Chapter 7 - THE VISITATION ROOM GLASS
The visitation room in the basement of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center smelled of industrial disinfectant and stale panic.
The reinforced glass partition was scratched with old initials, dividing the room into two worlds: the free and the condemned. On the far side of the glass sat Jason.
He had traded his tailored black funeral suit for an oversized orange jumpsuit that hung off his narrow shoulders. The silver handcuffs had left dark purple rings around his wrists. His hair was greasy, uncombed, and his eyes were hollow, sunken into dark purple sockets. When the heavy steel door buzzed open and I walked in, he flinched as if expecting a blow.
Beside me walked Theresa and Elena.
We didn't take our seats immediately. We stood in a line on our side of the glass, looking down at him. Three generations of his betrayal staring back at him through the smudge-stained barrier.
Jason swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He reached for the heavy black plastic receiver on the wall, his hand trembling so violently he nearly dropped it.
I sat down in the metal chair opposite him and lifted my receiver. Theresa and Elena stood directly behind me, their faces carved from stone.
“Caroline,” Jason croaked through the perforated earpiece. The audio was tinny, hollow, stripping away whatever warmth his voice had ever possessed. “Caroline, you have to help me. You have to get a lawyer from outside the county. The public defender they gave me doesn't understand. They’re trying to pin racketeering on me! They’re talking about twenty-five years!”
I didn't blink. “Only twenty-five? You got off easy.”
“Caroline, listen to me!” He pressed his face against the glass, his breath fogging the pane. “I did what I had to do! You don't know the people I was dealing with! When I lost the money on the market three years ago, I was desperate. I took a loan from the wrong guys. They threatened to kill you, Caroline! They threatened to burn down your studio! Everything I did—the accounts, the loans—I was trying to protect you!”
Even now, sitting in a county jail in an orange jumpsuit, the lies rolled off his tongue with sickening, reflexive ease.
“You weren't protecting me, Jason,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “You were using me as an ATM. Just like you used Elena. Just like you used your mother’s name to buy a life insurance policy.”
At the mention of his mother, Jason’s eyes flicked up to Theresa standing behind me.
Theresa didn't pick up the secondary phone. She didn't say a word. She simply reached into her pocket, pulled out the gold baptismal medal she had given Jason on his tenth birthday—the one he had claimed was stolen from his gym locker two years ago—and let it dangle from her fingers against the glass.
Jason closed his eyes, a dry, choked sob escaping his throat. “Mom… please.”
“She’s dead, Jason,” I reminded him cruelly. “Remember? You told me she died last night. You told me she died hating me.”
“I had to keep you away from the funeral!” Jason cried, tears finally breaking through his defenses. “Elena was there! David was there! If you showed up, the whole thing would blow!”
“And Chloe?” Elena’s voice cut through the air, even without the phone, her grief sharp enough to penetrate the thick acoustic tiles. She stepped forward, pressing her palms against the glass, her face inches from Jason’s. “What about my daughter, Jason? Did you protect her when you wired her chemotherapy fund to Vincent Rossi?”
Jason flinched, pulling back from the glass as if burned. “Elena… Chloe was sick. The doctors said her chances were less than ten percent. I was trying to double the money! I had an inside tip on three college games! If the parlay hit, we would have had two million dollars! We could have taken her to Germany! I was doing it for her!”
“You gambled my daughter’s life on a football game?” Elena’s voice rose to a shriek that bounced off the cinderblock walls.
The guard stationed by the door took half a step forward, his hand resting on his baton, but I raised my hand slightly, signaling for calm.
“Jason,” I said, bringing the receiver back to my mouth. “Vincent Rossi called your burner phone forty minutes ago.”
Jason froze. Every muscle in his face locked in terror. The tears stopped instantly. “What did he say?”
“He said I have twenty-four hours to deliver four hundred and twenty thousand dollars from the sale of my studio, or they’re going to put me in the ground next to Chloe.”
Jason’s hands began to shake violently. “You… you have to pay them, Caroline. You have to sell the studio! Give them whatever they want! Donatelli’s people don't bluff! If you don't pay, they’ll find you!”
“I’m not selling my studio, Jason,” I said coldly. “And I’m not paying them a single dime of my money. But you are going to call Vincent Rossi right now.”
Jason shook his head rapidly, backing his chair away from the counter. “No. No way. If I cross them, they’ll kill me inside this prison! You don't know what they can do!”
“You have two choices, Jason,” I said, leaning closer to the glass until my reflection overlapped with his terrified face. “Choice number one: You refuse to help Detective Miller. In which case, she hands your financial ledgers over to the IRS and the Texas State Prosecutor with an immediate recommendation for maximum consecutive sentencing. Forty years in a maximum-security penitentiary in Huntsville. And believe me, when the inmates find out you stole money from a dying six-year-old girl, you won't survive your first week in general population.”
Jason’s chest heaved. He swallowed a lungful of air, looking like he was about to vomit on the metal counter.
“What’s… what’s choice number two?” he whispered.
“Choice number two: You pick up that phone, you call Vincent Rossi on the recorded line, and you tell him that Caroline has the cashier’s check in hand. You tell him she refuses to wire it because she’s terrified of federal tracing, and that she will only hand it over in person at the Commerce Plaza office tonight at nine o'clock.”
“You’re crazy,” Jason gasped. “They’ll take the check and put a bullet in your head!”
“They won't get the chance,” I said. “Because the moment Vincent Rossi touches that check, forty federal agents are kicking down his door.”
Jason looked at me. For the first time in five years, he wasn't looking at a naive nurse who believed his fairy tales. He was looking at a woman who had taken his web of deceit and turned it into a noose.
“And what do I get?” Jason asked, his voice pathetic, a drowning man grasping at straws. “If I do this… what do I get, Caroline?”
I stood up from the metal chair, setting the black receiver back onto its metal cradle with a sharp, final click.
May you like
I looked down at him through the scratched glass, my voice carrying clearly through the metal speaker grate.
“You get to live, Jason. In a six-by-eight concrete cell, where every morning when you wake up, you remember that the women you tried to destroy are the only reason you’re still breathing.”
