“Oh no!”
“I kept yelling ‘he’s having a heart attack, he’s having a heart attack, call an ambulance, call an ambulance,’ and the next thing I know, all hell broke loose. Gangbangers started throwing punches and, like, a SWAT team of COs dragged me away and threw me in ad seg.”
“What’s that?”
“Administrative segregation. Isolation. Solitary. They were even going to write me up until they got the CO to the hospital and they got it straightened out.”
“What’s ‘write you up’ mean?”
“Discipline me!” Zachary’s eyes flared, though the right one stayed half-closed. “The only reason they didn’t is because the EKG and heart enzymes showed he had a heart attack. It took them all day to realize I didn’t jump him, and they backed off on the discipline, but I’m still in ad seg.”
“Did he live?” Christine asked, astonished.
“Yes.” Zachary smiled, exhaling.
“So you saved the man’s life?”
“I guess.” Zachary’s bruised forehead eased momentarily.
“Wow.” Christine felt a warm rush of validation. She’d seen compassion in him, and she’d been right. But at the same time, she’d also seen the bloody scene at Gail’s. She wanted to know why he had lied to her.
“Right?” Zachary snorted. “Unreal. The COs are probably trained in CPR but none of them was as close as I was.”
“So was there a riot, in the yard?”
“No, it didn’t get that far, but they locked us down.”
“Did they take you to the hospital?”
“No, they treated me here. It’s only superficial.”
“This wasn’t in the newspaper or anything, was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see any reporters. I hear the prison brass can keep things out of the papers.”
“Still, you did the right thing. You saved a man’s life.”
“Are you kidding?” Zachary leaned close to the Plexiglas, looking at her like she was crazy. “It’s not the right thing to save a CO, not in here. Gangs run this place, stone cold gangbangers. They would’ve let the CO die. They’re keeping me in ad seg for my own protection. I’m the pretty boy who saves COs. I have a target on my back.” Zachary raked his fingers through his hair, his knuckles red. “I hope they never move me back to gen pop, but ad seg is the worst. The guy in the cell next to me, he screams, rants, and raves all night. The guy on the other side hits his head against the wall. It’s cinder-block.” Zachary’s good eye rounded, a bloodshot blue. “They had to put him in a restraint chair, with shackles and a spit mask, and they moved him to a psychiatric observation cell. He should be in a mental hospital, they all should. They’re psychotic. Insane.”
“My God.” Christine grimaced.
“I sit in the cell twenty-three hours a day. I eat in the cell, all three meals. I talk to nobody, I see nobody. They only let me out for an hour, in a cage by myself. You have to get me out of here.” Zachary shifted forward on his elbows. “Tell Griff about this, what happened in the yard. You’re working with him now? They put you on my visitor’s list.”
“Yes, and I will talk to him about it, for sure.” Christine resolved to buy Griff a cell phone, too.
“Please, do, maybe he can use it to get me out of here or sent down to Chester County Prison. It’s minimum-security, a camp compared to here.”
“Of course.” Christine had to get back on track. She had so many questions, including the one about the lie. “Zachary, I just came from Gail’s apartment, and there’s a few things I need to understand about the murder. Can you tell me exactly what happened that night, in detail?”
“I told you, I came in and found her.” Zachary blinked.
“I need to know in greater detail. What did you do exactly?” Christine wanted to hear his story and see if it explained the blood she’d seen on him in the photos.
“I went in-”
“How did you get in?”
“The door was open. Only the screen was closed. I went in. We had a date, so I figured that was okay, but I didn’t see her in the kitchen. So I went to the bedroom.”
“Were there bloody footprints from the kitchen to the bedroom?”
“Not that I saw at first. I wasn’t looking down. I saw them later, after the cops came, and I’m sure a lot of the footprints are mine, pacing, walking around, going back and forth to let the cops in.”
“So what did you do when you first got there?”
“I saw that there was something wrong in the bedroom, that she was lying there, so I went in, like, I went in to her.”
“Was a light on in the bedroom?”
Zachary frowned in thought, shifting his butterfly bandages. “No, I think I turned it on.”
“So how did you see in the dark?”
“There’s a window on the other side of the bed and some light was coming in from it, moonlight or light from the houses, just enough to see something was wrong. And there was a funny smell. I knew it right away, from the OR. It was blood.”
Christine knew it, too. It rang true. “What time was this?”
“Around ten o’clock.”
“Why so late?”
“That’s when she said she was free.” Zachary shrugged.
“Then what did you do?”
“I went right to her, I grabbed her, I mean, I don’t remember exactly. Blood was everywhere, all over her, the bed, everywhere.” Zachary’s brow furrowed, even with the red scrapes. “I leaned over her, I lifted her up, I called her name, I felt her pulse, her carotid. There was nothing. She was dead.”
“Was she bleeding? Was blood spurting out?”
“No, not in the beginning. Her heart had stopped, so it wasn’t spurting out, and I don’t know why, I pulled out the saw. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was like I wanted it not to be. I wanted it not to be in her.” Zachary’s lips curled in revulsion. “But when I pulled the saw out, blood came out, gushed out, more of it. I even held her up, like, hugged her, God knows why, I was so shocked.” Zachary grimaced, recoiling. “Blood squirted all over me. It was horrible.”
Christine thought it explained the blood that was on him, a credible alternative scenario to his being the killer. And she realized something else, it also explained why there had been no blood on the top of his loafers. His shoes would have been out of the way or under the bed, from the way he described what had happened. She kept going. “Before we move on, let me ask you, you called it a saw. Did you recognize it as one of the types that you sell?”
“No, not at first. It was too dark, and I was too, like, upset.” Zachary shook his head. “I saw it had a stainless-steel handle. I thought it was a kitchen knife. When I pulled it out, the blood flew all over, I didn’t notice what kind of knife it was. That was the last thing I was looking at. But then when the police came, and they took photos of me and the knife, I realized it was one of ours.”
“Did you say that to the police?”
“No, I was, like, in shock, I was so freaked. I didn’t realize they would arrest me. I mean, I didn’t do it.” Zachary leaned over, his battered face a mask of anxiety. “Please, I didn’t. You have to know that.”
“I believe you,” Christine found herself saying. She thought that if Zachary was telling the truth, then he was terribly unlucky, being wrongly accused not only at the scene but in the prison yard. “Let’s go back to the saw, as you call it. What type of instrument is it?”
“It’s a metacarpal bone saw, for hand surgery or other small bones.”
“So hand surgeons would have that?”
“Yes, all hospitals would in their ORs and ERs. It’s for general surgery of the hand and other small bones.”