Was she out of danger? Was it all over?
Robinson was panting with exertion. He directed a suspicious glare at Dennis and said: “You didn’t bring that vermin in here, Pinker, did you?”
“No, sir,” Dennis said glibly.
Jeannie formed in her mind the words “Yes, he did!” But for some reason she did not say them.
Robinson went on: “ ’Cause if I thought you done a thing like that, I would …” The guard shot a sideways look at Jeannie and decided not to say exactly what he would do to Dennis. “I believe you know I’d make you regret it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeannie realized she was safe. But relief was followed immediately by anger. She stared at Dennis, outraged. Was he going to pretend that nothing had happened?
Robinson said: “Well, you can get a bucket of water and clean this place up, anyway.”
“Right away, sir.”
“That is, if Dr. Ferrami is finished with you.”
Jeannie tried to say, “While you were killing the rat, Dennis stole my panties,” but the words would not come out. They seemed so foolish. And she could imagine the consequences of saying them. She would be stuck here for an hour while the allegation was investigated. Dennis would be searched and her underwear found. It would have to be shown to Warden Temoigne. She imagined him examining the evidence, handling her panties and turning them inside out, with a strange look on his face.…
No. She would say nothing.
She suffered a pang of guilt. She had always scorned women who suffered assault and then kept quiet about it, letting the offender get away with it. Now she was doing the same thing.
She realized that Dennis was counting on that. He had foreseen how she would feel and gambled that he could get away with it. The thought made her so indignant that for a moment she contemplated putting up with the hassle just to thwart him. Then she envisioned Temoigne and Robinson and all the other men in this jail looking at her and thinking, She doesn’t have any panties on, and she realized it would be too humiliating to be borne.
How clever Dennis was: as clever as the man who had set fire to the gymnasium and raped Lisa, as clever as Steve.…
“You seem a little shook,” Robinson said to her. “I guess you don’t like rats any more than I do.”
She pulled herself together. It was over. She had survived with her life and even her eyesight. What happened that was so bad? she asked herself. I might have been mutilated or raped. Instead I just lost my underwear. Be grateful. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said.
“In that case, I’ll take you out.”
The three of them left the room together.
Outside the door Robinson said: “Go get a mop, Pinker.”
Dennis smiled at Jeannie, a long, intimate smile, as if they were lovers who had spent the afternoon in bed together. Then he disappeared into the interior of the jail. Jeannie watched him go with immense relief, but it was tinged with continuing revulsion, for he had her underwear in his pocket. Would he sleep with her panties pressed to his cheek, like a child with a teddy bear? Or would he wrap them around his penis as he masturbated, pretending that he was fucking her? Whatever he chose to do she felt she was an unwilling participant, her privacy violated and her freedom compromised.
Robinson walked her to the main gate and shook her hand. She crossed the hot parking lot to the Ford, thinking, I’ll be glad to drive out of this place. She had a sample of Dennis’s DNA, that was the most important thing.
Lisa was at the wheel, running the air-conditioning to cool the car. Jeannie slumped into the passenger seat.
“You look beat,” Lisa said as she pulled away.
“Stop at the first shopping strip,” Jeannie said.
“Sure. What do you need?”
“I’ll tell you,” Jeannie replied. “But you’re not going to believe it.”
19
AFTER LUNCH BERRINGTON WENT TO A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD bar and ordered a martini.
Jim Proust’s casual suggestion of murder had shaken him. Berrington knew he had made a fool of himself by grabbing Jim’s lapel and yelling. But he did not regret the fuss. At least he could be sure Jim knew exactly how he felt.
It was nothing new for them to fight. He remembered their first great crisis, in the early seventies, when the Watergate scandal broke. It had been a terrible time: conservatism was discredited, the law-and-order politicians turned out to be crooked, and any clandestine activity, no matter how well intentioned, was suddenly viewed as an unconstitutional conspiracy. Preston Barck had been terrified and wanted to give up the whole mission. Jim Proust had called him a coward, argued angrily that there was no danger, and proposed to carry it on as a joint CIA-army project, perhaps with tighter security. No doubt he would have been ready to assassinate any investigative journalist who pried into what they were doing. It had been Berrington who suggested setting up a private company and distancing themselves from the government. Now once again it was up to him to find a way out of their difficulties.
The place was gloomy and cool. A TV set over the bar showed a soap opera, but the sound was turned down. The cold gin calmed Berrington. His anger at Jim gradually evaporated, and he focused his mind on Jeannie Ferrami.
Fear had caused him to make a rash promise. He had recklessly told Jim and Preston that he would deal with Jeannie. Now he had to fulfill that imprudent undertaking. He had to stop her asking questions about Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker.
It was maddeningly difficult. Although he had hired her and arranged her grant, he could not simply give her orders; as he had told Jim, the university was not the army. She was employed by JFU, and Genetico had already handed over a year’s funding. In the long term, of course, he could easily pull the plug on her; but that was not good enough. She had to be stopped immediately, today or tomorrow, before she learned enough to ruin them all.
Calm down, he thought, calm down.
Her weak point was her use of medical databases without the permission of the patients. It was the kind of thing the newspapers could make into a scandal, regardless of whether anyone’s privacy was genuinely invaded. And universities were terrified of scandal; it played havoc with their fundraising.
It was tragic to wreck such a promising scientific project. It went against everything Berrington stood for. He had encouraged Jeannie, and now he had to undermine her. She would be heartbroken, and with reason. He told himself that she had bad genes and would have got into trouble sooner or later; but all the same he wished he did not have to be the cause of her downfall.
He tried not to think about her body. Women had always been his weakness. No other vice tempted him: he drank in moderation, never gambled, and could not understand why people took drugs. He had loved his wife, Vivvie, but even then he had not been able to resist the temptation of other women, and Vivvie had eventually left him because of his fooling around. Now when he thought of Jeannie he imagined her running her fingers through his hair and saying, “You’ve been so good to me, I owe you so much, how can I ever thank you?”
Such thoughts made him feel ashamed. He was supposed to be her patron and mentor, not her seducer.
As well as desire he felt burning resentment. She was just a girl, for God’s sake; how could she be such a threat? How could a kid with a ring in her nose possibly jeopardize him and Preston and Jim when they were on the brink of achieving their lifetime ambitions? It was unthinkable they should be thwarted now; the idea made him dizzy with panic. When he was not imagining himself making love to Jeannie, he had fantasies of strangling her.