Chapter 10 #3
She moved a picture, the lone female face among a group of otherwise male subjects, to the center of the table.
As Clay and the other witnesses continued to compare notes, I mostly stayed out of the conversation. I’d already provided everything I could about these people. Now, all I could do was wait for the others to refine my chaos into something useable.
Having actual pictures in front of them seemed to help the other witnesses when recalling their own experiences.
They were suddenly able to recall details that, until now, had been forgotten.
It still made no sense to me. The pictures on the table were no different than the memories in my head.
In some cases, they were worse, because another person had drawn the pictures, and not all the details were exactly accurate.
Yet, I was coming to understand that not everyone’s memory worked the same way mine did. Even if I didn’t fully comprehend it, I could at least accept it.
After about an hour of work, the final result was a small list of three names that seemed to have the most influence among the bell ringers.
Preston Vanshaw.
The Assistant Director of the FBI. By all accounts, he seemed to be in charge of the bell ringers, though he probably hadn’t originally created the group considering how long it had been around.
He always made it a point to personally inspect “new product,” which was where most of the witnesses had encountered him.
I’d been a baby when I was first kidnapped, and even my memory wasn’t that good, but I had managed to encounter him one other time.
When he killed my roommate for trying to escape.
It was a harsh lesson, but a lucky one, for after watching my roommate’s body drop to the floor, I never made the mistake of trying to escape on my own.
Edgar Barr.
The wastrel second son of an old money family.
He’d tried and failed to start several businesses, but despite never having any luck in the business world, his trust fund never ran dry.
He’d been the bell ringers’ most frequent repeat customer, and one of their biggest financial supporters.
He was also the man I most wanted to see behind bars due to his frequent starring role in my nightmares.
Grace Calderon.
On paper, her history was one failure after another.
She’d been dishonorably discharged from the military and dropped out of MIT.
Behind the scenes, however, she ran the county’s most successful human trafficking operation.
Like some sick combination of a curator and a farmer, she picked which kids to target and how to keep them under control once they were acquired.
Kitt looked over the three people we’d picked out, comparing them to his own notes that he’d taken while we’d been talking. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but I could see the wheels turning in his head as he put something together.
Eventually, he pointed toward Grace Calderon.
“Calderon will be our best bet. We’ll focus on prosecuting her for trafficking, and hopefully, we’ll be able to rope in the other two in the process.”
“What?” The word practically exploded out of me of its own volition. “Why her? I mean, yeah, she’s bad, but she’s hardly the worst. I barely ever interacted with her.”
I jabbed my finger at the pictures of Vanshaw and Barr hard enough for my knuckle to knock painfully inside its socket.
“This guy, Preston Vanshaw, he’s in charge of everything.
That means all this pain and abuse is because of him.
And this guy, Edgar Barr. This guy needs to pay.
He forced himself on me so many times, and not just me.
Practically every kid who was kept at the bell ringers’ facility with me ended up in his hands at some point.
If we do nothing else, we need to at least make sure this guy goes down. ”
My breaths were coming hard and fast, and by the end of my impromptu speech, there were tears slowly rolling down my cheeks. I felt both flushed and cold at the same time and couldn’t stop myself from shivering.
Clay placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shoved him off. He should be on my side, damn it.
Why was he looking at me like I was the one in the wrong?
Moving slowly and holding eye contact the whole time, Kitt slid the page out from under my finger, and lined up all three images of the subjects we’d selected side by side.
First, he pointed at Grace Calderon.
“Calderon is our best bet to start with because she’s the weakest. She has the least personal support and the most evidence against her.
Also, and I hate to say it, but because she’s a woman, her mostly male allies will be more willing to hang her out to dry, which we can use to our advantage.
Right now, it’s about finding a way for our case to get a good foothold so we can get it off the ground.
Then we can worry about going after bigger prey. ”
“But—” I started to argue, but Kitt held up a hand to interrupt me.
He then pointed at the picture of Preston Vanshaw.
“Vanshaw may be the one in charge, but that means he’s also the most powerful and comes with the most protection.
We can’t just go straight at this guy. He’s the Assistant FBI director, and his family has held that position for generations.
He’ll bury us before we can get our case off the ground, so we shouldn’t focus on him first.”
Next, he pointed at the picture of Edgar Barr.
“While I agree with you and really want to see this man punished for what he’s done, he’s also not the best choice to start with.
He’s only a financial backer of the bell ringers, not someone with actual power among them, so taking him down won’t really do much to stop them.
Plus, the evidence against him isn’t the most.. . reliable.”
It was unusual for Kitt to stumble over his words. The man was usually so eloquent in his speech that the uncharacteristic stutter almost distracted me from what he was saying.
Clay, however, had no such distractions and immediately realized the implication.
“Wait, unreliable?” Clay stepped up next to me to also jab at the picture of Edgar Barr. “Hold on. Jordy’s not the only one who’s had experience with this guy. I can also testify about what he did to me. What do you mean unreliable?”
With a heavy sigh, Kitt started clearing away the rest of the papers other than the three we were focusing on. He made the action seem casual, but it was clear that he was using it as an excuse to avoid looking directly at us.
“I believe what you’re saying, but it’ll be too easy for the defense to discredit your stories. So, we can’t rest our case on persecuting Barr. We need to go after Calderon instead, because that case is a better bet overall.”
Later, when I’d had some time to calm down, I would probably agree with Kitt’s reasoning and see the sense in his decision. Unfortunately, I had not yet calmed down and was running on pure emotion at that moment.
Grabbing the paper with Edgar Barr’s face on it, I crumpled it into a ball.
