fic: criminal vigilantism and redemption causes
Title: Criminal Vigilantism and Redemption Causes (1/2)
Author: ktcosmopolitan
Spoilers: Anything that has aired at this point is fair game.
Rating/Warning: Ooh, yikes, R? Please be advised that this gets pretty violent and there are some disturbing themes threaded through several bits of the story.
Word Count: 7,190 (yikes!)
Disclaimer: Sob, neither this show nor its characters belong to me, I promise.
Summary: Three years after Annie’s murder, Jeff comes to the numbing conclusion that his newest client is, in fact, the man responsible for her death.
Author's Note: UGH, THIS IS FINALLY DONE. Near Christmastime, I was pretty much finished with the story, and then promptly decided it was terrible and scrapped the whole thing. Giant thanks to eleventhimpala for a) coming up with the wonderful and challenging prompt, and b) being super patient with me, because I always take forever to write anything remotely of quality.
Um, a couple notes: this is a future!fic, so it takes place about six years after the gang would graduate. This isn’t beta’d (that reminds me, I need to find myself a beta; if anyone is ever interested, let me know!), so forgive any mistakes, I weeded through the thing like four times. For anyone who watched "Suits" on USA, you'll recognize one character who makes a cameo here. The lyrics at the end are provided by Iron & Wine, from their song “Flightless Bird, American Mouth.” I’ve read several different interpretations of the song, so let’s just pretend it makes perfect sense in this story… Oh, and lastly, my 60s AU fic, for anyone who cares, is getting back into action really soon, basically once my finals are done (the end of this week). I think that’s about it! Okay, enjoy! xo Kate
...
Sitting in the holding cell brings him the greatest amount of peace he has felt in months.
His boss, who immediately volunteered herself as his lawyer when they arrested him the day before, appears on the other side of the cell’s rusting metal bars, her eyes blank as though her memory has been wiped clean. He recognizes this face. Ever the diplomat, Jessica Pearson stares at Jeff with unflappable poise. “He barely got a scratch on you,” she observes. “I’m surprised. I never considered you a violent man.” She turns to the single guard standing against the wall and clears her throat. “Allow me to remind you that there is such a thing as attorney-client privilege. I would appreciate it if you unlocked this cell and gave us some privacy.”
The guard blanches at the request. “What? He’s been charged with a violent crime; I have strict orders to keep him sep-”
“I doubt,” Jessica says sharply, “the ADA will be pleased when I file a formal complaint with the judge regarding a prison guard’s partisan and unprofessional conduct with a defense attorney. I’ll repeat myself: unlock this cell. Now.” Her stony expression unsettles the guard, who hurriedly opens the cell door; he hisses five minutes and stalks out. Jessica steps inside the cell and, hearing the latch click behind her, calmly walks toward Jeff. She gives him six inches of space on the cold, steel bench.
“We’re scheduled to appear in court tomorrow morning, eight A.M. sharp.”
“Peachy,” he says to the ground. “I wonder whose parole hearing they had to defer in order to squeeze me in. I’m sure I’ll get the red carpet treatment.”
She placidly ignores his sarcasm. “At this point, I can’t imagine any judge being quick to let us post bail-though affording it is a non-issue-so you’ll be in here for a little while,” she explains, as if he knows next to nothing about the legal system. Jessica falls silent for a few minutes, leaving Jeff to wallow in his own thoughts, which move like molasses. He has lost his adrenaline by now. “It’ll be fine. You are going to be fine. Your alibi will be solid, the detectives found an open bottle of alcohol-fights can break out easily when both parties are intoxicated-”
“I wasn’t drunk,” he says bitterly. “You-you aren’t even going to ask me what happened?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do I need to?”
His eyes drop back to the floor. “Maybe. Ethically, perhaps.”
