The Third Twin

  Jeannie stood outside, listening. All she could hear was the frightened beating of her heart. No sound came from inside. He probably was not there.

  She rapped on the door of 5A. A moment later the door opened and an elderly white man came out. He was wearing a chalk-stripe suit that had once been dashing, and his hair was so ginger that it had to be dyed. He seemed friendly. "Hi," he said.

  "Hi. Is your neighbor home?"

  "No."

  Jeannie was relieved and disappointed at the same time. She took out the photo of Steve that Charles had given her. "Does he look like this?"

  The neighbor took the photo from her and squinted at it. "Yeah, that's him."

  I was right! Vindicated again! My computer search engine works.

  "Gorgeous, ain't he?"

  The neighbor was gay, Jeannie guessed. An elegant old gay man. She smiled. "I think so too. Any idea where he might be this morning?"

  "He goes away most Sundays. Leaves around ten, comes back after supper."

  "Did he go away last Sunday?"

  "Yes, young lady, I believe he did."

  He's the right one, he has to be.

  "Do you know where he goes?"

  "No."

  I do, though. He goes to Baltimore.

  The man went on: "He doesn't talk much. In fact, he doesn't talk at all. You a detective?"

  "No, although I feel like one."

  "What's he done?"

  Jeannie hesitated, then thought, Why not tell the truth? "I think he's a rapist," she said.

  The man was not surprised. "I could believe that. He's peculiar. I've seen girls leave here sobbing. Twice, that's happened."

  "I wish I could look inside." She might find something that would link him with the rape.

  He gave her a sly look. "I have a key."

  "You do?"

  "The previous occupant gave it to me. We were friendly. I never returned it after he left. And this guy didn't change the locks when he moved in. Figures he's too big and strong to be robbed, I guess."

  "Would you let me in?"

  He hesitated. "I'm curious to look inside myself. But what if he comes back while we're in there? He's kind of large--I'd hate to have him mad at me."

  The thought scared Jeannie, too, but her curiosity was even stronger. "I'll take the risk if you will," she said.

  "Wait there. I'll be right back."

  What would she find inside? A temple of sadism like Wayne Stattner's home? A gruesome slum full of half-finished takeaway meals and dirty laundry? The excessive neatness of an obsessional personality?

  The neighbor reappeared. "I'm Maldwyn, by the way."

  "I'm Jeannie."

  "My real name is Bert, actually, but that's so unglamorous, don't you think? I've always called myself Maldwyn." He turned a key in the door of 5B and went in.

  Jeannie followed.

  It was a typical student apartment, a bed-sitting room with a kitchen nook and a small bathroom. It was furnished with an assortment of junk: a pine dresser, a painted table, three mismatched chairs, a sagging sofa and a big old TV set. It had not been cleaned for a while, and the bed was unmade. It was disappointingly typical.

  Jeannie closed the apartment door behind her.

  Maldwyn said: "Don't touch anything, just look--I don't want him to suspect I came in here."

  Jeannie asked herself what she expected to find. A plan of the gymnasium building, the pool machine room marked "Rape her here"? He had not taken Lisa's underwear as a grotesque souvenir. Perhaps he had stalked her and photographed her for weeks before he had pounced. He might have a little collection of pilfered items: a lipstick, a restaurant check, the discarded wrapping from a candy bar, junk mail with her address on it.

  As she looked around, she began to see Harvey's personality in the details. On one wall was a centerfold, torn from a men's magazine, showing a naked woman with shaved pubic hair and a ring through the flesh of her labia. It made Jeannie shudder.

  She inspected the bookcase. She saw the Marquis de Sade's One Hundred Days of Sodom and a series of X-rated videotapes with titles like Pain and Extreme. There were also some textbooks on economics and business; Harvey seemed to be doing an MBA.

  "Can I look at his clothes?" she said. She did not want to offend Maldwyn.

  "Sure, why not?"

  She opened his drawers and closets. Harvey's clothes were like Steve's, somewhat conservative for his age: chinos and polo shirts, tweed sport coats and button-downs, oxford shoes and loafers. The refrigerator was empty but for two six-packs of beer and a bottle of milk: Harvey ate out. Under the bed was a sports bag containing a squash racket and a dirty towel.

