The Third Twin

  "The big difference is his behavior. He doesn't know how to relate to the rest of the human race."

  "It's very strange."

  "I don't find it so. In fact, it confirms my theory. You were both what I call wild children. I stole the phrase from a French film. I use it for the type of child who is fearless, uncontrollable, hyperactive. Such children are very difficult to socialize. Charlotte Pinker and her husband failed with Dennis. Your parents succeeded with you."

  This did not reassure him. "But underneath, Dennis and I are the same."

  "You were both born wild."

  "But I have a thin veneer of civilization."

  She could see he was profoundly troubled. "Why does it bother you so much?"

  "I want to think of myself as a human being, not a housetrained gorilla."

  She laughed, despite his solemn expression. "Gorillas have to be socialized too. So do all animals that live in groups. That's where crime comes from."

  He looked interested. "From living in groups?"

  "Sure. A crime is a breach of an important social rule. Solitary animals don't have rules. A bear will trash another bear's cave, steal its food, and kill its young. Wolves don't do those things; if they did, they couldn't live in packs. Wolves are monogamous, they take care of one another's young, and they respect each other's personal space. If an individual breaks the rules they punish him; if he persists, they either expel him from the pack or kill him."

  "What about breaking unimportant social rules?"

  "Like farting in an elevator? We call it bad manners. The only punishment is the disapproval of others. Amazing how effective that is."

  "Why are you so interested in people who break the rules?"

  She thought of her father. She did not know whether she had his criminal genes or not. It might have helped Steve to know that she, too, was troubled by her genetic inheritance. But she had lied about Daddy for so long that she could not easily bring herself to talk about him now. "It's a big problem," she said evasively. "Everyone's interested in crime."

  The door opened behind her and the young woman police officer looked in. "Time's up, Dr. Ferrami."

  "Okay," she said over her shoulder. "Steve, did you know that Lisa Hoxton is my best friend in Baltimore?"

  "No, I didn't."

  "We work together; she's a technician."

  "What's she like?"

  "She's not the kind of person who would make a wild accusation."

  He nodded.

  "All the same, I want you to know that I don't believe you did it."

  For a moment she thought he was going to cry. "Thank you," he said gruffly. "I can't tell you how much it means to me."

  "Call me when you get out." She told him her home number. "Can you remember that?"

  "No problem."

  Jeannie was reluctant to leave. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "Good luck."

  "Thanks, I need it in here."

  She turned away and left.

  The policewoman walked her to the lobby. Night was falling as she returned to the parking garage. She got onto the Jones Falls Expressway and flicked on the headlights of the old Mercedes. Heading north, she drove too fast, eager to get to the university. She always drove too fast. She was a skillful but somewhat reckless driver, she knew. But she did not have the patience to go at fifty-five.

  Lisa's white Honda Accord was already parked outside Nut House. Jeannie eased her car alongside it and went inside. Lisa was just turning on the lights in the lab. The cool box containing Dennis Pinker's blood sample stood on the bench.

  Jeannie's office was right across the corridor. She unlocked her door by passing her plastic card through the card reader and went in. Sitting at her desk, she called the Pinker house in Richmond. "At last!" she said when she heard the ringing tone.

  Charlotte answered. "How is my son?" she said.

  "He's in good health," Jeannie replied. He hardly seemed like a psychopath, she thought, until he pulled a knife on me and stole my panties. She tried to think of something positive to say. "He was very cooperative."

  "He always had beautiful manners," Charlotte said in the southern drawl she used for her most outrageous utterances.

  "Mrs. Pinker, may I double-check his birthday with you?"

  "He was born on the seventh of September." Like it should be a national holiday.

  It was not the answer Jeannie had been hoping for. "And what hospital was he born in?"

  "We were at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, at the time."

  Jeannie suppressed a disappointed curse.

  "The Major was training conscripts for Vietnam," Charlotte said proudly. "The Army Medical Command has a big hospital at Bragg. That's where Dennis came into the world."

