Sales shook his head. "No. That's not happening. I'm not turning myself in and taking that chance. I don't care what you say. The police won't get me."
"The police will be looking for me, though," she said. "That makes it even more likely that they'll find you."
"No," Sales said. "They won't be looking for you. I don't think they will anyway. Does the alarm company have the keys to your house?"
"No."
"So you must have had the alarm go off before," Sales said. "Think about what happens. First, they call the house. When there's no answer, they call the police. When the police get there, they look around the outside of the house. If there's no sign of anyone breaking in and the alarm company doesn't have a key to the house, they think it's a false alarm. They file a report and go away. Unless your husband came home yesterday, which from the size of his suitcase it didn't look like, then there probably isn't even anyone who knows you're gone."
"That's how you planned it," Casey said bitterly.
"That's how I planned it," Sales admitted. "I'm not going to beg you, you know. But if you don't help, there's going to be a lot more killing…"
"I can't just help you hunt someone down to kill them," Casey said, shaking her head. "That goes against everything I believe in."
Sales shrugged. "You believe he should go on killing?"
After a long pause, Casey said, "If I helped you in any way-if I helped you-then it would be to bring Professor Lipton to the police, not to hunt him down to kill him. I can't do that and I can't help you do that. I never would."
"Even if more innocent women are going to die?" Sales said sharply. "Even if he's going to try to kill you?"
"Yes, even if that," Casey said. "I believe in the system despite its shortcomings. We can't just go out and execute people. That's lawlessness."
Sales scoffed at that with a derisive snort. "Look what your system has done. It's nothing to be so proud of."
"That's your opinion," Casey retorted, defending her vocation out of habit, but aware deep down of her own new doubts. "Nothing's perfect, but it's what I believe in. Whatever help I can be, I have to be to the police."
"That's just what Lipton would want you to do," Sales said in disgust.
"Why is that?" Casey asked dubiously.
"Lipton knows how to stay ahead of the police," Sales cried. "They can't catch him any more than they can catch me. What do they do? Stake out his house, the way they did mine? That's a joke. He knows the rules of the game too well. The police can't get to him the way I can. I'm a hunter and I don't have anything holding me back. You should know that better than anyone. The police can't just bust into a hotel room or break into his van, but I can. He can't hide behind the law from me. But he'll beat the police. He beat them before and he's learned from it. He's always learning. He's a piece of shit, but he's smart.
"Listen," Sales continued. "I want him stopped, period. If you help me get him, I won't kill him."
Casey looked at him skeptically.
"If you help me in a way that'll guarantee he goes to jail," Sales added, "then I won't kill him."
"You're lying," Casey said.
"When Lipton told you he didn't kill that girl in Atlanta," Sales said, "did you believe him?"
"Yes," she said, after a pause.
"Why? Because that's what he said, right?"
"Yes," Casey replied. "That's what he said."
"So, I'm saying I won't kill him and I want you to believe me. I won't kill him. If it means you'll help me, then I won't. If that's what it takes, then I'm saying I'll bring him to justice, to the police. Just give me the same deal you gave him. Help me, Casey. I need your help."
"I want you to take me to my car," Casey said after a few silent minutes of contemplation. "I need to go home. I need to sleep. I need to think."
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.