The Advocate's Ex Parte (The Advocate Series Book 5) (7 page)

Tyson took his laptop and walked into the coffee shop. He ordered a cup of coffee and took a seat inside where he could take advantage of the WiFi. He couldn’t find a website for Torn or for Sabre Brown. With a little digging around, however, he found Sabre’s photo in
martindale.com
. She looked to be around thirty, assuming the photo wasn’t twenty years old, was quite attractive, and had a 4.9 peer rating, whatever that meant. JP proved to be another matter. He couldn’t find anything of any consequence on him, no social media connections, nothing.

After about fifteen minutes, Blake called back. “Sabre’s office address is correct. She’s not there, though; she’s at juvenile court. The address for the courthouse is 2851 Meadow Lark Drive in San Diego. The receptionist said she’d be back this afternoon after four if we wanted an appointment.”

“Good work. And text me the picture on JP’s driver’s license. I can’t find anything with his photo on it.”

“Do you think Robin’s with that JP fella?”

“He’s her ex, and she told me once that he was always ‘there for her,’ whatever the hell that means. I’m sure that’s where she is.”

“What are you going to do when you find him?”

“I’m going to show him he can’t mess with Tyson Doyle Cooper.”

“Do you think Robin will come home with you?” Blake said, lowering his voice on the last few words as if he wished he hadn’t asked.

“Of course. She’s my wife.” Tyson’s nefarious tone made Blake pause. Tyson quickly added, “She’ll come home—one way or the other.”

Within a few minutes Tyson received the text with a photo of JP. He packed up his laptop and drove to juvenile court. He parked where he could see the front door and waited.

Tyson watched as people came and went from the courthouse—men and women in suits, teenagers who looked like they should be locked up, and families with too many kids and not enough money. Many would come out for a cigarette break or just to smell the air. Occasionally an attorney came out with a disgruntled client and Tyson could hear them yelling at one another. Others would stand around near the door until a bailiff stepped out and called them for their hearing.

Well over an hour had passed before he saw Sabre exit the building with a man dressed in a suit, whom he assumed was another attorney. The man looked a little older than her and had started to gray. He looked at the photo of JP on his phone. That was definitely not him. They walked across the parking lot and got into a black Mercedes parked just a few cars away from his, Sabre on the passenger side and the man behind the wheel. Tyson waited until they left their parking spot and then followed them.

They made a left out of the parking lot, then a right, another right, and up over the freeway. He stayed back far enough so he wouldn’t be spotted. He followed the car when it turned into a little strip mall. They parked, and Tyson drove past them and circled around the lot. He watched them enter a restaurant with a sign that read Pho Pasteur.

Tyson didn’t wait there. He drove to a fast food place, picked up some food, and went back to his room to rest. He had a few hours before Sabre would return to her office.

Chapter 11

JP and Robin sat on JP’s sofa in silence for several minutes before she finally spoke, still gazing at the floor and avoiding JP's eyes. “I met Tyson Doyle Cooper, that’s how he introduced himself, at a church picnic about four years ago. He went there with my cousin Sandy and some other friends. He kept flirting with me and when I called him on it he told me he wasn’t really with Sandy, that they were just friends. I found out later that was not entirely true. They had been friends, but this was their first—and what turned out to be their last—date. He started calling me, sending me flowers, and leaving me little notes on my car until he wore me down. I talked to Sandy before I ever accepted a date with him. She was over him by then and gave me her blessing.”

JP reached for his coffee cup on the table, took a drink, and waited for her to continue. She sat next to him, her leg less than an inch from his.

“Ty was very good to me and he was incredibly charming. After about two months of a whirlwind romance, he proposed.”

“And you accepted.” JP said, glancing at the ring on her left hand.

