Criminal Justice:
A Hells Belles Story
“Hi, welcome to hell,” Ruggy began without looking up from the book she was reading, perched comfortably on Angel’s lap. Her girlfriend’s arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, chin resting on one shoulder as she, too, skimmed the novel. “What brand of stupidity would you like to foist upon us today?”
“I shouldn’t be here!”
Ruggy lazily drug her eye up to stare flatly at the tall red-headed man who frowned down at her, leaning across her desk. He bore the unmistakable arrogance of someone who was used to abusing his authority while keeping up a thin veil of alleged professionalism. But a few tale-tell signs gave him away as a mere bully. She could read it in the way he reached for his hip, as if to reassure himself with the caress of a sidearm that hadn’t followed him into the afterlife, the way he raised his arm and shifted to hook his thumb over the top of a radio that was no longer attached to his shoulder, and the way his hands twitched slightly when they brushed only his clothing instead. She smirked, making a pretend bet with herself regarding who he was and why he was there, and reached for his file.
Behind her, Angel giggled. “We should keep a running tally of the number of times we hear that each day. Whoever hears it the most should win a lap dance from their lover.”
“That sounds like fun to me, but it leaves out Sharkie,” Ruggy replied with a grin as the aforementioned Shark began to gag dramatically from the next chair over.
“We can always get an inmate to dance away from your lightsaber instead, Sharkie,” Angel promised.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Sharkie choked out. “But why do you all go straight for the sticky? Every time!”
“Ladies!” The man called. “I asked you a question!”
“Nooooooo,” Sharkie countered. Their tone and cadence were a mocking staccato as blue eyes turned to survey the new arrival. “Yoooouuuuu made a very direct statement. It was a false statement… But it did not end with our little friend Mr. Question Mark.”
Disgust painted the man’s features. “Why is there a kid in a shark onesie working here?” He directed this question to the two women sharing a chair, sneering a bit as he noticed the obvious intimacy between them.
“There!” Angel grinned. “That was a question! But the kid is an adult and the adult does what they want.”
“Yes, she does,” Ruggy agreed, opening the file. “But back to you… Ha! I knew it! Corrupt cop! I’m one tile away from a full-card BINGO!”
“Corrupt?!” The officer sputtered. “How dare you - ”
Ruggy suddenly went rigid as her finger touched the page and the contents of the thick folder flooded into her mind.
“Oh, I dare a lot of things,” Ruggy said, rising to her feet to lean into the taller man’s face. “I dared to face my past and atone for it. I dared to own my mistakes. I dared to heal and learn and grow. But one glance through your file tells me you don’t have the capacity to do the same.”
Angel frowned. At first from the lack of girlfriend cuddled sweetly against her chest and then from the tone she heard in Ruggy’s voice. Even Sharkie went still at the hint of rage skating under the surface of her otherwise steady voice.
“You ignored that woman when she told you she was epileptic.”
The officer straightened. Ruggy prowled around the desk and closed the distance between them sticking her face up as if she could crowd him despite his much taller stature. His eyes widened and he scrambled back, but the woman kept coming.
“She told you the strobe light was dangerous for her. But you refused to turn it off. She warned you that if she had a seizure, it would be bad and you…. You looked at her and said - and I quote! - ‘that’s okay’. She could have died, but you were too busy making up a reason to give her a ticket to care. Then, when you saw that she was scared, you used it to torture her. You tried to force her to open her eyes with the strobe lights still on. Then you sat behind her, refusing to drive away before she did, knowing she couldn’t go anywhere. She finally had to switch on her turn signal to trick you into thinking she was going a different way. Only then did you turn off your lights and drive away.”
“Baby?” Angel ventured carefully as she moved to the edge of the chair. But Ruggy was on a roll and didn’t seem to hear.
“And if that wasn’t enough, you began to stalk her.”
The officer’s back hit the wall. The rough surface of the rock pressed painfully into him, but moving forward again meant getting closer to her. In life he would have relied on his badge and his fellow officers and his friend the judge to cow this woman down. But they weren’t with him and the lava reflected in her eyes in a way that unnerved him. She, not he, had the power here. It was a foreign feeling and he didn’t like it.
“You followed her through your town for months every night,” Ruggy growled. “You would tailgate her as she tried to drive home from work each night. You would turn on your strobe lights and then turn them off again when she tried to pull over. Then you’d do it again. You tampered with her brakes and you were disappointed when she was able to make it home and fix them. You wanted her to crash so that you could respond to the call and make sure she was surrounded with emergency vehicles, all with their lights on. You wanted to see what a seizure looked like. And your malicious curiosity mattered to you more than her safety.”
“Abercrombie?” An old man’s voice carried over, sounding baffled. “What’s going on here?”
It was another soul, newly arrived and headed their way. Ruggy took one look at the red-faced, not-entirely-sober man who was staring at the soul of the officer in front of her, and she turned and snatched up his file too just as the rest of the Hellp Desk staff emerged from the corridor, back from lunch. Her family stopped short, realizing that something was going on.
“Judge Walker, is it?” Ruggy sneered. “Looks like you have a hand in this mess, too. You sent people to jail who didn’t belong there. You threatened people with jail for asking if there was a simple no contest option to traffic violations. You were just as cruel, in fact, to the same epileptic woman by kicking her out of your courtroom and extending the process for her when she asked you that exact question. You screamed at her for having an attitude when all the poor thing wanted to know was what her options were! You were both being paid kickbacks, trying to draw in new victims to send to a private prison. You got paid for every person you sent there and you did everything you could to inflate minor and even non-existent offenses into a payday for yourselves. Then, when that woman managed to slip between your fingers and then sued you both, you conspired to kill her. You, Abercrombie, accepted a bribe from Walker to finish her off. You attempted a police maneuver to cause her car to crash. You sent her into oncoming traffic. Her little blue truck hit a red sedan with tan interior, didn’t it? Your intended victim survived…” By now there were tears in Ruggy’s eyes and their files were crushed in her fists. “But I didn’t!”
Everyone at the desk froze. Angel shot to her feet, hands over her mouth.
“And I can see from your files that you never felt a shred of remorse. Not for me. Not for her. Not for anyone else who had actual lives before the two of you decided work together to destroy them.”
“Oh, baby…” Angel swept in and pulled her close.
“These two killed you?”
Ruggy looked up at Lily and nodded. “Level nine. Both of them.“
Without waiting for further instruction, Greg stepped silently forward, opened the trap door and threw each of them down. Headfirst.