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 canget 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 onpersecuting 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?”