“Eleanor told me that the Davies kid spent the evening in your office to go over his testimony-”
At this, he buries his face in his hands, clamping his mouth shut in an attempt to suppress the nausea percolating through his body. “He mentioned-he mentioned An-her. He was really drunk at that point. And then he confessed, just like that. He knew details that were never disclosed to the public like-like the ring.” Jessica hears Jeff lose himself momentarily. “I don’t think he knew it was me. He couldn’t have known-who I was, I mean, in relation to… Her,” he mutters vaguely, trembling. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t even conscious of what I was doing until after it all happened. He didn’t even stand a chance.”
…
With caution, the woman approached the man standing beside the window. She was fairly surprised to see that the rim of the glass in his hand was unstained. “Dear-um, sweetheart,” she said gently, remembering the instructions from the book about how to handle grieving people: to use terms of endearment rather than actual names, which often sounded accusatory. “Do you want to join us in the dining room?”
She followed his eye line to a single raindrop that had landed on one of the higher window panes; it fell past, disintegrating into the pool of water at the bottom. She let out a shallow breath. “Won’t the weather be nice once this storm finally clears up?” she asked, tugging at the charcoal lace on the end of her sleeve. Small talk made her nervous; it was even worse at funerals.
“Not really,” he replied in that hollow voice she would grow to hate.
“No,” she said after a while, sobering. “I guess not.”
They had all witnessed him crying before, but the sight of him beside the grave earlier that afternoon would burden them in the years to come. He looked so unfamiliarly awkward, folding in on himself next to the burial plot and screaming into the ground. His voice grew hoarse almost immediately. In his hands he held dirt, which, instead of dropping onto the casket as normal procedure suggested, he flung across the cemetery, pelting other headstones with pebbles and rootstocks. “This doesn’t-” smack “bring me-” smack “any-” smack “fucking-” smack “closure-" smack "at all!” he bellowed, his voice carrying to faraway places yet untouched by his bereavement. His mother, whose presence had stunned nearly everyone else in attendance, watched her son from the back row, looking more embarrassed than concerned.
It was Shirley who finally went to sit with him in the pile of soil, holding him against her chest as he sobbed.
“Well, if you’d like to join us, Troy was just about to make a toast.” She waited; when he said nothing, she continued hopefully, “It might make you feel better. Someone suggested we each share our favorite memory of-”
“Thanks, Britta,” he interrupted, fully conscious of their conversation now. “I appreciate it-I do. But I can’t pretend that I… Maybe another time, you know.”
She sighed. “Right.” They stood together, arms nearly touching, and he silently thanked her for not pressing the matter. Perhaps the impossible amount of tears at the funeral had exhausted her. He finally took a sip of his drink and, for the first time, did not like the taste.
…
The grandfather clock in the corner chimed ten. A small string of drool trailed from Jeff’s mouth to the corner of the law book lying beneath his head; it quivered each time he breathed out. The ink of a pen caught between his fingers was seeping out onto one of the dozens of manila folders under the handful of dense textbooks that a few junior associates had volunteered to retrieve from the firm’s library. Near nine o’clock, Jeff had fallen asleep to the sound of Sebastian Davies, Jr. laughing as he downed another glass of whiskey across the room.
A plump woman with gray hair waddled inside the office, the toes of her loafers kissing the plush brown carpet quietly. Eleanor knew to let Jeff sleep; his work frequently took precedence over his health, so she never woke him right away when he dozed off during the day. “Mr. Winger,” she began softly. Her heart broke when she noticed the silver frame pinned beneath his wrist, the one held the last picture taken of him and his fiancée. “Mr. Winger. Mr. Winger! Jeffrey!”
Startled, he shot up, immediately rambling about meeting deadlines and extra paperwork. Eleanor smiled sympathetically. “It’s all right, Jeffrey, I was just getting ready to leave when I thought you might like a bite to eat, seeing as you haven’t stopped working since noon.”
