“Uh, yeah, we’re here to visit someone,” I said.
“Are you registered for visits?” he asked.
“I am,” I said, grateful that Avery had realized an application was necessary to visit inmates and helped me fill it out after we made the plan to come.
“Which inmate are you visiting?” he said.
I looked at Nikita and Brayden as my heart sank.
I didn’t know his name.
Deon always called the man he was aided by ‘Venom,’ but I assumed that wasn’t the name on his birth certificate. “Um,” I said. “I only know his nickname?”
The officer crossed his arms. “If you don’t have a legal name, how am I supposed to know who to call to come down?”
That was a fantastic question. Still, Deon had made it seem like Venom had his run of the place. Maybe they’d know him by name. “His name, or the one I’ve always known him by, is Venom.”
Behind the glass, the officer took a step back. He looked left and right at the other officers behind the counter, then he looked back at me. “What’s your name?”
“Cherri,” I said.
He looked at the female officer to his left and nodded, and she put up a ‘Be Right Back’ placard at her window and disappeared behind a door behind her. The cop looked at us, keeping a curious gaze on us, but said nothing. Had I made a mistake name-dropping Venom? His nickname was probably listed alongside his real name in some public record, somewhere. Why didn’t I think to look it up first?
We didn’t let the tension scare us and stayed standing in place. At one point, I must have been shivering and didn’t know it, because Brayden pulled off his zip-up hoodie and slung it around my arms. I smiled at him and Nikita rubbed my back. Even if Avery and Sicily had come with me, I wasn’t sure they’d have offered the same kind of support Brayden and Nikita were. The fact that we weren’t all that close kept them from doing too much. They just offered quiet support, which was exactly the kind I needed.
After what felt like an hour, but had only been around twenty minutes, the female officer came back. She pulled the officer we were dealing with back, and whispered something to him. He nodded at her, then turned around and faced us. He grabbed a clipboard with a paper on it, scribbled something on it, and then slid it through the window to me.
“Fill this out. I’ve already done the inmate name for you. Do you have an ID?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Okay. When you turn that form back in, you have to give me your ID too. I’ll hold it while you visit and return it when you’re done.”
“Okay. Thank you.” I grabbed the clipboard, and filled out all of the necessary information, then I pulled out my ID, clipped it to the clipboard and slid both the form and the ID back. I took a note of the inmate name on the paper before sliding it back.
The man I was there to see was Garrett Williams.
“Find a spot to sit and wait for the guard to call for visiting hours. You’ll have to go through the metal detector and you can’t take anything with you. No phone, no keys, no wallet, no nothing. I’d give that hoodie back. You’ll be cold back there, but deal. We don’t like baggy clothes here.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
We went and found a couple of open seats and I handed my cell phone, wallet, and keys over to Nikita and returned Brayden’s hoodie. We waited for about thirty minutes, then a guard came and stood at a door to the left of the room. The regulars must have recognized him, because a representative for each group started standing before he said anything, and as they were lining up he called out, “Line up for visiting hours!”
“Okay,” Nikita said to me. “We’re right out here. Good luck.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
Brayden gave my hand a squeeze as I stood up and left them behind to get in line. One cop was standing on our side of the door, that, when opened, gave me a clear view of the metal detector on the other side, behind which a cop was standing with another, handheld metal detector.
“Remember, folks. Visiting time is one hour long. You sit across from your loved one and talk using the phone. Any attempt to tamper with the glass, phone, chair, or booth will result in immediate termination of all visitation rights for the duration of your inmate’s stay.”
For a moment, I imagined visiting Deon while he was there. How I’d be one of the people in line ahead of me, moving on memory, used to doing this all already. I was glad that Deon and I reconnected after, even if I was sad to have been separated from him all those years. If it would have helped him at all, I would have visited him.
But thank god it didn’t come to that.
Once we were through the metal detectors, the same female officer who’d helped me earlier appeared from a door and led us down a long hallway. We entered a totally cement room with about a dozen seating booths lined along the center of the room. Plexiglass separated our side from the other side, and dividers separated each booth from the next one over. Each booth only had one chair, and I hesitated in the door, wondering if I needed to go to a specific booth, but everyone appeared to just be sitting down, so I went to the booth way at the end and sat down.
A loud buzzer echoed through the room, and a door at the end of the other side we were separated from opened and a different officer led in inmates who were cuffed at their wrists and ankles. They sat down at the booths as they passed the ones they were meant to be at, and I watched as one man’s eyes locked on me. He wasn’t as tall as I had imagined, but he was twice as built. His arms looked like he could punch right through the concrete if he wanted to, and his shoulders were so broad, they completely blocked out the view of anyone behind him. He had chocolate skin, and a bald head and walked with an overconfident swagger that made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of talking to him.
He walked to the end of the booths and sat down in front of me, then a prison guard stepped forward and unlocked the handcuffs around his thick wrists. He reached up and grabbed the phone hanging on his side of the booth, and I did the same.
“Cherri, right?” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah. Are you Venom?”
A huge smile crossed his face, unexpectedly kind. “Yeah. Call me Garrett.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Hi, Garrett.”
“Now, you are one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” he said. “My kid’s got good taste.”
Deon had mentioned he thought of Venom like a dad. It was sweet to see that Venom thought of Deon the same. I remembered Anisa and Cobalt loving Nathan like parents, and I was happy to see that Deon had found something similar in Venom. “Thank you.”
“Now, Cherri, I’m not sure if you know this, but anything you and I say into these phones can be replayed and listened to by anyone.” His eyes narrowed at me. “Anyone.”
I didn’t have to guess what he was trying to say. Connor had contacts everywhere, and if we said anything about or pointing towards Deon, he could find out. “I understand.”
“So. What can I do for you?” he asked. “I assume you’re on a bit of a hunt.”
“I am,” I said. “Am I your first visitor?”
Venom’s smile grew. “Smart too. I love it. No, you’re not. Someone else came and saw me about, oh, three months ago now. Needed a lawyer, so I put them in contact with my wife, Felicity.”