Most Wanted (19 page)

“Ladies, this way. This is general visiting. You're in the back.” The male corrections officer ushered Christine and Lauren past the chairs, and Christine spotted an incongruous mural on the wall, depicting an idyllic stone archway with a cobalt-blue river winding into the distance.

“That's unusual,” she said, pointing to the mural.

“It's a fake backdrop. Inmates can use it when they take pictures with their families.”

“Oh.” Christine took in the amateur art hanging on the cinder-block wall beside the mural, presumably by the inmates; a moonlit ocean, a pastoral landscape, Elvis, an Eagles logo, and a still life of red wine with cheese.

The corrections officer pointed to the left. “If you like murals, outside is one the Mural Arts Program did for us.”

Christine looked to her left, where tall windows overlooked an outdoor area with old picnic tables and ratty blue-and-white umbrellas. On one side was a children's playground with a bright yellow slide and blue monkey bars, which would have been cheery but for the gray concrete wall topped with spiky concertina wire. On the wall was a colorful mural depicting children at play, which read
CHERISH THIS CHILD
.

Christine thought again of her baby, then the ultrasound image of its fluttery heartbeat, delicate as gossamer. Her heart beat faster with each step closer to where she would meet Jeffcoat, who could be the baby's father. She never would have believed she would get to meet their donor, much less in a prison, and the conflicting emotions wrenched at her gut; on the one hand, she was excited to meet the donor, but on the other, horrified that it was in here.

“Ladies, you'll be in the back booths, for no-contact visits. Jeffcoat is here on a special hold.”

“Oh, I see.” Christine tried to suppress her emotions and get her bearings.

“Here.” The corrections officer stopped outside two white metal booths built into the wall and opened the metal door of the first one. “Wait inside and he'll be brought down.”

“Thanks.” Christine and Lauren squeezed inside the cramped white booth, where the air was so warm it was hard to breathe. They sat down on the two gray metal chairs, in front of a scratchy Plexiglas divider with a scored hole in the center and a white metal counter underneath. On the other side, barely three feet away, sat a single empty chair, where Jeffcoat would sit.

“Wait here,” the corrections officer said, shutting the door.

Christine set down her pad and braced herself to get the worst news, or the best news, of her life.

 

Chapter Eighteen

Christine composed herself as the door opened on the other side of the booth, and Zachary Jeffcoat was admitted to the secured side, his arms handcuffed behind his back. He was tall, blond, and so handsome that he looked as out of place in the orange jumpsuit as an actor in a soap opera, a blond romantic lead miscast in the role of a felon.

Jeffcoat was tall and well-built, with broad shoulders and muscular biceps, shown by the short sleeves of his jumpsuit, but Christine zeroed in immediately on his face, visualizing the donor's adult photo. His eyes were wide-set, round, and blue, he had a straight nose, vaguely upturned, and a smallish mouth with thin lips, and his hair was a fine, ashy blond.

She had the instantly horrifying impression that Jeffcoat looked like Donor 3319, or at least his adult photo, but she resisted the conclusion with every fiber of her being. It bewildered her to see him in person, especially because her emotions roiled within her. She felt fear and confusion, at the same time as an intense, undeniable curiosity to know the truth. The very notion that she could be in the same room with the father of the baby she was carrying sent her into a tailspin.

Christine broke into a sweat, made worse in the hot room, and she felt her heartbeat accelerate. Her face burned, her thoughts raced. She wondered if her baby would look like Jeffcoat, if he was her donor, or if their baby would look like her, or what the combination would be, the amalgam of features and traits that made up a human being.

Jeffcoat looked up, meeting her eye for a split second before the corrections officer turned him around to uncuff him, and Christine recognized the look as the one from the CNN video, just before Jeffcoat had been put into the cruiser. A jolt electrified her system as she realized that Jeffcoat was a serial killer. It appalled her to think that he could be the father of her baby, and she felt like crying, screaming, raging, and suing everybody she could. But she told herself she had to get a grip on her emotions. She would only have twenty-five minutes with him, under prison rules, since she wasn't his attorney. She had to find out the truth, one way or the other, today.

