Lily pressed her palm against the reinforced glass.
“Dada.”
I matched my hand to hers. Her fingers were so small that all five fit inside the outline of my palm. She leaned forward, expecting me to lift her, and struck the barrier instead.
“Daddy’s right here,” I said.
She reached again. Sarah held her close, but Lily twisted toward me, crying harder.
We had ten minutes.
I had missed Lily’s first birthday while serving a sentence for a robbery I did not commit. I had missed her first steps. Sarah sent photographs when she could, and I kept the latest one folded inside a book in my cell.
Now Lily knew my face. That made leaving her worse.
Officer Hayes opened the door behind me.
“Time.”
I kept my hand against the glass. Lily’s palm stayed there until Hayes touched my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Sarah looked up. “His transfer isn’t until tonight. Please give them another minute.”
Hayes’s eyes moved from Sarah to Lily. “I can’t.”
I walked toward the secure door. Lily screamed as soon as she saw me moving away. I turned once. Sarah was holding her against the window, and Lily was searching for my hand.
Then the door closed between us.
Hayes walked beside me without speaking. At the end of the corridor, he stopped in front of the gate that led back to my housing unit.
“You still have the name of your attorney?” he asked.
“Why?”
“Tell me.”
“Rebecca Shaw.”
He nodded. “Wait here.”
I thought he meant to check my transfer paperwork. Two officers had collected my belongings that morning, although the bus was not scheduled to leave until after dark. Nobody would tell me why my appeal had been delayed again.
Hayes went through another door. I stayed where he told me, watched by the gate officer.
Several minutes passed.
Then Hayes returned with a supervisor I had never met. Her identification read Captain Ellis. She looked at me, then at the visitor corridor behind us.
“Mr. Carter,” she said, “you are being taken to a supervised room while we contact your attorney.”
“Has something happened?”
“Officer Hayes found evidence relevant to your case.”
Before I could ask what it was, she opened the corridor door. Sarah was sitting on a bench outside the visitation room, rocking Lily as she cried.
Hayes stopped beside the secure doorway.
“Go ahead,” Ellis told me.
Sarah stood when she saw me. Lily lifted her head at the sound of my steps. I held out my arms, and Sarah placed her in them.
For eleven months, I had imagined this moment. In my imagination, I always knew what to say.
I said nothing.
Lily locked her arms around my neck and pressed her face beneath my chin. Sarah wrapped her arms around both of us. I could feel her shaking.
Hayes watched from the doorway. A tear ran down his cheek, but he stayed at his post while Ellis made the call.
The reunion lasted only a few minutes. Lily fell quiet against my shoulder. When Ellis said we needed to move, Sarah took her gently, and I followed the captain into an interview room.
Hayes came in carrying a folder.
“Why did you look at the robbery footage?” I asked him.
“My brother works near that store,” he said. “He told me the camera across the street faced the entrance. Your attorney’s request for its footage was listed as answered, but the file attached to the response was incomplete.”
Hayes had checked the original copy in the evidence archive that morning. The camera had captured the robbery suspect running past the storefront. In the glass, a reflection showed the person opening a car door.
The vehicle was registered to the prosecutor’s brother.
“That doesn’t prove he was the driver,” Hayes said. “It does prove the car was there. I sent the original file and its access record to Captain Ellis.”
Ellis placed another document on the table. My transfer order had been backdated by three days. It appeared to have been approved before anyone at the prison was notified of the destination.
“The bus is coming tonight,” she said. “We’ve put the transfer on hold while this is reviewed.”
I looked at Hayes. “Did the prosecutor know you found it?”
“I accessed the file through my assigned system. I don’t know who can see the audit alert.”
As if in answer, Ellis’s phone rang.
She listened, asked the caller to repeat something, then looked through the interview-room window. Two unfamiliar men had arrived at the reception desk.
“They’re asking to take custody of the prisoner,” she said after ending the call. “They have another transfer order.”
Hayes checked the number on their document. It was different from the one in his folder, but it named the same destination.
Ellis kept the door closed and called the prison administrator. I watched the men through the window. One kept glancing toward the room where Sarah and Lily waited.
Rebecca Shaw arrived forty minutes later. She had already received the footage. She told me she was seeking an emergency hearing and that the original recording needed to be preserved outside the prosecution’s office.
“Does it clear me?” I asked.
“It gives us a serious new lead,” she said. “We still have work to do.”
I believed her. She was the first person in months who had shown me evidence instead of asking me to accept another delay.
That evening, the transfer bus left without me. Ellis told Sarah before she went home that I would remain at the facility while the court reviewed the order. I got another supervised visit before Lily’s bedtime.
This time there was no glass. Lily sat on my lap turning the buttons of my shirt between her fingers. Sarah showed me a video of her first steps. We watched it twice.
After they left, Hayes came to the interview room with news from the evidence archive. Someone had accessed the original robbery footage less than an hour after he copied it. The access used the credentials of a prosecutor’s office employee.
“They know,” he said.
Rebecca was still in the building. Hayes gave the audit record directly to her and Ellis. They secured copies before anyone could alter it.
I looked through the corridor window toward the gate where the second transfer team had waited.
“Do you know who sent those men?”
Hayes opened the new order. Beneath the official approval was a handwritten delivery instruction, added after the document was printed.
He read it once and passed it to Ellis.
It named the prosecutor’s brother as the person authorized to receive me at the other end.
