Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3 — Behind the Plexiglas
The visitation room at the county jail smelled of industrial floor cleaner, stale coffee, and cold iron.
I sat in a heavy metal chair on one side of a thick pane of bulletproof Plexiglas.
Daniel Price stood a few feet behind me, his arms crossed, his presence a quiet, immovable wall of support.
The heavy steel door on the opposite side of the glass buzzed and slid open with a harsh, grinding scrape.
A guard led Jason into the small booth.
He wore an orange jumpsuit that hung loosely off his broad shoulders.
His hair, usually impeccably styled with expensive gel, was unwashed, flat, and thinning at the crown.
His face was pale, his eyes sunken and rimmed with red.
The arrogant, polished executive who had closed his suitcase and smiled at me two months ago had vanished, replaced by a hollow shell of a man realizing the walls were closing in forever.
He sat down heavily on the metal stool.
He looked at me, his eyes flicking over my face, my coat, and my posture.
He picked up the heavy black telephone receiver attached to the wall.
I hesitated for a second, then picked up mine.
“Claire,” he said, his voice coming through the small speaker thin and raspy.
“You came.”
“I came to look at you, Jason,” I said, keeping my voice completely flat, devoid of anger, sorrow, or fear.
He leaned forward, pressing his palm against the glass, his eyes filling with manufactured tears.
“Claire, you have to help me,” he whimpered, his voice dropping into that pleading, manipulative register he had used whenever he wanted to smooth over an argument during our marriage.
“They’re trying to pin something on me that I didn't do.”
“They’re saying I killed Sarah.”
“You know me, Claire! You know I could never hurt anyone!”
I didn't blink. I didn't flinch.
“I saw the checklist, Jason,” I said.
The fake tears in his eyes dried up almost instantly.
His posture shifted. The desperate, pleading look vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, calculating stillness that sent a shiver down my spine.
“You always were too nosey for your own good,” he murmured, his voice changing, dropping an octave into something dark and metallic.
“I gave you a good life, Claire.”
“I bought you a house.”
“I paid for your doctors.”
“You were a burden,” he spat, his lip curling into a sneer.
“You were always sick, always complaining, always taking up space.”
“Sarah was the same way.”
“Weak. Needy. Constantly dragging me down with her medical bills and her fragility.”
Hearing him speak Sarah’s name with such casual contempt made my stomach turn, but I forced myself to remain motionless.
“You killed her for two hundred thousand dollars,” I said.
“I reorganized my assets,” he corrected coldly, without a shred of remorse.
“Sarah was going to die anyway.”
“Her lungs were weak.”
“I just accelerated the natural order of things.”
“And when you became sick, Claire, I realized lightning could strike twice.”
“You were worth six hundred thousand dollars dead.”
“Do you have any idea what I could have done with six hundred thousand dollars in Europe?”
“I could have bought a vineyard in the south of France.”
“I could have lived like a king.”
He leaned closer to the glass, his eyes burning with a terrifying, absolute madness.
“And you ruined it because of a six-percent phone battery.”
“You were supposed to be dead before the police ever got there.”
“You were supposed to be a tragic footnote in my life.”
I looked at the monster sitting three inches away from me behind bulletproof glass.
For months, I had wondered what I had done wrong.
I had wondered if I had failed as a wife, if I had been too demanding, if my illness had driven him away.
In that single, crystalline moment, the guilt that had been quietly eating at my soul evaporated into thin air.
He was not a man driven to desperation by circumstance.
He was an apex predator who viewed human life as currency.
Slowly, deliberately, I set the telephone receiver down on the metal ledge.
I didn't say another word to him.
I stood up from my chair, adjusted my coat, and turned my back on him.
“Claire!” he screamed through the glass, his voice a muffled, frantic roar as he slammed his fist against the pane.
“Claire, look at me! You’re nothing without me! You’ll always be a sick, broken little girl!”
The guard grabbed his arm, forcing him back onto the stool as he struggled, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
I walked out of the visitation room into the cold, clean air of the afternoon.
I took a deep, full breath of air, feeling my lungs expand, strong and clear.
May you like
I was alive.
And he was never going to see the sun as a free man again.
