Tim Green: The Letter Of The Law

Casey raced into the parking lot. Over the scream of tires, Sales asked her which unit belonged to Patti.

"Three-C," Casey said, remembering the first week Patti moved in and proudly invited her for a spaghetti dinner. "The top corner at the far end of the building!"

Sales pointed toward a white van at the other end of the lot and said, "He's here!"

Casey slammed on her brakes, sending the car in a sideways skid. Sales leapt from the vehicle before it had even stopped. Casey slammed the car into park and chased Sales up the stairs as fast as she could. When Sales got to 3-C, he tried the door's handle once before kicking it. The door shuddered from the blow but stood strong. Spinning around, Sales leaned forward and kicked back like a mule, bursting the door from its frame in a cascade of splintered wood.

With Casey now just behind him, Sales sprang into the hallway in a crouched position. Lipton, warned by the first kick at the door, welcomed him with a deafening hail of bullets from his Tech-9 sending Sales back out the doorway as quickly as he'd come. When the gunfire stopped, Sales waved a hand up high and came in low again. This time there was no gunfire. He edged into the apartment, knees bent, his Glock extended with both hands in a shooting position.

After a moment of silence, Casey peeked in after Sales. He had reached the living room now, and as he ducked into the bedroom gun first, Casey rushed toward Patti's inert body. A dreadful shriek escaped her lips at the sight of the gore. Blood was everywhere. She rushed for the phone and dialed 911. Her mind barely registered Sales as he burst from the bedroom and out onto the terrace. Gunfire cut through her shock, and she realized that Sales was firing over the edge of the railing.

Lipton had climbed down the outside of the building, hanging and jumping from terrace to terrace until he reached the ground. Sales caught only a glimpse of him as he raced across the grass and rounded the corner of the building. After two wild shots, he dashed back into the apartment and past Casey to the outside stairway without a glance. From there, he couldn't see Lipton's van. He took the steps three at a time, cursing loudly when he saw the van shoot across the lot and out into the street. Seconds later, Sales was at the wheel of the Mercedes and, with tires shrieking, fast on Lipton's trail.

A squad car was next to arrive. Having come from the opposite direction, the patrolmen had no idea that they'd missed Sales's wild chase of Lipton by thirty seconds. Bolinger wasn't far behind the cruiser. He knew from his radio that a 911 call had been made from the girl's apartment and that an ambulance was on its way. When he and Unger pushed through the crowd of onlookers and walked through the apartment's shattered doorway, they were struck by the scene of Casey, bloody to the elbows, bent over Patti's body. She was sobbing hysterically, with the two officers on either side of her not knowing what to do.

"Seal this place off," Bolinger told them. "Get all those people the hell out of here."

Relieved to have some direction, the patrolmen exited the apartment. As Bolinger got closer, he gasped at what he saw. The girl had been opened in exactly the same manner as Frank Castle and Marcia Sales before him.

"My God," he said. "Lipton."

Unger saw it, too, and suddenly bolted for the kitchen sink, where he began to vomit what was left of his lunch.

Bolinger knelt down next to Casey, but like her, he had no idea what to do. The grisly wound was so extensive that he couldn't imagine how he could stop the bleeding. With Patti's insides exposed, he was afraid to apply pressure to anything. With the tips of his fingers, he felt for a pulse in her neck.

"She's alive," he said in wonderment.

Casey looked down at him in disbelief.

"Get some towels," he told her. "Look in the bathroom."

The towels were clean and white and Bolinger laid them gently over the girl's gaping wound and pressed gently down on them to try to stem the flow of blood as much as possible without damaging her internal organs.

"Get a knife in here, James," he said over his shoulder. "Come cut this tape off."

Unger did as he was told, also glad for something more to do than rinse out the inside of his mouth at the kitchen faucet.

"What happened?" Bolinger asked Casey. "Can you tell me?"

Casey shook her head. "When we got here, Donald kicked in the door and Lipton started shooting. When he stopped, we waited before we went back in. By the time we did, Lipton was gone. Donald went after him…"

"Sales?" Bolinger asked incredulously. "Donald Sales?"

"Yes," Casey said blankly.

Bolinger didn't get to ask his next question because the paramedics arrived. Casey tried to go with Patti to the hospital but the paramedics refused to transport a non-family member.

As the ambulance roared away with its sirens blaring, Bolinger, who had supervised the total containment of the area, put his hand on Casey's shoulder. The two of them stood inside the yellow tape under a low-hanging birch tree on the sidewalk that led from the parking lot to the building.

"How did you end up here with Don Sales?" he asked, looking at her over the top of the flame he was using to light up a Winston.

Casey's face went blank with the practiced poker visage of a lawyer who knew better than to give information away. Then, with a sigh, she dropped her facade and simply said, "He saved my life. Lipton was after me, and Donald stopped him. We were trying to draw him out when I got a message from Patti that he was on his way to her place. I called you and we got here as fast as we could. When Lipton took off, Donald went after him. I left my car in the lot out here when we went in, and he must have taken it to follow Lipton. Where they are now, I have no idea…"

"But I do."

Both Casey and Bolinger turned their heads. It was James Unger. The frumpy FBI agent stood there in his best suit, his hair slicked back, with a pair of clip-on sunglasses presiding over his crooked grin.

"I wanted to make sure," he lamely explained to Bolinger. "I had to check out a couple of leads I had this afternoon, but it paid off. I know where Lipton is."

"How?" Bolinger said.

"It's a long story. I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, but it's something I've been working on. He's been staying in a lake house up at Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir. The place belongs to a trust in the name of Sarah Lipton," Unger said importantly. "His aunt. Lipton is the trustee. He's using the house and her credit cards and checks, too. They all belong to the trust."

With just a hint of condescension he added, "That's why you haven't been able to track him down. Everything he's done over the last few months, he's done in her name."

"Where's the aunt?" Bolinger asked without acknowledging Unger's slight.

Unger shrugged. "I don't know. She could be anywhere. She could be dead."

"Let's go," Bolinger said.

"You think that's where he's headed?" Casey asked them.

"I don't know," Bolinger told her, tossing his cigarette to the sidewalk and grinding it out with his toe, "but it's the only thing we've got."

Casey rode with them in the back of Bolinger's cruiser. Bolinger drove fast. Unger sat beside him in silent thought.

From time to time, the agent's fingertips would flicker to his glasses, readjusting them nervously on his nose before fading down to his lap, where he would caress the wallet in the front pocket of his pants. In it were all his points of contact written on a carefully folded sheet of paper. He'd spent the afternoon feeling his way through the media, making sure he had access to the right people and titillating them with promises of a diabolical serial killer about to be taken down by the FBI. His diligence had paid off. He now had the home and cell phone numbers for news producers at each of the three major networks as well as the Today show, Nightline, and Larry King. The minute the arrest was made he'd start dialing, and it was him they'd come to interview.