The Advocate's Ex Parte (The Advocate Series Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

eighteen-month-old baby girl locked in a room while she went to work. The apartment complex caught on fire. Apparently, someone heard the baby crying so a couple of young guys broke in and rescued her.”
    “Good for them.” JP wrote his notes. “Do we know who the CASA worker is yet?”
    “No, but I’ll check on that.”
    “One more thing: Where does the mother on the Tran case work?”
    “Initially, she named a dry cleaning establishment, but then she finally admitted to being a stripper.”
    “This case just got more interesting.”
    Sabre glanced at JP without turning her head toward him. “Oh, it did, did it?”
    A hint of pink flushed over JP’s face. “I’m sure she’s a very nice girl.” His face reddened more. He turned to the next page in his notepad. “Tell me about Howard.”
    “That’s a shaken baby case. Someone shook the three-month-old and jarred his brain loose. The child died. There’s a three-year-old sibling who was removed from the home.”
    “Anyone arrested?”
    “Not yet. The parents are pointing the finger at the babysitter. The babysitter says the child was fine when she left.”
    JP turned to another blank page on his yellow pad. “That leaves Wheeler.”
    “Ah, where do I start with Willie Wheeler?”
    “If this huge stack of files is any indication, this case has been going on for some time.”
    “It first came into the system about two years ago with a ‘dirty home’ petition. Bob was appointed for the father, Willie Wheeler, and Regina Collicott for the mother, Debbie Wheeler. I represented the twelve children.”
    “Twelve children?”
    “Yep, and all the boys are named William and the girls are all named Debra. All of us involved with the case use the middle names of the children. Otherwise, it becomes way too confusing.
    “Don’t tell me the parents call them William and Debra?”
    “No, that would be silly.” Sabre couldn’t keep a straight face. “They call them Willie and Debbie.”
    JP just shook his head and smiled. He looked back at the huge file. “This case has been going on for four years, you said?”
    “Yes. We thought it would be a simple case. Get them to clean up the house and give them some services to teach them how to keep it clean, enroll them in a few parenting classes, and close the file.”
    “I take it that didn’t work.”
    “We soon discovered the case was riddled with drug and alcohol abuse, an obsessive belief in ghosts, mental instability, and some physical abuse—mostly ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ type.”
    “Who’s the mental case?”
    “Both parents, really, but Willie is crazier than a loon. A few of the children have some mental problems, too. But now there are only eight children left in the system. Four of the twelve are no longer minors; the oldest Willie just turned twenty; the twin Debbies are nineteen; and another Willie is eighteen now. There are a sixteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old who are in the delinquency system, so we’re only dealing with five placements: two girls, eleven and thirteen; two boys, five and seven; and the nine-year old twins, Holly and Bradley. It’s a lot easier to try to find placements for six children than twelve, especially if you’re trying to keep some of them together.”
    JP and Sabre continued to search through the cases looking for clues to the judge’s murder. Four hours later and after, a lot of reading, questions, and some bad Chinese take-out, JP said, “I’ll hit the streets first thing in the morning.”

Chapter 6
     
    Tyson Doyle Cooper
     
    The tall, lean Texan ravaged through each drawer that his wife, Robin, had in their home. Clothes were flung aside looking for clues. Drawers were emptied onto the bed, counters, and floors. He looked at every photograph and every piece of paper that she had once possessed in search of some clue as to where she might have gone. He loved his wife and he wasn’t one to give up easily. He would get her back no matter