from a French film. I use it for the type of child who is fearless, uncontrollable, hyperactive. Such children are very difficult to socialize. Charlotte Pinker and her husband failed with Dennis. Your parents succeeded with you.”
This did not reassure him. “But underneath, Dennis and I are the same.”
“You were both born wild.”
“But I have a thin veneer of civilization.”
She could see he was profoundly troubled. “Why does it bother you so much?”
“I want to think of myself as a human being, not a housetrained gorilla.”
She laughed, despite his solemn expression. “Gorillas have to be socialized too. So do all animals that live in groups. That’s where crime comes from.”
He looked interested. “From living in groups?”
“Sure. A crime is a breach of an important social rule. Solitary animals don’t have rules. A bear will trash another bear’s cave, steal its food, and kill its young. Wolves don’t do those things; if they did, they couldn’t live in packs. Wolves are monogamous, they take care of one another’s young, and they respect each other’s personal space. If an individual breaks the rules they punish him; if he persists, they either expel him from the pack or kill him.”
“What about breaking unimportant social rules?”
“Like farting in an elevator? We call it bad manners. The only punishment is the disapproval of others. Amazing how effective that is.”
“Why are you so interested in people who break the rules?”
She thought of her father. She did not know whether she had his criminal genes or not. It might have helped Steve to know that she, too, was troubled by her genetic inheritance. But she had lied about Daddy for so long that she could not easily bring herself to talk about him now. “It’s a big problem,” she said evasively. “Everyone’s interested in crime.”
The door opened behind her and the young woman police officer looked in. “Time’s up, Dr. Ferrami.”
“Okay,” she said over her shoulder. “Steve, did you know that Lisa Hoxton is my best friend in Baltimore?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“We work together; she’s a technician.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s not the kind of person who would make a wild accusation.”
He nodded.
“All the same, I want you to know that I don’t believe you did it.”
For a moment she thought he was going to cry. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
“Call me when you get out.” She told him her home number. “Can you remember that?”
“No problem.”
Jeannie was reluctant to leave. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, I need it in here.”
She turned away and left.
The policewoman walked her to the lobby. Night was falling as she returned to the parking garage. She got onto the Jones Falls Expressway and flicked on the headlights of the old Mercedes. Heading north, she drove too fast, eager to get to the university. She always drove too fast. She was a skillful but somewhat reckless driver, she knew. But she did not have the patience to go at fifty-five.
Lisa’s white Honda Accord was already parked outside Nut House. Jeannie eased her car alongside it and went inside. Lisa was just turning on the lights in the lab. The cool box containing Dennis Pinker’s blood sample stood on the bench.
Jeannie’s office was right across the corridor. She unlocked her door by passing her plastic card through the card reader and went in. Sitting at her desk, she called the Pinker house in Richmond. “At last!” she said when she heard the ringing tone.
Charlotte answered. “How is my son?” she said.
“He’s in good health,” Jeannie replied. He hardly seemed like a psychopath, she thought, until he pulled a knife on me and stole my panties. She tried to think of something positive to say. “He was very cooperative.”
“He always had beautiful manners,” Charlotte said in the southern drawl she used for her most outrageous utterances.
“Mrs. Pinker, may I double-check his birthday with you?”
“He was born on the seventh of September.” Like it should be a national holiday.
It was not the answer Jeannie had been hoping for. “And what hospital was he born in?”
“We were at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, at the time.”
Jeannie suppressed a disappointed curse.
“The Major was training conscripts for Vietnam,” Charlotte said proudly. “The Army Medical Command has a big hospital at Bragg. That’s where Dennis came into the world.”
Jeannie could not think of anything more to say. The mystery was as deep as ever. “Mrs. Pinker, I want to thank you again for your kind cooperation.”
“You’re welcome.”
She returned to the lab and said to Lisa: “Apparently, Steven and Dennis were born thirteen days apart and in different states. I just don’t understand it.”
Lisa opened a fresh box of test tubes. “Well, there’s one incontrovertible test. If they have the same DNA, they’re identical twins, no matter what anyone says about their birth.” She took out two of the little glass tubes. They were a couple of inches long. Each had a lid at the top and a conical bottom. She opened a pack of labels, wrote “Dennis Pinker” on one and “Steven Logan” on the other, then labeled the tubes and placed them in a rack.
She broke the seal on Dennis’s blood and put a single drop in one test tube. Then she took a vial of Steven’s blood out of the refrigerator and did the same.
Using a precision-calibrated pipette—a pipe with a bulb at one end—she added a tiny measured quantity of chloroform to each test tube. Then she picked up a fresh pipette and added a similarly exact amount of phenol.
She closed both test tubes and put them in the Whirlimixer to agitate them for a few seconds. The chloroform would dissolve the fats and the phenol would disrupt the proteins, but the long coiled molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid would remain intact.
Lisa put the tubes back in the rack. “That’s all we can do for the next few hours,” she said.
The water-dissolved phenol would slowly separate from the chloroform. A meniscus would form in the tube at the boundary. The DNA would be in the watery part, which could be drawn off with a pipette for the next stage of the test. But that would have to wait for the morning.
A phone rang somewhere. Jeannie frowned; it sounded as if it were coming from her office. She stepped across the corridor and picked it up. “Yes?”
“Is this Dr. Ferrami?”
Jeannie hated people who called and demanded to know your name without introducing themselves. It was like knocking on someone’s front door and saying: “Who the hell are you?” She bit back a sarcastic response and said: “I’m Jeannie Ferrami. Who is this calling, please?”
“Naomi Ereelander,
“At this time of night?”
“I work all hours. It seems you do too.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“I’m researching an article about scientific ethics.”
“Oh.” Jeannie thought immediately about Steve not knowing he might be adopted. It was an ethical problem, though not an insoluble one—but surely the
“I believe you scan medical databases looking for suitable subjects to study.”
