“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.
Zachary continued, his tone quieter, “We were never the same after that, as a family. We fell apart. My dad tried to understand it, make sense of it in God’s plan, all that. My mother was a woman of faith, too, and she prayed and prayed for forgiveness.” Zachary’s blue eyes glistened, but he blinked them clear. “She blamed herself for falling asleep, for letting it happen, for being careless. But she wasn’t careless, it could have happened to anyone. It was a mistake. She was only human, overworked, underpaid, doing it all. She became very depressed. They died two years ago, they were hit by a drunk driver.”
“I’m so sorry,” Christine said, again. She hadn’t expected to hear such a moving story.
Zachary shook his head, his lips puckering. “That was when I lost my religion, that day. I was ten but I was old enough to doubt. I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t believe in a God who would let my little sister drown.”
Christine reeled, trying to make the comparisons on the fly, so moved by his story of his sister’s death. She remembered that Donor 3319 had said he was an agnostic or atheist. Maybe this was why. Maybe Zachary really was Donor 3319.
“Anyway, that’s why I don’t blame them. It was a hard thing to go through, as a family, and I was happy when we moved away. That’s when we went to Nevada, and I graduated from high school in Reno.”
Nevada. “Where did you go after that, did you go to college?”
“Yes, I was a good student. Math comes really easily to me, all sciences do. I’m a logical thinker.”
Christine masked her dismay. Donor 3319 was good in math and logic. She didn’t seem to have to ask anything for Zachary to keep talking.
“I graduated from the University of Arizona magna cum laude, which is pretty good.” Zachary allowed himself a brief smile, and Christine smiled back, eager to latch on to a piece of good news.
“Well done, that couldn’t have been easy. What was your major?”
“Chem.”
Christine told herself to remain calm. Donor 3319 had been a chemistry major. “What did you do after graduation?”
“I worked, trying to save up the money to go to med school, but that was a dumb way. You can’t do it without loans.”
Christine held her breath at the mention of medical school, but she didn’t interrupt him. She knew Lauren would be thinking the same thing.
“I got into medical school at the University of Nebraska, Creighton. I was so excited about being a doctor. I really wanted to work in a research capacity, like try and cure something.”
“Like what?” Christine forced a smile, but her head was exploding. It was all adding up, just like Donor 3319, but she couldn’t bring herself to reach that conclusion. She just couldn’t.
“Something, anything to help society. Advance society. But the money was an issue for med school. The tuition was $65,000 a year, and I couldn’t get enough loans. The textbooks cost way too much, like $300 a pop, even if you buy used or e-books.” Zachary leaned forward, the conversation flowing more easily now that the harder subject had passed. “I worked every job I could get. Grocery bagger, math SAT tutor, research assistant. But I couldn’t come up with tuition. I got accepted, but I never went.”
“That’s a shame.” Christine realized it explained why the news reports hadn’t said he was in medical school. He had never gone. Had Donor 3319 or was he Donor 3319?
“I hope I get back someday, but I have to get out of here.” Zachary’s forehead buckled, his desperation plain, all over again. “I’m innocent, they have the wrong guy, I swear to you. I had a life, I had a future. I don’t belong in jail. You have no idea what it’s like in here. It’s scary as hell.” Zachary’s gorgeous eyes flared. “Please, I’ll tell you anything you need to know. Do you think you could help me get a private lawyer?”
“I don’t know,” Christine answered, unprepared for the question. “I’m here to write about you-”
“But you’re not, like, a real journalist with a real newspaper.” Zachary hesitated, frowning in an apologetic way. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I meant, the other reporters told me that they have ethical guidelines. They can’t help me get a lawyer. But you can, you’re on your own.”