Chapter 7 - The Shadows Lengthen
The federal holding facility downtown smelled of industrial floor wax, old paper, and institutional despair.
I sat across a scratched Plexiglas divider in the visitor’s booth, my hands resting calmly in my lap. A guard stood by the heavy steel door behind me, arms crossed, watching every micro-expression.
A moment later, a side door banged open.
Spencer was shoved into the room by a corrections officer. He looked unrecognizable. His custom Tom Ford suit was gone, replaced by a coarse orange jumpsuit that hung loosely on his frame. His hair was unwashed and matted, dark circles bruised the skin beneath his hollow eyes, and his shoulders were permanently hunched as if he were trying to shrink into the floorboards.
He shuffled across the linoleum, sat down heavily on the metal stool on the other side of the glass, and picked up the heavy plastic telephone receiver with trembling fingers.
I picked up mine.
For nearly a full minute, neither of us spoke. Spencer just stared through the transparent barrier at me, his mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish, trying to find words that no longer existed in his vocabulary.
“Gwen…” he finally choked out, his voice a pathetic, raspy whisper echoing through the audio speaker. “Gwen, please. You have to help me. My lawyer says the prosecutors are pushing for fifteen years. Minimum security, maybe, but fifteen years! I’ll lose everything! The company is liquidated, the cars are impounded, they even seized my retirement accounts!”
“Your retirement accounts were funded by embezzled pension funds from your subcontractors, Spencer,” I said, my voice entirely flat, devoid of anger or satisfaction—just clinical, absolute detachment. “The auditors found three separate shell companies you used to skim payroll over the last four years.”
“I didn't mean to!” he sobbed, a pathetic tear carving a clean track down his dusty cheek. “It was just business! Everyone in real estate bends the rules! Gwen, please… we were married. We had a life together. Have mercy on me.”
“Mercy?” I asked softly. “Did you show mercy when you let your mother treat me like a servant in my own home? Did you show mercy when you looked my five-year-old daughter in the eye and told her she ruins everything after your mistress knocked her teeth out?”
Spencer flinched as if I had struck him across the face.
“Cassandra is gone,” he whimpered, staring at the floor. “The moment the federal agents froze the accounts, she blocked my number, deleted her social media, and vanished. She never even called me once.”
“Of course she did,” I said. “She loved your credit limit, Spencer, not your company. You were just a vehicle for a lifestyle you couldn't actually afford.”
He pressed his forehead against the cold Plexiglas, his shoulders shaking with ragged, hysterical sobs.
“What am I going to do, Gwen? I’m ruined. My life is over.”
“Your life isn't over, Spencer,” I said, standing up from the metal stool and smoothing down the cuffs of my blazer. “It’s just finally honest. You have a very long time to think about what you built on lies, arrogance, and cruelty.”
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“Gwen! Don't leave me! Gwen!”
I hung up the phone. I didn't look back as I turned away from the glass partition, walked out of the holding room, and stepped back into the blinding, beautiful sunlight of a city that was finally free of him.