“Oh,” he said, finally regaining his bearings. “Oh, Eleanor, no, really, it’s late-go home and get yourself some rest-”
“I’ll get Thai food, then,” she said firmly. “And don’t you go thinking I’ve forgotten about those birthday cards. You asked me to sort through that whole rotten pile of mail just to find the ones from your friends at Greendale and I did exactly that so you better look at them before I up and croak.” She waddled back out of office and Jeff smiled as she closed the door behind her. The sixty-year-old grandmother of four pitied him as everyone else pitied him, but she typically managed to keep her opinions to herself.
Tucked away under his memos from the week was a stack of birthday cards from the study group. He only glanced at them some time after his actual birthday, because that date coincided with another horrible anniversary, which, in the last few years, had often left him in miserably drunken stupors. Reading their messages was more exhausting than he had anticipated, so he never confessed to Eleanor when he finally opened them.
In his card, Abed suggested they go see a movie soon, since they were in the peak of Oscar season; Troy waxed nostalgic about their adventures and mishaps with trampolines, paintball, and space simulators; Shirley said something sweet about him being in her prayers sometimes and her thoughts always; Pierce reminded him to take advantage of what was left of his youth; Britta wrote that she was still worried about him and asked that they all get together soon to catch up because it had been too long damn long and was anything new and was he okay?
At the far end of the grandiose mahogany table that had come with the office, Sebastian Davies, Jr. laughed as he hiccupped into his glass. “This is good Scotch,” he said, and began to bellow the sentiment. “Such good Scotch! Not just good Scotch, great Scotch! The best Scotch! Scotch for only the most handsome bastards and the most deserving bitches! Scotch, Scotch, Scotch, it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore, does it-”
Representing Sebastian seemed elementary at first. The prodigal son of a business mogul from upstate New York was on trial for sexual harassment and sexual assault, a nasty combination that they would spin in court as a woman’s sad attempt to libel the family name and gain some money. Jeff knew the firm normally frowned upon taking cases like this-those cocooned in adverse publicity and touchy subjects-but big names and bigger paychecks went a long way.
Admittedly, to ignite the case, Jeff forced himself to abandon a few statutes of his personal code of ethics so he could revive some outdated (if not completely awful) habits from his early work as a defense attorney. With their resurrection came a voice that, at certain times, sounded like various study group members and gnawed at him round the clock, squawking, I thought you were better than this! How could you do such a thing? What would she say if she saw you now? Oh, you are better than this, you’re so much better than this, you can’t go through with this, you can’t, of course you can’t, you know you’re much better than this, don’t you, you piece of shit, the devil himself would balk at you, you’re no better than any of this, how could you-
The cool touch of silver beneath his wrist made him glance down at the picture again. The photo was impromptu; in it, she smiles at the camera, but his eyes are trained on her. He remembered the moment the flash went off and everything went white, before she came back into focus, every small detail he would later regret not memorizing. As the pain began to bleed into his brain again, he chucked the frame into the bottom drawer of the desk. His knee slammed into the cabinet’s edge when he turned away; a bruise would later form there.
“Sebastian,” he called out to the clearly drunk young man. Jeff had decided the reason he did not like Sebastian Davies, Jr. was that he was an obnoxious trust fund baby whose manner was anything but polite, but, in truth, Jeff often worried he had once been like the boy. “Mr. Davies, you’ve had enough.”
“No!” objected Sebastian. The ice in the drink tinkled as he drew the glass close to his chest. “You’ve just had too little. Come on-hic-Winger, live a little. I can hold my weight and you’re getting paid by the hour and my father doesn’t-hic-care how you do your job as long as it-hic-gets done.”
“That bottle was just a gift from a client that I always forgot to take home-let’s not treat it like the bar’s bowl of complimentary nuts,” Jeff chided. He considered wrestling the glass away from Sebastian, but instead took a resigned seat beside his client. “Fine. We can go over your testimony here. Just sit up straight and the sooner we get this done, the better. Now, the first few questions I’m going to ask you will be about your relationship with Ms. Novak-”
With a hiccup Sebastian slapped the table, throwing his head back with a sloppy laugh. “Oh, what’s the-hic-point of trying to play nice, the jury will see! She’ll get up there on the stand and they’ll all-hic-see just how much of a bitch she is-”
“Watch your mouth,” Jeff said unsmilingly. His grandfather always said it just like that when he was a child, in that stern voice that was almost too high to be comfortable. Watch your mouth! Next time you say something like that, I’ll wash it out with gasoline! “Look, Sebastian, regardless of how the jury feels about Pamela Novak, you need to make a good impression-well, let’s be realistic, an adequate impression-so that means dial back the profanity. Are we clear?”
