Tony began connecting the box to the back of his computer. He typed frantically for a minute or two to set the program in motion. When he'd finished, he looked up at Casey and really saw her for the first time.
"You want to talk?" he said.
She looked at him. "No. I'm fine."
"Okay," he said. "I don't know if I totally believe you, but okay."
"Why don't you believe me?"
"You were kidnapped and estranged from your husband all in the same weekend," he said calmly. "Most people wouldn't be completely fine…"
With a smile he said, "I don't want to pry and I don't want to drag it out. I wasn't going to say anything, but I just want you to know I care…"
"I know you do, Tony," she said with her beautiful smile. "I appreciate it. But I really am fine. What happened with Sales… Well, I almost feel like I deserved it," she said. "I know that sounds strange but that's how I feel. After what I did… I don't know. It doesn't bother me. That's all. And what happened with Taylor was a good thing… It made me realize what's important and what isn't. What I don't feel good about is Lipton and getting him off."