“Hi, I'm Zachary Jeffcoat.” He rubbed his wrists and met her eye, nodding almost shyly, as he sat down. “And you're a reporter? Christine Nilsson?”

Christine shuddered to hear her name coming from his lips. She made herself calm down. “Yes, a stringer, a freelancer.”

“Which newspaper do you freelance for?”

“None, really.” Christine reminded herself of her cover story, which she'd kept as close as possible to the truth in case he looked her up online. “I find stories that interest me, write them up, and try to sell them. This time I'm thinking of a book. My day job is a teacher, a reading teacher, and I always loved books, and I think this would be a great one.”

“I understand, okay.” Zachary nodded, inhaling. He pursed his lips, his strain evident. “So you're trying to make something happen.”

“Yes.” Christine put her legal pad on the counter, then gestured to Lauren. “This is Lauren Weingarten, a friend of mine. She's a teacher, too, but she comes along on my research trips.”

Lauren said, stiffly, “Hi Zachary, if I can call you Zachary.”

“Of course.” Jeffcoat turned to Christine with a deep frown, a premature furrowing of his brow under feathery blond bangs. “Listen, I swear to you I'm not a serial killer. I'm not the Nurse Murderer, or whoever they want to call him. I didn't kill Gail Robinbrecht. I didn't murder anyone, I never would. I'm innocent, and I need to get out of here.”

“So you're innocent?” Christine repeated, fumbling for her footing. She hadn't expected to talk about the murder right off.

“Absolutely, totally innocent, I swear it.” Zachary held up a palm.

“First, before we begin, do you have a lawyer?”

“Yes, a public defender, but I haven't heard much from her. Her name is Mira Farooz. That's pretty typical of defenders, from what I hear. They handle, like, fifty cases at once, and I need a good lawyer, a private lawyer. Can you help me get one? I have to get out of here.”

“Sorry, no, I can't.” Christine wrote down
Mira Farooz
, to gather her thoughts. She hadn't anticipated him asking for her help.

“I'll tell you what I told the other reporters. I'm innocent and you have to help me. Please.” Zachary leaned over, urgently, on his side of the divider. “The cops think I did it because they found me there in Gail's apartment, but she was already dead. I was the one who called 911. I didn't do it. Why would I call 911 if I did it?”

Christine wrote down,
he called 911
. She didn't know if it was prudent of him to be telling her so much about his case, but she didn't have time to ponder. She tried to ask a question that a reporter would. “How did you know her? Gail Robinbrecht.”

“I didn't. We hooked up the night before she was killed, that's it.” Zachary pursed his lips, shaking his head. “I have, or had, a girlfriend, I know. I feel terrible about that, I know it was wrong. But I would never kill anyone.”

“What's your girlfriend's name?” Christine's ears pricked up. Donor 3319 had a girlfriend, but she didn't know if it was the same one.

“I don't know if I should tell you that. I don't want you to print that.” Zachary's skin flushed a rosy pink, but Christine couldn't say for sure that it was
creamy
, like on the online profile.

“I won't use her name if you don't want me to, but why not?”

“I think it would make her look bad, right now. She's in medical school.”

Christine swallowed hard. So Zachary's girlfriend was in med school. It was uncomfortably close to Donor 3319, who should have been in med school. She hoped it was a coincidence. “Why don't you tell me her name, but I promise not to print it?”

“Still, no. She'd hate that. She was just here, she broke up with me.” Zachary flushed again, frowning. “I don't blame her, she has to distance herself, with all this. Her family, her career, anyway, we were in trouble for a long time.”

“Oh, my. Sorry.” Christine remembered the corrections officer upstairs, telling her that the girlfriend had been here today. She tried to think of more questions, so she could see if his background matched Donor 3319. “Can I ask, does she go to med school in Pennsylvania?”

“Yes, Temple.”

Christine made a note,
Temple Med
. “Do you live together?”