Snickering devilishly, Sebastian raised his drink toward Jeff, as if saluting him. He hiccupped again. “Clear as glass.”
Jeff pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right. So, again, I’m going to ask you about your relationship with Pamela Novak, considering that’s something the prosecution will dissect in length throughout the course of the trial. The jury needs to understand that your relationship with her was strictly business, one-hundred percent professional.”
Once his smirk dissolved like the alcohol in his bloodstream, Sebastian stared sullenly into the bottom of his lass. “All women are bitches.”
“Mr. Davies,” Jeff said, electing to keep his eyes shut behind his clenched hand.
“It’s true! Don’t you go-hic-pretending I’m wrong! You know it’s the truth! All-hic-women are ungrateful bitches who just want to fuck us over for our-hic-money. Damned if we’re with them-hic-and damned if we’re not!” He glanced at Jeff’s hand and spotted a plain gold band on his finger . “Shit, they-hic-got you, too? You seemed like a-hic-bachelor to me.”
Without a word, Jeff stood up and returned to his desk. “Perhaps we’ll just go over the testimony early tomorrow morning, before court begins. Get some sleep, come back here when you’re not an inebriate moron, and then we’ll talk-”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair and spun it around throwing his arms up and squealing. He quickly stopped by letting his legs catch on the table, as if he had just realized something. “You know, I’m glad that Pamela-hic-Fucking Novak thinks I’m a prick. I want her to think of me when-hic-she closes her eyes, when she-hic-just wants to be alone. I want to be the first thing on her mind when she-hic-wakes up and the last face on the back of her-hic-eyelids when she falls asleep. Bitch didn’t even appreciate what I could’ve given her-she was a fucking secretary and I’m-hic-richer than God!”
Praying he had never come close to being such scum, Jeff snapped, “That’s enough, Mr. Davies.”
“Oh, come on,” protested Sebastian as he grabbed the bottle of Scotch by the neck and took a bold swig. “Like you-hic-don’t know what I’m talking about. Men can pretend they’re not wrapped around the-hic-pinkies of the women in their lives but we’re all whipped bastards-hic-for merciless bitches.” The pause he took in that moment seemed almost poetic, like he had planned this speech months in advance. “But nature’s got it-hic-all right. Nature knows who’s the-hic-dominant species.”
“I think it’s time you go,” Jeff said quietly. The belligerent tone in Sebastian’s voice was beginning to unnerve him.
“Like this one bitch,” Sebastian continued loudly, either disregarding or entirely missing Jeff’s indirect order, “A few years ago in-hic-Brooklyn… She tried to tell me-hic-no… Stupid bitch… In a stupid little skirt and stupid-hic-black stockings.”
The memory flooded Jeff’s mind so abruptly that he was afraid it would drown before it could fully come back to him.
“You really don’t have to go to all the trouble of getting me some sort of special birthday sandwich across town,” he insisted as he hurriedly redid his tie in the bathroom mirror. She was moving around their bedroom noisily, searching for something. “Thirty-nine is hardly a milestone.”
“I know,” she called. “But I want to treat you.” She appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, her face flushing as she pulled on jet-black nylons that he found indisputably sexy. “So let me treat you, okay?”
He finally relented. “Okay. Okay.” He moved toward her to give her a quick kiss and smiled at her outfit, which, he realized, he had never seen before. “Shit, you look especially spectacular today. Got a hot date?”
“Oh, yes, he’s quite handsome, I’m sure that you two would get along famously,” she said, taking his face with both hands and pressing her lips to his. “Happy birthday, honey.”
