Chasing Justice (9 page)

“I think I’d like a strawberry cake with white frosting,” Jules said as she looked back and forth between Piper and Bobby, trying to make sense of the tension in the room.

Bobby nodded and headed for the door. “I’ll see you guys tonight then.” He leaned in and kissed Jules on the cheek as he hurried away.

“What was that about?” Jules asked with her hands on her hips looking suspiciously at Piper. “Did I walk in on you two about to make out or about to fistfight?”

“We were definitely not about to make out. We were having a fiery debate about my feelings that legal mechanisms for criminal punishment are either nonexistent or insufficient, and maybe a little justice outside the law is occasionally in order. He, however, feels that the rules are there for a reason and the law is completely black and white.” Piper started to stack the files up and found herself doing it with a little more annoyance than she intended.

“In other words you want to go kick some ass and he wants to let the law do its job. That sounds a lot like Bobby. He plays by the rules, almost to a fault. That’s how my dad was, and he feels like anything else would be doing a disservice to his memory. He might be a little sensitive today. The cake he’s going to get is for my dad’s birthday. Every year my dad used to let me pick whatever cake I wanted and every year I picked something different. We’ve tried to keep that tradition alive. We’ll have it after dinner tonight.” Jules swallowed hard as she smiled through the pain she still carried with her about losing her father. It didn’t matter how many years went by, how many cakes she picked, it always felt like she had just lost him.

Piper stopped forcefully stacking folders and turned herself toward Jules. She felt like a bratty little child now and wanted to slink away and die of embarrassment. “I feel like such an idiot now. I didn’t know. I get so caught up in my own convictions sometimes that I lose sight of the fact that people have reasons for believing what they do. I don’t want to intrude on your celebration tonight or upset Bobby any more than I have. I should skip dinner this time.”

“I want you to come,” Jules whispered, with a disarming smile. “My father would have liked you. He always appreciated a good discussion of opposing views. Plus, I know Bobby wants you there. When you know someone as long as I’ve known Bobby you can read ‘em like a book. I’ve actually been fixing to tell you that if something should happen between you and Bobby, I’d be all right with it. I’m always going to love him, but I don’t ever see us being together again. I want him to be happy, and if that comes from being with you then I’m all for it,” Jules said, flashing her magnificent smile at Piper. It was hard to even listen to Jules speak sometimes without getting caught up in how stunning she was.

“You don’t have to worry about that at all, Jules. Bobby is a really nice guy, and getting to know him better has been great, but nothing is going to happen between us. I know it’s kind of a cliché, but I have an enormous amount of baggage. I’m hardly in a position to be anyone’s friend right now let alone anything more than that. I don’t have any room in my life for it.” Piper hoped this brief moment of honesty on her part wouldn’t lead to a barrage of questions from Jules.

“Oh darling, Bobby is the kind of guy you make room for. He’ll open your car door, drive twenty minutes to kill a spider you’ve trapped under a jar, and he’ll forgive you before you even realize you’re sorry. That boy has been by my side for every hard moment of my life. Whatever woman makes room for Bobby will be eternally blessed,” Jules said with a knowing look on her face. Letting Bobby’s love slip through her fingers was a regret she’d have to live with, but if she could stop someone else from making the same mistake maybe she’d find some peace with it.

Piper kept thinking to herself, this isn’t at all like the movies. She was an average person with no notable skills trying to do something most people wouldn’t be delusional enough to attempt. It had been two weeks since digging through court records had helped her make the connection between the Donavan family and the judge, yet she still found herself buried in more research. She couldn’t decide if she was stalling or being thorough.

Two more trips to the town hall had proven helpful. She was able to read an abundance of articles that had been printed about the Donavan family along with personal notes by various attorneys. This gave her insight into people’s perceptions of them. None of the material offered cold hard facts, but there was something to be said for rumors; they almost always held some truth. Two prosecutors had actually made notes in the margins of their pads that made vague references to judicial bias.

Piper was also very grateful for the job with the cable company. Not only did the staggered shifts give her ample time to piece the puzzle together, but the company’s data base was a gold mine of information. It was amazing what you could learn about someone from television and internet choices. She compiled a spreadsheet of addresses for each member of the Donavan family she could find. Something Bobby had said kept running through her head.
If I was going to take them down, I’d start with Sean.
And everything Piper found was pointing in that same direction.

Sean didn’t seem to be employed as he spent most of his time during the day utilizing the gaming system and chat function that ran through the cable company. At night he rented an ungodly number of porn movies. His overall Internet and television usage was astronomical. He seemed to be a deadbeat, just as Bobby had described him.

All of this was helpful information, but Piper still had no idea how to use it. She knew that the quickest and most effective way to remove the judge was to turn his allies against him. She was now fairly certain that the Donavans were the cohorts in question, but what was her next move?