Robin held her coffee mug tightly in her hand. She looked down at the mug as if she were talking to it. “I thought I was in love. I
was
in love.” She looked back up at JP. “He wanted babies and my biological clock was ticking. Three weeks later I became Mrs. Tyson Cooper. The first month everything was great. We spent all of our spare time together. He insisted I quit my job, which I was happy to do. We tried to get pregnant, but it didn’t take. Then I started receiving phone calls from other women asking for him and lots of hang-ups. I figured it was just old girlfriends since I’d known him less than six months, but when I mentioned it to him, he became very angry. Somehow he turned the argument back on me and the fact that I hadn’t gotten pregnant yet. And soon we were having ‘angry’ sex. It was like he was a different man. I’d try to talk to him afterwards, but he’d just turn over and fall asleep.”

JP looked at this woman he had once loved. She had been so young and so beautiful. She was still striking, but her innocence was gone. As JP listened, anger at Tyson Cooper welled up inside him, but he forced himself to not let it show.

“One night he started drinking before he came home, but he wasn’t drunk yet when he arrived. I could tell he was upset. When I tried to talk to him he just ignored me. He went to the refrigerator, took out a six-pack of Shiner Bock—that’s what he always drank when he drank beer—and went into his study. I fixed dinner and then went to tell him it was ready. When I opened the door he flung a nearly full bottle of beer at me. It hit my shoulder, splattered beer all over me, and then smashed when it hit the tile floor. I stood there for a second in shock. He stood up and walked toward me. I think I expected him to apologize. I figured he was angry about something else and didn’t realize I had entered the room.”

“But he didn’t apologize, did he?”

“No. He said, ‘I’ve had a rough day. Clean it up.’ Then he walked out the door and left the house. He stayed out all night. He had flowers delivered to me the next day with a note that read,
I love you more than all the stars over Texas
. When he came home he acted like nothing had happened. I tried to talk to him. He apologized for throwing the bottle, but he didn’t want any further discussion. After that he reverted to his usual charming self.”

“How long did that last?” JP asked.

“Not long. A couple of weeks later he came home very late and very drunk. He smelled of cheap perfume. He wanted to make love to me and when I told him no, he got belligerent. He said I was his wife and we would do it when
he
‘damn well pleased.’ I tried to fight him off but he held me down. The more I fought, the more sexually excited he seemed to get.” Robin paused and her face tightened. She swallowed and tried to compose herself. She looked directly at JP, holding his gaze. “I’m sure you don’t need to hear all this.”

JP placed his hand on her knee. “Robin, if I’m going to help you, I need to know exactly what happened.”

She took a deep breath and with her eyes turned down toward the floor she continued, speaking rapidly as if she had to get it all out before she changed her mind. “I struggled to break loose from him until he backhanded me across the face. The blow stunned me and I just collapsed and decided to let him have me. But then he totally deflated and he became angrier. I think it was because I stopped fighting him. I was so frightened. My head pounded. I didn’t know what to do, so finally I struggled just enough so he could keep his erection, the whole time praying that I wasn’t getting pregnant. I just wanted it all over with.” She took another deep breath and sighed.

“And did you get pregnant?”

“No. I guess God heard my prayers.”

JP tried to contain his anger for this despicable man. Robin didn’t deserve that. No woman deserved that. “What did you do then?”

“After he fell asleep I wanted to sneak out, but I was afraid he would wake up and stop me. The next morning when he got up, he acted like nothing had happened.”

“No apology or anything?”

“No, and I was afraid to bring it up. When he left for work I packed a few things and I went to my mother’s. Ty showed up before the sun went down. He brought me chocolates, apologized, blamed it on the booze, and promised he would never do it again. I told him I needed a few days to think things over.”

“And he let you?”

“Reluctantly. He started courting me all over again. Every day I received flowers and phone calls from him. He professed his undying love to me and promised he wouldn’t ever drink again. I went to the doctor and got on birth control. I hadn’t decided if I was going back or not, but one thing I knew for sure.…I didn’t want to get pregnant.”

“And then you went back?”

“Not until about two weeks later. He had been so sweet and my mother kept encouraging me to save my marriage. So, I went home. All was good for nearly another month. I still received some strange phone calls occasionally, but he always explained them and he totally abstained from alcohol. Then one Saturday I went shopping and when I returned he was sitting at the table with a bottle of whiskey and my birth control pills. He grabbed my arm before I could set the bag of groceries down. The groceries hit the floor and a jar of pickles broke and splattered across the floor. I tried to pull away, but I slipped in the pickle juice and fell. I landed on a piece of broken glass and my leg started bleeding.” She gulped.