  Jeannie was disappointed. This was where the monster lived, but it was not a palace of perversion, just a grubby room with some nasty pornography in it.

  "I'm done," she said to Maldwyn. "I'm not sure what I was looking for, but it's not here."

  Then she saw it.

  Hanging on a hook behind the apartment door was a red baseball cap.

  Jeannie's spirits soared. I was right, and I found the bastard, and here's the proof! She looked closer. The word SECURITY was printed on the front in white letters. She could not resist the temptation to do a triumphant war dance around Harvey Jones's apartment.

  "Found something, huh?"

  "The creep was wearing that hat when he raped my friend. Let's get out of here."

  They left the apartment, closing the door. Jeannie shook hands with Maldwyn. "I can't thank you enough. This is really important."

  "What are you going to do now?" he asked.

  "Go back to Baltimore and call the police," she said.

  Driving home on 1-95, she thought about Harvey Jones. Why did he go to Baltimore on Sundays? To see a girlfriend? Perhaps, but the likeliest explanation was that his parents lived there. A lot of students took their laundry home on weekends. He was probably in the city now, eating his mother's pot roast or watching a football game on TV with his father. Would he assault another girl on his way home?

  How many Jones families were there in Baltimore: a thousand? She knew one of them, of course: her former boss, Professor Berrington Jones--

  Oh, my God. Jones.

  She was so shocked she had to pull over on the interstate.

  Harvey Jones could be Berrington's son.

  She suddenly remembered the little gesture Harvey had made, in the coffee shop in Philadelphia where she had met him. He had smoothed his eyebrows with the tip of his index finger. It had bothered her at the time, because she knew she had seen it before. She could not recall who else did it, and she had thought vaguely that it must have been Steve or Dennis, for the clones did have identical gestures. But now she remembered. It was Berrington. Berrington smoothed his eyebrows with the tip of his index finger. There was something about the action that irritated Jeannie, something annoyingly smug or perhaps vain. This was not a gesture that all the clones had in common, like closing the door with their heel when they came into a room. Harvey had learned it from his father, as an expression of self-satisfaction.

  Harvey was probably at Berrington's house right now.

  55

  PRESTON BARCK AND JIM PROUST ARRIVED AT BERRINGTON'S house around midday and sat in the den drinking beer. None of them had slept much, and they looked and felt wasted. Marianne, the housekeeper, was preparing Sunday lunch, and the fragrant smell of her cooking wafted in from the kitchen, but nothing could raise the spirits of the three partners.

  "Jeannie has talked to Hank King, and to Per Ericson's mother," Berrington said despondently. "I wasn't able to check any others, but she'll track them all down before long."

  Jim said: "Let's be realistic: exactly what can she do by this time tomorrow?"

  Preston Barck was suicidal. "I'll tell you what I'd do in her place," he said. "I'd want to make a highly public demonstration of what I'd found, so if I could get hold of two or three of the boys I'd take them to New York and go on Good Morning America. Television lov
es twins."

  "God forbid," Berrington said.

  A car drew up outside. Jim looked out of the window and said: "Rusty old Datsun."

  Preston said: "I'm beginning to like Jim's original idea. Make them all vanish."

  "I won't have any killing!" Berrington shouted.

  "Don't yell, Berry," Jim said with surprising mildness. 'To tell you the truth, I guess I was bragging a bit when I talked about making people vanish. Maybe there was a time when I had the power to order people killed, but I really don't anymore. I've asked some favors of old friends in the last few days; and although they've come through, I've realized there are limits."

  Berrington thought, Thank God for that.

  "But I have another idea," Jim said.

  The other two stared at him.

  "We approach each of the eight families discreetly. We confess that mistakes were made at the clinic in its early days. We say that no harm was done but we want to avoid sensational publicity. We offer them a million dollars each in compensation. We make it payable over ten years, and tell them the payments stop if they talk--to anyone: the press, Jeannie Ferrami, scientists, anyone."

