"He was the one who killed her, you know," he continued, narrowing his eyes malevolently. "He was jealous of what I had with his daughter."

"Did you tell this to anyone?" Casey said, incredulous. She vaguely recalled the father from the newspaper accounts, but nowhere had she heard or read of him as a suspect.

"Of course not!" Lipton scoffed. "I was their suspect. Once the police machine sets its sights on a person, that's it. They're like dumb animals. Beyond a very brief initial interview, I've said nothing to the police. I know better than that. But all this is in the files. You're wasting my time."

Casey thought about asking what other important things he had to do, but didn't.

"What about the underwear?" she asked, averting her eyes from his cold gaze.

"A sexual proclivity," he told her. His voice was quiet, almost syrupy. "A trophy of sorts."

"And the blood?" she asked.

"Old," he said. "Marcia liked to be tied up. She was what I call a dominant woman. Young, but still dominant. She was smart and headstrong and ambitious as well as very beautiful. I find that dominant women often like to be tied up… to restore the natural order if you will…"

Casey looked up. Lipton's eyes were gleaming now. He was playing with her, staying just barely within the bounds of decency.

"That doesn't explain"-Casey stopped, cleared her throat, and continued-"that doesn't explain the blood."

"Part of the bondage she craved was to have her panties stuffed into her mouth," Lipton responded in a clinical tone. "She bit her tongue. It's that simple."

"And speaking of sexual proclivities," he continued, "Michael Dove has my computer and I want you to get it from him immediately, and by that I mean today. The police took it when they arrested me. After they went through it, along with everything else I own, and found nothing, he was able to get it back. There are some very personal files that I've hidden on the hard drive that could be very damning if they were to get into the wrong hands. Their sexual content is irrelevant. That's my private business. But if a prosecutor got them in front of a jury… well, not everyone has our enlightened view when it comes to the First Amendment, especially when it comes to sex."

Lipton was leering at her now, and Casey's skin began to crawl. The air vent hummed. A fly came down from the ceiling and conducted a haphazard march across the tabletop between them before retreating to the glass panel on the door. More than anything, Casey wanted to get out of the room.

"I'm sure I'll have more questions after I read these," she said, rising and gathering the files. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"I'm looking forward to seeing you, Casey, on a daily basis, I mean. It's been quite a while," he said, rising himself and extending his hand. Casey took it, and her old professor pressed his long, cool fingers into her flesh until she twisted free.

"Then don't take the case," Tony told her. He was standing next to her Stairmaster machine in a royal blue suit with a crisp white shirt and a bold orange tie. Casey dabbed her sweaty face with a fresh white hand towel and stared hard at him. Her hair, pulled back from her face with a black cloth band, had gone from wavy to curly in the heat of her workout.

"Right, Tony," she huffed sarcastically. It was six-thirty in the morning and she was almost finished with her workout. The small exercise room was adjacent to her office. It came complete with a shower and a small set of free weights. Casey was obsessed with being mistaken at the beach for a twenty-one-year-old. Working out every morning kept her that way. She claimed it also gave her time to think about the coming day. It wasn't unusual at all for Tony to wander in about this time with his second double cappuccino of the morning. His idea of starting the day off right was to have his shoes shined while he drank his first double and scanned the morning paper.

Casey presumed he wasn't serious when he said she should drop the case. When Lipton had first been arrested over a year ago, Tony had implored her to contact him.

"Let him know you're available," Tony had said. She refused, and then when she lamented Michael Dove's being hired by Lipton, Tony only made it worse by saying that if she'd taken that first step of contacting him, she could have had the case.

"The first step is every bit as important as trying the case," Tony was always saying. "Without the first step, there is no case."

"That's your job," she'd responded.

"He wasn't my law professor," Tony had countered. "He was yours. You could have had the case. All you had to do was ask. I tell you that all the time, Casey. You have to ask."

Now that she had the case, she certainly wasn't going to give it up.

"I'm not saying I don't want it. It would be great," Tony said, stepping aside as she got down off the machine. "The media will be like bums on a bologna sandwich for this one. It might even get some play nationally. And the guy can pay our top rate. He's loaded. Those are all good reasons to take it, but I really mean it when I say don't take it if you're not comfortable."

Casey studied his face.

"Do you really think I'm that mercenary?" he asked. "I don't want you working with a client if it disturbs you. Besides, one week to prepare is almost unheard of. I don't know if you could do it."

His last words were spoken with an ingenuous expression. Whether they were actually intended to challenge her or not, Casey responded that way.

"I can do it," she said with a snort, hoisting a pair of dumbbells and beginning to crank out a set of curls as if to accentuate her confidence. "I could walk in on a case in a day if I had to."

"What about the fact that it looks like he did it?" he asked, sitting down on the padded bench and bracing his elbow against one thick knee.

"Innocent until proven guilty," she said. "Remember?"

"But tell me you don't think he did it," Tony said. As he continued to speak, he counted off on his fingers. "Come on. The guy was seen leaving the scene. He lied about it to the police. He had her bloody underwear in his bag, for God's sake! And they caught him heading for the airport with a reservation to Toronto. Oh, that's good, Casey. That's overzealous. Tell me how you explain the guy out of all that."

"You're talking like a prosecutor," she said.

"Hey, I started there, too, you know," he reminded her.

"You're so far from the DA's office that you… I don't know. You're just far."

"Okay," he said, "so we're back to representing defendants until they're proven guilty? That's good. I thought we were going to have to start chasing ambulances."

"Funny," she said, switching her dumbbells to an overhead press. "But Lipton didn't say he did it. That's the difference and you damn well know it. If a client tells me he did it, I won't represent him. I don't care if it's the pope. But Lipton says he's innocent, and he deserves to have someone plead his case."

"Hey, go easy on the pope. This guy's no pope."