So, careful not to let the dye on my hair touch anything, I hopped up onto the counter and started scrolling on my phone to pass the time.
This phone was another of my accomplishments. When I’d first arrived at the recovery center, I didn’t have more than five dollars to my name. Everything had to be provided for me, including a phone. It had been a low-tech flip-phone, mostly just for emergencies, that I’d barely ever used.
However, as part of my recovery, I’d gotten a part time job at a restaurant as a dishwasher. It wasn’t much, and honestly, I hated spending my days elbows deep in soapy water washing away the remnants of other people’s meals, but it gave me my own respectable income.
The very first thing I’d bought with my paychecks was my own phone.
Enjoying the fruits of my labors, I flipped idly through a few online articles as I waited for the dye on my hair to do its job. It was mostly just clickbait titles, like “DEADLY OBSESSION: The Twisted Love Triangle that Led to a Brutal Murder” and “A Mother's Love Knows No Bounds: Watch This Dog Save Her Puppies from a Flood”. The topics varied so wildly that a person could get whiplash just from reading the titles. A few even looked interesting, but I knew better than to click on them. Most were just ads in disguise, and the few that held actual news weren’t worth wading through the proverbial muck to find.
I was just about to leave the page and go watch some funny cat videos instead, when the last article on the list caught myeye. The title wasn’t nearly as sensational sounding, but the unassuming words still brought goosebumps to me skin.
“The End of a Long Fight: Door Closing on The Bell Ringer Case.”
No way. I’d heard nothing about them since entering the recovery center.
What were the odds that news of them would show up on my most important day?
Maybe speaking their name out loud really had summoned them.
I roughly shook my head, then flinched when some of the dye from my hair went flying and landed on the wall.
Grabbing some paper towels, I cleaned off the wall as best I could, then turned back to my phone.
Should I click on it?
I could always just ignore it and pretend I didn’t see anything.
No, that would never work. Now that I knew the information existed, I’d never be able to rest until I saw it for myself.
Biting my bottom lip hard enough for my teeth to leave a dent in my skin, I clicked on the article.
Other than the title, the article had very few words. All it really said was that there had been an unexpected disturbance in the case, followed by a link to a YouTube video. Since I’d already gathered up the courage to open the article, I couldn’t turn back now. So, without hesitating, I clicked on the video.
It was a clip from a news broadcast. The info sitting on the bottom of the screen under the reporter’s face said the footage was live, but based on the date of the article, I knew it had actually taken place a few days ago. The reporter stood outside a courthouse, surrounded by a small crowd of other reporters all shoving their mics into the face of a man I didn’t recognize.
“Before this trial started, you said your client would be proven innocent without any doubt,” the reporter lucky enough to get closest to the man shouted over the noise of the crowd. “Now that the case has been put on hold, do you consider this a victory, or a setback?”
Despite all the chaos around him, the man looked completely unfazed. Not a single strand of his overly oiled hair stood out of place, and his suit had been ironed to such a sharp perfection that he could probably use it in place of a letter opener. He stared straight down the camera, completely confident over every word that came out of his mouth.
“Although this delay is not ideal, it’s just one more step toward our inevitable victory. It’s clear why the prosecution’s lawyer has dropped out of this trial. My client is innocent, and the opposing council knows it.”
A new microphone was shoved in his face and another reporter asked him a new question almost before he’d finished answering the first one.
“The prosecution is certainly going to take this break to try and gather more evidence against your client. Does this worry you or change your plans for the trial going forward?”
The microphone came close enough to the lawyer’s face that it almost bopped him in the nose. With a smile that was just a little stained around the edges, he pushed the microphone back to a more reasonable distance before answering.
“The prosecution has no solid evidence tying my client to these so-called, ‘Bell Ringers’ and now they are scrambling. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how long the case is delayed, they won’t find anything because there is no evidence to be found.”
I couldn’t bear to look at this sleazy lawyer any longer, but I also couldn’t bring myself to shut off the video. I’d tried not to obsess over the bell ringer case, but of course I knew the details. One of the bell ringers hidden facilities had apparently beenfound in the middle of a swamp in Louisiana. It wasn’t one of the main facilities and taking it down didn’t put much of a dent in the bell ringers operation, but it was the first time any evidence against them had been found. Until now, there hadn’t been any proof that the evidence even existed.
Even more embarrassing was the fact that the raid on the swamp facility hadn’t been carried out by official law enforcement, but by a group of private investigators. It was a slap in the face of government law enforcement, and now the police of several states, as well as the FBI, were jumping on the bandwagon to make it look like the they’d been a part of the investigation all along.
I snorted out loud.
Where was this eagerness before?
Of course, it was easy to join an investigation once someone else had already cracked it open, but everyone wanted a piece of the credit without doing the work. Meanwhile, victims like me continued to suffer at the hands of these monsters that the so-called “police” didn’t bother to stop.
