In response, all I could do was shake my head.
I understood exactly what message he was trying to convey; I just had no idea what it meant.
What had he told me?
Had we ever even talked about Sebastian before?
At the front of the room, Kitt paused to rub the bridge of his nose for a moment before straightening his shoulders again addressing the rest of us with his usual confidence.
“All right. So, have any of you heard the phrase‘A hunter that chases two rabbits catches none’?”
Thomas and Clay both looked like they were considering raising their hand, but inevitably no one said a thing.
I didn’t even pretend to have heard such a phrase before. I wasn’t the most well read person, and these kinds of references often went over my head. I wasn’t illiterate or anything, but growing up as a pawn of the bell ringers hadn’t given me a very good education. It had been enough of a struggle to eventually earn my GED, and that was where my education stopped.
Kitt didn’t look surprised when no one answered him and carried on as if he had expected our silence.
“The basic meaning is that trying to pursue too many things at once will only result in failing to achieve anything. That is the dilemma we find ourselves with now. Mister Emerson has kindly provided us with a lot of information, but it is, odd to say, too much. We cannot hope to pursue every potential lead, so I need the rest of you to take a look at the pictures and information here andcompare notes, so to speak. This way, we can hopefully narrow it down to a select few names that we can focus on. We aren’t going to take out the bell ringers all at once, but if we can take out a few of their most important individuals, that will open the door for us to bring down the rest.”
He gestured toward the table neatly covered with papers, inviting everyone to come take a look. I already knew what was on them, I’d been the one to supply the information, after all, but curiosity still got the best of me, and I joined the rest in circling around the table.
There, side-by-side, were copies of all the pictures I’d helped the sketch artist make, along with a list of information about the identity of each person. Personal information, such as how I’d interacted with these people, had been left out, which I appreciated. Just because everyone in this room had experienced some kind of trauma didn’t mean that I wanted to give them all a play-by-play of my own experiences.
“I recognize this guy,” Clay said, pointing to one of the pictures. “Along with this guy as well.”
“I’ve also seen that one,” Thomas agreed. “But I’m having trouble remembering where. He wasn’t a... I mean... we never...”
“You never engaged in sexual activity,” Kitt summarized for him.
Thomas pulled a face, like he’d just eaten something disgusting, but ultimately nodded.
“Yeah. That.”
During the whole exchange, the two sisters, Madison and Maria, were busy whispering amongst themselves.
“We’ve seen that guy before,” Madison said, pointing to one of the pictures. “He was there when our brother was kidnapped. He seemed to be in charge of things. He was inspecting the “new product” along with this woman.”
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.