She did have a slight advantage over the average person. Her childhood provided an inside track to the unwritten code of criminals. Most people would incorrectly assume that a family of crime would be far too indebted to a judge who consistently acted in their interest. But Piper knew there were at least three things the judge could do to undermine his relationship with the Donavans.

First, you never mess with an associate’s children or sleep with his wife. Even if they are divorced, she is still off limits. Second, you don’t double dip, meaning if you are currently taking bribes from the Donavans you don’t go getting greedy and start looking to expand your dealings with other groups. And third, you are perfectly allowed to sleep with women of any age. You can frequent strip clubs, pay for sex, and even rough the girls up if that’s your thing. Regardless of how young they are, in the eyes of these men, you are not a pedophile. But if you make the same habit with young men and boys, then you are a monster and considered the lowest of low on the criminal food chain. If the judge were to cross any of those lines it would be a fast track to dissolving their alliance.

So Piper would follow Bobby’s unwitting advice and start with Sean. She wasn’t sure where he would lead her, but she felt if anyone was going to further her plan it would be him.

Now all she needed to do was set the trap. Finding a way into his house wouldn’t be all that difficult. Sean certainly couldn’t live long without his cable and Internet, so disrupting those would result in an urgent call for a technician in that area. The hard part would be what she would do once she was there. No one really opens up much to some stranger from the cable company. She would need this encounter to be a bridge to a more intimate rendezvous between them. She decided that she would need Sean to ask her out on a date. Judging by his inability to put down the remote control, this might not be an easy task. Somehow she would have to come across as someone worth leaving the house for.

That meant more research. She studied the video games he played in great detail and watched many of the movies he ordered through pay-per-view, but she stopped short of diving into the ones that fell under the adult subscription. She hoped that sharing his interest in
Smoking Hot Moms
wouldn’t be necessary to win him over.

Before she knew it, Piper was standing outside the door of Sean Donavan’s third-floor apartment choking back the urge to vomit. She blamed the feeling on the repulsive smell of marijuana and garbage that seemed to fill the hallway, but realistically, her nerves had begun to catch up with her.

She knocked hesitantly and clutched her toolbag tightly with her sweaty hand. She heard a muffled grumbling noise and then the shuffling of feet coming toward her. The door swung open and a disheveled man who had clearly just woken up stood before her. His eyes were puffy and red, which Piper assumed was from doing drugs of some sort. His hair, which was somewhere between blond and brown, was matted in some areas and then looked as though it was attempting to escape from his head in other areas.

He wore baggy gray sweatpants and a green buttoned-down shirt that was wide open, exposing his chest and stomach. Piper noticed he was fit and had a thick, raised scar running from his chest down to his belly button. Even with the repulsive lack of grooming he had a gorgeous face. The structure of his lips and cheeks were rigid and incredibly masculine. He reminded Piper of a young James Dean, weathered but smolderingly handsome.

“They send a freaking skirt to fix my cable? What the hell is this world coming to?” Sean asked as he squinted to look Piper over. The bright lights of the hallway were too much for his cloudy and watery eyes. Piper was beginning to wonder what kind of backward town Edenville must be. Its occupants had such a hard time wrapping their mind around a woman being able to run some wires and drill some holes. She wasn’t sure if they thought work at the cable company was so complicated or that girls weren’t capable of manual labor. “At least you’re hot. Let’s get this over with already. I’ve got shit, like work, to do on my computer.”

Piper wanted to interject that chatting with other unmotivated strangers while blowing things up in the latest video game didn’t count as work. Instead, she smiled and followed Sean into his apartment. Not surprisingly, it was a mess. The apartment itself was quite nice, with a brick fireplace and granite countertops in the kitchen, but it was overrun with beer bottles, ashtrays, and piles of clothes.

“Sorry you’re having trouble with your cable. I'm sure I can get it fixed so you can get back to work,” Piper spoke in a coy, quiet voice and smiled warmly at Sean. She made her way to the first television in the room. She knew full well that the problem with his cable didn’t lie in the house. She had disconnected his service from outside.

Sean plopped down on the couch, and she could feel his eyes on her. Piper had on a lace tank top beneath her uniform and had left most of the buttons on her shirt undone. In a very degrading move she had searched through her old clothes to find a pair of thong underwear that she hiked up above the line of her khaki pants. It was all incredibly demeaning to her, but she had known guys like Sean her whole life. She knew what he’d be thinking as she bent down to get access behind the television.

“Oh wow,” Piper sang, feigning surprise. “You have the Demons from the Depths Five? I’ve been on the waiting list to get a copy of that for weeks. You’re so lucky.” Piper felt her face warm a little as she tried to sound like an envious fellow gamer.

