Other than the snow on the ground, it was a mostly pleasant day.
I made it to my job in less than thirty-five minutes, putting me there just shy of fifteen minutes early.
That earliness paid off, because Charleigh was practically bouncing on her toes as she waited for me right inside the door.
“Whoa, do I have a lot of information for you.” Charleigh breezed up to me.
I smiled in excitement. “Tell me everything?”
“So after a couple of hours of internet sleuthing, I compiled a dossier for you.” She beamed as she handed it to me.
It was printed out photos, and a complete biography on Bernice Lynn Arquette.
I moved past the photo fairly quickly, having already seen a similar one in Creed’s house.
Bernice “Bernie” Lynn Arquette. Single. Works at a manufacturing plant for heavy equipment. One brother—Justin Arquette. Deceased. Mother, Bessie Ross. Drug addict.
“How did you find out her mother was a drug addict?” I questioned.
“She has multiple arrest records,” she answered. “Briefly in an article I found online written by Bernice herself, it touches on a few of her and her brother’s struggles in life. How her mom was a drug addict that only cared about herself. How her brother raised her, kept her healthy and fed.”
“What’s the article for?” I wondered.
She pulled a paper from mid-way through the stack and said, “Bernie’s brother was arrested for killing two police officers. Bernie was in the car at the time, but awoke with no knowledge of the accident. The brother was convicted, and later Bernice says her memory returned and her mother was the one responsible for everything. The police thought she was just trying to cover up for her brother, though, and didn’t pursue it any further.”
I quickly scanned the article that Bernice had penned in a desperate plea to get any help at all for her brother.
It was heartbreaking to see everything she’d gone through at such a young age, only to have her one and only person in life taken away from her.
“That post right there is something she made just recently.” Charleigh shifted papers again. “This was a heartfelt post to the powers that be about how her brother, who died during a prison break, never should have felt so desperate to have attempted it. He should’ve been given a fair trial when they appealed, instead of having everything denied and swept under the rug.”
I read that, too, feeling Bernice’s fury and devastation in the words she’d shared.
This will not be the last you hear of me.
I have spent half my life trying to prove my brother’s innocence, and not a single person in the world has taken the time to read deeper than what was right on the surface, handed to them to read.
My brother was not a murderer. Well, not until you made him one.
He went into that corrupt prison system at twenty and a half, having no clue what awaited him.
He didn’t know that upon his arrival, someone would stab him in the chest. That someone being a prison guard who thought he had the right because my brother was a ‘cop killer.’
Let me tell you something, my brother was not a cop killer. My drug-addicted mother was. She was the one that orchestrated everything. Yet, not a single one of you ‘good, caring people’ truly cared.
A year into his prison sentence, my brother was nearly killed again. Yet, nothing was done. No one took the time to find out what, exactly, was going on until my brother had to take his protection into his own hands.
He killed four men, and each subsequent death by his hands was y’all’s fault. (You know who you are.) He wouldn’t have had to protect himself if you hadn’t put him in that position.
Now, my brother is dead, and again, there is no one to blame but you.
I hope that one day, when you finally meet your maker, you are shown straight to the doors of hell. I hope that you lose everything you hold dear. I hope that your children hate you once they grow up and can take care of themselves and choose to not be associated with the likes of you.
I truly believe that karma will come for each and every one of you. And I will never stop fighting for those unjustly imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit.
My brother might be dead, but his fight will live on.
See you all in hell.