  Jeannie could not think of anything more to say. The mystery was as deep as ever. "Mrs. Pinker, I want to thank you again for your kind cooperation."

  "You're welcome."

  She returned to the lab and said to Lisa: "Apparently, Steven and Dennis were born thirteen days apart and in different states. I just don't understand it."

  Lisa opened a fresh box of test tubes. "Well, there's one incontrovertible test. If they have the same DNA, they're identical twins, no matter what anyone says about their birth." She took out two of the little glass tubes. They were a couple of inches long. Each had a lid at the top and a conical bottom. She opened a pack of labels, wrote "Dennis Pinker" on one and "Steven Logan" on the other, then labeled the tubes and placed them in a rack.

  She broke the seal on Dennis's blood and put a single drop in one test tube. Then she took a vial of Steven's blood out of the refrigerator and did the same.

  Using a precision-calibrated pipette--a pipe with a bulb at one end--she added a tiny measured quantity of chloroform to each test tube. Then she picked up a fresh pipette and added a similarly exact amount of phenol.

  She closed both test tubes and put them in the Whirlimixer to agitate them for a few seconds. The chloroform would dissolve the fats and the phenol would disrupt the proteins, but the long coiled molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid would remain intact.

  Lisa put the tubes back in the rack. "That's all we can do for the next few hours," she said.

  The water-dissolved phenol would slowly separate from the chloroform. A meniscus would form in the tube at the boundary. The DNA would be in the watery part, which could be drawn off with a pipette for the next stage of the test. But that would have to wait for the morning.

  A phone rang somewhere. Jeannie frowned; it sounded as if it were coming from her office. She stepped across the corridor and picked it up. "Yes?"

  "Is this Dr. Ferrami?"

  Jeannie hated people who called and demanded to know your name without introducing themselves. It was like knocking on someone's front door and saying: "Who the hell are you?" She bit back a sarcastic response and said: "I'm Jeannie Ferrami. Who is this calling, please?"

  "Naomi Ereelander, New York Times." She sounded like a heavy smoker in her fifties. "I have some questions for you."

  "At this time of night?"

  "I work all hours. It seems you do too."

  "Why are you calling me?"

  "I'm researching an article about scientific ethics."

  "Oh." Jeannie thought immediately about Steve not knowing he might be adopted. It was an ethical problem, though not an insoluble one--but surely the Times did not know about it? "What's your interest?"

  "I believe you scan medical databases looking for suitable subjects to study."

  "Oh, okay." Jeannie relaxed. She had nothing to worry about on this score. "Well, I've devised a search engine that scans computer data and finds matching pairs. My purpose is to find identical twins. It can be used on any kind of database."

  "But you've gained access to medical records in order to use this program."

  "It's important to define what you mean by access. I've been careful not to trespass on anyone's privacy. I never see anyone's medical details. The progr
am doesn't print the records."

  "What does it print?"

  "The names of the two individuals, and their addresses and phone numbers."

  "But it prints the names in pairs." "Of course, that's the point."

  "So if you used it on, say, a database of electroencephalograms, it would tell you that John Doe's brain waves are the same as Jim Fitz's."

  "The same or similar. But it would not tell me anything about either man's health."

  "However, if you knew previously that John Doe was a paranoid schizophrenic, you could conclude that Jim Fitz was, too."

  "We would never know such a thing."

  "You might know John Doe."

  "How?"

  "He might be your janitor, anything."

  "Oh, come on!"

  "It's possible."

  "Is that going to be your story?"

  "Maybe."

  "Okay, it's theoretically possible, but the chance is so small that any reasonable person would discount it."

  "That's arguable."

  The reporter seemed determined to see an outrage, regardless of the facts, Jeannie thought; and she began to worry. She had enough problems without getting the damn newspapers on her back. "How real is all this?" she said. "Have you actually found anyone who feels their privacy has been violated?"

  "I'm interested in the potentiality."