He swallowed the thorns tearing into his throat and parroted, “Black stockings?”
Again, Sebastian did not hear him. In fact, the notion of the woman in the black stockings seemed to immerse him completely, and when he spoke, he sounded faraway. “She tried to-hic-tell me no, just like the old lady told me no,” he muttered, speaking into his glass again. “The old lady-hic-went down easy, but this bitch in the black stockings-hic-ah, she put up a-hic-a good fight. I remember pressing the heel of my loafer into-hic-her throat, and it felt so good, so goddamn-hic-good, to look into the eyes of someone who suddenly feared me like-hic-my mother feared the Lord.”
The medical examiner hesitated to pull the sheet back. The detectives standing behind Jeff also looked uncertain, but he had insisted to see the body, saying out loud that it would bring him closure, and saying to himself that it might not be her, that perhaps there had been a mix-up.
“I’ve cleaned the gunshot wound as best I can. Beyond that, there are a few marks and bruises that a mortician will be able to cover up later,” the medical examiner explained.
Slowly, after one of the detectives signaled what read as “now or never,” the M.E. carefully pinched the plain white sheet and peeled it back to reveal a pale cadaver on the silver table. There was a single, clean bullet hole above her left eyebrow; a bruise in the shape of a shoeprint covered the whole of her neck. Jeff threw up only when he realized she was not there anymore, and therefore to use pronouns like ‘she’ and ‘her’ when referring to a corpse was a bit ludicrous.
Melancholy and pride fused together in Sebastian’s voice as he continued, staring at the ceiling, “She fought me… I slipped my hand-hic-up her skirt and she slapped me across the face. My mother-hic-used to slap me, when I got her real mad. That bitch-hic-barely lived to regret doing that to me.” It occurred to Jeff that Sebastian Davies, Sr. never mentioned a wife.
For the first time since he mentioned the woman in black stockings, Sebastian chuckled, which seemed to increase his hiccups. “The old lady-hic-was only carrying a few bucks, which was why I-hic-knocked her down. She fell like a goddamn-hic-tree.” He cackled. “But that bitch-hic-in the black stockings had a real nice rock on her finger-hic-that sold quick. Fourteen karat diamond… If I could have another go ’round with her-hic-I’d be better about making her keep-hic-still. I guess I was just a-hic-an amateur back then.
“The old lady finally-hic-stopped sobbing when I-hic-shot her. Then the bitch in the-hic-black stockings kept shouting something about-hic-burning in hell. Then I-hic-shot her, too.” He smiled almost fondly. “And those eyes-hic-those big, round eyes finally looked like someone had just blown out that-hic-little bitch’s candle.”
Through his peripheral vision, Sebastian saw a fist flying at him, but he was too drunk to react quickly enough. Jeff’s knuckles sank into his cheekbone with a grisly crack and Sebastian hit the floor, curling into a ball as he groaned, “What the-hic-what the fuck?”
Jeff’s fingers closed around the collar of Sebastian’s shirt, like the way a mother picked up her pup by the scruff of its neck. He rammed Sebastian’s head into the gold-plated plaque mounted on the wall that read Pearson and Hardman Senior Partner of the Year. To see that the words had imprinted themselves into the skin of the precious young trust fund baby would not have surprised anyone.
When Sebastian stood up, he lunged at Jeff, but his movements were slipshod and imprecise. They scuffled with each other briefly, before Sebastian’s elbow collided with Jeff’s nose and Jeff’s knee plowed into Sebastian’s groin. He allowed the young man to drop to the floor, reveling in the way he whimpered in pain, and then hoisted him up before shoving him against the wall. “What did the woman in the black stockings look like?” he demanded, shaking Sebastian as though trying to wake him up. “The color of her eyes, her hair, her skin?”
Beneath Sebastian’s right eye, a red welt had formed and in its center was a very small cut. A larger cut had spread along his hairline. “Fuck, Winger, I don’t know,” he said as though he had gravel in his gullet. “Brown hair-hic-and blue eyes. I remember thinking she looked-hic-a lot… A lot like my mother.”
