the Third Twin (1996)

15

THE CITY OF RICHMOND HAD AN AIR OF LOST GRANDEUR, AND Jeannie thought Dennis Pinker’s parents fit right in. Charlotte Pinker, a freckled redhead in a whispering silk dress, had the aura of a great Virginia lady even though she lived in a frame house on a narrow lot. She said she was fifty-five, but Jeannie guessed she was probably nearer sixty. Her husband, whom she referred to as “the Major,” was about the same age, but he had the careless grooming and unhurried air of a man who had long retired. He winked roguishly at Jeannie and Lisa and said: “Would you girls like a cocktail?”

His wife had a refined southern accent, and she spoke a little too loudly, as if she were perpetually addressing a meeting. “For mercy’s sake, Major, it’s ten o’clock in the morning!”

He shrugged. “Just trying to get the party off to a good start.”

“This is no party—these ladies are here to study us. It’s because our son is a murderer.”

She called him “our son,” Jeannie noted; but that did not mean a lot. He might still have been adopted. She was desperate to ask about Dennis Pinker’s parentage. If the Pinkers admitted that he was adopted, that would solve half the puzzle. But she had to be careful. It was a delicate question. If she asked too abruptly, they were more likely to lie. She forced herself to wait for the right moment.

She was also on tenterhooks about Dennis’s appearance. Was he Steven Logan’s double or not? She looked eagerly at the photographs in cheap frames around the little living room. All had been taken years ago. Little Dennis was pictured in a stroller, riding a tricycle, dressed for baseball, and shaking hands with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland. There were no pictures of him as an adult. No doubt the parents wanted to remember the innocent boy before he became a convicted murderer. In consequence, Jeannie learned nothing from the photographs. That fair-haired twelve-year-old might now look exactly like Steven Logan, but he could equally well have grown up ugly and stunted and dark.

Both Charlotte and the Major had filled out several questionnaires in advance, and now they had to be interviewed for about an hour each. Lisa took the Major into the kitchen and Jeannie interviewed Charlotte.

Jeannie had trouble concentrating on the routine questions. Her mind kept wandering to Steve in jail. She still found it impossible to believe he could be a rapist. It was not just because that would spoil her theory. She liked the guy: he was smart and engaging, and he seemed kind. He also had a vulnerable side: his bafflement and distress at the news that he had a psychopathic twin had made her want to put her arms around him and comfort him.

When she asked Charlotte if any other family members had ever been in trouble with the law, Charlotte turned her imperious gaze on Jeannie and drawled: “The men in my family have always been terribly violent.” She breathed in through flared nostrils. “I’m a Marlowe by birth, and we are a hot-blooded family.”

That suggested that Dennis was not adopted or that his adoption was not acknowledged. Jeannie concealed her disappointment. Was Charlotte going to deny that Dennis could be a twin?

The question had to be asked. Jeannie said: “Mrs. Pinker, is there any chance Dennis might have a twin?”

“No.”

The response was flat: no indignation, no bluster, just factual.

“You’re sure.”

Charlotte laughed. “My dear, that’s one thing a mother could hardly make a mistake about!”

“He definitely isn’t adopted.”

“I carried that boy in my womb, may God forgive me.”

Jeannie’s spirits fell. Charlotte Pinker would lie more readily than Lorraine Logan, Jeannie judged, but all the same it was strange and worrying that they should both deny their sons were twins.

She felt pessimistic as they took their leave of the Pinkers. She had a feeling that when she met Dennis she would find he looked nothing like Steve.

Their rented Ford Aspire was parked outside. It was a hot day. Jeannie was wearing a sleeveless dress with a jacket over it for authority. The Ford’s air conditioner groaned and pumped out tepid air. She took off her panty hose and hung her jacket on the rear-seat coat hook.

Jeannie drove. As they pulled onto the highway, heading for the prison, Lisa said: “It really bothers me that you think I picked the wrong guy.”

“It bothers me, too,” Jeannie said. “I know you wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t feel sure.”

“How can you be so certain I’m wrong?”

“I’m not certain about anything. I just have a strong feeling about Steve Logan.”

“It seems to me that you should weigh a feeling against an eyewitness certainty, and believe the eyewitness.”

“I know. But did you ever see that Alfred Hitchcock show? It’s in black and white, you catch reruns sometimes on cable.”

“I know what you’re going to say. The one where four people witness a road accident and each one sees something different.”

“Are you offended?”

Lisa sighed. “I ought to be, but I like you too much to be mad at you about it.”

Jeannie reached across and squeezed Lisa’s hand. “Thanks.”

There was a long silence, then Lisa said: “I hate it that people think I’m weak.”

Jeannie frowned. “I don’t think you’re weak.”

“Most people do. It’s because I’m small, and I have a cute little nose, and freckles.”

“Well, you don’t look tough, it’s true.”

“But I am. I live alone, I take care of myself, I hold down a job, and nobody fucks with me. Or so I thought, before Sunday. Now I feel people are right: I am weak. I can’t take care of myself at all! Any psychopath walking around the streets can grab me and hold a knife in my face and do what he wants with my body and leave his sperm inside me.”

Jeannie looked across at her. Lisa was white-faced with passion. Jeannie hoped it was doing her good to get these feelings out. “You’re not weak,” she said.

“You’re tough,” Lisa said.

“I have the opposite problem—people think I’m invulnerable. Because I’m six feet tall and I have a pierced nostril and a bad attitude, they imagine I can’t be hurt.”

