“Uh-huh,” Griff said again.

“What about the hard evidence, or trace evidence, or whatever it’s called?”

“The tests take longer, and they’re waiting for the results.”

Christine tried to put it all together. There were too many facts to analyze on the fly, and her gut was churning. She had believed Zachary when he said he didn’t know Allen-Bogen or McLeane. So either he lied or made a simple mistake. “So what does this mean for Zachary?”

“Bottom line, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania feel very good about their cases against Jeffcoat. They ‘like him,’ which is police-talk for they believe he’s the Nurse Murderer. The fact that he was in all three hospitals on the day the three nurses were murdered, and were seen with him, is strong circumstantial evidence. It won’t get to our jury, but it’s enough to get the FBI and the other two jurisdictions champing at the bit.”

Christine’s mind reeled. Even if Zachary hadn’t lied, he was in worse trouble than ever. “What did the FBI have to say? Did they meet with you?”

“No. The FBI doesn’t meet with defense counsel.”

“Then how do you know what they said?”

“The detectives from Maryland and Virginia told me, trying to make me shake in my boots.” Griff chuckled. “The Feds are on board, lending them a profiler out of the Philly office.”

“What did the profiler say, did they tell you?”

“The profile they developed is that the killer likes and respects women. He gets along great with them. The praying hands is a reference to nurses as angels on earth. They think he’s a ladies’ man.”

Christine listened, disturbed. The description fit Zachary to a T. “But if he likes nurses so much, why does he kill them?”

“Because they’re not appreciated on earth. They’re too good for this mundane world. That’s why he does no sexual violence, unusual for a serial murderer. He delivers them to heaven. That’s what the profiler thinks.”

Christine couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around the twisted logic. She didn’t know if it sounded like Zachary. “What do you think?”

“I think I missed lunch. I’m hungry. I’m hanging up.”

“Okay, good-bye,” Christine said, but Griff had already hung up.

Christine hung up, her thoughts racing. Could it be a coincidence that Zachary was in the same three places at the wrong time? How unlucky was he? Was he being framed? It horrified her to think that he really was a serial killer, but she knew she had to allow it as a possibility.

She tried to focus on the road. Traffic was speeding. She still couldn’t bring herself to believe that Zachary was guilty. She didn’t want to believe that the father of her baby could be so evil, so depraved. She squeezed the steering wheel to hold fast to something palpable, to tether herself to reality.

She headed west, driving into the hot white sun.

Chapter Forty-six

Chesterbrook Hospital was a massive modern complex of boxy tan buildings with orange tile rooftops, sprawling with associated medical offices, blood-testing labs, a physical rehab center, and parking lots and garages. Christine got out of the car and joined the stragglers heading to the vigil. She was running late because traffic had turned heavy, so she’d parked in the ER lot, which was the closest to the vigil, which was being held outdoors, behind the hospital, on the South Lawn.

The sky had clouded over, which seemed appropriate for such a solemn occasion, and Christine walked along the walkway, following people to the South Lawn. A hospital employee stationed at the lawn entrance handed her a bottle of water, a white program, and a white ribbon, which she didn’t have time to pin to her dress. Even if she had, it would have felt wrong. She thought about using a blue Porta John on the route, but it reeked, and she was late.

She entered the South Lawn, a lush green carpet where a few hundred people stood facing a temporary wooden stage with forest-green skirting and a matching backdrop covered with CBH logos. At its center was a podium with a microphone, several folding chairs with seated men and women in suits, and uniformed West Chester police officers, in front of an American flag and a forest-green flag bearing the hospital logo.

Christine joined the back of the crowd, looking around. She’d come hoping to learn more about Gail Robinbrecht, and hospital employees were out in such force that they looked like an army of lab coats, blue, green, and maroon scrubs, green lanyards, and clogs. Everyone wore a white ribbon, and each face bore the traces of sadness. There were fresh tears from nurses who must’ve known Gail personally, and still others who carried green balloons and homemade posters with Gail’s picture: GAIL, WE MISS YOU! FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS! CBH FOREVER RIP GAIL.

Christine caught snippets of conversation around her, either from employees talking about Gail—“dedicated nurse,” “so sweet,” “still can’t believe it,” “seems unreal”—or talking about Zachary, who had become the focus of their collective anger—“heartless bastard,” “sick pervert,” “they should fry him,” “he’ll never hurt anyone else.” She felt like an interloper among them, her white ribbon tucked into her purse and the child of the man they all hated growing inside her very body.

The program got underway, and two massive screens flanking the stage came to life, broadcasting a magnified close-up of the speaker, a middle-aged man in a gray suit, at the podium. Some of the crowd ahead of Christine surged forward for a center view of the stage, but others flowed around the right side of the stage, settling for a parallax view, if closer to the front. She joined the latter group and noticed a group of downcast nurses in patterned scrubs in the front row of the crowd, their arms linked together as they stood. Among them she recognized the older nurse and the younger Asian nurse from the memorial, and Christine realized that they were the orthopedic surgery unit, where Gail had worked. Next to them was a reserved section, cordoned off by a green sash, which held a grief-stricken older couple who had to be Gail’s parents, sitting with their other family and friends. They raised their glistening eyes to the stage when the man at the podium tapped the microphone.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he began to say, his voice solemn. He had on rimless glasses and a shaven head, a masculine look he managed to pull off. “My name is Dr. Adam Verbena, CEO of Chesterbrook Hospital, and I welcome you to this program, at which we will remember one of our dearest colleagues, nurse Gail Robinbrecht. Gail worked for the past nine years in our orthopedic surgery unit and was beloved by all of us and by her patients. Today will be a celebration of her life and of all she gave to those around her, because that’s what nurses do, and that’s the way she would’ve wanted it, as those of you who knew her the best will agree.”