the Third Twin (1996)

She had been shaken by the revelation that Steve Logan had no idea he might be adopted. She was going to have to work out some procedure for dealing with this phenomenon. In the future she could contact the parents, and check how much they had told, before approaching the twins. It would slow her work, but it had to be done: she could not be the one to reveal family secrets.

That problem was soluble, but she could not lose the sense of anxiety caused by Berrington’s skeptical questions and Steven Logan’s incredulity, and she began to think anxiously of the next stage of her project. She was hoping to use her software to scan the FBI’s fingerprint file.

It was the perfect source for her. Many of the twenty-two million people on file had been suspected or convicted of crimes. If her program worked, it should yield hundreds of twins including several raised-apart pairs. It could mean a quantum leap forward in her research. But first she had to get the Bureau’s permission.

Her best friend at school had been Ghita Sumra, a math wizard of Asian-Indian descent who now had a top job managing information technology for the FBI. She worked in Washington, D.C., but lived here in Baltimore. Ghita had already agreed to ask her employers to cooperate with Jeannie. She had promised a decision by the end of this week, but now Jeannie wanted to hurry her. She dialed her number.

Ghita had been born in Washington, but her voice still held a hint of the Indian subcontinent in its softness of tone and roundness of vowels. “Hey, Jeannie, how was your weekend?” she said.

“Awful,” Jeannie told her. “My mom finally flipped and I had to put her in a home.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What did she do?”

“She forgot it was the middle of the night, got up, forgot to get dressed, went out to buy a carton of milk, and forgot where she lived.”

“What happened?”

“The police found her. Fortunately she had a check from me in her purse, and they were able to track me down.”

“How do you feel about it?”

That was a female question. The men—Jack Budgen, Berrington Jones—had asked what she was going to do. It took a woman to ask how she felt. “Bad,” she said. “If I have to take care of my mother, who’s going to take care of me? You know?”

“What kind of place is she in?”

“Cheap. It’s all her insurance will cover. I have to get her out of there, as soon as I can find the money to pay for something better.” She heard a pregnant silence at the other end of the line and realized that Ghita thought she was being asked for money. “I’m going to do some private tutoring on the weekends,” she added hastily. “Did you talk to your boss about my proposal yet?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

Jeannie held her breath.

“Everyone here is real interested in your software,” Ghita said.

That was neither a yes nor a no. “You don’t have computer scanning systems?”

“We do, but your search engine is faster by far than anything we’ve got. They’re talking about licensing the program from you.”

“Wow. Maybe I won’t need to do private tuition on the weekends after all.”

Ghita laughed. “Before you open the champagne, let’s make sure the program actually works.”

“How soon can we do that?”

“We’ll run it at night, for minimal interference with normal use of the database. I’ll have to wait for a quiet night. It should happen within a week, two at most.”

“No faster?”

“Is there a rush?”

There was, but Jeannie was reluctant to tell Ghita of her worries. “I’m just impatient,” she said.

“I’ll get it done as soon as possible, don’t worry. Can you upload the program to me by modem?”

“Sure. But don’t you think I need to be there when you run it?”

“No, I don’t, Jeannie,” Ghita said with a smile in her voice.

“Of course, you know more about this kind of stuff than I do.”

“Here’s where to send it.” Ghita read out an E-mail address and Jeannie wrote it down. “I’ll send you the results the same way.”

“Thanks. Hey, Ghita?”

“What?”

“Am I going to need a tax shelter?”

“Get out of here.” Ghita laughed and hung up.

Jeannie clicked her mouse on America Online and accessed the Internet. As her search program was uploading to the FBI, there was a knock at her door and Steven Logan came in.

She looked at him appraisingly. He had been given disturbing news, and it showed in his face; but he was young and resilient, and the shock had not brought him down. He was psychologically very stable. If he had been a criminal type—as his brother, Dennis, presumably was—he would have picked a fight with someone by now. “How are you doing?” she asked him.

He closed the door behind him with his heel. “All finished,” he said. “I’ve undergone all the tests and completed each examination and filled out every questionnaire that can be devised by the ingenuity of humankind.”

“Then you’re free to go home.”

“I was thinking of staying in Baltimore for the evening. As a matter of fact, I wondered if you’d care to have dinner with me.”

She was taken by surprise. “What for?” she said ungraciously.