“You don’t have a bad attitude.”

“I must be slipping.”

“Who thinks you’re invulnerable? I don’t.”

“The woman who runs the Bella Vista, the home my mom’s in. She said to me, straight out, ‘Your mother will never see sixty-five.’ Just like that. ‘I know you’d prefer me to be honest,’ she said. I wanted to tell her that just because there’s a ring in my nose it doesn’t mean I have no goddamn feelings.”

“Mish Delaware says rapists aren’t really interested in sex. What they enjoy is having power over a woman, and dominating her, and scaring her, and hurting her. He picked someone who looked as if she would be easily frightened.”

“Who wouldn’t be frightened?”

“He didn’t pick you, though. You probably would have slugged him.”

“I’d like the chance.”

“Anyway, you would have fought harder than I did and you wouldn’t have been helpless and terrified. So he didn’t pick you.”

Jeannie saw where all this was heading. “Lisa, that may be true, but it doesn’t make the rape your fault, okay? You’re not to blame, not one iota. You were in a train wreck: it could have happened to anyone.”

“You’re right,” Lisa said.

They drove ten miles out of town and pulled off the interstate at a sign marked “Greenwood Penitentiary.” It was an old-fashioned prison, a cluster of gray stone buildings surrounded by high walls with razor wire. They left the car in the shade of a tree in the visitors’ parking lot. Jeannie put her jacket back on but left off her panty hose.

“Are you ready for this?” Jeannie said. “Dennis is going to look just like the guy who raped you, unless my methodology is all wrong.”

Lisa nodded grimly. “I’m ready.”

The main gate opened to let out a delivery truck, and they walked in unchallenged. Security was not tight, Jeannie concluded, despite the razor wire. They were expected. A guard checked their identification and escorted them across a baking-hot courtyard where a handful of young black men in prison fatigues were throwing a basketball.

The administration building was air-conditioned. They were shown into the office of the warden, John Temoigne. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and a tie, and there were cigar butts in his ashtray. Jeannie shook his hand. “I’m Dr. Jean Ferrami from Jones Falls University.”

“How are you, Jean?”

Temoigne was obviously the type of man who found it hard to call a woman by her surname. Jeannie deliberately did not tell him Lisa’s first name. “And this is my assistant, Ms. Hoxton.”

“Hi, honey.”

“I explained our work when I wrote to you, Warden, but if you have any further questions I’d be glad to answer them.” Jeannie had to say that, even though she was itching to get a look at Dennis Pinker.

“You need to understand that Pinker is a violent and dangerous man,” said Temoigne. “Do you know the details of his crime?”

“I believe he attempted to sexually assault a woman in a movie theater, and killed her when she tried to fight him off.”

“You’re close. It was at the old Eldorado movie theater down in Greensburg. They were all watching some horror movie. Pinker got into the basement and turned off the electric power. Then, while everyone was panicking in the dark, he ran around feeling girls up.”

Jeannie exchanged a startled look with Lisa. It was so similar to what had happened at JFU on Sunday. A diversion had created confusion and panic, and given the perpetrator his opportunity. And there was a similar hint of adolescent fantasy about the two scenarios: feeling up all the girls in the darkened theater, and seeing the women running naked out of the changing room, if Steve Logan was Dennis’s identical twin, it seemed they had committed very similar crimes.

Temoigne went on: “One woman unwisely tried to resist him, and he strangled her.”

Jeannie bridled. “If he had felt you up, Warden, would you have unwisely tried to resist him?”

“I ain’t a girl,” Temoigne said with the air of one who plays a winning card.

Lisa tactfully intervened. “We should get started, Dr. Ferrami—we have a lot of work to do.”

“You’re right.”

Temoigne said: “Normally you would interview the prisoner through a grille. You’ve specially asked to be in the same room with him, and I have orders from above to let you. All the same I urge you to think again. He is a violent and dangerous criminal.”

Jeannie felt a tremor of anxiety, but she stayed outwardly cool. “There will be an armed guard in the room all the time we’re with Dennis.”

“There sure will. But I’d be more comfortable if there was a steel mesh separating you from the prisoner.” He gave a sickly grin. “A man doesn’t even have to be a psychopath to suffer temptation with two such attractive young girls.”

Jeannie stood up abruptly. “I appreciate your concern, Warden, I really do. But we have to carry out certain procedures, such as taking a blood sample, photographing the subject, and so on, which can’t be done through bars. Furthermore, parts of our interview are intimate and we feel it would compromise our results to have such an artificial barrier between us and the subject.”

He shrugged. “Well, I guess you’ll be okay.” He stood up. “I’ll walk you along to the cell block.”

They left the office and crossed a baked-earth yard to a two-story concrete blockhouse. A guard opened an iron gate and let them in. The interior was as hot as the outside. Temoigne said: “Robinson here will take care of you from now on. Anything else you girls need, just holler.”

“Thank you, Warden,” Jeannie said. “We appreciate your cooperation.”

Robinson was a reassuringly tall black man of about thirty. He had a pistol in a buttoned holster and an intimidating-looking nightstick. He showed them into a small interview room with a table and half a dozen chairs in a stack. There was an ashtray on the table and a water cooler in the corner; otherwise the room was bare. The floor was tiled in gray plastic and the walls were painted a similar shade. There was no window.

Robinson said: “Pinker will be here in a minute.” He helped Jeannie and Lisa arrange the table and chairs. Then they sat down.

A moment later the door opened.