“It’s not luck. You have to be someone in this town to get access to shit like that so early. You play?” She assumed that was some kind of gamer slang and that he was asking her if she liked video games.

“A little,” she answered. “I can hold my own. But I guess it doesn’t matter, since I’m not
someone in this town
I won’t get a chance to play it for a while,” Piper used her fingers to make air quotes and show a sassy side.

“If you ever get my shit fixed here, then maybe I’ll let you lose to me for a while.” Sean had clearly spotted the lacey clues Piper had left for him to find all over her body. She could feel his interest in her growing. He had a devilish smile creeping across his face.

“I’ll have it fixed in just a few minutes, but I have other jobs to get to so I can’t stay, even though I’d really like to hang for a while.” Piper wasn't sure if people still said things like hang, and she could feel her nerves raging. She winked at him and gave her best attempt at a naughty crooked grin.

“I think if you stayed we’d find other things to play.” Sean rose from the couch and Piper felt her heart skip a beat. She wanted to be flirty and mysterious, but she knew she might claw his eyes out if he actually tried to touch her right now.

“I don’t play anything without dinner, or at least drinks.” Piper slowly started putting her tools back in her bag and stood.

“You might be worth a drink or two. How about you meet me at Lorenzo’s Bar on Thursday night at nine?” Sean moved closer to her and she could feel her skin begin to crawl. She sidestepped him as he approached and headed for the door.

“That sounds great. I’ll see you there. Your cable should be all set in about ten minutes. I’ll just show myself out,” she spoke fast and moved even faster toward the door. Mission accomplished, she thought, no need to stick around and give Sean a chance to get any ideas.

As Piper reconnected Sean’s cable from the box outside his place, she could feel her heart pounding against her chest. Every time she took one step further down this path she felt herself falling slightly more out of control.

“Are you ready to go?” Bobby asked Piper as they sat on Betty’s porch swing watching the night unfold before them. Lightning bugs were beginning to sparkle across the open field of the front yard, and the crickets were chirping loudly. Piper looked forward to Wednesday nights week after week. They were brief moments in time filled with calmness and tranquility mixed with laughter. For the last two weeks Bobby had given her a ride there. Betty had insisted that it didn’t make sense for two people coming from the same direction to in drive different cars. Whether she was playing matchmaker or mother hen, it didn’t seem up for debate.

“I’m never ready to leave here,” Piper answered, with a little pout. “Don’t you wish you could stay forever? This creaky old swing, the sounds of the night and all these stars? I’m not sure there is anywhere on earth more peaceful than this.” Bobby watched the wonder dance on Piper’s face and realized how different her life must have been from his growing up. He appreciated a little front porch sitting as much as the next southerner, but Piper seemed completely in love with the concept of quietly watching the world around her, as if she had never really done it before. Until his parents moved back up north two years ago, Bobby had lived at home, just next door, with them. Most of his nights ended exactly this way. Now, since moving into downtown Edenville, Wednesday night was the only way he could enjoy the outdoors this way. But if he had to, he’d sit on a pile of rotting trash at the landfill to be next to Piper.

“Come on,” he said, standing and pulling her up by her outstretched hands. “It’ll be next Wednesday night before you know it. I’ll be honking the horn outside your house and we’ll be on our way back here.” Bobby poked his head back through the screen door and called a goodbye to Betty who was drying the dishes and humming a song.

“Bye kids, drive safe.” Betty walked out on the porch as they got into Bobby’s big red truck and waved at them as she always did. Piper loved that about Betty. She loved that she stood on the threshold of her house and waved all of them off every time they left.

There was something so comforting about knowing no matter how many times you looked back she’d still be there. She’d stand with her dishrag draped over her shoulder waving her hand and smiling until you were out of sight. Piper felt like she had waited her whole life for gestures like that.

Being a passenger in Bobby’s truck was oddly exciting. It was an antique but so comfortable and well-kept that you’d never know how old it really was. It was nice not to have to navigate the dark country roads, and to simply sit back and watch the world go by. They usually talked about how work was going for both of them, how much of an idiot Scott was that night, and occasionally about Betty and Stan. Piper had learned their love story was one you might see in a movie. Bobby painted them as the perfect parents and fiercely loyal to each other. He had mentioned on more than one occasion that he would never settle for a relationship that was less than what Betty and Stan had.

“So I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Bobby started timidly, and Piper could tell he was feeling a little awkward about his question. “Did Jules give you the same speech about how we have her blessing if anything should happen between us?” Bobby looked straight ahead, focusing on the road.

“She did. It was strange and uncomfortable but very sweet. Don’t worry though, I told her nothing was going to happen.” Piper was desperate to move on from this conversation. She hated any deep discussion that didn’t come with an exit strategy, unless she considered diving out of a moving truck an acceptable form of ending a chat. She knew everything she had been doing over the past weeks was playing with fire. She couldn’t go around blending herself into this peculiar but delightful group without them wanting more from her. And she couldn’t go around swinging on a porch swing week after week with a gorgeous cop and not think he’d expect something to come of it.

