the Third Twin (1996)

Mish’s voice hardened. “Jeannie, this is the police. You don’t make conditions, you just answer the goddamn questions, now give me the address.”

“I have to satisfy myself. I want to see him.”

“Do you want to go to jail, that’s the question for you right now, because if not you better give me that address.”

“I want us both to go see him together. Tomorrow.”

There was a pause. “I ought to throw you in the slammer for abetting a felon.”

“We could catch the first plane to New York in the morning.”

“Okay.”

SATURDAY

43

THEY CAUGHT THE USAIR FLIGHT TO NEW YORK AT 6:40 IN the morning.

Jeannie was full of hope. This might be the end of the nightmare for Steve. She had called him last night to bring him up-to-date and he had been ecstatic. He had wanted to come to New York with them, but Jeannie knew Mish would not allow it. She had promised to call him as soon as she had more news.

Mish was maintaining a kind of tolerant skepticism. She found it hard to believe Jeannie’s story, but she had to check it out.

Jeannie’s data did not reveal why Wayne Stattner’s fingerprints were on file with the FBI, but Mish had checked overnight, and she told Jeannie the story as they took off from Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Three years ago, the distraught parents of a missing fourteen-year-old girl had tracked her down to Stattner’s New York apartment. They had accused him of kidnap. He had denied it, saying the girl had not been coerced. The girl herself had said she was in love with him. Wayne was only nineteen at the time, so in the end there had been no prosecution.

The story suggested that Stattner needed to dominate women, but to Jeannie it did not quite fit in with the psychology of a rapist. However, Mish said there were no strict rules.

Jeannie had not told Mish about the man who attacked her in Philadelphia. She knew Mish would not take her word for it that the man was not Steve. Mish would want to question Steve herself, and Steve did not need that. In consequence she also had to keep quiet about the man who had called yesterday and threatened her life. She had not told anyone about that, not even Steve; she did not want to add to his worries.

Jeannie wanted to like Mish, but there was always a tension between them. Mish as a cop expected people to do what she told them, and Jeannie hated that in a person. To try to get closer to her, Jeannie asked her how she came to be a cop.

“I used to be a secretary, and I got a job with the FBI,” she replied. “I was there ten years. I began to think I could do the job better than the agent I worked for. So I applied for police training. Went to the academy, became a patrol officer, then volunteered for undercover work with the drugs squad. That was scary, but I proved I was tough.”

For a moment Jeannie felt alienated from her companion. She smoked a little weed herself now and again, and she resented people who wanted to throw her in jail for it.

“Then I moved to the Child Abuse Unit,” Mish went on. “I didn’t last long there. Nobody does. It’s important work, but a person can only see so much of that stuff. You’d go crazy. So finally I came to Sex Crimes.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement.”

“At least the victims are adults. And after a couple of years they made me a sergeant and put me in charge of the unit.”

“I think all rape detectives should be women,” Jeannie said.

“I’m not sure I agree.”

Jeannie was surprised. “Don’t you think victims would talk more easily to a woman?”

“Elderly victims, perhaps; women over seventy, say.”

Jeannie shuddered at the thought of frail old women being raped.

Mish went on: “But, frankly, most victims will tell their story to a lamppost.”

“Men always think the woman asked for it.”

“But the report of rape must be challenged at some point, if there’s going to be a fair trial. And when it comes to that kind of interrogation, women can be more brutal than men, especially to other women.”

Jeannie found that hard to believe and wondered whether Mish was simply defending her male colleagues to an outsider.

When they ran out of things to talk about, Jeannie fell into a reverie, wondering what the future held for her. She could not get used to the idea that she might not continue to be a scientist for the rest of her life. In her dream of the future she was a famous old woman, gray haired and cantankerous but world renowned for her work, and students were told, “We did not understand human criminal behavior until the publication of Jeannie Ferrami’s revolutionary book in the year 2000.” But now that would not happen. She needed a new fantasy.

They arrived at La Guardia a few minutes after eight o’clock and took a battered yellow New York taxi into the city. The cab had busted springs, and it bounced and rattled across Queens and through the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan. Jeannie would have been uncomfortable in a Cadillac: she was on her way to see the man who had attacked her in her car, and her stomach felt like a cauldron of hot acid.