Chasing Justice

Chapter Eight



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.