the Third Twin (1996)

“There’ll be a lineup. We’ll let Lisa Hoxton decide whether this is the man that raped her.” With facetious deference Mish added: “Is that okay with you, Dr. Ferrami?”

“That’s just fine,” Jeannie said.

9

THEY TOOK STEVE DOWNTOWN IN THE PALE BLUE DODGE Colt. The woman detective drove and the other one, a heavyset white man with a mustache, sat beside her, looking cramped in the little car. No one spoke.

Steve quietly seethed with resentment. Why the hell should he be riding in this uncomfortable car, his wrists in handcuffs, when he ought to be sitting in Jeannie Ferrami’s apartment with a cold drink in his hand? They had just better get this over with quickly, that was all.

Police headquarters was a pink granite building in Baltimore’s red-light district, among the topless bars and porn outlets. They drove up a ramp and parked in the internal garage. It was full of police cruisers and cheap compacts like the Colt.

They took Steve up in an elevator and put him in a room with yellow-painted walls and no windows. They took off his handcuffs then left him alone. He assumed they locked the door: he did not check.

There was a table and two hard plastic chairs. On the table was an ashtray containing two cigarette butts, both filter tips, one with lipstick on it. Set into the door was a pane of opaque glass: Steve could not see out, but he guessed they could see in.

Looking at the ashtray, he wished he smoked. It would be something to do here in this yellow cell. Instead he paced up and down.

He told himself he could not really be in trouble. He had managed to get a look at the picture on the flyer, and although it was more or less like him, it was not him. No doubt he resembled the rapist, but when he stood in the lineup with several other tall young men, the victim would not pick him out. After all, the poor woman must have looked long and hard at the bastard who did it: his face would be burned into her memory. She would not make a mistake.

But the cops had no right to keep him waiting like this. Okay, they had to eliminate him as a suspect, but they did not have to take all night about it. He was a law-abiding citizen.

He tried to look on the bright side. He was getting a close-up view of the American justice system. He would be his own lawyer: it would be good practice. When in the future he represented a client accused of a crime, he would know what the person was going through in police custody.

He had seen the inside of a precinct house once before, but that had felt very different. He was only fifteen. He had gone to the police with one of his teachers. He had admitted the crime immediately and told the police candidly everything that had happened. They could see his injuries: it was obvious the fight had not been one-sided. His parents had come to take him home.

That had been the most shameful moment of his life. When Mom and Dad walked into that room, Steve wished he were dead. Dad looked mortified, as if he had suffered a great humiliation; Mom’s expression showed grief; they both looked bewildered and wounded. At the time, it was all he could do not to burst into tears, and he still felt choked up whenever he recalled it.

But this was different. This time he was innocent.

The woman detective came in carrying a cardboard file folder. She had taken off her jacket, but she still wore the gun on her belt. She was an attractive black woman of about forty, a little on the heavy side, and she had an I’m-in-charge air.

Steve looked at her with relief. ‘Thank God,” he said.

“For what?”

“That something is happening. I don’t want to be here all damn night.”

“Would you sit down, please?”

Steve sat.

“My name is Sergeant Michelle Delaware.” She took a sheet of paper from the folder and put it on the table. “What’s your full name and address?”

He told her, and she wrote it on the form. “Age?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Education?”

“I have a college degree.”

She wrote on the form then pushed it across to him. It was headed:

POLICE DEPARTMENT

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

EXPLANATION OF RIGHTS

Form 69

    “Please read the five sentences on the form, then write your initials in the spaces provided beside each sentence.” She passed him a pen.

He read the form and started to initial.

“You have to read aloud,” she said. He thought for a moment. “So that you know I’m literate?” he asked.

“No. It’s so that you can’t later pretend to be illiterate and claim that you were not informed of your rights.”

This was the kind of thing they did not teach you in law school.