So why in the hell, every time he looked up, did he feel jealous of the fork that kept crossing her lips and making contact with her tongue?
She caught him staring at them.
“You read these reports cold and it looks like we’re talking about two different men, his word against the facts. Instead of taking accountability, he’s reframing what happened,” she said, acting as though she hadn’t noticed his inappropriate gaze.
Thankful for the reprieve, Jayden pushed away his half empty plate, having lost much of his appetite.
He hadn’t eaten much the night before, either. Bruised ribs were a bitch.
“I’ve got a way to go yet here, so give me a few more minutes,” he said, putting off further discussion until he had a chance to take in every fact to determine where he went from there.
The position he was in was as much of an inconvenience as his ribs. He needed the prosecutor to think he was on her side—which he was, completely, concerning Suzie Heber’s safety—so that he could run interference between her and a man whose second chance lay in the balance. He needed to know if Emma Martin had gathered any new evidence, to know what she was thinking, so he could help his client. Keep an innocent man out of jail.
After three months of continuous contact with Heber, Jayden was as convinced as he was able to be that Bill loved his ex-wife and that he only wanted to do right by her and by society, too. He’d seen his faults and, while in jail, had put himself in counseling to learn to manage his jealousy-based emotions. He had real desire to live a life that contributed to society and to make up for the wrongs he’d done in his marriage and not to repeat them.
He kind of reminded Jayden of himself in that area: himself back when he’d realized he’d made
a horrendous mistake, did something he couldn’t take back, and became determined to spend the rest of his life taking accountability.
There were differences between them, to be sure. Jayden would never ever have knowingly hurt someone. Had never in his life even started to strike another person.
And there was another key difference, too. Bill Heber had gone to jail for something he shouldn’t have gone to jail for. And Jayden hadn’t gone for something he probably should have.
The law hadn’t found him prosecutable, but he prosecuted himself every single day. And found himself guilty.
Yeah, he was in a pickle. He served at the interests of the public—to keep them safe from reoffenders. And yet, he was the best hope his clients had of living productive lives. He served them, too.
Bill Heber hadn’t touched his wife since he’d gotten out of jail. Jayden wasn’t certain the man had ever hurt his wife—despite what he was reading. There was no clear proof. And Bill’s confessions to Jayden explained, just as astutely, the actions that had taken place in the past. Suzie Heber had fallen. Or, another theory: someone else had hurt her and she was covering for whoever that could be.
She’d blamed Bill. Bill didn’t blame her for that. He’d been a jealous ass who’d made her life miserable.
But he swore he’d never physically hurt her.
Whatever had taken place in the past, Jayden didn’t see how Bill could be guilty of the current abuse. Jayden was too on top of the guy, conducting surprise visits, phone calls, checking in at work, driving by his house, all of it. He was putting in extra time because he had a sense that this guy was doing what he said he was going to do and Jayden’s job was to give him the best chance for success. Sometimes that meant having someone watching over you in case of low moments where you might get discouraged and slip, so Jayden was watching closely. And if Bill wasn’t hurting Suzie, that meant someone else was. Someone that no one was looking for while they were only seeing Bill.
Emma Martin, based on her notes and reports, was only seeing Bill. “You did a thorough job,” he told her, finishing with the last of the paperwork she’d given him. She seemed to have known how many times a week Bill changed his underwear. Or darn near close to it. Assigning motivation to every move he made.
Unfortunately, just because she assigned a motivator, didn’t make that motivation true.
“You documented every single meal he had—”
“Only the meals he had when Suzie was outside the home. He ate out at least three times every day that she went to work, and that was with her making breakfast and dinner at home, which he also consumed. Every single meal was taken at fast-food restaurants within sight of her office complex. He was watching her...”
“He admits that he was insanely jealous. That doesn’t make him a wife beater. To the contrary, he adored the woman and, while he had doubts about someone as young as beautiful as Suzie being satisfied with him, he also wanted to make certain that no one messed with her,” he fired back.
“Did he tell you that he was abused as a kid? By a stepfather?”
“I read about it here,” Jayden conceded. “And while I know, statistically, abusers have often first been victims, it’s completely wrong to use someone’s past abuse to try to prove he’s an abuser.”
“According to his mother, who refused to testify, Bill hadn’t told her what was going on as a kid. He’d just said that he’d been playing football, which accounted for his bruises.” She paused to take a breath before filling him in. “She didn’t always see him right afterward, but it got to the point that she’d known he was hurting because every time he was physically hurt, he’d eat chocolate ice cream. She’d notice the container in the trash, or notice some missing from the freezer. Apparently he started getting into fights in his later teen years and her first sign of trouble was the chocolate ice cream containers... Says she can’t stand to have the stuff in her house. He’d changed, though, when her husband died and left him the body shop. Said that there’d been no trouble since.”
“There you go, then,” Jayden asserted.
Emma frowned slightly before continuing. “Suzie told me that every time Bill hit her, he’d go out for a bit and always bring back back ice cream for her. A sundae. She can’t stand the stuff because of it. When I checked, Bill’s bank card reflected charges to an ice cream shop down the street from them that correlated with every single incident. He’d always place two orders. Two scoops of chocolate in a bowl, which he’d eat there, and then a hot fudge sundae to go. The owner remembered because it was so sad, seeing him sit there alone eating. She always wondered who the sundae was for.”
Purely coincidental. A man’s penchant for ice cream in no way convinced Jayden of anything. “Why didn’t you bring this up at trial?” he asked.
“Because without his mother’s testimony, I only had a man who brought his wife ice cream.”