"I have no more questions, Your Honor," Casey said.
Rawlins banged his gavel. "Court will adjourn for lunch. We'll hear final arguments at one-thirty."
Hopewood's close was like a bad sermon. He meandered endlessly. Over and over, he rehashed his argument in barely disguised alterations, losing the jury halfway through. For her part, Casey was crisp and to the point. She bludgeoned the prosecution for its lack of concrete evidence against Lipton and chastised the police for letting the best suspect go uninvestigated.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt?" she scoffed, recalling her final witness's words to their minds. "Ladies and gentlemen, as you have seen, the doubts in this case are so numerous and so large that I'm sure you feel almost as indignant as I do that Professor Lipton was even brought to trial. This case has been a misguided sham and a travesty, and I am confident that you will do the right thing by exonerating Professor Lipton."
Rawlins gave a creditable set of instructions to the jury, and they left the courtroom for deliberations. Lipton excused himself to use the bathroom, leaving Casey alone with Patti in their small consultation room.
"This is the worst part," she told her understudy.
"I know," Patti said. "But you pretty much always win."
Casey rapped her knuckles lightly on the wooden table. "Let's hope. You never know with a jury."
"But you rarely lose," Patti reminded her. She had cut her strawberry-blond hair blunt just above her collar, and the glasses she wore were austere but did very little to hide either her bubbling youth or her unmitigated admiration of Casey.
"No, you're right," Casey admitted flatly, staring aimlessly into her jumble of notes. "I rarely lose…"
The jury was back in just under an hour, a good sign. Lipton stood by Casey's side as they handed their verdict to the bailiff, who in turn delivered it to the judge. Casey felt the blood pound in her heart. She was lightheaded. It was always the same. Rawlins frowned and nodded his head. As the bailiff crossed the court, Lipton dipped his head down toward Casey until his lips lightly brushed her ear.
With a shiver, she heard his words just as the judge directed the foreman of the jury to read their verdict on the count of first-degree murder.
Lipton's voice was charged with delight, his words were sickeningly sweet. "I really killed her."
Casey's mind swam. Shock and horror contorted her face. She looked at Lipton. His incandescent eyes were wild with amusement. A greedy smirk shone from his handsome face.
"We find the defendant, Eric Lipton"-uncomfortable with being the focus of attention, the middle-aged foreman's voice quavered-"not guilty."
Patti grabbed Casey, hugging her with delight. In the confusion, Casey gently separated herself from the younger lawyer and stood alone in a kind of personal fog. From the bench, Rawlins shot her a begrudging frown, then in a flourish of robes, he was gone. She looked to Hopewood.
The DA picked up his papers with a sour look and, without acknowledgment of any kind, left the courtroom, surrounded by a small pack of sympathetic underlings. Only Donald Sales gave Casey her due. She caught his eye from across the room. In the row of seats immediately behind the prosecutor's table, he remained standing like a great, dark rock in the ebbing sea of spectators. His pale green eyes, so full of loathing, made her start. Still, she seemed unable to look away, and for several moments his malice was something she could actually feel pressing against her face.
When she turned away, the professor was gone. There was only one last glimpse of his wavy hair and his orange prison suit as he passed through the side door between two guards like a moving flame. There were no congratulations, no thanks, only the resonating words from his diabolical confession, which she prayed was nothing more than a demented joke.
CHAPTER 15
Bob Bolinger farmed out two burglaries, an assault, and an arson before he dug into some paperwork on a fifteen-year-old kid who'd been killed execution-style in what appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. It was an uninspiring case because the killer was a kid himself and wouldn't do more than a few years in juvenile lockup before he was out doing it again. He closed the door, opened the window, and smoked his way through it. By the time he was finished, the big clock on the squad room wall told him it was almost time for lunch.
Bolinger spotted Farnhorst at a desk near the door and invited him for a hot dog on the street. It was a pleasant day outside, and armed with a couple of cans of Pepsi and their dogs, the two detectives found a bench in the green area across the street. The small park was milling with businesspeople who had the same idea.
"How's your boy?" Bolinger asked.
Farnhorst grinned widely and reeled off his sixteen-year-old's latest accomplishments on his way to the state shot put championship. By the time he finished, the only thing left of Bolinger's dog was a mustard skid on his chin.
"How about you, Bob?" Farnhorst asked.
Bolinger lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke in the direction of the courthouse, where only yesterday Lipton had walked free.
After a pause during which he'd followed his sergeant's gaze, Farnhorst solemnly said, "You don't want to think about that shit, Bob. You gotta forget about it. You told me that same thing yourself. We set 'em up and the DA's gotta knock ' em down. Sometimes they get a strike, sometimes they roll a gutter ball."
Bolinger looked at Farnhorst, then back toward the courthouse before speaking. "I know that. I know what I'm supposed to do and what I'm supposed to think, but the more I try not to think about it, the more it's on my mind."
"But what can you do?"
Bolinger crushed out his smoke and slapped his hands on his knees, then rose from the bench.
"I can call Dean Wentworth."
"From the FBI?" Farnhorst asked, standing as well and jump-shooting his trash into the barrel at the other end of the bench.
"Yeah, I know Dean pretty well," Bolinger said. "The guys in Atlanta hit a wall. Their crime scene was as clean as ours. I spoke to my brother's brother-in-law this morning, and after what happened here, the DA in Atlanta told them to leave it alone. But the FBI, now they could do something about it…"
Farnhorst shook his head doubtfully and said, "With all those bank robberies in the news, I doubt they're gonna pull someone away to chase this. It was a loser. That's just the way it is. It happens. Come on, Bob, you gotta let it go. It ain't healthy."
Bolinger squinted up into Farnhorst's eyes and saw real concern. He smiled and patted the big man on the back.
"Don't worry about me," he said. "I don't have a bunch of kids like you. I need something to worry about… It keeps me going."
Dean Wentworth was the special agent in charge in the Austin FBI office. He was glad to hear from Bolinger and wanted to set up a game of golf, but when it came to tracking down evidence against Lipton, he politely declined.
"I just can't," Wentworth explained. "The one guy I had to spare was working on some local stuff up in Stratford on a deal where some salesman disappeared from a hotel. The killer didn't leave anything behind but a blood-soaked pillow. The dead guy's brother is Ron Tanner, the number three guy over at Treasury, and I got a request from up top to look into it. But now, even that's by the board, and if I do anything at all, I have to put someone back on that case. Really, Bob, I can't take on anything that's not priority one."
"But this is big," Bolinger argued. "Really big."
"Hell, Bob, I got a call from Washington on Tuesday," Wentworth said. "The goddamn vice president was watching CNN the night before he had a meeting with the director, and he asked specifically about these goddamn bank robberies. I can't spare a single man. Fact is, they're sending me six goddamn guys from D.C. to help out."