  Berrington nodded slowly. "My God, it might just work. Who's going to say no to a million dollars?"

  Preston said: "Lorraine Logan. She wants to prove her son's innocence."

  "That's right. She wouldn't do it for ten million."

  "Everyone has their price," Jim said, regaining some of his characteristic bluster. "Anyway, there isn't much she can do without the cooperation of one or two of the others."

  Preston was nodding. Berrington, too, found he had new hope. There might be a way to shut the Logans up. But there was a more serious snag. "What if Jeannie goes public in the next twenty-four hours?" he said. "Landsmann would probably postpone the takeover while they investigate the allegations. And then we won't have any millions of dollars to throw around."

  Jim said: "We have to know what her intentions are: how much she's discovered already and what she plans to do about it."

  "I don't see any way to do that," Berrington said.

  "I do," said Jim. "We know one person who could easily win her confidence and find out exactly what's on her mind."

  Berrington felt anger rise inside him. "I know what you're thinking--"

  "Here he comes now," Jim said.

  There was a footstep in the hall, and Berrington's son came in.

  "Hi, Dad!" he said. "Hey, Uncle Jim, Uncle Preston, how are you?"

  Berrington looked at him with a mixture of pride and sorrow. The boy looked adorable in navy blue corduroy pants and a sky blue cotton sweater. He picked up my dress sense, anyway, Berrington thought. He said: "We have to talk, Harvey."

  Jim stood up. "Want a beer, kid?"

  "Sure," Harvey said.

  Jim had an annoying tendency to encourage Harvey in bad habits. "Forget the beer," Berrington snapped. "Jim, why don't you and Preston go into the drawing room and let us two talk." The drawing room was a stiffly formal space that Berrington never used.

  Preston and Jim left. Berrington got up and hugged Harvey. "I love you, son," he said. "Even though you're wicked."

  "Am I wicked?"

  "What you did to that poor girl in the basement of the gym was one of the most wicked things a man can do."

  Harvey shrugged.

  Dear God, I failed to instill in him any sense of right and wrong, Berrington thought. But it was too late now for such regrets. "Sit down and listen for a minute," he said.

  Harvey sat.

  "Your mother and I tried for years to have a baby, but there were problems," he said "At the time, Preston was working on in vitro fertilization, where the sperm and the egg are brought together in the laboratory and then the embryo is implanted in the womb."

  "Are you saying I was a test-tube baby?"

  "This is secret. You must never tell anyone, all your life. Not even your mother."

  "She doesn't know?" Harvey said in astonishment.

  "There's more to it than that. Preston took one live embryo and split it, forming twins."

  "That's the guy who's been arrested for the rape?'

  "He split it more than once."

  Harvey nodded. All of them had the same quick intelligence. "How many?" he said.

  "Eight."

  "Wow. And I guess the sperm didn't come from you."

  "No."

  "Who?"

  "An army lieutenant from Fort Bragg: tall, strong, fit, intelligent, aggressive, and good-looking."

  "And the mother?"

  "A civilian typist from West Point, similarly well favored."

  A wounded grin twisted the boy's handsome face. "My real parents."

  Berrington winced. "No, they're not," he said. "You grew in your mother's belly. She gave birth to you, and believe me it hurt. We watched you take your first unsteady steps, and struggle to maneuver a spoonful of mashed potato into your mouth, and lisp your first words."

  Watching his son's face, Berrington could not tell whether Harvey believed him or not.

  "Hell, we loved you more and more as you became less lovable. Every damn year the same reports from school: 'He is very aggressive, he has not yet learned to share, he hits other children, he has difficulty with team games, he disrupts the class, he must learn to respect members of the opposite sex.' Every time you got expelled from a school we trudged around begging and pleading to get you into another one. We tried cajoling you, beating you, withdrawing privileges. We took you to three different child psychologists. You made our lives miserable."

  "Are you saying I ruined the marriage?"

  "No, son, I did that all on my own. What I'm trying to tell you is that I love you whatever you do, just like any other parent."

  Harvey was still troubled. "Why are you telling me now?"