  Jeannie was struck by a thought. "Who told you to call me, anyway?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Same reason you've been asking me questions. I'd like to know the truth."

  "I can't tell you."

  "That's interesting," Jeannie said. "I've talked to you at some length about my research and my methods. I have nothing to hide. But you can't say the same. You appear to be, well, ashamed, I guess. Are you ashamed of the way you found out about my project?"

  "I'm not ashamed of anything," the reporter snapped.

  Jeannie felt herself getting cross. Who did this woman think she was? "Well, someone's ashamed. Otherwise why won't you tell me who he is? Or she?"

  "I have to protect my sources."

  "From what?" Jeannie knew she should lay off. Nothing was to be gained by antagonizing the press. But the woman's attitude was insufferable. "As I've explained, there's nothing wrong with my methods and they don't threaten anyone's privacy. So why should your informant be so secretive?"

  "People have reasons--"

  "It looks as if your informant was malicious, doesn't it?" Even as she said it, Jeannie was thinking, Why should anyone want to do this to me?

  "I can't comment on that."

  "No comment, huh?" she said sarcastically. "I must remember that line."

  "Dr. Ferrami, I'd like to thank you for your cooperation."

  "Don't mention it," Jeannie said, and she hung up.

  She stared at the phone for a long moment. "Now what the hell was that all about?" she said.

  WEDNESDAY

  21

  BERRINGTON JONES SLEPT BADLY.

  He spent the night with Pippa Harpenden. Pippa was a secretary in the physics department, and a lot of professors had asked her out, including several married men, but Berrington was the only one she dated. He had dressed beautifully, taken her to an intimate restaurant, and ordered exquisite wine. He had basked in the envious glances of men his own age dining with their ugly old wives. He had brought her home and lit candles and put on silk pajamas and made love to her slowly until she gasped with pleasure.

  But he woke up at four o'clock and thought of all the things that could go wrong with his plan. Hank Stone had been sucking down the publisher's cheap wine yesterday afternoon; he might just forget all about his conversation with Berrington. If he remembered it, the editors of the New York Times might still decide not to follow up the story. They might make some inquiries and realize there was nothing much wrong with what Jeannie was doing. Or they could simply move too slowly and start looking into it next week, when it would be top late.

  After he had been tossing and turning for a while, Pippa mumbled: "Are you all right, Berry?"

  He stroked her long blond hair, and she made sleepily encouraging noises. Making love to a beautiful woman was normally consolation for any amount of trouble, but he sensed it would not work now. He had too much on his mind. It would have been a relief to talk to Pippa about his problems--she was intelligent, and she would be understanding and sympathetic--but he could not reveal such secrets to anyone.

  After a while he got up and went running. When he returned she had gone, leaving a thank-you note wrapped in a sheer black nylon stocking.

  The housekeeper arrived a few minutes before eight and made him an omelet. Marianne was a thin, nervous girl from the French Caribbean island of Martinique. She spoke little English and was terrified of being sent back home, which made her very biddable. She was pretty, and Berrington guessed that if he told her to blow him she would think it was part of her duties as a university employee. He did no such thing, of course; sleeping with the help was not his style.

  He took a shower, shaved, and dressed for high authority in a charcoal gray suit with a faint pinstripe, a white shirt, and a black tie with small red dots. He wore monogrammed gold cuff links, he folded a white linen handkerchief into his breast pocket, and he buffed the toecaps of his black oxfords until they gleamed.

  He drove to the campus, went to his office, and turned on his computer. Like most superstar academics, he did very little teaching. Here at Jones Falls he gave one lecture per year. His role was to direct and supervise the research of the scientists in the department and to add the prestige of his name to the papers they wrote. But this morning he could not concentrate on anything, so he looked out of the window and watched four youngsters play an energetic game of doubles on the tennis court while he waited for the phone to ring.

  He did not have to wait long.

  At nine-thirty the president of Jones Falls University, Maurice Obeli, called. "We've got a problem," he said.