JP could see how Robin struggled to tell her story and he felt his face redden with anger. He placed a reassuring hand on hers, both of which were still holding the coffee mug tightly. She let go of her mug with her right hand and placed it in his other hand.

She continued. “He grabbed my arm and pulled me across the floor over the broken jar; the chunks of glass ripped my leg in several places. Then he yanked me to my feet, carried me to the bedroom, and threw me on the bed. He forced himself on me, all the time yelling at me, calling me a whore and screaming about how God meant for us to have babies. I was scared and angry and my leg hurt. I could feel pieces of glass push deeper in my leg. Somehow I managed to get out of the blood-soaked bed and away from him. I ran out of the room, but he caught up with me, spun me around, and hit me in the face with his fist.”

JP felt her grip on his hand tighten. Her other hand on the coffee mug trembled. He took the cup from her hand, set in on the coffee table, and then took her other hand in his. “Go on,” he said.

“When I woke up my clothes were soaked in pickle juice and blood. Ty was gone and so were my keys and my cell phone. We lived too far from civilization to walk for help and I was still bleeding. There was also a lot of dried blood on my body and when I moved my leg a couple of cuts broke open. I was scared and confused and tried to find something to bandage my leg. All I could find were some small Band-Aids and there were some pretty big gashes on my thigh. I decided to clean up so I took a shower and washed my hair so I wouldn’t smell like pickle juice. When I stepped out of the shower, Ty was back. He stood there in the bathroom with some medical supplies in his hand. His head hung low as if in shame and his voice was soft. He told me…no, he asked me... to please sit down and he would take care of me. He gently dabbed the blood away with a towel, put peroxide on the wounds, and applied some butterfly bandages holding the gaps together. Then he wrapped gauze around the two larger cuts and applied smaller bandages to the others.”

Robin finally looked directly at JP for just a second and then she turned her face away. JP wondered if she saw the contempt for Tyson in his eyes. She continued. "He kept my cell phone and my keys and pretty much locked the rest of the world out. I started to realize then and there that he had already been isolating me from my family and friends for some time. My mother called on his phone when she couldn’t reach me on mine. He told her my phone was acting up and we were waiting on the phone company to fix it. After that, most of the time when she called he would tell her I wasn’t home. On a rare occasion he’d give me the phone to talk to her, but he always stayed near me. I didn’t want to scare my mother, so I was very careful what I said. A couple of times I told her I was sick, but then I was afraid that she was worrying about my health. I was more worried for her than me.”

“So how long did that go on?” JP asked.

“For several months. Then one day he took me to see my mother. I think he was worried that she might start getting suspicious. We didn’t stay long and I tried to act as normal as possible. There hadn’t been any more physical confrontations, mostly because I did whatever he wanted and he hadn’t been drinking. By then I hated having sex with him because I felt like a prisoner and I was so afraid I would get pregnant. Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to have a baby, just not
his
baby.”

JP saw a flash of pain cross Robin’s face. Her eyebrows furrowed and her forehead wrinkled. Then she took a deep breath. He waited.

“One night he came home about midnight. He was so drunk I don’t know how he drove. He was angry because I didn’t wait up for him and he just started slapping me. I didn’t fight back. I never knew what to do because sometimes it made him angrier if I fought and other times it seemed to be worse if I didn’t. This time he slapped me harder each time and then he took off his belt and hit me with the buckle. He threw me down on the kitchen table and tore my clothes off. I tried to escape, but I couldn’t. He forced himself on top of me, raped me, and then passed out. I had to struggle to get out from under him, and he fell off the table when I did. The fall didn’t even wake him up. That’s when I decided it was my chance to escape. I dug his keys out of his pants. The key to my car wasn’t on his keychain. So I snatched his cell phone off the counter where he had laid it, threw on some clothes, and jumped in his car and took off.”