"This stuff can't be true," Casey said, looking at Tony with disbelief.
"I don't know," he said as he typed in a command, "you tell me."
Casey followed his eyes to the screen. There was her picture. At least it was a youthful resemblance of her. There were apparently hundreds of women in the file, but Tony had stopped scrolling and gone right to the letter W for Woodgate, her maiden name. Casey read what it said. It disgusted and horrified her at the same time. More than anything, it made her feel terribly unsafe.
"But he never did anything to me," Casey heard herself saying weakly.
Tony searched to the letter S. Marcia Sales's picture appeared before them.
"But he did something to her," Tony said solemnly. He went to the menu again and chose to search through the women by location. Atlanta, Georgia, produced four. Casey recognized one of the names as belonging to the girl who had been killed there only a few months before Marcia Sales's death.
"And her," Casey said.
"The question is," Tony added, "how many others?"
"My God," Casey said. The horror of the whole thing was almost too much. "My God."
"He's a sick son of a bitch," Tony said disgustedly. "He's everything the DA said he was, worse even."
"I know that, Tony," Casey snapped. "But it was a big case, remember?"
Tony shot her a nasty look.
"We lost the rock star so we took the law professor," she said in a voice laced with sarcasm. "We were going to get a lot of media coverage for this one, so we jumped all over it."
Tony continued to stare at her.
"Go easy," he said.
"No, Tony," she snapped. "I'm not going easy. It's wrong. The whole thing is wrong."
Calmly he said, "You were a kid out of law school doing minor-league rape cases for the DA before you met me. Now you get six-figure retainers for people in the news, and they call you to do interviews on CNN. That's what you wanted and that's what I got you. So don't get nasty with me. You wanted this kind of practice as much as I did."
"Well, maybe I don't want it anymore."
Tony glared at her, then stood up and started for the door.
Casey sat there alone for a long time. The small noises of the empty building were amplified in the silence of the Sunday night. Her mind spun this way and that like a broken kite in a stiff wind, going back and forth on what she had been and what she would now be. She wondered if Tony would even want to be a part of the new Casey… Woodgate. She thought about all the things she could have done differently until she could bear it no longer. She had to do something now. She ejected the disk from the Norton Utility and flicked off the computer before turning for the door.
The code of ethics proscribed disclosing the information she had to the police. The privilege between a client and his attorney prevented that. But what if it was to turn up on Bolinger's doorstep anonymously? It was unethical. Then again, what Lipton had done with her had nothing to do with ethics. The way he had manipulated her to represent him, to help set him free, was a despicable misuse of the law, and she had not only been a party to it, she had been the prime mover. She tucked the disk into the pocket of the light coat she'd taken as a hedge against the coming rain and made for the elevator.
It took several minutes for the car to reach the top floor. Only one elevator was operational after hours, and Casey presumed that one had to come all the way up from the basement, where Tony had taken it to get to his own vehicle. When it finally arrived with the familiar ding, Casey peered warily inside before stepping aboard and pushing the lobby button. She wasn't usually skittish, but after the last few days, she wasn't ashamed of being apprehensive.
Anxious to get off, Casey watched the numbers above the door as they hopscotched their way toward the lobby. But when the car reached the second floor, there was none of the typical slowing that preceded a stop. Casey's heart jumped into her throat and her blood began to race. The L button on the panel was no longer lit. She'd pushed it. She was sure she had. She stabbed at it again, but the button only illuminated momentarily before going dark again. She pushed it repeatedly to no avail. The car went right past the lobby. It was as if someone else was in control of the elevator.
P1 was the first level of parking below the street. That floor lighted above the door, but still the elevator continued its descent. It ran past P2 as well, but then began to slow. At P3, the lowest level in the building, the elevator came to a halt. The car was quiet until the doors began to heave themselves open with a mechanical rumble. Casey stabbed at the lobby button once again. The light went on, but as soon as she removed her finger, it went dead dark. She stabbed at it frantically, over and over, while at the same time pounding repeatedly on the Close Door button. Then everything went black.
Casey could hear the dying whine of the elevator motor somewhere below her in the pit of the shaft. Terrified, she pressed herself into the corner of the darkened car and peered out into the yawning gloom of the subterranean garage.
CHAPTER 25
Not far away, in a hip bar on Sixth Street, James Unger was whispering something lewd into a young woman's ear. He took a drink in the face for his efforts. He wasn't angry. He got what he deserved. He was way out of his league, a worn-out government employee, not the slick young law enforcement agent he once was. That was how he'd begun his career, full of hope and grand ideas. Back then he had even fantasized about being the director. But that was then, this was now. He took off his glasses and wiped his face on the sleeve of his golf shirt. After cleaning his glasses, he finished off his vodka tonic. The girl was gone now, and the incredible din of the music made it seem as if the little incident had happened to him in another place and time.
Unger sighed heavily and turned to find his friend. Dean Johnson was standing in front of the band, swaying to the rhythm that wailed from the two massive speakers on either side of the stage. He looked like a fool. A paunch hung down over the front of his belt. The back of his balding head, his thin, sunburned arms, and his big, bulbous nose made Unger look like a catch. In front of the car dealer was the band's lead singer, a raven-headed girl dressed up like a Native American, right down to her beads and moccasins. She had a wicked body that somewhat offset the nastiness of her face, and to the amusement of all the young people watching, she sang her suggestive lyrics right at Dean.
Unger grabbed his friend by the arm and tugged him outside, where the relative quiet of the street rang in their ears.
"What the fuck!" Johnson howled drunkenly. "She wanted me! Did you hear that girl's voice? She wanted me."
Unger only shook his head impatiently. "Let's go home."
His words came out in a long, slow slur.
Johnson looked at his friend in a daze before suddenly grinning and saying, "Not yet. I got a surprise for you."
"What's that?"
"Hookers," Johnson told him, his eyes agleam.
"You're kidding," Unger said. That wasn't his style, but he knew from the last few days that his friend liked to spend every cent of the money he made at his dealership on living well. That meant champagne at dinner, cigars with expensive brandy, and now women. Unger wasn't opposed to it on ethical grounds; it was just something he'd never indulged in before.