  Berrington tensed. "What's up, Maurice?"

  "Bitch on the New York Times just called me. She says someone in your department is invading people's privacy. A Dr. Ferrami."

  Thank God, Berrington thought jubilantly; Hank Stone came through! He made his voice solemn. "I was afraid of something like this," he said. "I'll be right over." He hung up and sat for a moment, thinking. It was too soon to celebrate victory. He had only begun the process. Now he had to get both Maurice and Jeannie to behave just the way he wanted.

  Maurice sounded worried. That was a good start. Berrington had to make sure he stayed worried. He needed Maurice to feel it would be a catastrophe if Jeannie did not stop using her database search program immediately. Once Maurice had decided on firm action, Berrington had to make sure he stuck to his resolve.

  Most of all, he had to prevent any kind of compromise. Jeannie was not much of a compromiser by nature, he knew, but with her whole future at stake she would probably try anything. He would have to fuel her outrage and keep her combative.

  And he must do all that while trying to appear well intentioned. If it became obvious that he was trying to undermine Jeannie, Maurice might smell a rat. Berrington had to seem to defend her.

  He left Nut House and walked across campus, past the Barrymore Theater and the Faculty of Arts to Hillside Hall. Once the country mansion of the original benefactor of the university, it was now the administration building. The university president's office was the magnificent drawing room of the old house. Berrington nodded pleasantly to Dr. Obell's secretary and said: "He's expecting me."

  "Go right in, please, Professor," she said.

  Maurice was sitting in the bay window overlooking the lawn. A short, barrel-chested man, he had returned from Vietnam in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. Berrington found him easy to relate to, perhaps because they had a background of military service in common. They also shared a passion for the music of Mahler.

  Maurice often wore a harassed air. To keep JFU going he ha
d to raise ten million dollars a year from private and corporate benefactors, and consequently he dreaded bad publicity.

  He spun his chair around and rolled to his desk. "They're working on a big article on scientific ethics, she says. Berry, I can't have Jones Falls heading that article with an example of unethical science. Half our big donors would have a cow. We've got to do something about this." "Who is she?"

  Maurice consulted a scratch pad. "Naomi Freelander. She's the ethics editor. Did you know newspapers had ethics editors? I didn't."

  "I'm not surprised the New York Times has one."

  "It doesn't stop them acting like the goddamn Gestapo. They're about to go to press with this article, they say, but yesterday they got a tip-off about your Ferrami woman."

  "I wonder where the tip came from?" Berrington said.

  "There are some disloyal bastards around."

  "I guess so."

  Maurice sighed. "Say it's not true, Berry. Tell me she doesn't invade people's privacy."

  Berrington crossed his legs, trying to appear relaxed when he was in fact wired taut. This was where he had to walk a tightrope. "I don't believe she does anything wrong," he said. "She scans medical databases and finds people who don't know they're twins. It's very clever, as a matter of fact--"

  "Is she looking at people's medical records without their permission?"

  Berrington pretended to be reluctant. "Well ... sort of."

  "Then she'll have to stop."

  "The trouble is, she really needs this information for her research project."

  "Maybe we can offer her some compensation."

  Berrington had not thought of bribing her. He doubted it would work, but there was no harm in trying. "Good idea."

  "Does she have tenure?"

  "She started here this semester, as an assistant professor. She's six years away from tenure, at least. But we could give her a raise. I know she needs the money, she told me."

  "How much does she make now?"

  'Thirty thousand dollars a year."

  "What do you think we should offer her?"

  "It would have to be substantial. Another eight or ten thousand."

  "And the funding for that?"

  Berrington smiled. "I believe I could persuade Genetico."

  "Then that's what we'll do. Call her now, Berry. If she's on campus, get her in here right away. We'll settle this thing before the ethics police call again."

  Berrington picked up Maurice's phone and called Jeannie's office. It was answered right away. "Jeannie Ferrami."