“Miss Lavoie, will you please cover yourself up?” the judge began, quite shocked.

Justine held her hands before her breasts. The judge looked at Donovan. “Counselor?”

Donovan shrugged. He did not know how to deal with the girl. He took her jacket and placed it around her shoulders. At least it covered up something. Apart from covering her shoulders, it covered the large, elaborate tattoo of a soaring eagle with a bloody beak and claws she had tattooed on her back and shoulders. It looked odd on a little girl like this. But then, she was hardly an innocent little girl.

The judge shook his head read the charge. “The State of New York against Justine Aoibhe Maria Lavoie. On the charge of driving under influence of alcohol, how do you plea?”

“Fuck you,” Justine Lavoie answered before Donovan could open his mouth.

“Pardon me?” the judge said. “I’m not sure I heard you correctly.”

“I said...” the girl gathered her breath and screamed the next words, “Fuck you!”

The judge's face paled. He was used to a lot, but he could not let this go. “Counselor. Please control your client, or I will also hold her in contempt of the court.”

“Yes, your honor.” Donovan answered quickly. Justine Lavoie turned to him and looked at him, licking her lips. “I'll fuck you too, you know. Pay him off with my pussy and you can take my ass.” She turned away from him again, lifted the poor excuse for a skirt and began grinding into him. Naomh stepped in and pulled her away.

“Oh, you want him in your ass instead? I'll share; you know, I'm not picky.”

“Miss Lavoie!” the judge roared. “This is a courthouse, not a brothel. If you cannot keep from exposing yourself and behaving indecently, I will find you guilty of the charges, add contempt of the court and have you locked up immediately!” The old man looked furious. And rightly too, Donovan thought. There was no excuse for this. The girl was completely deranged. “Can I approach the bench, your honor?” he asked quickly. The judge nodded.

As Donovan approached, he already knew he had made a mistake. He had wanted to talk to the judge and ask whether he could spare her any harsh sentence, forcing her to take rehab instead, but that plan was not going to fly. For the moment he approached, Justine Lavoie dropped onto her back and began touching herself. “See, I'll pay you off? I'll give you as much as you want,” she proposed to the judge.

Not five minutes later, she had been taken to the jail at the back of the courthouse. There was nothing Donovan could do about it. He calmly heard the judge say she had defiled the courtroom and shown utter contempt for the court, on top of the charges already filed against her. He ordered the officers to take blood for drug testing and to hold her in the cells until the results came back. Donovan could only agree. He wanted to ask for bail, but he knew it was futile right now.

When he walked out of the courtroom, Naomh Walsh was already outside, making calls. Journalists were talking to camera teams, phoning their offices or speaking into recorders. The whole scene was beyond chaotic. And Naomh Walsh was in full damage control mode. For himself, the damage had been done. He could do little other than wait for the judge to call him back and talk about bail. He sat down on the wooden bench outside the courtroom and closed his eyes.

Two hours passed before he was called in to hear the final ruling. The results of the blood test had come back and they did not look good. It seemed Justine Lavoie had recently taken nearly everything she could have gotten her hands on. Uppers and downers, legal and illegal. She was a walking pharmacy, as the judge put it. He hesitated not a moment. He gave her a fine for the drunk driving, but ordered Justine Aoibhe Maria Lavoie to go into rehab. Donovan accepted the verdict in her place. She was not there, having passed out in the cell.

Outside, Donovan found the topless man, whom he knew was one of Justine’s bodyguards, even if she did use him for other things too. He told him to bring the girl back into the limousine and take her home. He looked around and saw Naomh Walsh still making calls. He would probably not see her again, not any time soon, and he felt he should say goodbye. But she was busy and he had to get back to his office on the other side of town. Instead, he began the long walk several blocks north to his office and back to saner legal work.

Chapter Nine

Albert walked into Donovan’s midtown office, where he was in the library, looking through several decades of history of land ownership for Gregoris Sedakis. The case actually looked pretty clear-cut. The land did seem to have belonged to the Lang family, but the ownership was pretty much neglected since the deal was agreed between their grandfather and the corporation. It seemed pretty much as Sedakis had said.

He did not know why he was still researching it, because the claimant in the case was dead, but he just felt compelled to keep looking. He could not explain why, but he did.

“Need a word,” Albert said gruffly.

“What about?”

“The two corpses connected to you.”

Donovan looked up with a sigh. “What now?”

“First of all,” Albert came into the library. “They were paralyzed with drugs and then cut up while still alive.” Donovan looked down again. He did not want to show how horrified he was with that knowledge. “Second, there's no recent trace of any other sibling.”

“There isn't?” Donovan asked him blankly.

Albert shook his head. “Nope. They had a sister in that boarding school, but she vanished the same day as Mara Lang ended up under your car. Nobody has heard from her since. It was summer so she probably made it further than freezing to death. But nobody reported her missing. No bodies fitting her description have been found. She probably ended up somewhere in the woods or in the Hudson River.”

Donovan shook his head. “I know Frankie wouldn’t tell me to look out for her if she were dead.”

Albert just shrugged. “Believe what you want, but she's not showing up on the grid.”

“Was that all, Al?”

“No clue where to go with it, but for some reason, this killer does these horrible things. Might be a fascination with eagles or with Vikings or something. But the killer also has a strong connection to you.”

“Well, it's not me, and I know fuck-all about it,” Donovan said tensely. He was annoyed because of the business earlier at the courthouse and he did not like to think too much about the two blood-eagled bodies.

“I know.” Albert came forward and thumped him on the shoulder. “You need a distraction. How about more steak? You're buying.”

Donovan looked at him and saw him grinning broadly. “Fuck you.” But he managed a smile too. “Since you're doing the inviting, you're paying, you bastard. But you can buy me a burger or something.”

“So you can rub it in that you can eat them without getting fat and my belly is expanding all the time?”

“Of course,” Donovan smiled. “How's the diet?”

“Good enough as long as the wife doesn't know what I eat during the day.”

There was a burger joint not too far from the office. Their burgers were expensive, but they were good. They made everything fresh and they actually had a decent chef running the kitchen. They sat down by the window and looked over the menu. It was changed every month and Donovan was not familiar with anything on the menu anymore. It had been months since he had been there.

“Doesn't look too bad now,” he remarked to Albert.

“Fucking expensive burger joint,” Albert grumbled.

“Of course. It's quality food, not processed shit.”

“I guess. Should never have agreed to pay.”

“Well, you did. I'll get the drinks.”

“Thanks.”

“So what are you having?”

Albert thought for a moment. “I'll go for some goddamned lemonade.”