Chapter 9 - The Ghost in the Glass
Three months later, the bitter, freezing blizzards of February had encased Chicago in a breathtaking, blinding armor of white ice.
It was a cold Thursday morning when my phone rang with a call from Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Reynolds.
"Leo," Reynolds’s gravelly voice came through the encrypted line. "Julian Cross is being transported to the federal transfer center in Oklahoma City this afternoon before his final placement at Terre Haute. His defense counsel submitted an emergency request for a ten-minute attorney-client room visit with you. He claims he has proprietary source code archives he will only surrender to you in person."
Reynolds paused, clearing his throat.
"You don't have to go, Leo. We already have his drives. He’s just looking for an anchor in the dark."
I looked out my office window at the snow swirling around the glass sixty floors above the city.
"Set it up, Reynolds," I said quietly. "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
The private interview room on the fourth floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown was an altar of institutional gray concrete.
The air was sterile, smelling of heavy industrial floor stripper, cold metal, and carbolic soap. A single bolted-down stainless-steel table occupied the center of the room, flanked by two orange plastic chairs.
The heavy steel security door buzzed and swung open with a harsh, mechanical clatter.
A federal corrections officer led Julian Cross into the room.
The transformation was horrific.
The tailored bespoke suits, the hundred-dollar haircuts, and the porcelain veneers were completely destroyed. Julian wore an ill-fitting, coarse orange prison jumpsuit with the letters BOP stenciled across the back in black paint. His hair had been roughly shorn down to an uneven buzz cut; his face was gaunt, hollowed out by three months of sleepless terror in solitary confinement; and deep, bruised hollows ringed his bloodshot hazel eyes.
His wrists and ankles were linked by a heavy steel belly-chain that rattled with every agonizing step he took across the linoleum.
The guard guided him into the plastic chair across from me, clipped his center chain to the floor eyelet, and stepped back to the door, resting his hand on his holster.
Julian didn't look up immediately. He stared down at his shackled, trembling hands, his breath coming in shallow, ragged rasps.
"You came," Julian whispered. His voice sounded like dry leaves scraping across a gravel driveway.
"I came, Julian," I said evenly, resting my arms on the cold stainless steel.
Julian slowly lifted his head.
When his eyes met mine, there was no arrogance left. No patronizing mentorship. No vicious, mocking smirks. There was only the bottomless, agonizing comprehension of a man who had thrown his entire soul into a furnace for an empire he could no longer touch.
"Why, Leo?" Julian wept, a single, greasy tear cutting a clean path through the gray grime on his hollow cheek. "Why didn't you just tell me you knew about Exhibit F? If you had told me... if you had just warned me that morning in the penthouse... I would have rewritten the schedule! I would have given you seventy percent! We could have been partners!"
I looked at him across the cold metal table.
I didn't feel hatred. I didn't feel rage. I felt only the cold, clinical pity one might afford a rabid animal that had finally broken its own teeth on an iron cage.
"You were never my partner, Julian," I said softly, my voice carrying clearly through the small, sterile room.
"You were a parasite who thought friendship was a line item on an acquisition ledger. You watched my father die in that hospital, and all you saw was an opportunity to steal his son's company."
Julian swallowed hard, his throat bobbing frantically behind his orange collar.
"I have twelve years, Leo," he whimpered, his chains rattling violently as his hands reached out in a pathetic, begging gesture that froze halfway across the table. "Terre Haute is a medium-security nightmare. The men in there... they know who I am. They know about the federal forfeiture. I’ll die behind those walls. My parents won't answer my letters. My friends have deleted my name."
I stood up slowly from my plastic chair, buttoning my tailored charcoal jacket.
"You have your life, Julian," I said, looking down at the ruined wreck of the boy who had tried to steal my future.
"You’ll have three meals a day, a clean cot, and twelve years of daylight through iron bars to think about every single sentence you hid in Exhibit F."
I turned my back on him, knocking twice on the heavy steel door for the guard.
"Leo! Leo, please! Don't leave me here!" Julian screamed, lunging forward against his chains, the steel links snapping tight, dragging his chest against the edge of the metal table as he sobbed hysterically into the empty room. "Leo! Tell the judge I was sick! Tell them it was an accounting mistake!"
The heavy steel door buzzed and swung open.
May you like
I stepped out into the bright, fluorescent hallway, the heavy lock clicking shut behind me with a finality that echoed like an iron gate closing on a tomb.
I walked out of the detention center into the freezing Chicago wind, pulled my wool scarf tight around my neck, and stepped forward into the clean, unclouded light of living men.
