“I was fired today. They put all my personal stuff in that bag and locked me out of my room.”
“What?” He was incredulous. “How come?”
“There was an article in the New York Times today saying that my use of databases violates people’s privacy. But I think Berrington Jones was just using that as an excuse to get rid of me.”
He burned with indignation. He wanted to protest, to spring to her defense, to save her from this malicious persecution. “Can they dismiss you just like that?”
“No, there’s a hearing tomorrow morning in front of the discipline committee of the university senate.”
“You and I are both having an unbelievably bad week.” He was going to tell her about the DNA test when she picked up the phone.
“I need the number of Greenwood Penitentiary, it’s near Richmond, Virginia.” As Steve filled the kettle, she scribbled a number and dialed again. “May I speak to Warden Temoigne? My name is Dr. Ferrami.…Yes, I’ll hold.…Thank you.… Good evening, Warden, how are you? … I’m fine. This may sound like a silly question, but is Dennis Pinker still in jail? … You’re sure? You saw him with your own eyes? … Thank You And you take care of yourself, too. Bye.” She looked up at Steve. “Dennis is still in jail. The warden spoke to him an hour ago.”
Steve put a spoonful of jasmine tea into the pot and found two cups. “Jeannie, the cops have the result of their DNA test.”
She went very still. “And … ?”
“The DNA from Lisa’s vagina matches the DNA from my blood.”
In a bemused voice she said: “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Someone who looks like me and has my DNA raped Lisa Hoxton on Sunday. The same guy attacked you in Philadelphia today. And it wasn’t Dennis Pinker.”
Their eyes locked, and Jeannie said: “There are three of you.”
“Jesus Christ.” He felt despairing. “But this is even more unlikely. The cops will never believe it. How could something like this happen?”
“Wait,” she said excitedly. “You don’t know what I discovered this afternoon, before I ran into your double. I have the explanation.”
“Dear God, let this be true.”
She looked concerned. “Steve, you’re going to find it shocking.”
“I don’t care, I just want to understand.”
She reached into the black plastic garbage bag and retrieved a canvas briefcase. “Look at this.” She took out a glossy brochure folded open to the first page. She handed it to Steve and he read the opening paragraph:
The Aventine Clinic was founded in 1972 by Genetico Inc., as a pioneering center for research and development of human in vitro fertilization—the creation of what the newspapers call “test-tube babies.”
Steve said: “You think Dennis and I are test-tube babies?”
“Yes.”
He had a strange, nauseated feeling in the pit of his stomach. “That’s weird. But what does it explain?”
“Identical twins could be conceived in the laboratory and then implanted in the wombs of different women.”
Steve’s sick feeling got worse. “But did the sperm and egg come from Mom and Dad—or from the Pinkers?”
“I don’t know.”
“So the Pinkers could be my real parents. God.”
“There’s another possibility.”
Steve could see from the worried look on Jeannie’s face that she was afraid this would shock him too. His mind leaped ahead and he guessed what she was going to say. “Maybe the sperm and egg didn’t come from my parents or the Pinkers. I could be the child of total strangers.”
She did not reply, but her solemn look told him he was right.
He felt disoriented. It was like a dream in which he suddenly found himself falling through the air. “It’s hard to take in,” he said. The kettle switched itself off. For something to do with his hands, Steve poured boiling water into the teapot. “I’ve never much resembled either Mom or Dad. Do I look like one of the Pinkers?”
“No.”
“Then it’s most probably strangers.”
“Steve, none of this takes away the fact that your mom and dad loved you and raised you and would still give their lives for you.”
With a shaky hand he poured tea into two cups. He gave one to Jeannie and sat beside her on the couch. “How does all this explain the third twin?”
“If there were twins in the test tube, there could have been triplets. It’s the same process: one of the embryos split again. It happens in nature, so I guess it can happen in the laboratory.”
Steve still felt as if he were spinning through the air, but now he began to get another sensation: relief. It was a bizarre story that Jeannie told, but at least it provided a rational explanation of why he had been accused of two brutal crimes.
“Do Mom and Dad know any of this?”
“I don’t believe they do. Your mother and Charlotte Pinker told me they went into the clinic for hormone treatment. In vitro fertilization was not practiced in those days. Genetico must have been years ahead of everyone else with the technique. And I think they tried it without telling their patients what they were doing.”
“No wonder Genetico is scared,” Steve said. “Now I understand why Berrington is so desperate to discredit you.”
“Yeah. What they did was really unethical. It makes invasion of privacy look petty.”
“It wasn’t just unethical. It could ruin Genetico, financially.”
She looked excited. “That would explain a lot. But how could it ruin them?”
“It’s a tort—a civil wrong. We covered this last year in law school.” In the back of his mind he was thinking, Why the hell am I talking to her about torts—I want to tell her how much I love her. “If Genetico offered a woman hormone treatment, then deliberately impregnated her with someone else’s fetus without telling her, that’s a breach of implied contract by fraud.”
“But it happened so long ago. Isn’t there a statute of limitations?”
“Yes, but it runs from the time of discovery of the fraud.”
“I still don’t see how it would ruin the company.”
“This is an ideal case for punitive damages. That means the money is not just to compensate the victim, say for the cost of bringing up someone else’s child. It’s also to punish the people who did it, and make sure they and others are scared to commit the same wrong again.”
“How much?”
“Genetico knowingly abused a woman’s body for their own secret purposes—I’m sure any lawyer worth his salt would ask for a hundred million dollars.”
“According to that piece in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, the entire company is only worth a hundred and eighty million.”
“So they would be ruined.”
“It might take years to come to trial.”
“But don’t you see? Just the threat would sabotage the takeover!”
“How so?”
“The danger that Genetico may have to pay a fortune in damages reduces the value of the shares. The takeover would at least be postponed until Landsmann could assess the amount of the liability.”
“Wow. So it’s not just their reputations that are on the line. They could lose all that money, too.”
“Exactly.” Steve’s mind came back to his own problems. “None of this helps me,” he said, suddenly feeling gloomy again. “I need to be able to prove your theory of the third twin. The only way of doing that is to find him.” A thought struck him. “Could your computer search engine be used? Do you see what I mean?”
“Sure.”
He grew excited. “If one search threw up me and Dennis, another search might throw up me and the third, or Dennis and the third, or all three of us.”