2

Piper finished her work for the day, and her back was screaming. She tried to correct her bad posture by forcing herself to sit straight backed, but the slouching always returned.

She got her satchel and started heading out when her friend Andi Penny hurried up to her.

“You ready?”

“To go home? Definitely.”

“No, we’re going to Buzz.”

Buzz Junction was a bar that catered to a lot of workers in the criminal justice system. Attorneys, police officers, probation officers, prison guards, and everyone in between would go there to have a few drinks and swap war stories. Piper had never liked bars and liked crowds even less, but she had promised Andi after she begged her to come out with her.

“I really don’t feel like it,” Piper said as she hit the button for the elevator. “I’m exhausted.”

“You promised.”

“I didn’t promise.”

“Yes, you did. Don’t be a liar.”

She sighed. “Do you feel good forcing your friend to do something she doesn’t want to do?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. One drink. That’s it.”

She held up her fingers as though swearing in. “Scout’s honor.”

They chatted a bit on the elevator down, and then Andi rode it back up because she forgot to gather her things before leaving. Piper normally would have waited for her, but every muscle hurt and a headache was beginning to pound on the inside of her skull.

When she got home to change, she kicked off her shoes, her feet screaming in agony, and wanted nothing more than to have a beer and watch some television, but she really only had one friend, and Andi was it.

She showered and then dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The temperature outside sweltered at over a hundred, and she took off the jeans and put on shorts. Her grandmother wasn’t home, and Piper checked the Post-its on the fridge to see if she’d left a note for her, but there wasn’t anything new.

Buzz had a dinner crowd that was different from the night crowd. Dinner seemed to consist of everybody: regular joes coming in for some good food, with a little curiosity toward the cops, GALs, and prosecutors who went there to eat. It had gotten some bad press a few years ago when a man named Henry David Smith killed three young prostitutes, and used to come to the Buzz after and listen in on the detectives and officers talking about it, picking up details of the investigation that weren’t made public.

The building was two stories and a VIP area, or just somewhere for people to get drunk without too many prying eyes. Piper had been here a few times and never enjoyed it. Something too casual about the debauchery.

“Hey,” she said to Andi and the two men sitting across from each other in a booth near the bar.

Mark Davidson wore a sleek jacket and had his hair primmed and proper. Tom looked like he had just woken up. The scent of alcohol emanated from his breath.

“So,” Andi said once Piper had sat down, “I was telling Mark how you were on the news the other day and how hot you looked.”

She hoped she wasn’t blushing as she said, “It was nothing.”

Mark said, “I wanna hear it.”

“A man tried to shoot his stepdaughter with his shotgun, but she had taken out the shells the day prior when she sensed something was wrong. When he pulled the trigger and only heard the dry click, the daughter ran and went to a police station. I was her guardian.”

“Wow, his own daughter?” He shook his head as he took a sip of beer. “Wish I hadn’t asked.”

Andi said, “Talking about work was a bad idea, never mind. We came here to get drunk.” She rose and held out her hand for Mark and said, “Come dance with me.”

“There’s no one else dancing.”

“We’re trendsetters. Come on.”

They left Piper and Tom alone. They gave each other an awkward smile, and Tom tapped the glass in front of him rhythmically and said, “You seem distracted.”

“Do I?”

“You do.”

She shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about your offer.”

“Not my offer. But you know you’re gonna ruffle some feathers if you take it. People would step over their own mothers to work with Judge Dawson.”

“Why?”

“You need to poke your head out of your cubicle once in a while and actually interact with people, Piper. She’s the granddaughter of Warren Dawson, who was one of the founders of Champion Chemical. He died and left it all to his only beloved son, Hope’s father, who is going to leave it all to her one day.”

“So she’s rich?”

“You can’t say it like that. She’s rich . That doesn’t begin to describe it. She’s going to be a billionaire, Piper. Billion, with a b . Do you know if you’re a millionaire, you could spend one thousand dollars a day and your money would last you a few years. If you’re a billionaire, you could spend a thousand a day for twenty-seven hundred years.” He took a long drink and motioned for the waitress to bring another. “But it’s not the money, it’s the connections. That lady could get anyone a job at any law firm in the country. She’s got pull. That’s what getting ahead is all about, getting to know people with pull.”

“I’m not into politics, Tom.”

“If you ever want to climb out of the Lawyer’s Dump, you should be into politics.”

“I’m too tired to think about it now.”

Piper chatted a few more minutes with Tom and then a few more with some detectives she knew from Special Victims, and she managed to last a good half an hour after that. Enough to say that she was there. When she left, her head was pounding and a pain was radiating down her leg from being on her feet so much.

“Where you going?” Andi said when she told her she was leaving.

“My head is killing me.”

Andi glanced back to the men and said, “So you might be working with Judge Dawson?”

“I haven’t decided yet. And how’d you hear about that?”

“Oh, please. Everybody in our office knows everything about everybody. You’ve been in front of her, right?”

“No, I’ve been assigned to Judge Wilcox since I started.”

“Oh, well I did a rotation in front of her. You can never get a read on her if she likes you or not. I saw her make a detective cry on the stand. Just break down like a baby and cry. But she’s got serious juice in getting her clerks and interns jobs with the fat paychecks. You should kiss her butt for a few months. Never know what it could lead to.”

“I’ll think about it.”

That night, Piper sat with her laptop on the couch and read everything she could find about Hope Leila Dawson.

She had graduated first in her class in both medical school and law school, completing a JD/MD in a little under two years, an unheard of time to finish both degrees simultaneously. There were a few newspaper stories of cases that had appeared in front of her that had gotten media attention, one legal article mentioned her in passing and called her the “Billionairess Judge,” but other than that, there was nothing. The judge had no social media, no blogs, no published papers. For someone so prominent, it appeared the judge knew how to stay out of the limelight.

Piper set the laptop down and leaned back on her couch. Sweat trickled down her neck from the heat. She thought about going to the thermostat and turning on the air, but it sounded like too much work right now.

She thought about the judge. If what everyone had said was true, if working with Judge Dawson could help her in her career and provide enough money to fix up her grandmother’s house and provide some financial stability in her golden years, shouldn’t she do it?

With some hesitation, she texted Tom and said she wanted to look at the case file. Just look.

He texted back, Good choice .

We’ll see.