“I can tell you things about that man that no normal person could possibly know,” I shouted as I tossed the paper at Kitt, where it bounced harmlessly off his chest and landed on the floor.
“I don’t just know about his hairline and the smell of his cologne, or the fact that he always visited us on Tuesdays.
I know about his botched circumcision scar, and the mole on his left hip that he hates but he refuses to have removed because he’s too afraid of needles.
I dare anyone to try and say that I’m lying when I can list a dozen personal details like that about that bastard. ”
Picking up the crumpled paper from the floor, Kitt smoothed it out and placed it back on the table, still not looking directly at me.
“As I said, I believe you. Unfortunately, all that proves is that you’ve slept with the man.
It doesn’t prove whether you were willing or that you were a minor at the time.
And with your past history of prostitution, it’ll be too easy for the defense to cast doubt on your accusations by simply claiming that Barr was one of your paying clients.
Soliciting a prostitute is still a crime, but it’s not nearly as bad as human trafficking and pedophilia.
He probably wouldn’t even get jail time for it. Just a slap on the wrist.”
I wanted to keep arguing, but I couldn’t think of anything to say as I glared down at the crinkled face staring up at me from the page.
Kitt was right. Despite all the information I’d provided and all the details I’d spilled out onto that page, none of my evidence was good enough.
“You were a prostitute?”
The snide question shocked me out of my trance, and I looked up to find Thomas, Madison, and Maria all staring at me with a wide variety of unpleasant emotions.
“What?”
Thomas nodded toward Kitt. “He said you were a prostitute, but you said that the bell ringers took you when you were just a baby.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged as if it were no big deal, while internally I cringed. I could already tell where this was going. “It was after I got away from the bell ringers. I had to survive somehow, and I didn’t really have any other skills.”
It was at that moment I was reminded that, even taking the girls into account, I was the shortest one in the room.
Thomas only took one step closer, yet it felt like he suddenly loomed over me.
His silhouette blocked out the room lights, and the harsh shadows hast his disgusted expression into stark relief.
“How?”
I tried to take a step back, but he grabbed my arm to keep me in place.
“After finally getting free, how could you possible choose to subject yourself to that again? Don’t tell me you actually like it.”
“Hey.” Clay tried to shove between us. “There’s no need to say something like that.”
With my hand that wasn’t being held in a vice grip, I shoved Clay away. “I don’t need you to defend me, Clay.”
My tone was harsh, but I hoped Clay understood what I was trying to do.
It was clear that as soon as they heard the word prostitute, the other witnesses no longer saw me as a fellow victim, and now, saw me as something dirty and below them.
That was fine. It wasn’t the first time I’d been looked down on by other victims due to the choices I’d made.
Right now, Clay was safe because they didn’t know that he’d also worked the streets, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Thomas was too strong for me to remove his grip from my arm, so rather than retreat, I chose to press forward and invade his personal space.
“Judge me all you want. I don’t care. I did what I had to in order to survive, and I’m not sorry about that.”
Thomas scoffed, and his grip on my arm tightened.
“Is that what you tell yourself in order to sleep at night? The bell ringers tried to make you into an object for their pleasure, and then you went and finished the job for them.” His gaze raked up and down me, and for a moment, I felt like a child again, caught by monsters I could never escape.
A pair of hands slipped between Thomas and I, and with one hard shove on both of our chests, we were forcibly separated. Kitt stood like a wall dividing us from each other, as tall and unyielding as stone.
“That is enough.”
“But he—” Thomas started to argue, only to be cut off by the force of Kitt’s glare.
“Enough. You have two options. Either apologize, and never let me hear those words cross your lips again, or leave this bunker right now.”
The finality of his statement actually made Thomas stumble backward.
“But I’m helping your case. If the bell ringers get a hold of me, they’ll kill me.
You’d let that happen just for this... this.
..” His hand flapped wildly in the air as he gestured in my direction, unable to come up with a word suitable to describe me.
Kitt didn’t answer. He just stared directly at Thomas and said without hesitation, “You have your options. What’s your choice?”
Thomas clenched his hands at his sides so hard his fists trembled. He looked anywhere but at me as he mumbled out a quick, “Sorry.”
The sisters also followed up with their own apologies. They hadn’t been the ones actually insulting me, but they also hadn’t hidden their disgust, and they probably didn’t want to take any chances.
With a disdainful sniff, Kitt smoothed out invisible wrinkles from his suit. “It’ll do. Now, I think we all need a break to cool off and... think things through for a while. Take the rest of the day off, and we’ll pick this back up tomorrow.”
As soon as he was excused, Thomas pushed his way out of the room with the sisters close on his heels.
Once they were gone, Kitt patted me on the shoulder, then gathered up the remaining papers and also took his leave.
One moment the room was full, and then the next only Clay and I remained.
“Are you okay?” Clay asked, though he hesitated to come closer.
Slumping down into one of the wicker chairs, I ran a hand through my disheveled hair.
“Yeah. I’m fine. It’s not the first time someone has turned on me when they found out about my history with prostitution.
I’m used to it, though it’s probably better if you keep it to yourself.
We shouldn’t both make enemies of everyone. ”
Clay laughed, though there was nothing humorous about the sound. “You’d think, as fellow victims, they’d understand better than anyone. But I have to say, you handled that really well. Is there anything I can do now?”
I let my head lean back against the edge of the wicker chair. “I’d just like to be alone for a bit.”
“All right,” Clay agreed. “Let me know if you need anything. Even if it’s just someone to listen to you.”
Then he left, and just as I’d asked, I was alone.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed one of the pillows off of the chair next to me, pressed it over my face, and screamed into the brightly colored fabric.