Trenton, New Jersey, enters the book chiefly through the New Jersey State Prison, where Charles Cullen is taken after his final sentencing and held under stringent restrictions. The prison’s controlled spaces—an escorted transfer, a monitored cell, and a later phone visit—make the city a setting for both the consequences of his crimes and the unresolved relationship with Amy Loughren.

The Prison and Cullen’s Arrival

After sentencing at the Lehigh County Courthouse in Allentown, Cullen is handcuffed and shackled in a windowless van bound for New Jersey. During the journey on the New Jersey Turnpike, nausea disrupts his attempt to use the spiritual techniques Reverend Kathleen Roney had taught him. He imagines Jesus in a halo of fire, but the image becomes nauseating too; he turns instead to the Jesus Prayer.

At the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, about ten guards meet him, four wearing riot gear. Two guards strip-search him on camera in a detaining cell. One says he has read about Cullen in the newspaper; another warns that any move will be treated as aggression. After receiving clothes, Cullen is taken to the prison psychiatric ward, searched again, and placed in a cell for seventy-two hours wearing a makeshift covering of plastic sheets. It tears after the first day, leaving him naked under constant camera surveillance for the next two days. He tries to shut out the guards’ taunts about insulin by concentrating on Psalm 25.

Confinement and the Delayed Donation

The prison gradually establishes the terms of Cullen’s new life through small humiliations and restrictions. His cell is smaller than the one in Somerville; guards tell him there is no library and give him sneakers two sizes too small. He is held in a noncontact wing, locked down twenty-three hours a day and separated from other prisoners for his own safety. By the time he becomes eligible for a phone visit, he has grown visibly thinner and has a gray beard.

Despite that confinement, the kidney donation he hopes to make to Ernie Peckham remains no closer than it was five months earlier. Cullen interprets the delay through the religious meaning he has attached to being a perfect match: if the match is God’s will, he wonders, why has the donation not happened? Trenton thus marks not a resolution but an extended suspension between his hope of giving an organ and the prison’s control over his movements.

A Visit After the Confession

In October 2012, Amy Loughren travels to the prison in Trenton to see Cullen for the first time since his confession. She asks him to forgive her, and he tells her that what happened was not her fault. The meeting gives the prison a different function from that of his arrival: it is also a place where a former colleague and friend can speak to him directly.

The encounter does not disclose the full history of their relationship. Amy’s role as a confidential informant had never been made public, and Cullen had not been told what she had done. She still has not told him. The visit therefore brings them face to face while leaving a consequential secret intact.