Hell Has A New Name

28

As the shower ran, Amber sat the closed toilet lid. Mentioning that he should hack prison files reminded her of her own research she'd been doing. She opened the tab on her phone with the article she'd found.

Well respected Dr. Juan Ortiz Oncologist gunned down... the headline read, she looked at the pictures of the family. The family, a girl about ten or so and a teenage boy, definitely Micheal, a woman with dark sad eyes, and the dr, they looked perfect, dressed in formal wear, smiling despite their eyes. They all had the same sad eyes. The same sad eyes Micheal still had now.

Pictured below: Dr. Ortiz, wife Stella, daughter Sonya, and son Juan-Carlos, attend Annual Fundraiser Gala for Children's Oncology Unit at North Ridge hospital in Queens NY. Six months prior to the fatal accident claiming the life of Dr. Ortiz.

The article went on to talk about the dr, his family, the loss of his daughter. It went on to explain the accident, his obituary and funeral service information was listed. Juan-Carlos she thought the name, it suited him. She couldn't imagine how the kid in picture, with the perfect looking family could end up on the run. But she knew all too well how families had their secrets.

She closed the tab and pulled up a new search bar, typing in just the name Juan-Carlos Ortiz. Nothing on social media came up, but she did have a few web links. Some of them took her to random people online, apparently his name wasn't rare. She clicked on the images search tab, scrolling through the pictures until she came across a picture that looked like him. It was a mug shot, a young Micheal with a Mohawk and head tattoos. She followed the link, taking her to a government site, several other men were pictured along with him linking them to the Sons of Anarchy in Charming California. Her blood started to feel cold as a chill ran down her. The article asked for information about them, apparently something was going on with them, the article was ten years old, she closed it and continued searching his name.

His obituary came up, just a brief synopsis listing his name, his age, that he was buried within the prison cemetery. The rabbit hole led her to random junk news sites talking about prison politics and other social issues. He seemed to have garnered a decent amount of attention for the people interested in that sort of thing.
Inmate fatally stabbed in cafeteria brawl. Are our prisons over crowded?

Model inmate brutally stabbed, taken out of protective custody against administrations orders. Who's really calling the shots?

Inmate mental health and rehabilitation services are nonexistent leaving many excommunicated gang members to the justice of inmate politics.

Juan-Carlos Ortiz better known as "Juice" member of notorious motorcycle club Sons of Anarchy killed in gang retaliation. Club representatives refuse to comment, President states simply that he was no longer a member when the incident occurred.

All of the articles were mostly opinion pieces using him as a focal point to push their narrative. He was basically faceless, could have been any inmate. It didn't bother her to learn that he was who he was, he'd only omitted some of the information. It bothered her more that even in death the journalist were continuing to use him, as a means to an end for their own agenda. From what she'd gathered his whole life had been about pleasing other people, being used for one thing or another, never really having a value beyond the assignment.

The man she'd come to know, stripped and broken as he was, was probably the most authentic version of himself he'd been in a long time despite the lies he was built on. When there's nothing left to lose you can let go of pretense. She couldn't help the pit in her stomach with the knowledge that her father had probably been involved somehow in his case. He had been in California at the time, working with organized crime, using smaller clubs to try to get to the big ones. She'd never forgive him he was a part of what happened to him while inside.