Good For A Storm
Part 7
By Missy



SERIES: Good For a Storm
PARTS: Seven of eight
RATING: R (Character death and gruesome description thereof, possible language, mature themes, heavy angst, possible sexual content)
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Â Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: L&L; Drama
PAIRING: L/L
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne must deal with the ramifications of the decision she made in "These Kisses"
NOTES: You must read the story "These Kisses" for any of this to make sense; also, the possibility of alternate chapters being sent through Impure Thoughts exists. Please subscribe to the list or go to the archive for more details.

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Laverne maintained her sanity by keeping emotional distance from her situation. She was in control throughout the trial, and would remain so even at home with Lenny, to his dismay.

First came the technical witnesses. Their testimony heavily incriminated her assailants. Policemen, pathologists, lab technicians paraded before her eyes.

Then there were waitresses, former girlfriends, and other character witnesses. Collectively, they painted a portrait of a group of men who had been known as drunks with mean tempers.

There were exceptions, as not even the foulest of human beings are pure evil. Pleading clergy members, mothers, fellow officers.

But the material witnesses were unequivocally uniform. They had been seen leaving with her. She had not been overly flirtatious, but had treated them warmly. They had consumed beers, wine, cocktails until management had cut their tab off. She had left with them willingly, however.

Forensic evidence indicated that the multiple rapes, which had been perpetrated upon her, were more than likely done by the criminals. Blood and seamen samples had been collected, and the crude technology available indicated that they were, indeed, her rapists. Her case had been given the highest priority due to public pressure.

Laverne was placed on the stand during the third day, and her testimony incriminated the accused men. She remembered their faces clearly, but would not meet their eyes. She recalled the events, the pain, the blood. Part of her story she could not tell, and part no one but she and Randy would ever know. She simply knew that they had done it, and that was the crux of her argument.

Of course, they had tried to paint her as a loose woman. Lenny turned into her character witness, but his overt emotion didn't help her case.

On the fifth day, one of her attackers took the stand. Laverne had allowed them to blend into one person in her mind; they all had the same loud, deep voice. The same cruel gestures and crude snear.

The gray mush on the stand announced on the eighth day of testimony that she had been behaving provocatively, had been wearing a very short dress and had offered them some time at her place. But they had chosen the Dumpster for convenience's sake.

One of them had been married. Laverne remembered the coal-black dress the woman wore. The anger burning in her eyes as she rubbed her husband's broad shoulders.

"Are you saying," Bruce Davidson asked, "that my client somehow asked for this to happen to her?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Those words penetrated the haze that surrounded Laverne. But only briefly.

The closing arguments were filled with jurispurce she could not understand. The deliberation lasted for six more days. Bruce Davidson had taken to hanging out at her apartment, preparing her, coaching her.

A week later, and even then the jury could not reach a conclusive decision.

When the dust cleared, two of the men had been convicted, and then sentenced to a life in prison. One plea-bargained to a lighter sentence. Another walked. Apparently, he was the one who had called the ambulance (and tied her hands over her head), and his time served had fit the punishment. All would be discharged from the service, which was particularly satisfying to Laverne.

In the end, her emotions and that of her friends were mixed. Lenny had been furious that they all weren't rotting in jail, and he had delivered her victim's statement at the sentencing. Shirley and Carmine, wrapped in the throes of their re-emerging relationship, began the process of trying to figure out how to disentangle Shirley from Walter.

For Laverne, returning to the real world, with its ordered chaos, after a regimented existence of trial and preparation, seemed impossible. When the self-protecting fog cleared from Laverne's eyes, she awoke to a world that had branded her temptress in the eyes of the Navy, a saint in the eyes of the church, and a heroine in the eyes of the emerging feminist movement.

Her desire to get away was overwhelming, and Lenny did the only thing he could think of.

He took her home to Milwaukee.





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