Chasing Justice (8 page)

They entered the small windowless room that housed the court documents, and Bobby flipped on a switch that brought the humming florescent overhead lights to life.

“I’ve certainly considered it. It’s not like I’m doing a bang-up job at work or anything. What would I really be walking away from? But when I think about what our lives would be like with everything that’s happened I feel we’re better off as friends. I don’t know if I could be with someone who asked me to give up everything I believe in. I don’t think that’s the right foundation for a relationship. All I want is Jules and I to be happy for each other, even if we can’t be happy together. I’m not making any sense,” Bobby stuttered, heading toward the computer and turning it on.

“It makes perfect sense to me. I completely understand why she doesn't want you to be a police officer, but I also understand why you feel like you have to be. It’s amazing how one event can impact people so differently.” Piper and Bobby hadn’t ever talked about Stan’s death, but he assumed Betty had shared it with her. If Piper was coming over for Wednesday dinners that meant Betty trusted her. Bobby was inclined to agree, but was taking a bit longer to form his full opinion.

“That’s exactly it. Stan being murdered made me want to chase down criminals, and it made Jules want to protect everyone she loves and her own heart. When we were younger it didn’t matter as much because doing either of those things was outside our control. Eventually, though, we grew up and had to decide if we were going to stay on our paths or make a new path together. I’m hoping there is some middle ground somewhere. I feel like we’re finally on our way to finding it.” Bobby pulled two chairs up to the computer and sat down. Piper joined him, her leg brushing his thigh as she sat. This man was solid muscle. She let her thoughts move from the melancholy of Bobby’s heartache, to the idea of what he might look like under that uniform, then finally to the anxiety of what she was about to do. She wished now she had been firmer in her objections to his help, but she had to admit being here next to him had its perks, too.

“So,” Bobby continued, “you tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll use this program to drill down to the specific cases. The drill downs are almost endless. Just give me the criteria you need and I’ll enter it. Then it will tell where in these filing cabinets we can find the public information linked to them. Also, by searching here in this field, you can pull up any news stories that may have been printed about it.” Bobby sat with his fingertips over the keyboard waiting for Piper to direct him. She bit her lip and let her mind run through the possible repercussions of over-sharing here. As long as Bobby was under the impression that she was gathering the work for a friend then it seemed fairly safe. She decided that sitting quietly while he waited looked far more suspicious than having him dig up some old files in the name of research.

“I need to find case files from the last eighteen months where the sitting judge was Judge Lions. Then I need only the cases that were found in favor of the defendant. I’d like to drill down into cases that included special judicial rulings like the suppression of evidence for any reason, technicalities resulting in an acquittal, or petitions by either the defense or prosecution that were ruled in favor of the defense.” Piper pulled her notebook onto her lap and waited as Bobby typed the information into the system.

“Okay, that gave us thirty-nine results. Now we just need to write down the reference numbers and then go dig them out.” Bobby called the numbers off to Piper as she jotted them down.

It took them over an hour to gather all thirty-nine case files and, by the end of it, Piper’s arms were tired and her eyes were strained. Every time they crossed paths Piper felt her body tingle and her face become warm.

“Why exactly do you need all this stuff anyway? Are you trying to site precedence in a case or something?” Bobby asked as he handed Piper another stack of documents.

“It’s not for a case per se. It’s more along the lines of a thesis, something for my friend Michael to publish eventually. He’s a lawyer and you know how gigantic their egos are. Well apparently they like having their names in writing too. He’s trying to show how strict adherence to the letter of the law in our society has prevented the spirit of the law from being enforced.” Piper had spent the last twenty minutes getting that story straight in her head.

“I know all about that. Catching a guy with a box of illegal guns and getting your ass kicked means nothing unless you Mirandize him. If that isn’t bullshit I don’t know what is.” Bobby sat down at the computer again and grimaced. “Let’s not get into that though, what other information do you need about these cases?”

“Well I’ll need a list of the defendants and the charges against them.” Piper rolled her chair back over to his side. She quickly realized another absolute difference between Bobby and Michael—the way they smelled. Michael wore expensive cologne that always made Piper imagine him dressed in a sweater vest, holding a polo mallet and posing for a clothing store ad. Bobby, on the other hand, just smelled clean, like soap and maybe some shaving cream.

“Here’s the list, alphabetized.” He scanned it as Piper read over his shoulder. She noticed a trend immediately.

“That’s odd. Of all these cases, fourteen of them have the same last name—Donavan. And here, five of them have the last name Cheval. That doesn’t seem normal, does it?” If Bobby hadn’t been with her, she’d be running those names through every search engine she could find, frantically looking for more information on them.

“It’s not that odd, really. Donavans are a pretty notorious family in this part of the state. It doesn’t surprise me they’ve had a lot of cases. Duke Cheval is a known associate of theirs. There aren’t too many really bad guys in this area luckily, but they are certainly on the short list. I would have expected to see their names on here.” Bobby passed the list over to Piper.

“What makes them so bad?” asked Piper as she rolled her chair over to the piles of folders on the table. She tried to look as though she were only half listening to what Bobby was saying, when in reality she was hanging on every word.

“Christian Donavan, Jr. is said to have followed pretty closely in his father’s footsteps. Christian Sr. was a notorious gambler who ran an enormous bookie business. When things were going his way he was living the high life, but when times got tough he started to invest in some shady deals. He was around in Stan’s heyday. I remember hearing stories of how Christian Sr. was the number one source for illegal guns at the time. The homicide rate had almost doubled in the underprivileged sections of the state where he had been running prostitution rings and gun sales. A lot of people actually looked at him pretty favorably since he had an unwritten code about not selling the guns in Edenville. Who says there’s no honor among thieves?” Bobby rolled his chair over to sit next to Piper, hoping he’d be able to help her sort through the documents in front of her.