  "Steve Logan, one of your doubles, was a subject for study in my department. I had a hell of a shock when I saw him, as you may imagine. Then the police arrested him for the rape of Lisa Hoxton. But one of the professors, Jeannie Ferrami, got suspicious. To cut a long story short, she's tracked you down. She wants to prove Steve Logan's innocence. And she probably wants to expose the whole story of the clones and ruin me."

  "She's the woman I met in Philadelphia."

  Berrington was mystified. "You've met her?"

  "Uncle Jim called me and told me to give her a scare."

  Berrington was enraged. "The son of a bitch, I'm going to tear his fucking head off his shoulders--"

  "Calm down, Dad, nothing happened. I went for a ride in her car. She's cute, in her way."

  Berrington controlled himself with an effort. "Your uncle Jim has always been irresponsible in his attitude to you. He likes your wildness, no doubt because he's such an uptight asshole himself."

  "I like him."

  "Let's talk about what we have to do. We need to know Jeannie Ferrami's intentions, especially over the next twenty-four hours. You need to know whether she has any evidence that links you to Lisa Hoxton. We can't think of any way to get to her--but one."

  Harvey nodded. "You want me to go talk to her, pretending to be Steve Logan."

  "Yes."

  He grinned. "Sounds fun."

  Berrington groaned. "Don't do anything foolish, please. Just talk to her."

  "Want me to go right away?"

  "Yes, please. I hate to ask you to do this--but it's for you as much as for me."

  "Relax, Dad--what could happen?"

  "Maybe I worry too much. I guess there's no great danger in going to a girl's apartment."

  "What if the real Steve is there?"

  "Check the cars in the street. He has a Datsun like yours; that's another reason the police were so sure he was the perpetrator."

  "No kidding!"

  "You're like identical twins, you make the same choices. If his car is there, don't go in. Call me, and we'll try to think of some way to get him out."

  "Suppose he walked there?"

  "He lives in Washi
ngton."

  "Okay." Harvey stood up. "What's the girl's address?"

  "She lives in Hampden." Berrington scribbled the street address on a card and handed it over. "Be careful, okay?"

  "Sure. See you sooner, Montezuma."

  Berrington forced a smile. "In a flash, succotash."

  56

  HARVEY CRUISED UP AND DOWN JEANNIE'S STREET, LOOKING for a car just like his own. There were lots of elderly automobiles, but no rusty light-colored Datsuns. Steve Logan was not around.

  He pulled into a slot near her house and turned off the engine. He sat thinking for a moment. He would need his wits about him. He was glad he had not drunk that beer Uncle Jim had offered him.

  He knew she would take him for Steve, because she had done so once before, in Philadelphia. The two of them were identical in appearance. But conversation would be more tricky. She would make references to all sorts of things he was supposed to know about. He would have to answer without betraying his ignorance. He had to keep her confidence long enough to find out what evidence she had against him and what she planned to do with her knowledge. It would be very easy to make a slip and betray himself.

  But even while he thought soberly about the daunting challenge of impersonating Steve, he could hardly contain his excitement at the prospect of seeing her again. What he had done in her car had been the most thrilling sexual encounter he had ever had. It was even better than being in the women's locker room when they were all panicking. He got aroused every time he thought about ripping her clothes while the car swerved all over the expressway.

  He knew he should concentrate on his task now. He must not think of her face contorted in fear and her strong legs writhing. He ought to get the information from her and leave. But all his life he had never been able to do the sensible thing.

  Jeannie called police headquarters as soon as she got home. She knew Mish would not be there, but she left a message asking her to call urgently. "Didn't you leave an urgent message for her earlier today?" she was asked.

  "Yes, but this is another one, just as important."

  "I'll do my best to pass it on," the voice said skeptically.

  Next she called Steve's house, but there was no reply. She guessed he and Lorraine were with their lawyer, trying to get Charles freed, and he would call when he could.

  She was disappointed; she wanted to tell someone the good news.

  The thrill of having found Harvey's apartment wore off, and she felt depressed. Her thoughts returned to the danger that faced her of a future with no money, no job, and no way to help her mother.