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,