Chapter 8 - The Inspection
Six months later.
The summer sun was hot over Florence, Arizona—a small desert town sixty miles southeast of Phoenix, dominated by the towering concrete walls, watchtowers, and barbed wire fences of the state correctional complex.
Inside the minimum-security administrative wing of the facility, the air was warm, smelling of ozone, diesel exhaust, and industrial floor wax.
Garrick Vance Carter sat at a stainless-steel table in the visitor's room, wearing an ill-fitting orange inmate uniform with his state registration number stamped in black block lettering across his left chest.
His hair had been shaved close to his scalp. His hands were calloused from six months of mandatory maintenance labor in the prison laundry facility, earning twenty-five cents an hour.
The heavy steel door across the room clicked open.
A visitor walked inside.
It wasn't a lawyer. It wasn't his family.
It was David Chen, a senior investigative reporter for the Phoenix Business Journal, carrying a small digital audio recorder and a notebook.
David sat down across from Garrick, setting the recorder on the metal table between them.
"Mr. Carter," David said professionally. "Thank you for agreeing to this interview regarding the liquidation of your former acquisitions firm."
Garrick stared at the reporter with hollow, sunken eyes. "Is... is she here?"
"Who?"
"Evelyn," Garrick whispered, his voice dry and raspy. "Is she in the building?"
David shook his head. "Mrs. Vance is currently in New York attending the annual board meeting of the Vance Global Investment Group, where she was officially appointed Chairwoman of the Board yesterday morning."
Garrick let out a bitter, dry laugh, resting his elbows on the metal table. "Chairwoman... of course she was."
"I brought a copy of the morning business section if you'd like to see it," David said, sliding a folded newspaper across the table.
Garrick looked down at the front page.
There was a large, high-resolution photo of me standing on the glass balcony of a Manhattan skyscraper, holding a healthy, laughing eight-month-old baby girl in my arms. Below the photo was a simple caption:
EVELYN VANCE PLEDGES $50 MILLION IN CORPORATE EARNINGS TO PEDIATRIC HEALTH AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECOVERY IN ARIZONA.
Garrick stared at the photograph for two long minutes. His thumb traced over the image of the baby—the child he had never held, the daughter whose first words he would never hear, the girl who would grow up bearing a name that represented everything he had tried and failed to destroy.
"She... she looks like her grandmother," Garrick muttered softly, a single tear rolling down his nose onto the newsprint paper.
"Do you have any message you would like to convey to Mrs. Vance for the article, Mr. Carter?" David asked, hovering his pen over his pad.
Garrick slowly closed the newspaper, pushing it back across the table to the reporter.
May you like
He looked up at the high, small window near the ceiling of the visitor's room, where a tiny sliver of blue Arizona sky was visible through heavy iron bars.
"Tell her..." Garrick choked out, his voice barely audible above the hum of the air vents. "Tell her I finally called myself a taxi."