“Well that’s not completely true. We kissed.” Bobby felt a small pang of disappointment at Piper’s reaction. He had hoped this conversation might be a jumping off point for something more.

“That wasn’t really a kiss. It was a thank you between friends. It didn’t mean anything. It was how you would kiss your grandmother for goodness sake.”

“I guess the next time I kiss you I better not leave any doubt about my intentions then,” he smiled unapologetically at her.

“There isn’t going to be a next time. I’m not sure how to put this so bear with me while I think of the right way to say it.” She bit her lip and searched out her window, hoping maybe the right words would be painted on the passing trees.

When Piper remained silent for several moments, Bobby spoke up. “You’re very beautiful when you’re speechless. Let me see if I can help you. Are you dating that lawyer guy you’re doing all that research for? Because that won’t stop me from pursuing you. I’m not above stealing another guy’s girl,” Bobby said with a forced seriousness that broke into a smile.

“No, Michael and I are barely even friends. We’re more like acquaintances. That isn’t it at all.” She looked down at her lap still searching for the right words to say. She fiddled nervously with her hands until Bobby reached over to hold one.

He intertwined his fingers with hers, and she was taken aback by how warm and large his hand felt. Her hands were always cold regardless of the outside temperature. It seemed to be ages since she had felt the warmth of another person in this intimate way. She let the comfort and connection of his hand take over for a moment before realizing what she had to do. She pulled her hand away and began to speak.

“I’m not even a whole person, Bobby. I’m no Betty to your Stan. There are some girls out there who are worth the fight and the hard work, but you’re going to have to trust me when I tell you that I’m not one of them.” She had her hands back in her lap now and stared down at them. It had only been a minute and she already missed the feeling of his hand enveloping hers.

“I’m a pretty insightful guy, Piper. By now I’ve realized that you don’t talk about your past. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve stopped asking. I can see that you’ve got some history that maybe you’re still dealing with. That doesn’t make you some damaged girl unworthy of a relationship.” Bobby pulled the truck up to the front of Piper’s house. The thought of the conversation ending was relieving to Piper and disappointing to Bobby. She pushed open her car door instead of waiting for Bobby to come around and do it for her as he usually did, another gesture she had always imagined but never expected. Before she could hit the first step of her apartment she heard Bobby following behind.

“Bobby, I know you have this whole hero complex thing, and you probably see me as this great cause you can work on. I don’t need that right now. I need a friend, and you, Jules, and Betty have been wonderful. That’s all I have room for at the moment.” She fumbled for her front door key as she climbed the stairs, not looking over her shoulder to see his reaction or if he was following her. He certainly was.

They were both at the top of the stairs now, her keys in hand and her forehead pressed against the door in frustration. He turned her around to face him and pulled her chin up so he could look into her eyes.

“I’m going to kiss you right now unless you explicitly tell me not to.” He paused, and Piper was frantically searching for the words to tell him to stop, but none came.

Bobby leaned in and kissed her, hesitating slightly as if he were afraid to scare her off. After a moment of passively fighting it, Piper parted her lips, inviting him to kiss her passionately. Bobby’s warm hand was resting softly on her cheek. His tongue danced lightly across her lips. He used his free hand to pull her body up against his and she felt herself shake with passion. It didn’t matter how many times she had touched him over the last few weeks she was always surprised by the tightness of his muscles and the width of his shoulders.

Time seemed to cease, until the sound of a honking car somewhere in the distance freed them both from the trance. As their lips moved away from each other’s, their foreheads came together, and Bobby looked into Piper’s eyes, searching for a reaction.

Her face read only stunned. She was surprised at how magical the moment felt, how she had made it all the way into her twenties without ever feeling anything like that before. She was even more surprised that she had let it happen. Bobby kissed her cheek, tucked her frazzled brown hair behind her ear and leaned in to whisper to her, “That was no Grandma kiss.” He took the keys from her hand, unlocked her door, and swung it open. Piper, who was still reeling from the kiss, felt his hand on the small of her back as he nudged her in. For a moment she thought he’d be joining her and the kiss would be only a gateway to a night of passion. But in true gentlemanly fashion, he nodded and winked as he turned back toward the street, pulling the door closed between them.

It took another long minute before she could will herself to move toward the window to watch his taillights as he pulled away. She had kissed and been kissed by men in the past, but none had ever felt so breathtaking. She could still taste the mint of his gum on her lips and smell his fresh, soapy skin. She knew now that she felt something for Bobby that she had never experienced before, and it meant one of two things. Either she’d have to let him in or push him away. Both options seemed suffocating.