“Victim: female. 5’0 to 5’3. Hair: brown. Eyes: blue. No wallet nor identification found on her person. Sustained two gunshot wounds, one fatal.”
The detective noticed the shoeprint bruise on the woman’s neck only after he noticed the bullet hole in her forehead, which he noticed only after he tended to the elderly woman a few feet away who had-by some act of a higher power-narrowly survived a bullet to the chest, and he decided that he hated his job.
Jeff threw Sebastian across the mahogany table; he watched his limp body fall into a few of the rolling chairs and a fleeting moment passed in which Sebastian Davies, Jr. looked like a broken toy left behind, a stuffed animal whose stitching had come undone. Jeff found that he did not care as he pulled him up by the lapels of his jacket and dragged him toward the door. He brought Sebastian’s ear close to his mouth and snarled, “I wanted-one-thing for myself. And I finally got it. She gave it to me. And we had it for along time but it was supposed to be longer, much, much longer.” His voice broke, each agonizing word deafeningly quiet.
“And you took it away from me.”
And suddenly, heavy, quivering, bleeding fists rained down on Sebastian’s face, splitting lips and breaking capillaries and shattering bone, complemented by sickening sounds that tore the world in half. Jeff found himself sobbing and screaming, mindlessly making up for three years’ worth of painfully stoic suffering. “She was all I ever wanted! I wanted nothing more than to be with her! That was all I asked! She was everything to me and you took that all away! You bastard, you fucking pampered, privileged sociopath, do you have any idea how many lives you’ve ruined? How many people you’ve sent through hell? How many times I have woken up, drowning in my own sweat, haunted by the same goddamn nightmare in which she dies, over and over again, you fucking piece of shit? Do you? Do you?”
Beneath him, Sebastian howled in pain, wailing pleas for help. Jeff slapped a hand over his mouth. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted. “Do you think she wasn’t yelling for help as you stood over her? Do you think she felt safe? Do you think anyone heard and came to rescue her! No! No one came! No one was there! I-wasn’t-there!” Each word was punctuated by a savage blow.
Soon, the sight of Sebastian’s face warned that he should stop, that what he had done was enough, but Jeff found he was not satisfied. He reached for the closest thing near him, a small, leaden paperweight that previously sat upon the same text books and files he had read earlier that evening, planning to defend Sebastian Davies, Jr. in court, planning to liberate him. Not for a single second did Jeff neglect to consider the irony.
Racked with sobs, he pulled his arm back, fully surrendering to the paroxysm of grief. If someone were to have held up a mirror to his face in that moment, Jeff would have recognized himself sooner than he ever could have in the last three years: someone desperate to pretend he was more than the shell of a human being bathed in blind and muted rage, hopelessly clawing his way through a manmade purgatory, at the mercy of memories and madness.
“Jeffrey!” Eleanor shrieked from the doorway. At her feet lay a broken carton of Styrofoam, leaking grease and oil onto the carpet. The sound of her voice made his arm go weak, so he dropped the paperweight.
“Get him off me!” Sebastian hollered, waving his arms frantically. “Help me, please!” When Jeff stood up, he dragged his heel across Sebastian’s neck, sending the trust fund baby into another fit of terror.
“Jeffrey, what happened?” Eleanor asked in a voice that suggested she did not actually want to know.
Jeff wiped his bloody nose on the back of his sleeve. “Eleanor,” he said, tasting blood on the inside of his cheek. “Eleanor, I need you to call 911. Tell them there’s a man here who needs immediate medical attention. Make sure the police come. And then maybe call Jessica. Actually, yes, definitely call Jessica.”
“What? Where are you going?” she cried as he pushed past her, heading toward the elevator across the hall.
“4882 Sycamore,” he yelled over his shoulder. Just before stepping into the lift, he called out, “I promise I’ll be back at my apartment by tomorrow morning. You have my word.”