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  “Well, you know her parents have a house there, on Long Beach Island?”

  “Right, yes.” Marcus sounded vague, and Christine knew he didn’t remember. She barely remembered it herself. It was the only story that she and Lauren could come up with that was virtually uncheckable.

  “Yes, her parents have a house there and all the kids use it. You know, one of those deals where they divide the summer into weeks and they rotate?”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, she always gets stuck closing it, but this year she gets to open it, which is a helluva lot easier. She asked if I wanted to go with her. Take a weekend. Just take a break, you know, with all that’s been going on.”

  “Of course, right.” Marcus’s voice softened.

  “Right.” Christine felt a wave of guilt. “Jessica down the street can take care of the animals, so I think I’m going to go.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “We’ll leave tomorrow morning and come back Sunday.”

  “Fine. I won’t be home until Sunday night myself. Remember, it’s my dad’s birthday Monday night?”

  “Oh, right.” Christine rolled her eyes because she could get away with rolling her eyes on the phone. She disliked her father-in-law, the insufferable Frederik Nilsson.

  “We’ll go out to dinner. I made reservations at that Thai place he likes, so you don’t need to cook. Sound good?”

  “Yes, that’s great.”

  “Okay, I’m beat, so I’m going to turn in.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Love you,” Marcus said, and for a brief second, he sounded almost like himself.

  “I love you, too,” Christine said, touched, but she could hear the defensiveness in her own tone.

  “Hey, good night then. Give Murf the Surf a kiss for me.”

  “How about Lady?” Christine said automatically, their call-and-response, because he preferred the dog to the cat.

  “Her, no. Drive safe tomorrow. The Jersey Shore is a long haul. Good night.”

  “Good night.” Christine hung up, then stood still at the counter, the dishwasher door hanging open. She realized she had just lied to Marcus twice, once by omission and once by commission, her old Catholic catechism rising to her consciousness; she had lied about where she was going and she hadn’t told him about the ultrasound. She couldn’t remember the last time she had lied to him, if ever.

  Christine looked out the kitchen window, into the darkness of the backyard, and suddenly the motion-detector light went on, which meant that Murphy was at the door, ready to come in. She shook some Cascade powder into the little boxes in the dishwasher door, closed it, and pressed ON, then went to retrieve the dog, so they could both go upstairs and end this hellish day.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took Christine and Lauren until three o’clock to reach Pennsylvania, because the driver was pregnant and had to stop every hour to go to the bathroom or eat McDonald’s French fries, salads from Sbarro, and an iced lemon cake from Starbucks, plus assorted drinks. The sky was sunny and cloudless, and it would’ve been a pleasant drive if they hadn’t been so tense about where they were going or why they were going there.

  They drove through the town of Collegeville on Route 29, a winding two-lane road, and continued past colonial vintage houses, then rolling hills and pastured horses. The farmland turned into a vast open space, and Christine sensed they were approaching the prison. “I think we’re almost there,” she said, glancing over.

  Lauren straightened up in the passenger seat. “How do you know? It looks like more farms.”

  “I read on the website. The prison is set on seventeen hundred acres.”

  “So it’s in the middle of nowhere. What else did you read?”

  “Well, it’s Pennsylvania’s largest maximum-security prison.”

  “Oh, great. Go big or go home.”

  “It has about thirty-seven hundred adult men who have committed felonies, because that’s who gets sent to maximum-security. It also has one of the two Death Rows in the state.”

  “Now there’s an idea for summer vacation.”

  “It has a Facebook page.”

  “Whoa.” Lauren chuckled. “Facebook for felons.”

  “Its profile picture is a koala.” Christine gave the car gas, spotting the massive concrete complex that had to be the prison in the distance, to her right.

  “Why a koala?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “And you’re sure Jeffcoat will see us?”

  “I called ahead and asked to be put on his visitors’ list, which he has to approve, so, yes.”

  “He must want the company.”

  “Or the press. Remember, I told them we’re freelance journalists.”

  “Okay. No comment.”

  Both women fell uncharacteristically silent as the prison complex loomed larger, and Christine took a right turn when the GPS told her to, even though there was no sign. She steered onto a long, asphalt road that divided an open field, and they came to a fork in the road; to the right was a visitors’ parking lot, which was signed, but to their left, the road led to a massive concrete prison rising behind a fifty-foot-high wall of concrete, topped with coiled barbed wire. At the corners of the building, guard turrets pierced the blue sky.

  “Oh boy.” Lauren grimaced. “Can we go home now?”

  “Not yet.” Christine steered into the parking lot, which was about half-full, parked, and shut off the engine. “Here are the rules. We’re not allowed to bring phones or handbags, but we need to show IDs. Apparently they have lockers for the car keys, and we’re allowed to bring in our pads but not pens.”

  “Can I bring my gun?”

  “Do you even own a gun? It might be the one thing I don’t know about you.” Christine looked over, sliding her laminated driver’s license from her wallet.

  “Of course not. I’m Jewish. Words are our weapons.”

  “Good thing you’re a reporter then.” Christine handed her a fresh legal pad. “Here.”

  “Oh right, I forgot.” Lauren took the pad, then got her ID from her wallet.

  “Remember, I’ll ask the questions. All you have to do is take notes. They give us the pencils inside.” Christine slid the keys from the ignition, and they got out of the car.