“No. She lives in town, in Philly, and I live in Phoenixville. I travel for days at a time, to my accounts.” Zachary paused, hesitating. “Do we have to talk about her? If this is about me, we should talk about me.”

Christine nodded, trying to get on track. She was running out of time. “Okay, first, how old are you?”

“Twenty-four, and I didn't even know Gail Robinbrecht, not really. I met her randomly and asked her out. I'd been with her the night before she was killed, and I was going to meet her again, but when I went to her house, like I say, she was dead. The police came and saw me there, and they thought I had done it.”

“Do you have any idea who would kill her?”

“No, I don't even know her, it was a hookup. That's it. I
didn't
do it.”

Christine tried to get to the point. “Why don't you tell me a little about yourself? Not about the murder, about you.”

“Okay, if you want.” Zachary frowned. “I'm an only child, and my parents have passed. My father was a pastor, and my mother worked however she could. Pastors, obviously, make no money. Her last job was in a high-school cafeteria.”

Christine knew it matched the profile, in that Donor 3319's parents were religious. She remembered him writing that they would not approve of his donation, which was why he was requesting anonymity. “And where did you grow up, if I may ask?”

“We moved around because my father changed churches. We were Baptist and we went where the powers-that-be sent us. By the time I was fifteen, I had lived in twelve different states.”

“Oh my. Could you name a few of them?” Christine was wondering if one was Nevada. Donor 3319 had said that he was from Nevada, but he hadn't mentioned anything about moving around.

“Let me see. New Mexico, Arizona, California for a lot of the time, then Colorado.”

“That's a lot of moving around for a young child,” Christine said, relieved not to hear Nevada, but the list was incomplete. “Did you have a happy childhood?”

“No,” Zachary answered, without self-pity. “It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. My parents were very strict. It wasn't a happy household. It was disciplined. They had high goals for me. High expectations.”

“That must've been difficult,” Christine heard herself say, the words coming oddly naturally. Years of teaching had trained her to be empathetic, and she couldn't untrain herself in a day.

“In a way it was, but I understand the way my parents were. They weren't always that way.”

“You mean they changed?”

“Um, yes.” Zachary hesitated again. “Do you need to put this in the story? Like, is this for your story?”

Christine smiled at him, trying to put him at ease. “No, I won't print it if you don't want to. It's off the record. I'm just trying to understand your background.”

“Well, okay, my parents changed after my baby sister died.”

Christine blinked. None of this had been on the online profile of Donor 3319. “I thought you said you were an only child.”

“I wasn't always, I had a little sister. Her name was Bella. She passed away when she was four, in an accident. It was awful.” Zachary sighed, pursing his lips. “There was a development we lived in, like a townhouse development in Denver, that had a retaining wall at the back. After a really bad rain, water would fill up there.”

Christine tensed, guessing where the story was going. Still, it wasn't on the online profile, so she was hoping that it proved Jeffcoat wasn't Donor 3319.

“Anyway, my mother was working two jobs then. She had the day job at the cafeteria, and at night she worked in a hospital, working for a janitorial company.”

Christine made a note to stay on track.
Mother worked in hospital.

“My mom had worked the night before and she was really tired, and she was playing with Bella and reading to her out back on the blanket, like they always used to do. I remember, I used to go with them.” Zachary swallowed hard, his Adam's apple traveling visibly up and down. “Anyway, my mother fell asleep, she dozed off on the blanket. She had worked so late, she had only gotten two hours' sleep. Bella must have walked to the water and fallen off the retaining wall, and she drowned.”

“I'm so sorry,” Christine said, surprised to find herself meaning it. The story had an emotional power she couldn't deny, and it threw her off from making her mental note of comparisons with Donor 3319.

Lauren shook her head. “That must've been awful, I'm so sorry.”

“Thanks. I came home with my dad, and I found them. My mom was asleep, and I'm the one who found Bella. I jumped in but I couldn't save her. It was horrible. For Bella, for my mother.” Zachary shook his head, stricken, and Christine could see grief etching lines into his handsome face, which made it hard to believe he was a sociopathic serial killer.