“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.