  “Here goes nothing.” Lauren squared her shoulders, walking around the front bumper.

  “Thanks for doing this.” Christine met her, trying to ignore her case of nerves.

  “It’s okay. It’ll be interesting.” Lauren patted her on the back.

  “To say the least.” Christine shot her a shaky smile, and they fell into step, heading up the road toward the prison. It loomed even larger as they got closer, its high wall even more forbidding; up close the concrete looked stained and aging, and its barbed wire glinted sharply in the sunlight. The turrets at the corners of the building were of smoked glass, so she couldn’t see the guards inside. The air felt so humid it was almost claustrophobic, but that could have been her imagination.

  They reached the parking lot in front of the prison, passing a black van with white lettering that read, CORONER’S OFFICE, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, then a row of idling Department of Corrections buses, with wire grates over their windows. The women climbed the steps to the entrance, which had a grimy concrete overhang, and walked to the smudged glass doors of the entrance.

  Christine opened one door, which was old, its wood frame weathered, and let Lauren go first, then followed her into a dingy reception room that was a very long rectangle, dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lighting and small windows at the far end. The air smelled warm and dirty; if it was air-conditioned, it was too weak to do any good. A smattering of visitors talked quietly as they waited on old-fashioned wooden benches, under a sign that read NO SPANDEX, NO HOODIES. Tan linoleum covered the floor, and old beige lockers ringed the far side of the room. The place gave off the overall impression of being stop-time, circa 1960s, and oddly small-town for a maximum-security pris
on.

  Christine spotted a large wooden reception desk across the room, staffed by a female officer wearing a black uniform with the yellow patch of the Department of Corrections, which looked incongruous with the pink scrunchy around her light brown ponytail. Christine took the lead to the reception desk, placed her driver’s license on the counter, and introduced them both, then said, “We’re here to see Zachary Jeffcoat. We called ahead to be put on his visitors’ list.”

  “Sure. Sign in, please.” The corrections officer smiled as she slid a clipboard with an old-school sign-in log across the counter, and Christine signed in while Lauren handed over her driver’s license. The corrections officer examined the licenses. “You ladies come all the way from Connecticut?”

  “Yes.”

  “What newspaper you with?”

  Christine told herself to remain calm. “I’m freelance, I’m a stringer.”

  “Oh. You’re the third reporter today.”

  “Really?” Christine asked, surprised. She realized it helped her credibility as a cover story, too.

  “Mr. Jeffcoat is our celebrity inmate. He made the Most Wanted List. We don’t get many of those. He’s here in our holding area, on account of his dangerousness. He should be at Chester County Prison but they’re minimum security.” The corrections officer slid their driver’s licenses back across the counter. “His mail already started, too. He had some waiting before he got here. Wait ’til you see him, you’ll know why.” The corrections officer lifted a plucked eyebrow, then gestured at the lockers. “Car keys go in there, then take a seat. He’ll be brought up in a minute. He just was sent back down after his girlfriend visited.”

  “His girlfriend was here?”

  “Yes, you just missed her. A pretty redhead.” The corrections officer winked. “He’s a busy boy.”

  Christine and Lauren exchanged glances, then went to the lockers, stowed the car keys, and sat down on the bench. There were ten benches half full of people, of all races and sizes. Christine caught snippets of a variety of languages, English, Spanish, and others she couldn’t identify. Children fidgeted on the benches, swinging their legs or playing with toys, which made her despair. She tried not to think about what the life of her child would be like if Jeffcoat was her donor. Her hand went reflexively to her belly, and she prayed her baby didn’t end up here, in a maximum-security prison.

  “Zachary Jeffcoat!” a male corrections officer called out, as he stuck his head out a doorway on the left.

  Christine and Lauren rose together, and the male corrections officer motioned them forward toward a grimy metal door, which he opened with a loud ca-chunk. They passed through the doorway together and entered a narrow room that held an old wooden table with wooden bins, in front of a metal detector.

  “Ladies, take off any belts, shoes, and jewelry, and put them in the bins. Put your notepads in, too.”

  “Thank you.” Christine and Lauren complied, the both of them in their agreed-upon outfit of jeans, white shirts, and dark blazers, which they had on with flats. They passed through the metal detector, grabbed their legal pads, were handed two yellow golf pencils, and had their right hands stamped and read by an ultraviolet light, then they were led through one locked door, then the next, under the gaze of prison guards silhouetted behind a smoked glass panel. The two women were escorted to a narrow staircase with painted cinder-block walls and descended concrete steps. The air grew hotter the lower they went, as if it were hell itself, and a standing fan with grimy white plastic blades provided no relief, merely circulating hot air.

  They walked down a short hallway that led to a large, harshly lighted visiting room the shape of an L, filled with old, mismatched chairs. A smattering of young women, kids, and older women sat talking with inmates in brown jumpsuits who wore no handcuffs. A sign read, Inmates and Visitors May Embrace When Meeting and Departing Only. A brawny young corrections officer stood guard, sitting on an elevated wooden chair against the wall, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and black pants with a gray line down the side. His eyes scanned the room under the black bill of his black cap, a walkie-talkie crackling in its belt holster.

  “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 dono
r, 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.”