“I love the irony in that name. Christian, it’s so fitting. So all these Donavans on here are related to him?” Piper passed the list back to Bobby and continued to pretend to be otherwise occupied.

“It looks like it. Christian, Jr. is the brains of the operation as far as rumor has it. He picked up pretty much where his dad left off. These two cases here are his cousin Tommy’s. I know of his brother, Sean. He has three cases on this list. He’s not so bright. He’s known for being a bigmouth skirt-chaser, and that’s not conducive to a successful life of crime. If I were going to take these guys down, I’d start with him. Not that it matters—I’ll be working traffic for the next ten years.” Bobby took his hands and rubbed at his temples as though the thought of directing traffic gave him an instant headache.

“I’m sure you’ll be back taking down huge crime rings before you know it. One mistake doesn’t ruin your entire career.” She put her hand on his shoulder and was instantly impressed by how muscular it was. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on him anywhere.

“I think I’ll be asking to stay on traffic actually. The mistake I made had nothing to do with forgetting to read the Miranda rights. It was being overconfident enough to think I could manage that type of investigation and take down those guys my rookie year. I was trying to prove something, to Jules or myself or maybe to Stan. I don’t want to be just an average cop, because if I am then I gave up someone I loved in order to do a mediocre job. I guess I was trying to overcome that. Realistically, I had no business getting involved. I could have blown more than an opportunity, I could have gotten myself and Rylie killed. Those two weeks of suspension were some of the darkest of my life.”

Piper’s hand lingered on his shoulder, and he felt it burning through his shirt. He wanted to believe that it was all the time they had been spending together lately that made the thought of her touching him intoxicating, and hoped it wasn’t the fact that all he could picture was that lace bra of hers. He didn’t want to be that kind of guy.

“I wish I had known you then, because I would have told you I was proud of you. It took someone with an enormous amount of courage to do what you did. You should have no regrets. I wouldn’t have let you stay in that dark place for too long.” She saw a look of gratitude fill Bobby’s face as she spoke.

With a swift movement toward her, Bobby leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. It wasn’t a kiss full of passion and hunger. It was a kiss that two old friends might share. To Piper, even though it was brief, it felt powerful.

“I’m sorry,” Bobby whispered. “No one else has said that to me since this whole thing started, and I needed to hear it more than I thought. I didn’t mean to ambush you like that.” For the second time today Bobby couldn’t look at Piper directly.

“That’s all right, I completely understand. It was nothing.” Piper smiled and waved her hands, indicating it was no big deal, though inside, her mind was reeling. She thought the only thing worse than the awkwardness of a kiss would be a lingering silence to follow it, so she kept speaking. “You found a box of guns and three pretty terrible guys and none of it mattered because you didn’t follow every single step in the process. The justice system is completely flawed and set you up to fail. Those guys should be in jail right now, and you should be a hero.”

Bobby followed Piper’s lead and kept the chatter going. “The system is there for a reason. I’m supposed to execute it exactly how it’s been laid out so that everyone gets treated fairly. I made a mistake. It’s taken me a little while to own up to that, but I know now that, ultimately, I might have had the right motivations, but those guys deserve the same opportunities you or I would have.” Bobby tried to nonchalantly lean back in his chair to create some distance between them. Kissing Piper felt right in the moment, but sliding the piles of folders off the table and slowly peeling off her clothes didn’t seem as appropriate.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Piper was completely annoyed now and it was obvious all over her face. “I’d imagine you know where all those guns go. They’re involved in robberies, homicides, and drive-by shootings every day. Those guns kill children. The drugs they push ruin people’s lives. If I had my way, those guys would have been begging to go to jail when I was done with them. Look at this case.” Piper pulled open a folder she had been browsing earlier. “Duke Cheval was arrested for holding the lease to an apartment where seven women were being kept as sex slaves. The notes in the prosecutor’s file say that the women were too afraid to testify against him and, therefore, he was found not guilty. He claimed that the people were squatters, and he had no knowledge they were using his apartment as a brothel. There were pictures of Duke entering and leaving the building on at least two occasions, but Judge Lions suppressed the evidence due to a mishandling in the storage process. Apparently the pictures were coded incorrectly by the person cataloging them and they were filed with another case. By the time they were found the judge felt there was too much opportunity for them to have been tampered with. The youngest victim was sixteen years old and had restraint marks on her ankles and wrists, as well as cigarette burns all over her body. Can you honestly tell me that you think he had no idea what was going on in that place? Are you telling me that he doesn’t deserve a fate worse than prison?” Piper didn’t need the extra space Bobby had given her by leaning back in his chair in order to keep them from kissing again. His ridiculous idealism about the justice system was enough of a deterrent.

“So what exactly is your solution, vigilantism? We all go get our pitchforks and torches and hand out punishment as we see fit? How can someone with any interest in criminal justice have that opinion?” Bobby loved a good debate as much as anyone but he was desperately hoping that Piper would break into a laugh any minute and admit she was joking.

“Why do you think I’m not in school anymore? The entire thing is a joke, and I don’t want to be a part of it. Maybe retribution outside the system is exactly what they need.” Piper closed the file in front of her with a huff, exasperated by Bobby’s stubbornness. They both sat for a minute in silence, their faces twisted in frustration at the other’s view. Just as Bobby began to defend his point further, a voice broke in.

“I am so sorry guys. I swear they can’t do anything up there without me. Bobby, were you able to help Piper?” Bobby stood, and Jules, knowing him well, recognized the annoyance on his face.

“I think she needs more help than I can give.” Immediately regretting the dig he tried to change the subject quickly. “I completely forgot, Jules, I came here to ask you what kind of cake you want for tonight. I’m going to pick it up on my way.”