Sales shrugged. "I followed you. After I left my uncle's, I went right to West Lake Hills to watch the entrance to your development. I knew he would come for you. He's obsessed… Shit, I can't believe he got away." Sales slapped the leg of his jeans.
"How did he do that to the elevator?" Casey asked. They were outside the elevator now, and despite Sales's presence, the garage was still eerie.
"Over here," he said, pointing to a utility room whose gray steel door was ajar.
Casey turned to him and asked desperately, "Why do you say he'll come back?"
"Because he will," Sales said unequivocally.
"So what do we do?" Casey asked, trying without success to smooth the anxious edge in her voice.
"Help me find him," Sales urged. "He's got to have a place he's hiding that's nearby. You've got to tell me where."
"I can't," she told him desperately. "I don't know where he is! I have no idea!"
"He was your client!" Sales argued.
"I've got his disk," she said, touching her pocket. "I'll let you see the whole thing, but just get me out of here."
CHAPTER 27
Lipton became suddenly aware of the tension in his face, and he tried consciously to relax each muscle, one at a time. He drove carefully through the streets, checking his rearview mirror for signs of whoever it was who had drawn a gun on him. He doubted a cop would have been in the next room with a hooker and presumed it was just some do-gooder who certainly didn't have the balls to shoot anyone.
A smile crossed his face. Lately, he'd acquired the marvelous sensation that no one could kill him. He felt impervious to the rest of mankind, somehow above them all. He could hunt and kill what he needed and have his whores perform for him. The cycle seemed to be strengthening him.
He felt his face tightening again. It wasn't really the whore he'd been mad at. It was the predicament. He'd used the last remnants of his powder, and as he had feared, it hadn't been enough for him to perform. No, the whore herself was the one he always used, wonderfully docile. She had simpered and begged as submissively as she always did. In fact, since he'd been released after the trial, he'd had an exceptional run of bouts with her to make up for his time in isolation.
But the run was so exceptional that he'd used up every bit of his powerful aphrodisiac. And Casey wasn't going to be an easy victim. The gated community made it difficult to get to her at home. Although he'd scoped it out thoroughly, it would be a risky venture to try to take her from the parking garage; someone could see him and then he'd be trapped. He had abandoned that idea several days ago. He needed to be patient. It would happen in its own time. That much he knew.
He felt her spirit calling to him. All during the trial, her imperious mannerisms had left him dreaming of her at night. She needed him to crush the life from her. She needed him as much as he needed her. She needed to give up her essence to him so he could perform the sexual acts that kept his circle of power intact. It was those acts, he knew after years of experience, that were compounding to generate his invincibility. It was her destiny as much as his.
His own destiny had become clearer and clearer each passing day over the last sixteen years. His first taste of killing hadn't even been something he'd planned. The first had been a student in the audience of his seminar in New York City. She had stared shamelessly at him throughout his talk. Later that night, at the hotel bar in the midst of all his colleagues, she came on to him in a way that no other young woman had before. He'd always heard the stories, and sometimes even seen colleagues who found themselves the amorous objects of nubile young students. And although he suspected there were a number of students who might have given in to his advances, none until then had ever come right out and aggressively pursued him.
Despite his good looks, the girl in New York had been his first experience of a woman actually throwing herself at him. She drank too much, of course, and began to drape herself shamelessly over him, whispering nasty snippets into his ear. Once she'd even brushed her fingertips over his crotch. But back in his hotel room he was unable to perform, despite her unabashed oral attempts at rousing his manhood. And then she mocked him. Her words echoed through the back of his mind to this day. His sexual arousal had always been inconsistent, and his unsatisfying love life had never included a domineering woman. They seemed to affect him more adversely than most. It wasn't just that he'd failed as a lover. It was what she did afterward that put him over the edge. Frustrated and wanting another drink, he decided to go back downstairs. When he arrived, he was acutely aware of the whispering and the smirks on his colleagues' faces. His stomach sank with shame, and he hoped against hope that his fears were unfounded. Then he spotted her, right at the bar where he'd met her.
With a drunken laugh, she pointed at him and shouted for everyone to hear, "Hey, it's Professor Lipton, or I guess I should say professor limp-dick! At least we know there's one lawyer who won't be screwing anyone!"
That night was the most humiliating experience of Lipton's life, and before he'd reached the sanctuary of his room, he knew that he would be back.
Lipton returned to Texas obsessed with revenge. He would show her that he was more of a man than she could ever guess. He painstakingly researched the world's most powerful aphrodisiacs. Most striking to him were the accounts he read about the use of powdered gall bladder taken from the Asian black bear. The sexual essence of that powerful beast, he learned, was contained in the small, bulbous organ. On a subsequent trip to San Francisco, he obtained a small package of the powder. Aphrodisiac in hand, he surreptitiously returned to New York on a plane ticket under a false name that he purchased with cash.
It was a dark, lonely evening in November when he appeared at his first victim's door. She was reluctant to admit him into her small upper-story apartment in SoHo, but he had used all his persuasive powers and finally convinced her. Once inside, he didn't waste any time trying to take her to bed. With disgust, she spurned him, hissing like a cat. It was then that Lipton found his fingers wrapped around her neck, quietly choking the life from her.
When she lost consciousness, he grew afraid. But it wasn't without delight that he stripped her naked, and with a roll of duct tape he'd found in the cupboard above the refrigerator, he bound her tightly. He was in total control. The way her eyes helplessly rolled in panic when she revived stimulated him beyond anything he had ever imagined before. But when he removed his pants and attempted to mount her, she struggled like a roped mustang and the flow of blood to his organ ebbed almost instantly.
In a rage, he yanked a steak knife from the kitchen drawer and split her open from her belt line to her sternum. It was then that he had his epiphany. If the gall bladder from a virile beast could excite sexual prowess, how much more powerful must the effect of that same organ be from a dominant woman? Infinitely so-that was the answer that came to him like a sudden flash of electricity.
So he took it. He took it and he dried it and crushed it into a powder that he could then mix with a drink before performing with a prostitute trained to remain submissive throughout the act. It worked so marvelously that Lipton knew from the very first time that he would do it again and again. And like an addict, his obsession only grew with time and experience. Obtaining his aphrodisiac was only a matter of solving a mental puzzle. Each woman had her own weakness, a time and place that she was isolated, a time and place when he could get to her, subdue her, and take what destiny said belonged to him anyway.